Covenantal Hermeneutical Presuppositions and Their Logical Sequence

Below I have Included a revised edition of the covenantal hermeneutics I listed in a post a week ago or so. I have attempted to place the items in this list in a logical order, one that follows another in their function.

 

I.                    Let easily interpreted passages guide our interpretation of difficult passages. 

a.        

                                           i.      Let the interpretation of the fulfillment of Old Testament prophesies/promises found in the New Testament amplify/expand the grammatical/historical understanding of a particular prophesy when it was given.

                                             ii.      When a promise is made, the object of promise is always, to some degree, a shadow or type of the object of fulfillment; so if the fulfillment of a promise is limited to its "literal" or grammatical/historical manifestation, then it isn't as illustrative of God's goodness. But if the quality of the object of fulfillment is to be accurately represented by the object of promise, it cannot always be limited to its grammatical/historical manifestation.

1.      Christ is the ultimate fulfillment of the types and shadows pictured in the Old Testament, so in that way, all the Old Testament points forward to Christ and not to a future manifestation of ethnic Israel, but Christ is the true Israel and those found “in Him” are true Israelites.

b.       

                                               i.      Let our understanding of the immediate context of a passage be interpreted under the larger umbrella of the entire context of Revelation; the "meta-narrative" or "big picture" perspective of redemptive history should be used to tailor our understanding of the immediate contexts of passages, such as the context provided by their human authorship, chronology in respect to other writings of Revelation, and literary genre.

                               ii.      Let the literary genre of a passage guide our understanding of symbols, types/shadows, parables, numbers, and prophesies (either their giving or fulfillment) i.e., historical narratives such as the gospel accounts of resurrection should be taken at face value, but apocalyptic literature when it presents visions such as dragons, lamp stands, 24 elders, etc, they may be symbols which represent something greater. The objects they represent either, could not have been understood if their future manifestation had been presented, or God has decided that the objects being represented are meant to be kept a mystery in part, until such a time when He sees fit to reveal their identity. Note that the object being symbolized is normally a literal and real object.