The New Testament authors at times use the word “spiritual” to speak about the Christian way of reading the Old Testament (or the New, itself). Most often in using this word, they are indicating not that something is immaterial but that it pertains to or is produced by the Holy Spirit. For instance, First Peter 2 uses this word to characterize new covenant realities:
“Come to him … and like living stones be yourselves built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Christ.”
First Peter 2:4–5
The passage is speaking of the Christian community as a temple. The word “house” here refers to a temple as in the phrase “the house of God” (e.g., Judges 18:31; Psalm 135:2). The verse does not mean that the house, in this case the Christian community, is immaterial. No body of Christians on this earth is immaterial. Rather, the text is saying that the Christians are a temple formed by the Spirit and so are different in nature than the temple building in Jerusalem. Likewise, it is saying that Christian worship contains sacrifices formed by the Spirit and so they are different in nature than the animals, cereals, and oils used in the Jerusalem temple sacrifices.
The book of Revelation, speaking of Old Testament realities, uses “spiritual” in a related way. When we look at the role of the city of Rome (the most likely referent of “Babylon”) in the persecution described in the book of Revelation, we are told that, literally translated, Rome is “spiritually” called Sodom and Egypt (Revelation 11:8), that is, identified as the current example of the worldly city that is hostile to God’s people, as Sodom and Egypt were. By the revelation or insight that the Spirit gives, we can see that Rome plays the same role in God’s plan.
Many Christian writers over the centuries have spoken of the spiritual interpretation of the Scriptures and contrasted it to the literal or historical one. Some have been explicit in connecting the literal or historical meaning with the intent of the human author, or at least with what he might have been able to understand in his context at the time.4 They then saw spiritual interpretation as allowing us to get at the fuller meaning of the Old Testament (sometimes referred to as the sensus plenior, the Latin for “fuller meaning”).
There are different ways to get at the fuller meaning of Old Testament texts like the text of Genesis. Because of the light that has been revealed to us in Christ, we have a fuller view of what God was about at different points in human history than Old Testament writers did. We know much more about God’s purpose in creating Adam and Eve than the people who first heard the account knew, because they did not know about Christ or about the coming of the kingdom in the age to come. If we read the Old Testament in the light of what we know about the stages of God’s plan, we can understand better what God was about in creating Adam and how Christ fulfilled that intention. That, of course, is the main focus of this book.
The example of the Trinity in Genesis 1 is somewhat different. The early Church Fathers who wrote that when God said, “Let us make man in our own image and likeness,” he was referring to his Trinitarian nature when he said “us” probably did not say it on the basis of a reflection on the stages of God’s plan. Rather, they said it on the basis of what they knew about the reality being spoken of. They knew that God is Trinitarian because of Christian teaching, and therefore they thought that if “we” made man in “our” image and likeness, that probably was a reference to God and therefore in some way to the Trinity.5
Christian teachers who took this position did not necessarily expect the Old Testament author explicitly to know that it was so. But they believed they knew it was so because they understood something about the nature of God that the Old Testament authors probably did not. Strict adherence to an historical method that focuses exclusively on the knowledge of the original human author rules out knowledge we have of what is being said, when we now know more about the reality the original author was writing about. This is not especially helpful unless we are concerned with a solely historical view.
Moreover, in the traditional Christian method of exegesis, what we can call a theological method of exegesis, it is the subject matter, the Incarnation or sexual morality, for instance, which on the whole controls the process rather than the literary or historical character and antecedents of the text. A text is primarily related to other texts on the same subject or to anything else known about that subject.6 This does not mean that what we see in the text has to be fully explicit in the text or it is not there at all. As we saw, even in matters that are not especially theological, we could explain what Old Testament authors said about “great fish” by using the knowledge we have of whales that they did not have. In fact, it is not rare for teachers who engage in theological exegesis to observe that a particular text does not seem to teach or to clearly teach something that is more fully known about the subject from another source.
Spiritual (theological) exegesis
A theological approach to exegesis is “spiritual.” It is at least spiritual in the sense that it is the approach of the New Testament authors, writers inspired by the Holy Spirit, and of Christ himself. But it is also spiritual in the sense that the Holy Spirit works in human beings to know God and especially to know God in Christ. The focus of a spiritual understanding is God himself, not history or literary method, as useful as these may be in understanding Scripture.
To be able to give a valid theological exegesis of a text based on theological knowledge that comes from another source than the scriptural text we are considering, we have to be able to refer to sources that convey reliable theological knowledge. For the most part these are other scriptural texts, because these are inspired by the Holy Spirit and therefore spiritual writings. In the case of the Old Testament, the New Testament plays a major role. Orthodox Christian teachers will normally also refer to creedal definitions, including the Nicene Creed. Although not usually considered inspired, these are recognized as spiritual interpretations (Acts 15:28).
Christian teachers will also stand in a theological tradition, whether they recognize that they do or not. Those formed in a certain tradition will use certain theological sources and prioritize them in a certain way. Increasingly now they will also let ecumenical considerations influence how they do theology. Of course when orthodox Christians use the same or a similar theological method, they will not necessarily all agree on everything, any more than historians who use similar methods will agree with one another in all their conclusions. Nonetheless, they are seeking the mind of Christ, which the Holy Spirit reveals to us (1 Corinthians 2:10–11, 16).
The fact that spiritual (theological) exegesis focuses first and foremost on the subject being discussed is one of the keys to why spiritual exegesis allows the Old Testament to be used by Christian teachers. If our method is historical, especially if it is secular historical, we only see the text in its relationships to historical facts (e.g., what we know about the conditions or events of the time, what previous writings influenced it, what gave rise to it, what the human author’s understanding of its content was). If our method is literary, we only see the literary features of the text (e.g., stylistic devices, unifying techniques, rhetorical techniques). If, however, our method is spiritual exegesis and the text is about God and the things of God, we are able to speak about its true significance, including its Christian significance, when we speak about its content.
All Scripture is inspired by the Holy Spirit
Spiritual interpretation also treats the words of the Scripture as inspired. The entire Scripture was written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in the first place. “Inspiration” is not the same as revelation. The letter to the Philippians is inspired Scripture. In it Paul says he was in prison. He must not have needed revelation to know he was in prison. But when he wrote Philippians, God’s hand was enough in what led up to the letter that we know the letter as a whole is God’s word, God’s communication to us, and it contains things we need to know to be saved, including how God wanted Paul to approach his imprisonment. For that reason it was accepted into the canon, even though only some of it was revealed truth (although all of it was written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit).
Moreover, frequently people have only a partial understanding of everything the Holy Spirit inspires them to speak, so there could have been a fair amount of content in Genesis that went beyond the understanding and therefore the intent of the author. A classic example is that of the high priest Caiaphas in John 12:49–50, who gave his opinion that it was expedient that “one man should die for the people,” without realizing that God was speaking through him to indicate that Jesus of Nazareth had to die to save the children of God from perishing due to their sins. The Scripture is the inspired Word of God, even if not everything in it came through the conscious understanding or intention of the human author, whether acquired by human knowledge or by revelation.
The spiritual gift of interpretation
Moreover, there is a spiritual gift of interpretation that allows us to understand Scripture as a work of the Holy Spirit and understand what he was doing in the Old Testament. Not only is there a shortcoming in the modern emphasis on what the human author intended, there is also a shortcoming in a secular methodology that prohibits a spiritual interpretation of the Scripture. First Corinthians 2 presents forcefully the need of a spiritual interpretation:
“Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who possess the Spirit.
The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.”
1 Corinthians 2:2–16
Paul, in other words, is teaching here that unless we are spiritualized people—people who have received the gift of the Spirit, which puts us into contact with spiritual realities and allows us to understand them, and who have let our minds be formed by spiritual teaching—we will not be able to understand the full meaning of the Old Testament, or the New Testament for that matter.
When Christians, whether ordinary believers or scholars and teachers, have received the gift of the Spirit in an experiential way, they come to understand who God is by acquaintance and not just by report or through studying texts. They also come to understand “the things of God,” spiritual truths. They know the holiness and goodness of God in ways that they cannot fully put into words or fully grasp by concepts. They “see” the transcendent majesty of God in a way that makes it impossible to confuse him with the gods of pagan mythology or any other human idol, and this “seeing,” this spiritual insight, compels them to understand his words in ways that point them to something beyond this world. They can understand spiritually [discern spiritually in RSV translation].
Spiritual interpretation also allows us to go beyond what the Old Testament authors had in mind when we apply the Scripture to our own lives or circumstances. The human author of the book of Revelation was enabled to see that Rome played the same role as Sodom or Egypt. The Roman Empire is gone, but we can be guided by the Spirit to see a similar application to some people or corporate entities in our own world. We may be able to spiritually and truly say some city or nation is Sodom and Egypt today, without, of course, claiming the same inspiration as the writers of Scripture. We are enabled by the Holy Spirit to see spiritually.
When someone takes the historical method as the only way of getting at the meaning of a text, they have cut themselves loose from a genuine Christian interpretation of the Scripture. An unspiritual person cannot reach a Christian interpretation. It is not available to a secular mind, because genuine Christian interpretation has to be reached the same way the Scripture was written; namely, by the Spirit of God.
Notes
4 For a further discussion of the spiritual interpretation of the Scriptures as traditionally understood, see the “Technical Note: The Four Senses of Scripture” on p. 414. For a discussion of the intent of the author and the ways the phrase is understood in scholarly literature, see “The Intent of the Author(s)” in part II on p. 499.
5 Trinitarian references in Genesis 1 are discussed more fully in chapter 1, both in the section “The Creation of the World” and the section “The Creation of the Human Race.”
6 See Mark Julian Edwards, Origen Against Plato (Aldershot, Hants, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002), 144 for a description of how patristic writers (in this case, Origen) use texts with similarity of subject matter as the primary way of interpreting a given text.
This article © 2017 by Stephen B. Clark is adapted from The Old Testament in Light of the New, Chapter 3, published by Emmaus Road Publication, Steubenville, Ohio, USA.
Top image credit: John the Evangelist writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, icon dated 1340-41 (image cropped), from the Vatopedi monastery on Mount Athos, Greece. Image in the public domain.
Steve Clark has been a founding leader, author, and teacher for the Catholic charismatic renewal since its inception in 1967. Steve is past president of the Sword of the Spirit, an international ecumenical association of charismatic covenant communities worldwide. He is the founder of the Servants of the Word, an ecumenical international missionary brotherhood of men living single for the Lord.
Steve Clark has authored a number of books, including Baptized in the Spirit and Spiritual Gifts, Finding New Life in the Spirit, Growing in Faith, and Knowing God’s Will, Building Christian Communities, Man and Woman in Christ, The Old Testament in Light of the New.
- See articles by Steve Clark in Living Bulwark Archives