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READING THE OLD TESTAMENT AS

CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURE:
A Critical Assessment of the
Canonical Approach
Of Christopher R. Seitz

by

Gregory E.T. Papazian

A thesis submitted to the Graduate Theological Studies Program,

Conrad Grebel University College

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Theological Studies

Awarded by Conrad Grebel University College.

Waterloo 2007

© Gregory E.T. Papazian


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ABSTRACT

Reading the Old Testament as Christian Scripture:


A Critical Assessment of The Canonical Approach of Christopher R. Seitz
by
Gregory E.T. Papazian
The Graduate Theological Studies Program, Conrad Grebel University College
2007

This study offers a critical assessment of Christopher Seitz’ canonical approach to reading the Old
Testament as Christian Scripture. Seitz’ canonical approach is interpreted as a focus on the theological
significance of the final form of the Old Testament, and the textual relationship between its plain sense
and that of the New Testament. Together these primary elements define Seitz’ approach to the Old
Testament as Christian Scripture.

Chapter I explores the canonical approach through the themes of history and revelation in Seitz’ work.
This chapter focuses particularly on his critique of historical-critical approaches to the Old Testament,
Seitz’ reading of the Exodus narrative, and the implications of this reading for Seitz’ understanding of
God’s self-disclosure in light of Israel’s election.

Chapter II explores the canonical approach through the themes of canon and unity in Seitz’ work.
Building on Seitz’ account of the Old Testament’s revelatory character, this chapter focuses particularly
on comprehending the unity of the canonical book of Isaiah as an illustration of the canonical approach to
the Old Testament overall.

Chapter III explores the canonical approach through the themes of scripture and community in Seitz’
work. This chapter focuses particularly on his account of the Old Testament as Christian Scripture with
the New Testament, scripture in the early church, and the role of creeds and the rule of faith in the
church’s reading of Christian scripture today.

The interpretive categories of W. Randolph Tate function as an analytical tool in this study, exploring the
themes above through the world behind-the-text (historical focus), the world within-the-text
(literary/textual focus), and the world in-front-of-the-text (reader focus).
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………..……………ii
Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………………………………v

INTRODUCTION.....................................................................................................................................1
A. Purpose of this Study..........................................................................................................................1
B. Locating Christopher R. Seitz.............................................................................................................1
C. Tate's Hermeneutical Model as Analytical Tool .................................................................................2
D. Structure: Behind, Within and In-Front-of-the-Text...........................................................................6

CHAPTER I - REVELATION & HISTORY: THE OLD TESTAMENT, ELECTION &


HISTORICAL CRITICISM.....................................................................................................................7
A. Behind-the-Text: Revelation & Reconstructing History.....................................................................8
1. Seitz’ Definition of Historical Criticism..........................................................................................8
2. Seitz’ Critique of Historical-Critical Method ................................................................................12
3. Illustration: The Failure of Historical Criticism.............................................................................15
B. Within-the-text: Revelation & Seitz’ Canonical Approach...............................................................17
1. Defining Seitz’ Canonical Approach .............................................................................................18
2. Seitz’ Canonical Approach & the Limited Role of Historical Criticism........................................20
3. Exegetical Illustration: Seitz' Reading of Exodus 3 & 6 ................................................................24
C. In-Front-of-the-Text: Revelation, Election & Hermeneutical Access ...............................................28
1. Election: Defining Hermeneutical Access to the Old Testament ...................................................29
2. Exegetical Illustration: God’s Name & Revelation in Exodus.......................................................30
3. The Scandal of Particularity: Revelation & Election .....................................................................33
D. Conclusion........................................................................................................................................35

CHAPTER II - CANON & UNITY: THE OLD TESTAMENT, AUTHORSHIP & SEITZ’
CANONICAL APPROACH...................................................................................................................36
A. Behind-the-Text: Unity, Authorship & the Text...............................................................................36
1. Revelation, Authorship & Unity....................................................................................................37
2. Seitz’ Account of Inspiration & Unity...........................................................................................38
3. Illustration: Inspiration & Unity in Isaiah......................................................................................42
B. Within-the-text: Expecting Unity in the Canonical Text...................................................................43
1. Unity of Isaiah - Structure and Form .............................................................................................43
2. Unity of Isaiah - Content ...............................................................................................................47
3. Unity of Isaiah - Canonical Context ..............................................................................................49
C. In-front-of-the-text: Unity and Readership .......................................................................................57
D. Conclusion........................................................................................................................................59

CHAPTER III - SCRIPTURE & COMMUNITY: THE OLD TESTAMENT AS CHRISTIAN


SCRIPTURE............................................................................................................................................61
A. Behind-the-text: Old Testament as Israel's Scripture for the Church ................................................61
1. Revelation & the Form of Christian Scripture ...............................................................................62
2. Christian Scripture: Old Testament & New Testament..................................................................65
3. Community Behind-the-text: the Early Church & Christian Scripture ..........................................68
B. Within-the-text: Old Testament Accordance & Deference in the New Testament............................74
1. Seitz on New Testament Accordance ............................................................................................75
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2. Seitz on New Testament Deference...............................................................................................78


C. In-Front-of-The-Text: How the Church Reads the Old Testament....................................................82
1. Church as the Community Formed by Scripture............................................................................83
2. Scriptural Reading formed by the Church .....................................................................................87
3. Critique: A More Robust Sense of the Reading Community .........................................................92
D. Conclusion........................................................................................................................................95

CONCLUSION: CRITICALLY ASSESSING SEITZ’ CANONICAL APPROACH .......................96


1. Primary Works By Christopher R. Seitz........................................................................................99
2. Secondary Works By Christopher R. Seitz....................................................................................99
3. Secondary Literature ...................................................................................................................100
4. Background Reading ...................................................................................................................101
5. Reviews Of Christopher R. Seitz’ Work......................................................................................106
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It has been a privilege to have the time, resources, and support to produce this study. My thanks
go first to my family, particularly my wife, for enduring with me through the past few years of research
and writing. I am also thankful to Lydia Neufeld Harder for her role as my supervisor. She has been
instrumental in teaching me how to write, and how to think clearly about this subject. Her commitment to
this project and to me made it possible. Tom Yoder Neufeld and Derek Suderman both offered excellent
feedback and criticism as readers, leading to a much-improved study. Finally, I would like to thank the
numerous teachers, preachers, and others who have inspired in a me not only an interest in the Old
Testament, but also the desire to be a student of it’s word.

Greg Papazian, April 2007


INTRODUCTION
A. Purpose of this Study

The aim of this study is to provide a critical assessment of Christopher R. Seitz’ canonical

approach to reading the Old Testament as Christian scripture. Seitz’ canonical approach focuses on the

text as it is found in the biblical canon, rather than in a historical context. In this study I will address the

question: “How does Seitz’ canonical approach advance the reading of the Old Testament as Christian

scripture?” My thesis is that Seitz advances the reading of the Old Testament as Christian scripture

through his approach in two ways. First, he addresses the theological significance of the text's final form.

Second, he pays attention to the plain sense of the Old Testament's own scriptural voice, in theological

relationship with the New Testament.

B. Locating Christopher R. Seitz

Seitz is an Old Testament scholar at the University of St. Andrews in Aberdeen, Scotland. Having

studied under Brevard S. Childs at Yale Divinity School, Seitz inherited Childs’ emphasis on the

canonical dimension of biblical texts as fundamental to their interpretation. Like Childs, Seitz is interested

in what it means to read the biblical text as scripture. In particular, Seitz shares Childs’ concern for

reading the Old Testament as Christian scripture and in ensuring interpretive methods serve this approach

to the text, rather than hinder it. Seitz raises the most questions about historical approaches to

interpretation. Thus Seitz’ canonical approach is quite different from that of a scholar like James A.

Sanders. For Sanders the Bible’s canonical process is the key to his interpretive methodology. The

historical context of historical communities gives insight into how and why a text was canonized, and

shapes how Sanders reads the text in the present.1 This distinguishes Seitz’ canonical approach from

Sanders, because Seitz seeks to make historical concerns secondary to canonical ones. Instead, Seitz seeks

to interpret the text of the bible as it stands in its final form, as part of the canon. Yet, Seitz also gives

1 For further discussion of Sanders see Charles H.H. Scobie “New Directions in Biblical Theology,” in The Ways of Our God:
An Approach to Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003), 38-39.
2

attention to, and is willing to account for, a wide range of interpretive approaches to the Bible including

historical, literary, and more recent reader centered approaches. The question for Seitz is how to make

sense of all of these approaches in light of the final form of the text and what he understands as its

revelatory character.

C. Tate's Hermeneutical Model as Analytical Tool

One way of getting a hold on the broad scope of interpretive issues and the variety of interpretive

approaches available today is to step back and get a sense of how they all relate to the text. Randolph W.

Tate offers such general reflection in Biblical Interpretation: An Integrated Approach.2 He proposes that

all interpretive strategies for reading biblical texts fall into three categories or worlds in-relation-to-texts:

a) behind-the-text (historical/author-centered), b) within-the-text (literary), and c) in-front-of-the-text

(reader centered). These categories, which I will use as a tool for my analysis in this study, are briefly

described as follows:

a) The World Behind-the-Text. The world behind-the-text is the focus of interpretive methods that

deal with a text's authorship, historical context and referents, and the history of the text itself. Focus on

the author naturally leads to historical investigation. Grasping the author's intention requires

understanding the author’s social, cultural and political setting in historical context. Looking behind-the-

text also focuses on the history of the text itself. Authorial intention requires discovering the original text,

which may lead to deconstructing a text into the various traditions, editions, and sources, which comprise

the text in its present form. Historical-critical methods are focused here, in the world behind-the-text.

b) The World Within-the-Text. Tate’s second category is the world within-the-text, inhabited by

interpretive methods that focus on the structure of the text, its internal linguistic relationships and literary

conventions. This frees the literary critic to focus on the text itself with the words on the page, rather than

2 Tate relies on the work of Paul Ricoeur for his categories. See Tate, W. Randolph. Biblical Interpretation: An Integrated
Approach, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 1991, xix.
3

looking behind-the-text to history. Proponents of this method pay careful attention to the text itself and

discover the meaning of the text in its genre, structure and literary conventions that exist apart from the

author and historical context.

c) The World In-Front-of-the-Text. In the world in-front-of-the-text we find the reader, the

presuppositions and goals the reader brings to the reading process, and the reading community in which

the reader is situated. Reader-centered approaches are premised on the idea that the reader plays some

role in the production of meaning. Every reader has presuppositions about the world, themselves, and the

text being read. Readers also bring a variety of goals to the reading process. Reader-centered approaches

range from the reader playing a minor role in the production of meaning, to making the reader the only

source of meaning in the reading process.

Table 1.1 offers a basic outline of how Tate categorizes various interpretive approaches into the

three worlds of interpretation as they relate to the text. He observes that many interpreters rely on only

1. Interpretive
‘World’ or A) World Behind-the-Text B) World Within-the-Text C) World In-Front-Of-The-Text
Context

2. Object of The Author   The Text   The Reader


Study (determines meaning of (meaning determined by (determines meaning of
the text) structure & genre) the text)

3. Interpretive Historical-Critical Literary Reader-response


Approaches Methods Approaches Approaches

Table 1.1 – Tate’s descriptive categories for all approaches to interpretation.

one method and, more importantly, focus on one world in-relation-to-the-text. Some historical-critical

scholars ignore the world in-front-of-the-text, disregarding their role in interpretation as readers. Some

literary critics, who focus on the world within-the-text, ignore the historical context of the text being read.

In each case, it is assumed that meaning is found in only one interpretive world, or through one

interpretive approach. In contrast to these isolated approaches, Tate’s thesis is that interpretation should
4

be modeled as an interaction between all three worlds of interpretation.


We argue, therefore, that the locus of meaning is not to be found exclusively in
either world or in a marriage of any two of the worlds, but in the interplay between
all three worlds. Meaning resides in the conversation between the text and reader with
the world behind-the-text informing that conversation. Interpretation is impaired when
any world is given preeminence at the expense of neglecting the other two.3

Tate's interpretive process is the interaction between the world within-the-text and the world in-front-of-

the-text, informed by the world behind-the-text. Table 1.2 displays Tate’s prescriptive model of

interpretation based on how these interpretive worlds should interact.

1.
Interpretive A) World Behind-the-Text B) World Within-the-Text C) World In-Front-Of-The-
‘World’ or Text
Context

2. Tate’s Historical background for Meaning comes from   Reader locates


Model text-reader interaction  interaction between text themselves in relation to text
and the reader
Table 1.2 – Tate’s prescriptive model of interpretation based on the interaction between the text and the reader.

Here we have a proposal for how to read biblical texts that is capable of broader application, and

gets a handle on the variety of approaches available. However, is biblical interpretation summed up in

these general hermeneutical principles? Is there anything that distinguishes the reading of biblical texts

from that of other forms of literature? These questions have broad implications for how the Old

Testament is read. Compared to Tate's general approach that could be useful for any text, Seitz is

concerned with the form and content of a particular text, the Old Testament. Seitz argues that its particular

form and content have theological significance, and this in turn shapes how the Old Testament is to be

read. Unlike Tate's general model of interpretation, Seitz' approach does not allow the text to be read from

a theologically neutral position.4

Nevertheless, I will use Tate's model as an analytical tool in this study. His model is useful in that

3 Tate, Biblical Interpretation, xx.


4 Tate understands 'canonical criticism' as an author-centered theory of interpretation, which reflects a significant difference
between Tate and Seitz. Where Seitz seeks to understand the world behind-the-text, within-the-text, and in-front-of-the-text
theologically in light of the canonical text, Tate views canonical approaches as fundamentally historical in nature, as they focus
on the reception of the text by believing communities and the process of their textual development. Ibid. 183-185.
5

it offers a broad platform for discussion of the interpretive issues and concerns that Seitz addresses in his

work. Seitz recognizes that there are interpretive issues in all three worlds: behind-the-text, within-the-

text and in-front-of-the-text. He does not want to deny that history, the text, and the reader each play

significant roles in the interpretive process.

Yet if Seitz were to engage Tate's model the question that I would hear him ask is, “how are these

three worlds of interpretation related to one another theologically, given the particular text being read?”

This means that while Seitz chooses to make the form and content of the canonical text the basis of

interpretation, it is not isolated from the world behind-the-text or the world in-front-of-the-text.

1. Text A) Behind-the-Old B) Old Testament C) In-Front-of-the-Old


Testament Testament
(Within the Text)
Text’s authorship and
2. Textual Form development understood OT Canon Shapes New Testament
in light of text’s final form Canon
History interpreted and
3. Textual Content witnessed to by the text’s OT Plain Sense Addresses Church as
plain sense. readers of scripture

Table 1.3 – Seitz’ canonical approach addresses each of Tate’s categories, but seeks to do so in light of OT’s final
canonical form.

Table 1.3 illustrates that while Seitz’ approach addresses similar issues as Tate’s, it seeks to do so

from a particular perspective. Seitz does not approach his work with Tate’s categories, but he does

recognize the interpretive issues these categories raise. Note that for Tate, in Tables 1.1 & 1.2, the arrows

move toward the text, shaping the context that determines the meaning of the text. For Seitz however, in

Table 1.3 the arrows point away from the text indicating Seitz’ view that the form and content of the Old

Testament itself informs his understanding of the context and methodology of interpretation. In this light,

Tate’s model will be helpful in this study to distinguish where the theological dimension of interpretation

lies for Seitz. My use of Tate’s model will help to address whether Seitz carefully deals with the more

general issues of interpretation without hiding them under a theological blanket.


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D. Structure: Behind, Within and In-Front-of-the-Text

I will address the question I have raised for this study and defend my thesis by focusing on three

specific themes of Seitz work in relation to the Old Testament. Each chapter is structured with Tate's

categories in mind and will address these themes by moving through the interpretive worlds behind-the-

text, within-the-text, and in-front-of-the-text.

In the first chapter, ‘History and Revelation,’ I will focus on Seitz’ understanding of the

relationship between history, revelation and the text of the Old Testament. The second chapter, ‘Canon

and Unity,’ will focus on Seitz’ treatment of the unity and diversity of the Old Testament. Finally, the

third chapter ‘Scripture & Community,’ will address Seitz’ proposal for how the church can read the Old

Testament as Christian scripture, together with the New Testament.


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CHAPTER I - REVELATION & HISTORY: THE OLD


TESTAMENT, ELECTION & HISTORICAL CRITICISM

In this chapter I will offer a critical assessment of Seitz’ canonical approach to the Old Testament

by focusing on the relationship between history and revelation displayed in his work. The primary reason

Seitz believes reading the Old Testament is worthwhile is that it reveals who God is.5 However, the Old

Testament also discloses the history of Israel on the backdrop of the ancient world, and is a text with a

history of its own. The issue then becomes, how does the text’s revelation of God relate to the history in

and behind-the-text? The answer to this question shapes Seitz’ interpretive approach to the Old

Testament, and one of Seitz’ major concerns is to critique historical-critical approaches to these issues.

As already stated, my overall thesis is that Seitz advances the reading of the Old Testament as

Christian scripture through his canonical approach’s integrated focus on the final form and plain sense of

the text. Seitz takes the form of the text seriously, and I will illustrate this in his critique of historical

criticism as an interpretive method that distorts the form of the Old Testament. In turn, I will argue that

Seitz takes the plain sense of the text seriously by focusing on the concept of God’s election as the

necessary basis for reading the Old Testament with its own theological and historical integrity. God’s

revelation of himself in the Old Testament comes through the revelation given to Israel, God’s chosen

people, rather than through an objectively accessible category such as ‘history’. Historical-critical

methods distort the text by looking behind it in search of 'history' as a more determinative category.

The first section of this chapter will focus on the world behind-the-text, and will address Seitz'

critique of historical criticism. What does his canonical approach have to say about the world behind-the-

text? The next section will focus on the world within-the-text where I will introduce Seitz’ canonical

approach more thoroughly, and illustrate his work exegetically. In the final section, the world in-front-of-

the-text, I will address the implications of Seitz' canonical approach for the question of who is being

5 “This two-testament witness renders not a great code, but God as he truly is…” Seitz in "God As Other, God as Holy: Election
& Disclosure in Christian Scripture," Word Without End: The Old Testament as Abiding Theological Witness. (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1997), 14.
8

addressed by the Old Testament, and how it is to be read.

A. Behind-the-Text: Revelation & Reconstructing History

1. Seitz’ Definition of Historical Criticism

The term ‘historical criticism’ does not refer to one homogeneous method nor is it used only in

one way for Seitz. He uses this term to refer to a whole class of critical approaches to interpretation and

historical inquiry. Here I will provide a general definition of the category by looking at two helpful

passages in his work. One definition Seitz offers is found in his 1998 collection of essays Word Without

End: The Old Testament as Abiding Theological Witness:


The point of historical-critical labor was to recreate the situation in life in which
the portion of the text under discussion was once under original utterance and
delivery.... Once the various situations-in-life that together constituted the book’s
complete history were imaginatively recreated, then the task would be to reapply
a word once delivered to a changed but analogous modern context.6

The first key premise here is that the historical distance from the original utterance is a problem for proper

hearing of the text. It is assumed that proper hearing must be coordinated with how it had been heard

originally. In this case, God is not speaking directly through the text to the contemporary reader. Perhaps

God spoke through the original utterance or even to the original readers of the text, but modern readers

are so distant that conceptual translation is required.

Another key premise of historical criticism is that reading the text as scripture is somehow

reading beyond its original intention, because the text and/or utterance was not yet scripture in its original

form. The assumption here is that the text’s form as scripture has somehow changed the text into

something it was not intended to be.

In a more recent collection of essays, Figured Out: Typology and Providence in Christian

Scripture, Seitz defines historicism in biblical studies as:


The belief that the presentation of scripture must be recast through attention
to origins and a theory of development. So, for example, the literary-theological
movement from Genesis to Deuteronomy is deconstructed and replaced by a

6 Seitz, Christopher R. "Isaiah In Parish Bible Study: The Question of the Place of the Reader in Biblical Texts" Word Without
End, 196.
9

theory of the development of Israel’s cult from free-wheeling (J/E), to


restricting (D), to rigid and parochial (P). The various pieces that together
make up the literary presentation of the Pentateuch are rearranged according
to a theory of their proper (original) order.7

In this definition, Seitz moves beyond interpretation of one biblical text to looking at how historical

critical tools are applied across a whole section of the Old Testament canon, the Pentateuch. Here the

form of the text is ignored, as Seitz says, “in its literary-theological movement”. This movement is

rearranged into the ‘proper’ chronological order that the various sources, traditions and texts were

‘produced’ according to historical reconstruction. These two definitions spell out the major thrusts of

historical-critical method, which combine to suggest that both the form and the content of the text need to

be historically reconstructed for proper interpretation.

Seitz clearly understands the focus of historical-critical method to be in the world behind-the-text,

and yet the definitions above demonstrate that he links this approach to contemporary interpretive

concerns. What is it that fuels and inspires interpreters to use these tools in this way? To further

understand historical criticism, Seitz offers numerous perspectives on the motivations for its use as a tool

of biblical interpretation. Surprisingly, Seitz finds that there are many theological motivations for its use.

Seitz does not set up a critique of historical-critical method because it is a-theological or anti-

theological. Rather, he argues there are theological motivations behind many uses of historical-critical

methods. For many scholars who adopt historical criticism, these methods are not opposed to theology.

Seitz points to Gerhard von Rad -whose work he analyzes extensively- and G.E. Wright as examples of

scholars who held they were not choosing the historical over against the theological. “Venerable historical

critics as distant from one another as Gerhard von Rad and G. E. Wright agreed on this much but

whatever their failings, both were still aware they needed to justify their labors theologically, not just

historically.”8 In my reading of Seitz’ work, I found numerous observations of how theological

motivations play are role in historical inquiry, and discussing these motivations will develop a fuller

picture of what historical-critical method looks like in Seitz’ view.

7 Seitz, Christopher R. "Bait and Switch: Rite I in American Book of Common Prayer Revision," in Figured Out: Typology and
Providence in Christian Scripture (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 83.
8 Seitz, "God As Other, God as Holy: Election & Disclosure in Christian Scripture," in Word Without End, 21.
10

a) Clash of Authorities. One of the primary motivations for using historical analysis as a

fundamental category for biblical interpretation comes from the history of Protestant Reformation in the
Th.
16 Century up to the Enlightenment. The Protestant reformers rejected the Catholic church’s authority

to interpret scripture for a number of reasons, including the claim the Catholic church had laid dogma and

doctrine over the Bible for which there was no support in the text.9 This separation from ecclesiastical

authority created a hermeneutical vacuum. Protestants filled this vacuum with their own scholasticism

that tied what the Bible really meant to what really happened, or to what was really said in the text.

Combined with the Enlightenment emphasis on reason giving individuals access to knowledge, history

became a category of objective knowledge apart from revelation and other authorities.

b) ‘Objective’, Non-Dogmatic Interpretation. The formulation of 'history' as a new category of

knowledge apart from other authorities was also construed as a more objective basis from which to

discern between rival perspectives. This motivation for historical criticism fueled a desire for biblical

accuracy.10 Historical criticism's ‘objective’ discourse was well suited for the debate between numerous

denominations and traditions, especially Protestant ones, which competed to prove their tradition more

'biblical' than the others via historical arguments.

c) Inspiration & Authorship. Seitz perceptively notes that the doctrine of inspiration, when

focused on individual authors, itself contributes to and fuels the use of historical-criticism. If human

authors were inspired by God to write texts that are now part of scripture, then knowing who these human

authors are could be helpful to understanding the inspired text.11 Isaiah is an excellent example of a text

where an account of its historical origins (with the possibility of more than one author) became crucial to

9 Seitz, "Having labored for two centuries to free the Bible from dogmatic overlay, Protestant and Catholic critics alike should
“concede victory.” Now we must try to generate a theology..." Ibid.15.
10 Seitz, "Finally, the lasting hallmark of historical-critical endeavor, and the thing that gave it an academic potential in
connection with, or divorced from, church life, was its interest in cultural and social contextualization as truly indispensable for
the task of reading and appropriating scripture ‘correctly’. The appeal of this sort of objectivism has been enormous. It has
energized generation after generation of critical readerships, who have expended enormous amounts of effort setting a text’s plain
literary sense in the proper time and space category." emphasis original. Seitz, "Sexuality and Scripture's Plain Sense: The
Christian Community and the Law of God," in Word Without End, 321.
11

reading the text properly. How many inspired authors were there? Historical inquiry could help answer

this question.
That such an appeal began with a highly theological justification (inspiration
required an accounting of the real human author) is made all the more tepid when
one observes the capacity of historical reconstructions to continue unabated and
unconcerned with any large-scale theological justification.12

While this motivation gave initial justification to the use of historical criticism, it has continued without

such justification as the focus on the human author provided enough ground for inquiry itself.

d) Historical Jesus. This historical emphasis fed back into theology and initiated another

motivation for historical-critical work in the search for the historical Jesus. If Jesus is the ultimate

revelation of God, then knowing who Jesus really was in his historical setting becomes critical. Aware of

the varying portrayals of Jesus in the gospels, scholars wanted to discover the real Jesus ‘behind-the-

text.’13 This motivation for historical-critical study as a means to accessing the revelation of God in Jesus

emphasizes Jesus' historical context, and the Old Testament becomes just another source of background

information.

e) Biblical Narrative and Worldview. Seitz argues that in his work on biblical narrative, Hans Frei

observed how historical-critical methods arose following the epistemological/cultural/social/political shift

of the Enlightenment in 19th-century Europe.14 In a world no longer correlated to the biblical narrative,

Seitz notes that scholars sought to re-describe the world of the Bible in terms of history.15 Guided by the

11 "One of the arguments I wish to put forward is that theological, and not just literary or historical, questions were what
stimulated a search for the person of Isaiah and his counterparts… So historical criticism received its mandate: to uncover the
connection and thus show us how theology had been generated, inspiration lying at the heart of the process." Seitz, "Isaiah And
The Search For A New Paradigm: Authorship and Inspiration,” in Word Without End, 113.
12 Emphasis original. Seitz, "Introduction," in Figured Out, 7.
13 "Once the New Testament as canon is used for (maximal or minimal) historical presentations of Jesus, it becomes very
difficult to comprehend how the Old Testament functions as scripture for the church’s ongoing life and not just as (important)
historical background to be viewed from the standpoint of the “historical Jesus” interpretation of it." Seitz, Ibid.
14 Hans W. Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative (New Haven: Yale University, 1974).
15 "What historical-critical method was designed to do was explain the cleavage between the biblical text and the world it
described by recourse to theories of authorship, editorial shaping, and historical and social settings… A distinct chronology,
world view, and intellectual, social, religious and theological history was then imaginatively reconstructed that very soon
overshadowed the world of the biblical text in its own form and literary configuration." Seitz, "Biblical Authority in the Late
Twentieth Century: The Baltimore Declaration, Scripture-Reason-Tradition, and the Canonical Approach,” in Word Without End,
12

desire to maintain the connection between the biblical text and the world, scholars sought to make the

Bible accessible by understanding the Bible in light of their view of the world, rather than attempting to

understand their view of the world in light of the Bible. This provided a clear motivation for reading the

Old Testament with historical-critical eyes.

f) Universal Revelation vs. the Contingency of History. Finally, one of the key motivations behind

historical-critical method was to focus on what it left behind. When revelation is understood as universal,

eternal truths, it makes perfect sense that revelation must be separated from the contingent mess of history

and its particularities. Seitz notes that this was an


agenda of early biblical criticism: namely, the isolation of eternal ideas
and abiding theological truths apart from the dross of historical contingency,
with the Bible in its entirety representing historical contingency, and Jesus
Christ the eternal Word of God.16

This motivated scholars to search Old Testament texts for kernels of revelatory truth in the midst of the

cultural, social, political particularities of ancient Israel. Once these particularities had been stripped

away, it would be possible to uncover the abiding, eternal ideas of revelation.

2. Seitz’ Critique of Historical-Critical Method

W. Randolph Tate challenges the view that historical-criticism is sufficient for biblical

interpretation, but he does not do so from a theological perspective. Tate does not want to discount the

usefulness of historical-critical tools, but he suggests that to be fruitful interpretation should also focus on

the world within-the-text and in-front-of-the-text, using historical critical methods to clarify the text’s

background. Tate attempts to offer a more ‘balanced’ model of interpretation that rightly leans on the

interpretive tools available in each world in-relation-to-the-text. In particular, by emphasizing in-front-of-

the-text dimensions of interpretation, Tate raises questions about who is reading a text and how this

affects the interpretive process itself.

98.
16 Seitz, Ibid. 95-96.
13

Seitz makes similar critiques and asks some of the same questions, but draws his answers from a

theological perspective. In particular, Seitz is concerned with addressing the question, why should the

church be reading the Old Testament at all? On strictly historical grounds, it is possible to argue that the

Old Testament actually belongs to the Jewish people and has been wrongfully appropriated by the church.

The difference between Tate and Seitz, is that Seitz goes on to suggest a theological answer to who

should be reading the Old Testament and how, based on a reading of the text itself. Seitz suggests that

from a theological point of view the Old Testament anticipates and addresses a particular readership of its

canonical witness.

Seitz make numerous critiques of historical critical method, and of a few particular scholars in

their use of it, including Gerhard von Rad, and Hartmut Gese, among others. There is not room here to

discuss the details of his entire critical analysis, but I think Seitz’ view of historical criticism is summed

up in one fundamental critique. “What’s at stake is retention of the actual form of the witness. The final

form of scripture has theological significance.”17 Seitz' claim is that historical criticism distorts the form

of its subject when it operates as though the information retrievable from the text points beyond itself to a

more determinative subject behind-the-text. The text's form ends up being merely accidental and

unnecessary. I believe this is the central claim of Seitz critique, the main thrust of his argument. Seitz’

claim that the final form of scripture has theological significance informs not only his critique of

historical criticism, but also the constructive proposals in his canonical approach.

For Seitz the final form of scripture refers to various levels of the canonical arrangement of

biblical texts. The final form of scripture refers, at the most basic level, to each individual text in the form

it has as part of the biblical canon. The second dimension of the final form of scripture refers to the

canonical ordering of these texts into collections. Genesis comes first, and then Exodus, etc.18 The third

dimension of scripture’s final form refers to its arrangement as a two-testament witness. That Christian

scripture is arranged as Old Testament and New Testament is an essential part of its final form.

17 Seitz, "Introduction," in Figured Out, 8.


18 Seitz recognizes that there are different canonical arrangements in the Tanak, Septuagint, Catholic and Protestant Bibles.
While this is not entirely insignificant, he downplays its importance to a large degree. Further discussion of this topic will
continue in chapter 2 on canon and unity.
14

These three levels of final form present in Christian scripture are essential to the nature of the text

itself. Seitz does not use these terms referring to the three levels, as I have characterized them, but

consideration of each is present throughout his work.


In sum, my concern over the past ten years has been to move beyond the
consideration of individual forms to the canonical shape of books and larger
collections and finally to a consideration of the form of Christian scripture itself,
a two-testament witness to God in Christ.19

This gives us an introduction to Seitz’ understanding of the final form of the text, which I will offer

further discussion and critical analysis of below and in the following chapters.

At this point, it becomes clear that Seitz attempts to distinguish between the use of historical

criticism and the methodology itself. When historical critical methods are applied as the fundamental

approach to interpreting the biblical text, Seitz argues that this actually changes the form of the text into

something other than scripture. For example, Seitz refers to the publication The Bible in Order, which

offers texts from the biblical canon arranged in an order of chronology with respect to the date of

authorship and other historical referents.20 It is assumed that arranging them in such a manner will make

the text more accessible and understandable for interpretive matters. What is not explicitly stated is that a

new canon is being offered, a new arrangement of texts other than their presentation as Christian

scripture.

The theological significance of each level of the text as scripture is ignored or even lost when the

final form of the canonical text is deconstructed through historical critical study. Seitz' concern is that

interpreting Old Testament texts as scripture requires a recognition of the theological significance of its

canonical arrangement at each of these three levels mentioned above. Though these three levels are not

practically separable in reading the text, they are conceptually distinct categories useful for analysis.

One of Seitz' major concerns, and the focus of this chapter in my study, is the impact of historical

criticism on the revelatory witness of the text. At each level of the final form Seitz’ concern is for how the

application of historical critical method distorts the text’s form and thus distorts its ability to witness

19 Seitz, "God as Other, God as Holy," in Word Without End, 14.


20 Joseph Rhymer (ed.) The Bible in Order (Garden City, NY, 1975). The subtitle of the book is as follows: “All the writings
which make up the Bible, arranged in their chronological order according to the dates at which they were written, or edited into
the form in which we know them; seen against the history of the times, as the Bible provides it."
15

truthfully to both revelation and history.


Historicism has given us a Bible that points beyond itself to a vast, complex,
developmental, ever-changing continuum in time and space. Historicism insists
the past become truly past, distinguished from the present, except by means of
human analogy, ingenious application, or a piety resistant to historicism’s acids…
Anachronism has become a problem to observe and correct, for everything
belongs in its proper historical location, even if the connections between locations
are as speculative as the locations themselves.21

Rather than interpreting a text as scripture which offers God’s Word in the present, Seitz argues that

historicism relegates the text to the past, removing it from its present relevance. It puts the text in an

imaginatively reconstructed past rather than its present form, where it can offer a present revelatory word

of address.

3. Illustration: The Failure of Historical Criticism

One example of a scholar who attempted to get at revelation historically is Gerhard von Rad.

Seitz goes in depth to discuss how von Rad labored to read the Old Testament with its own theological

integrity apart from the New Testament, so as not to “Christianize” the text without hearing its own

voice.22 Subsequently a Christian theology could connect Old & New Testament while maintaining the

theological integrity of both. Seitz acknowledges the brilliance of von Rad’s work and finds much that is

commendable in it, while at the same time holding it up as a specific example of the failure of historical

criticism.

Von Rad sought to discover the theology of the Old Testament by looking behind-the-text for

historical data. Seitz quotes von Rad:


The subject matter which concerns the theologian is, of course, not the spiritual
and religious world of Israel and the conditions of her soul in general, nor is it her
world of faith, all of which can only be reconstructed by means of conclusions drawn
from the documents: instead, it is simply Israel’s own explicit assertions about Jahweh.23

The brilliance of von Rad’s approach, for Seitz, was that he maintained a theological focus while using

21 Seitz, "Introduction," in Figured Out, 9.


22 Seitz, “The Historical-Critical Endeavor as Theology,” in Word Without End, 28-40.
23 von Rad, Gerhard, Old Testament Theology Vol. 1: The Theology of Israel’s Historical Traditions (Harper & Row: New
York, 1962), 105. Quoted in Seitz, “The Historical-Critical Endeavor as Theology” in Word Without End, 30.
16

historical-critical methods. However, von Rad did not take the text in its final form as revelatory, instead

revelation was found in the “assertions about Jahweh” made by Israel, constituted by the narrators and

authors of the texts that comprise the Old Testament. Similar to the model of historical criticism above,

von Rad had to isolate ‘Israel’ historically as a means to interpreting Israel’s assertions about Yahweh.

This meant using the documents of the Old Testament as sources to reconstruct the life of Israel through

its history.

But von Rad did not stop there, making a ‘history of Israel’ his focus. As Seitz notes, he sought to

place Israel’s assertions about God on a historical backdrop. Then a theology of the Old Testament could

be generated from ‘Israel’s reflection on God.’ The problem came when von Rad sought to make a case

for the relevance of his quest.


Once von Rad finished his task of re-description, he was uncertain as to the
relevance of what he had done, because of his fundamental isolation from
Israel- an isolation that could not and cannot be overcome by an effort of
theological imagination, however objectively and soberly undertaken.24

However much von Rad desired to formulate a theology of the Old Testament that could be connected to

the New Testament, his attempt to do so seemed to fail on theological grounds. Seitz quotes von Rad’s

question:
What part have I in the Old Testament as a Christian believer, and what part
has the church, if it cannot be that I identify myself, at least partly (it was
never a question of more than that!) with the religion of ancient Israel?25

Seitz notes that despite all of his historical critical work to identify with Israel’s recital, von Rad admits

that he still stands outside. “God gracious provisions, so lavishly bestowed on Israel, seem to pass me by,

because I do not belong to the historical people Israel.”26 The Israel that von Rad had isolated historically

became truly isolated theologically as well, being excluded from theological relevance to the rest of

Christian scripture because of historical distance. The very means by which von Rad had sought to make

Israel and the Old Testament relevant led to theological isolation and insignificance.

24 Seitz, "The Historical-Critical Endeavor as Theology,” in Word Without End, 38-39.


25 Italics and parentheses are original. von Rad, Gerhard. “Typological Interpretation of the Old Testament.” Translated by John
Bright in Essays on Old Testament Hermeneutics, ed. C. Westermann (Atlanta: John Knox, 1963), 35.
26 von Rad, Gerhard. Ibid. 36.
17

Historical-criticism had not so much failed in the work of reconstructing the history of Israel, but

it had failed theologically to connect the Old & New Testaments. My concern here is not to judge whether

von Rad’s work of historical criticism was accurate or successful in its reconstruction of ancient Israel

and Old Testament texts. That is a much more focused question of historical inquiry beyond the scope of

my study and expertise. What I am concerned to demonstrate here is that Seitz offers critical analysis of

historical criticism on theological grounds that suggest the methodology is unhelpful in reading the Old

Testament theologically as Christian scripture.

By deconstructing the text into a history of traditions, Israel, as presented in the final form of the

text, disappeared from theological relevance. The Israel that appears in the plain sense of the Old

Testament became, in von Rad’s case, fodder for the after thought of typological exegesis aimed at

maintaining some sort of connection between Old Testament and the New Testament.27

Seitz argues that looking behind-the-text into history does not provide a sound theological basis

for reading the Old Testament as Christian Scripture. When revelation is sought through a historical

category, as seen in the work of von Rad, revelation itself seems to diffuse and be replaced by a

fluctuating tradition history with no stability. Some have not been unsettled by this prospect, and have

continued unfettered by the theological implications of such a conclusion. Seitz, on the other hand,

maintains that reading the text as Christian scripture requires a different account.

B. Within-the-text: Revelation & Seitz’ Canonical Approach

To read the Old Testament as Christian scripture will require methodology beyond what is

available within historical criticism. As an alternative, Seitz offers his as a theological reading based on

election. Rather than trying to interpret the text in a historical context apart from theological concerns,

Seitz believes that biblical interpretation is necessarily theological. Thus, his canonical approach is

27 “His intention and the intention of the ‘latest portrayal’ were at perceptible odds. To hear then of a typological connection that
knows itself to be unanticipated by the tradition-historical process, set alongside a ‘warning against a sharp separation of
typological interpretation from the historical-critical exegetical process,’ sounds problematic.” Seitz, "The Historical-Critical
Endeavor as Theology,” in Word Without End, 39.
18

unashamedly theological in character.

1. Defining Seitz’ Canonical Approach

Seitz’ canonical approach begins with the canon of Christian scripture. A canon or rule is a

collection of texts ordered in a particular way. Seitz argues that compared to historical criticism this

approach, “seeks to move beyond the limited descriptive role of biblical criticism as historical or social

analysis toward a recovery of the abiding theological value of the biblical text in its final form.”28 By

taking the canon as its starting point, this approach makes the biblical text in its final form the subject of

biblical theology.

a) Two Testaments, One Scripture. The overarching structure of Christian scripture is, for Seitz, a

two-testament witness, Old Testament and New Testament. This structure of scripture in two distinct yet

related literary canons is not an accident of history, but an intentional, theological naming and ordering of

the text.29

Seitz’ canonical approach is distinguished from historical-critical approaches because it sees

these titles (OT/NT) and the canons they refer to as an essential part of engaging the text theologically as

scripture. In contrast Seitz notes that “...if there is any conviction dear to the heart of biblical criticism, it

is that the Old and New Testaments are ‘hermeneutically, materially, and formally independent’ of one

another.”30 Books are read as texts from a particular historical context, rather than as part of one

testament or the other, in relation to the rest of the canon.

b) Canonical Order & Arrangement. The second dimension of final form that Seitz’ canonical

28 Seitz, “Biblical Authority in the Late Twentieth Century: The Baltimore Declaration, Scripture-Reason-Tradition, and the
Canonical Approach,” in Word Without End, 100.
29 Seitz is resistant to any renaming of either the Old or New Testament. For discussion see chapter 3.
30 Seitz, "Biblical Authority in the Late Twentieth Century," in Word Without End, 94.
19

approach takes into consideration is the order of texts in the canon. For example, in the Old Testament the

Minor Prophets are not arranged in chronological order of writing or historical reference. Instead of

seeing this as a historical-critical problem to be overcome through analysis and rearrangement, Seitz

argues that the canonical order of texts should be considered relevant to the interpretation of those texts,

instead of an accidental arrangement without any significance.31 This is a complex and detailed level of

interpretation that involves discerning intentionality in the ordering, and judgments regarding the relative

value of the alternative orders in the canons available.32

c) Canonical shape. ‘Canonical shape’ refers to the final form of an individual text such as

Genesis, Isaiah, or one of the Gospels. While Seitz is critical of historical criticism for its theological

implications, it is important to stress that he recognizes individual texts do have a history of development

including various sources, editing, etc. But it is their form, as they exist as part of the canon of Christian

Scripture that is relevant to theological interpretation.

For example, while Seitz may find the reconstruction of Q an interesting historical enterprise, it

would be theologically irrelevant for interpretation of the New Testament Gospels or understanding Jesus.

For the Old Testament this level of interpretation is especially important when considering the book of

Isaiah and how to understand its canonical shape. By paying attention to these three levels of final form

under consideration by Seitz' canonical approach, it is possible to recover the theological significance of

the final form of the text.

d) Plain Sense. By paying attention to 'final form', Seitz clearly situates himself in the world

within-the-text, making it the central focus of biblical interpretation. Seitz names this focus on the text as

the text's 'plain sense.' While he does not explicitly refer to this phrase much or define it in either of his

31 For an example, see Berquist, who arranges the texts to be interpreted according to historical proximity and chronology, with
no interpretive consideration of the canonical order. Berquist, Jon L. Judaism in Persia’s Shadow: A Social & Historical
Approach (Augsburg Fortress Publishers: Minneapolis, 1995).
32 Again, the presence of the Tanak, Protestant and Catholic Bibles with their different orderings and numbers of books must be
accounted for. See Chapter II.
20

most recent collections of essays33 it does play a significant role conceptually in his canonical approach.

Here Seitz uses the Latin (sensus literalis) for plain sense.
...a fresh challenge is to let the sensus literalis of the Old Testament become, not
a historical sense or one connected to authorial intention alone - both contexts we have
sought for several centuries to lay bare. Let the literal sense of the Old Testament refer
as well to a word that does not return empty, but in fact reaches out and creates for
itself new scope and range of meaning, within the Old Testament and on into the New.34

Here Seitz suggests that the plain sense of the Old Testament must be read as a fundamentally revelatory

word, not just a historical word. That the Old Testament’s plain sense can include a ‘new scope and range

of meaning,’ suggests that it is not a narrow and determinate category. While this may be considered an

interpretive strength, it also raises questions of how to define what counts as the ‘plain sense’ of the text

and whether such a loose category can be applied to the text in a useful manner.35

He adds that ultimately, the plain sense of the New Testament is not strictly separable from the

Old Testament’s plain sense, given its revelatory character. This fits with the notion that the context for

reading the plain sense of the text is its final canonical form. Is there any place for historical criticism in

the task of interpreting the plain sense of the text?

2. Seitz’ Canonical Approach & the Limited Role of Historical Criticism

At first glance it appears that Seitz is discounting the need for any historical-critical work in the

study of biblical texts. This would be a radical position given the significant influence of historical

research in the last 200 years. Seitz’ critique of historical criticism and alternative canonical approach

33 Word Without End: The Old Testament as Abiding Theological Witness, & Figured Out: Typology & Providence in Christian
Scripture.
34 Seitz, "God as Other, God as Holy," in Word Without End, 12.
35 See Timothy Polk’s assessment of Seitz on ‘plain sense.’ “From the start, the idea of "the plain sense of the text/scripture"
works as a key leitmotif in the book and as one of two hermeneutic principles (the other being the "rule of faith") that function to
guide Christians in the faithful use of scripture. Negatively, the "plain sense" functions to discourage "postures external to the
text and its own claims" (p. 50), i.e., interpretations "externally imposed by coercive readers" (p. 82, cf. 128). Positively, it
warrants readings appropriate to the intrinsic nature (genre) of the text and congruent with the will of the communities that
historically produced, preserved, and transmitted it. Now, there are ambiguities in Seitz's use of the term "plain sense," and he
would no doubt welcome extended discussion on the problematics of reader location in what's "plain" about a text, much less
what's internal and external to a text.” Timothy Polk, Review of Word Without End: The Old Testament as Abiding Theological
Witness by Christopher R. Seitz. Anglican Theological Review 82 n.1(2000):193.
21

therefore raise questions about his understanding of history, and whether or not he is aware of the debts

which his method owes to historical criticism.36

But rather than being a problem for his canonical approach, the relationship it shares with

historical critical method reveals two strengths. First, Seitz’ canonical approach isn’t a naive return to pre-

critical exegesis, and second it avoids a pre-occupation with the concept of historical proximity. Seitz

helps us see these strengths:

a) Post-critical Exegesis. Seitz does not wish to return to pre-critical exegesis of the Bible as

though historical criticism was a blip in the history of interpretation to be ignored. He places high value

on pre-critical interpretation, such as that of Origen and the exegetical basis of early church creeds. Seitz

is keenly aware that we can’t jump back in time as if the historical critical project never happened. He has

learned the methods of historical criticism as a biblical scholar and used them fruitfully in his work, but

he has used them with a limited role and scope of inquiry.

Seitz continues to use these methods, but he limits historical-critical method from having any

positive theological contribution in the interpretive process of reading scripture.


In my view, historical criticism plays no positive theological role whatsoever.
Its only proper role is negative. It establishes the genre, form, possible setting,
and historical and intellectual background of the individual biblical text. It shows
how the Bible is not like other books: history books, novels, encyclopedias, comic
strips, and medieval liturgical tracts. Its force is explanatory.37

In case his readers miss his point he repeats and expands this statement in the same essay to emphasize

that historical criticism is merely a tool to be used for theological reading of the text, and does not exhaust

or define the interpretive process itself.


What then is the proper role of biblical criticism? First, it is to exercise its
explanatory function in helping us to appreciate the letter of the biblical text in
all its foreignness and complexity. It is to teach us to be close readers, straining
to hear something other than our own voices. Second, it is not to confuse its
explanatory function with matters of exposition, ethical and theological
application, or simple rhetorical persuasion...Third, it is to restrict itself to

36 My sense is that the phrase ‘final-form’ would not be possible or make sense in pre-critical exegesis. Rather, the concept of
final form only makes sense in light of historical criticism and its discovery that the canonical form of the text may have had a
history of development, editing, etc. that led to its present form. The canonical approach only makes sense post-historical
criticism, and is at best dependent on its methods, at worst parasitic of its findings.
37 Seitz, "Biblical Authority In the Late Twentieth Century," in Word Without End, 97.
22

the task of spotting repugnance, of showing how it is that the Bible is not a
simple, single-authored document, free of seams and tensions, literary,
theological and logical.38

Seitz is keenly aware of the significant contribution that historical criticism has made to biblical

interpretation, especially at the level of individual texts and the study of their canonical shape. Thus his

canonical approach is a post-critical enterprise.

Apart from historical criticism we would not be in a position to appreciate the final form of the

text. But Seitz clearly places these tools in service of reading the text, rather than allowing them to

function as a basis for reading. "In all these ways, then, biblical criticism has only a preparatory function.

It is not to be used as an end unto itself."39 When it is used improperly, as a means to a theological end

beyond its scope, historical critical methods are unhelpful. When allowed unrestrained access it can not

only explain but also deconstruct the form of the text, and we lose the ability to read the text as scripture

in the process.
Historical-critical endeavor means developing a sensitivity to when a text
means to broker facts and figures (which is fairly infrequently) and when it
is doing something else.... So too, one could use an English hymnal to
reconstruct Methodist church history, but the danger is that one could forfeit the
ability to sing hymns from it on the exchange.40

Thus if we want to be able to read the text as scripture, the use of historical criticism must be limited to

this explanatory role. Seitz’ canonical approach offers an alternative to historical criticism that seeks to

align itself with the character of Christian scripture, while at the same time leaving room for the tools of

historical criticism to be useful for the explanatory preparation to theological reading of the text.

b) Historical Proximity. The second strength of his canonical approach, related to its dependence

on historical criticism, is a lack of pre-occupation with the 'original text'. Rather than focusing on or

searching for the original form of the text, Seitz’ theological reading focuses on the final form. Both

liberal and conservative theological perspectives that value historical analysis often share a pre-

occupation with the original text. As already discussed above, this ignited motivation for historical critical

38 Seitz, Ibid. 99.


39 Ibid.
40 Seitz, "God As Other, God As Holy," in Word Without End, 14.
23

study, to find what the text really said in its original form, closest to what really happened. The problem

is that scholars ended up deciding either to use external criteria to identify a document as original at some

arbitrary point in its historical development, or naively assumed that original documents existed and were

inspired without error to defend a version of biblical authority tied to historical accuracy and proximity to

events.

A strict application of historical criticism would eschew this theological value of historical

proximity and admit there is no such thing as original documents, but instead a process of tradition-

history, or development of a text. But if the purpose is to be able to interpret scripture, the theological

irrelevancy that results from this approach to the text is unhelpful, as already argued above.

Alternatively, the canonical approach focuses on the final form of the text because of the

understanding of scripture itself as revelation in its final form. There is no need to search for some

‘original’ document to be reconstructed through historical inquiry as a means to get closer to revelation in

the past. At the same time, the canonical approach does not deny that biblical texts underwent this process

of historical development before reaching their canonical shape. The key difference is Seitz’

understanding that the text of scripture is revelatory in its final form.41 A search for original documents

behind-the-text could be construed as a lack of confidence in the revelatory character of the Old

Testament.42

The key is that the interpretation of scripture is not to be construed as an investigation in search of

revelation in history behind-the-text, as historical criticism often focuses it. Instead, the canonical

approach frames interpretation as our ability to take the ‘plain sense’ of the Old Testament seriously as

the textual revelatory witness God has providentially ordered for God’s people.

41 Seitz' canonical approach focuses on the text’s final literary-theological arrangement while acknowledging historical factors.
Alternatively, there are some publications that rearrange all the biblical text, verse by verse, into a theological meta-narrative by
chronological division of texts that deal with protology, creation, Israel, Christ, the church, and eschatology. See Reese Edwards,
Reese Chronological Bible (Bethany House, Cambridge, 1980).
42 "Whatever else might be said about Childs's approach, he clearly has an enlarged and sophisticated notion of authorial
intention. He depends upon a view of revelation in history that begins with events and their immediate interpretation but also
looks to the divine word as received by the community of faith, reheard and reshaped, continuing to call forth new theological
insight, obedience, and a life of faith congruent with the divine will." Seitz, "The Changing Face of Old Testament Studies," in
Word Without End, 81.
24

3. Exegetical Illustration: Seitz' Reading of Exodus 3 & 6

How does this play out in how we actually read the Old Testament? Seitz provides a direct

illustration of how historical, theological, and critical issues converge through exegesis of two key

passages from the beginning of Exodus. His reading challenges source-critical43 approaches to the

Pentateuch, and also informs his understanding of the Old Testament witness to history and revelation.

His study is found in the collection of essays, Word Without End.44

Exodus 3:1-4:17 and Exodus 6:2-9 are commonly referred to as texts that narrate the ‘call of

Moses’. Also, the first passage is often noted as a text with great significance where God reveals his name

to Moses, and then to Israel. The problem is that Moses is called twice and God’s name is revealed twice,

which requires an account of these seemingly contradictory passages. Source critics, based on a view of

the whole Pentateuch as a compilation of sources across the collection, suggest that the contradiction can

be resolved by concluding these two passages come from variant sources with different accounts of

Moses’ call.

An additional issue is that the second passage states in Ex. 6:3 that God had not previously made

himself known to Israel by his name 'YHWH'. This seems to fly in the face of not only Ex. 3:14 from the

first call where God did reveal his name, but also Genesis 4:26- referring to a much earlier time - which

states that, “At that time people began to invoke the name of YHWH.” It would appear that, on the

surface, the claims of Genesis and Exodus regarding who knew God's name and when are incompatible.

Source-critical logic resolves the contradictions between these passages by positing numerous sources

with differing accounts that have been compiled together in the final form of Genesis, Exodus and the rest

of the Pentateuch. This leaves us with the theological and historical consequences of an Old Testament

that speaks confusedly in its plain sense presentation of history and God’s revelation of himself.

43 Source-criticism: a branch of historical-critical analysis focused on dissembling the various sources behind a text’s final form,
used by the final editor to construct the text.
44 Seitz, "The Call of Moses and the ‘Revelation’ of the Divine Name: Source-Critical Logic and Its Legacy," in Word Without
End, 229-247.
25

Seitz explores an alternative approach to these textual issues in his essay by responding to the

work of Walter Moberly. He is critical of Moberly’s overall conclusions, but found it useful to follow his

suggestion of reading these passages in light of the overall narrative of the book.

Moberly’s reading forced me to reexamine what is being related, by attending to the


text in its present form and unfolding logic- rather than assuming from the start a
convergence of several sources, which can then be untangled precisely because logical
unfolding is absent. This also means setting aside the criterion of the divine name as
pointing to sources behind the account.45

This is especially so in light of how the beginning of Exodus introduces Moses as a central character.

Instead of seeing a messy compilation of sources that inconsistently interprets Moses’ call and God’s

revelation of his name, Seitz agrees with Moberly that, “the two ‘calls’ are not just capable of

coordination or compatible, but necessary for the text as a whole to make sense and as such indispensable

in the final form of the material.”46

Seitz’ thesis is that Moberly is correct to observe the name YHWH is revealed to Moses for the

first time in Exodus 3, but that this novelty does not extend to the rest of Israel:
My simple thesis is that the question posed by Moses in 3:13ff has stood at
the heart of source-critical discussion, and that the issue there turns on the
status of Moses and a correct understanding of his role vis-à-vis Israel in the
opening chapters of the book of Exodus.47

Where Seitz critiques Moberly’s work is in disagreeing with his assessment that the writer of Genesis

used the phrase ‘YHWH’ only because of the reader’s familiarity with the term, with full knowledge that

it was an historical anachronism for the earlier period of the ancestors (Genesis 4:26).48 By paying

attention to the narrative structure of Exodus and its emphasis on Moses’ unique position and role, Seitz

finds a way to take the plain sense of Exodus and Genesis seriously.

Seitz observes that in Exodus, Moses does not say, ‘The God of our fathers has sent me to you.’

Instead the text reads, “Then Moses said to God, “Behold, I am going to the sons of Israel, and I shall say

45 Seitz, "The Call of Moses and the ‘Revelation’ of the Divine Name," in Word Without End, 232. For Moberly’s work see
Walter Moberly. The Old Testament of the Old Testament (OBT; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992).
46 Ibid. 234.
47 Seitz, “The Call of Moses,” in Word Without End, 235.
48 Instead, Seitz argues, “that both [Exodus texts], each in its own way, presuppose a longstanding use of the proper name for
God. The conclusion I will draw from this is that Old Testament texts never concern themselves with a point in historical time
before which the name was hypothetically unknown, such that it might then be dramatically ‘revealed.’” Ibid. 234-235.
26

to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you.’ Now they may say to me, ‘What is his name?’

What shall I say to them?” (Ex. 3:13) By carefully observing that Moses- raised in Pharaoh’s house apart

from Israel- is estranged from his people, Seitz can posit that the name YHWH was known by Israel, but

not by Moses.
If one tracks the use of the divine name, alert to the difference between
Moses’ own perspective, that of the narrator, and that of the reader, then
verse-by-half-verse source division – here the Elohist, there the
Yahwist – proves unnecessary.49

This allows us to follow the plain sense of Genesis 4:26 where the name YHWH was known early on,

allowing for Israel to have known God by this name well before the exodus from Egypt. The emphasis of

the narrative in the early chapters of Exodus is that Moses did not know the name YHWH before God

spoke to him. Instead of focusing behind-the-text on the possible sources complied in the final form of the

text, Seitz takes note of the complex structure of the narrative itself and the different perspectives of the

characters involved as a way of accounting for the contradictions source-critics claim to find in the text’s

final form.

Seitz demonstrates that his canonical approach, while it can move beyond historical-critical

analysis, does not have to entirely reject the findings of historical critical work. He works with the source-

critical theories regarding the compilation of traditions in the Pentateuch, specifically in Exodus.
My remarks do not call for a repudiation of levels of tradition, but a different
understanding of their character and relationship to one another. In my judgment these
are more synthetically related than the old Priestly versus Yahwist theory held. 50

The canonical approach recognizes the traditions behind-the-text, but does not put any theological weight

on a specific theory of their development, or relation to one another.

The inconsistency between Genesis 4:26 and Exodus 3:13-15 has been resolved, but what of

Exodus 6:6,7 where God tells Moses, "Say therefore to the Israelites: "I am YHWH... and I will take you

for my people, and I will be your God; and you shall know that I am YHWH your God, who has brought

you up from the burden of the Egyptians."51 Is this a second 'call narrative' that contradicts the first? At

49 Ibid. 236.
50 Seitz, Ibid., 246.
51 Seitz' translation of Exodus 6:6,7. Ibid., 243.
27

this point in the narrative God's name is already known to Israel and Moses. Are there still rival sources

battling at the level of the final form of the text?

As we've already shown above, the so-called first 'call narrative' in Exodus 3 where God reveals

his name to Moses was not the first time God was known as YHWH. The key to interpreting the passage

was that God's name was new to Moses, while the ancestors and the Israel of Moses' day already knew the

name. But in this event God shared with Moses a new disclosure, so to speak. In combination with saying

his name, God also gave Moses the initial response of "I am who I am." Some ways of reading this

conclude that God is withholding his name, instead offering a mysterious phrase to imply he is beyond

naming. But Seitz rejects this saying, “... ‘I am as I am’ is not a rebuttal (cf. ani aser ani) but a clue to the

meaning of the proper name YHWH. God’s name involves something that he will be or become.”52 The

name YHWH was already known to the ancestors, and is now known to Moses. But now Moses has also

heard God reveal something about the meaning of his name. Thus, while Moses' encounter with God in

Exodus 3 is not the first time the name YHWH has been revealed, God is giving Moses special

knowledge regarding the meaning of his name.

In this light we can better understand how the second supposed 'call narrative,' Ex. 6:2-9, fits in

consistently as part of the narrative in the final form of the text. Careful reading of the text shows that it is

strictly not a revealing of God's name again, but instead, like Ex. 3, about pointing to the meaning of

God's name YHWH. In Ex. 6:7 God says, "and I will take you for my people, and I will be your God; and

you shall know that I am YHWH your God, who has brought you up from the burden of the Egyptians." It

appears that through what God is going to do for Israel, they will know his name is YHWH. Thus the

passage in Ex. 6 again points to a future time when this revealing will happen.
Though God tells Moses to say that this [-I am-] is his name (3:14), we
must wait until the second divine encounter to learn just what the name
means – or will mean. In this sense, even Exodus 6:2-9 does not report
the revelation of God as YHWH so much as anticipate it.53

Ex. 3, and Ex. 6 both appear to be about pointing to the meaning of God's name, rather than revealing the

name itself. Neither text is a rival source making claims about when God's name was first revealed.

52 WWE, 239
53 Seitz, Ibid. 244.
28

Together they are essential parts of the Exodus narrative that fit in as part of the final form of the text.

This gives us an important demonstration of Seitz' canonical approach to exegesis of the biblical

text. Seitz emphasizes the importance of the final form of the text on two levels. First he attempts to

interpret these two passages in light of the whole Exodus narrative, instead of a reconstructed historical

context from behind-the-text. Also, Seitz takes the canonical arrangement of the text seriously by

interpreting Exodus in light of the claims made in the book of Genesis.

Already we have seen how revelation and history come together in the final form of the text.

Exodus offers an interpretation of a particular history, but questions remain. What is the meaning of God's

name? Why is God revealing himself to Moses, who is an ‘Egyptian’ with distant kinship ties to Israel,

when Israel already knows that God's name is YHWH? Discussion of these textual issues takes us into

further consideration of how revelation and history come together in the Old Testament for Seitz, and also

how we as readers are to approach this from in-front-of-the-text.

C. In-Front-of-the-Text: Revelation, Election & Hermeneutical Access

We have come full circle, returning to the basic premise with which I began this chapter, that

Seitz finds reading the Old Testament worthwhile because it reveals who God is. The failure of historical

criticism to make the Old Testament universally accessible presses Seitz' statement with the further

question; 'who has God revealed himself to in the Old Testament?' Seitz' exegetical study of Exodus,

discussed above, was achieved in part by paying particular attention to the characters in the narrative and

their interaction. For the coherence of the text and the meaning of the narrative to come through, it

mattered for Seitz to give attention to whom in particular God was speaking and revealing himself, and

when this took place in the narrative. This is also a major thrust to Seitz' understanding of the Old

Testament overall. Here I will argue that Seitz’ understanding of revelation is shaped not only by who is

being addressed within-the-text -in the text's plain sense- but also by consideration of who is being

addressed by the form of the text as scripture.

Seitz canonical approach suggests that the world within-the-text informs the world in-front-of-
29

the-text, addressing specific readers in specific ways. In other words, Seitz is arguing that his

understanding of Old Testament revelation, and how the reader accesses it is based within-the-text itself.

In this final section of chapter one I will deal with one of the basic questions from in-front-of-the-text,

that helps to display Seitz' understanding of revelation. “Who has access to the Old Testament?”

1. Election: Defining Hermeneutical Access to the Old Testament

It has not always been obvious which religious communities the Old Testament is for, or who can

claim it as their own.54 Neither has it been clear why it matters who is reading the text when the view of

revelation as universal knowledge- that can and should be accessible to all- is operative. Seitz challenges

this assumption and argues why it is crucial to understand revelation in terms of election, the particular

relationship of God with his people Israel. Election, for Seitz, coincides with the form of the Old

Testament as correspondence from a particular God to a particular people.

This is what makes Seitz’ critique of historical criticism so central to approaching the text

theologically. In his view, hermeneutical access to revelation does not come by looking behind-the-text at

history. Instead he argues that it happens in-front-of-the-text, where the Old Testament addresses a

specific readership: those to whom God is revealing himself. Revelation and election come together as

essential characteristics of the Old Testament for Seitz.


By contrast, what makes the Old Testament literature what it most essentially
is, is the claim of a restricted election, encompassing its authors and audience.
This means that no matter how lofty or how timeless its themes, these find their
inner logic and most essential purpose always through the constraints of that
election. Seen from this perspective - which the literature itself asserts - the Old
Testament is not a classic (Psalm 147:19-20). The material did not take shape
and become scripture because of profound themes or an inherent capacity to
transcend time and space with a message for all. The characteristic mark of this
literature is the claim made within it to God's special election and inspiration,
and its proprietary attachment with God's people Israel.55

This understanding of election comes from within-the-text, not by looking behind it. The plain sense

54 See chapter 3 for discussion of Marcion and the Old Testament in the early church. See Robert P. Carroll, The Bible as a
Problem for Christianity. (Philadelphia, Trinity Press International, 1991).
55 Seitz, "Isaiah And The Search For A New Paradigm," in Word Without End, 115.
30

presentation of the Old Testament addresses Israel as God's elect. Seitz claims that the text itself

addresses a specific readership, and that revelation only makes sense from within that relationship of

address.

To understand this relationship between revelation and election, and the implications it has for

reading the Old Testament in-front-of-the-text, I will return to Seitz' study of the book of Exodus to

illustrate how revelation and election come together in the plain sense and final form of the Old

Testament.

2. Exegetical Illustration: God’s Name & Revelation in Exodus

One of the main ways that the Old Testament speaks of God making himself known is by his

name.56 Following this, some interpretations of the narrative in Exodus hinge upon the moment of God

revealing his name to Moses in Ex. 3:14. When interpreted in isolation, God's initial response to Moses,

"I am who I am" -a common English translation of the Hebrew 'eyeh 'aser 'ehyeh- has been read as a

statement about God's transcendence and eternal existence.57 This would suggest that God's name,

YHWH, and thus God's identity is beyond time and history and cannot be known by finite beings. God's

speech to Moses becomes an enigma pointing beyond human understanding to something mysterious and

unknowable, rather than a disclosure of who God is.

In Exodus, one of the key issues in understanding the 'revelation' of the name of God is how this

fits with the fact that the name YHWH was known previous to the time of Moses. According to Seitz’

attempt to take the text of Genesis 4:26 seriously, there was never, "a point in historical time before which

the name [of God] was hypothetically unknown, such that it might then be dramatically 'revealed'."58

Gen. 4:26 states that, "at that time people began to invoke the name of YHWH." I agree with Seitz that

56 “The notion that God has a name is a prevalent notion in both the Old Testament and in the cultures surrounding it… The
notion that God has a proper name and can be differentiated from other deities with proper names is absolutely clear in the Old
Testament.” Seitz, "The Divine Name in Christian Scripture," in Word Without End, 253.
57 B.S. Childs covers the history of interpretation in his commentary. Childs, Exodus, 84-85. Augustine and Aquinas both took
Ex. 3:14 to be speaking of God's unchanging essence.
58 Seitz, "The Call of Moses and The Revelation of the Divine Name," in Word Without End, 235.
31

this only reports the first use of the name, rather than demarcating a time before which God's name was

unknown to humanity.59 The implication is that God's name has always been known, or that at least the

Old Testament is not concerned with when it became known.

The question then becomes much more pointed. How is God's disclosure of his name in Exodus a

revelation of himself in a new way if his name, according to Genesis, was already known?" And how are

we to make sense of this in light of Ex. 6:2-9, where in verse 3 God says to Moses, "I appeared to

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai, but by my name YHWH I did not make myself known to

them…?"

In our discussion of Exodus above, we left off on the observation that God was, in Ex. 3 & 6,

pointing Moses ahead to a time when the meaning of his name would be revealed. Specifically, Moses

and the rest of Israel would know that God’s name was YHWH when he liberated them from Egypt. This

allows Seitz to introduce a helpful distinction, between God appearing to the ancestors, “and his being

made known, which happens in a permanently foundational way in the events of the Exodus and Sinai.”60

The plain sense of Ex. 6:3, which says of the ancestors Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, “I appeared…[to

them]...but by my name YHWH I did not make myself known to them," indicates this point and allows

for such a distinction to be made between the time of the ancestors and of Moses. God had appeared to

the ancestors as YHWH, but it was not until the time of the exodus that God was fully known as YHWH.

Seitz argues that through God’s liberation of Israel, YHWH becomes known as the God who liberated

Israel from Egypt. Rather than being the point in time where new or esoteric meaning is given to God’s

name in some abstract fashion, it is the event of Israel’s liberation that fills God’s name with meaning and

content.

This understanding of revelation, of God revealing himself through events which give new

meaning to his name, is central to Seitz’ understanding of the God revealed in the Old Testament.

59 "In other words, the Old Testament never takes up the question of how the name as such first came to be uttered by humanity.
As many have noted, Gen. 4:26 cannot be pressed into service to depict a first-time revelation of a name for God theretofore
unknown." Seitz, Ibid. Seitz also points to Westermann, for the same argument. Westermann, C. Genesis 1-11 (Minneapolis:
Augsburg, 1984), 339-340
60 Seitz, Ibid. 245.
32

Speaking in another context about God’s name, Seitz returns to the Exodus passages, following a survey

of other narratives on this theme.


In later narratives (Exodus 3 & 6), we learn that God makes himself
definitively known in the events of the exodus... The named deity whose
name existed from time immemorial reveals who he is in the events of
liberation from bondage in Egypt. He gets no new name. The old name
is filled with fullest content... .YHWH is Israel’s God, who was made known
in bringing Israel out of bondage from Egypt. The narratives tell who this
YHWH is; they reflect what this YHWH has done.61

God’s name is YHWH, and while this name was in use prior to the exodus, its meaning comes through

this event and is constituted by it. It is in fact the very narrative of Exodus that identifies God as YHWH

and supplies this content to God's name and identity.


The identity of YHWH, Marduk, or Asherah is tied up with a set of
narratives which supply content to the individual deity in question, so
that who Marduk is, is by definition different from who YHWH is. The
way YHWH is known is by reference to what Israel says about him based
upon his prior actions with Israel.62

Seitz’ argument, which goes into great depth to argue for this reading in light of the entire Exodus

narrative, is too detailed to capture here entirely. But there are clear ties between revelation and election

that come to the surface in what has been discussed so far.

In the final quote above Seitz makes some key observations. By choosing to make himself known

as YHWH through the events of the exodus, the book of Exodus tells us that God’s identity is tied to his

relationship with Israel. Rather than God’s name being a mysterious revelation about God’s character or

essence apart from everything else, the book of Exodus reveals that God makes himself known in relation

to a particular people and a particular set of events. In speaking to Moses in Ex. 6, God remembers his

covenant with Abraham and the ancestors. Verse 5, “I have also heard the groaning of the Israelites whom

the Egyptians are holding as slaves, and I have remembered my covenant.” God had already chosen Israel

to be his people, and now the book of Exodus tells us that God made the further choice of identifying

himself and being known as YHWH, through this election of Israel. God’s election of Israel seems to be

an essential element to the way God reveals himself in the book of Exodus. In terms of the way God

61 Seitz, "The Divine Name in Christian Scripture," in Word Without End, 253.
62 Ibid.
33

discloses himself within-the-text, it is clear that Exodus provides a narrative meant to be foundational to

the identity of YHWH.

This reading of Exodus is but one example of how revelation functions within-the-text of the Old

Testament for Seitz. It points to the way God reveals himself within-the-text, and serves as an illustration

of the argument which Seitz attempts to make regarding revelation and the form of the Old Testament. By

taking texts like the Exodus narrative and how it speaks of God revealing himself seriously, Seitz is able

to demonstrate how this relationship between election and revelation shapes the world in-front-of-the-text

as well. Seitz' argues it is not only within-the-text that God’s revelation functions through election, but

election shapes the function of the text itself as revelation to its readers.

Seitz' canonical approach suggests that not just anyone can expect to have access to God's

revelation of himself in the Old Testament. The form and content of this particular text make expectations

of its readership for how it is to be accessed as such.


'Revelation' or 'disclosure' is only comprehensible within the framework of
election. It cannot be abstracted or universalized; it is a particular perspective
to which one must be made privy...63

Hermeneutical access to revelation is not available to anyone who looks behind-the-text, but specifically

to those who are addressed as readers in-front-of-the-text. The Old Testament is the scripture of Israel, the

book of a particular people. Within its pages the claim is made that God has revealed himself through his

election and liberation of this people. I find Seitz' account fresh and helpful in its embrace of the

particularity of Israel's election and the theological implications this has for reading the Old Testament,

yet I am left with some questions regarding the character of Israel's particularity.

3. The Scandal of Particularity: Revelation & Election

In Seitz' view revelation is not a universal category of knowledge accessible through ‘history’ but

a particular category of self-disclosure given within the privileged relationship of YHWH with Israel,

God's elect people. This view of revelation sits at odds with most views of revelation that have functioned

63 Seitz, "God As Other, God As Holy," in Word Without End, 19.


34

in Christian theology since the Enlightenment. Historical-critical methods have often been paired with a

view of revelation that sought to avoid the 'scandal of particularity,' and instead attempted to see how

universal truth could be revealed amidst the particularities of historical contingency.

The work of historical criticism was then to unfold the levels of historical contingency placed

over top of the original revelation to make it accessible to modern readers of the text, whoever they were.

It was scandalous for some to discover that the ‘universal truth’ of biblical revelation depended on the

biblical record of historically contingent events. But even more scandalous is the notion that God has

revealed himself exclusively to one people and not to all of humanity.

Seitz' view of revelation attempts to capture the particularity of God's self-disclosure to Israel as it

appears throughout the Old Testament, and to follow through on the theological implications this has for

reading and accessing the text as scripture. Seitz summarizes his understanding of revelation and election:
The Bible does not assume that God can be known or experienced generally.
God reveals himself fully only to Israel, and within Israel, to a few chosen
individuals whose responsibility is then to pass on what they know to others
within Israel. Only in this way does Israel learn that God's ways will eventually
have to do with other nations and peoples, beyond her orbit-whether they
know it or not, care about it or not. Now the modern will object that this is
because the Bible is written from Israel's own perspective-but that is the
whole point. The very truth of the revelation of God in scripture has to do
with the scripture's attachment to a particular people, whom God has elected
for a special and rather burdensome task. In this consists its claim to be Holy
Scripture. No election, no particular revelation, no Holy Scripture.64

In Seitz view, "the very truth of the revelation of God in scripture" is necessarily linked to God's election

of Israel. Seitz recognizes and boldly accepts the implications of this, that the Old Testament is not only

tied to Israel, but belongs to Israel in an exclusive and particular way. This is a bold claim with significant

implications for reading the Old Testament.

While Seitz does embrace the particularity of revelation as it is presented in the final form of the

Old Testament, he is reluctant to spell out the particularity of Israel's election as a visible and socially

concrete reality. In his essay, God as Other, God as Holy, he does refer to the holiness of Israel in relation

to God's holiness, and this does suggest some account of how Israel is meant to be active in response to

God's revelation. However, it is not clear what this means for Israel's role in-front-of-the-text other than

64 Seitz, "Pluralism and the Lost Art of Christian Apology", 1996 First Things 44 (June/July 1994)
35

hearing and receiving it as such. Seitz does not seem to be especially concerned with the form of social

embodiment this reception of God's revelation should have. I believe this reflects two things.

On one level, as a gentile Christian Seitz feels he is not in a position to address what the social

embodiment of Israel's election should look like. At the same time, however, I think it reflects his broad

focus on a narrow range of the world in-front-of-the-text. Seitz focuses on the linguistic dimension of

Israel's election, as those who are addressed by and receive God's revelation in textual form. But Seitz

pays little attention to the way Israel should be shaped more broadly in its life as those who receive God's

revelation, particularly where this may have implications for how the Old Testament is read. The impact

this has on Seitz’ view of how the church reads the Old Testament remains to be seen.

D. Conclusion

In this chapter I have explored Seitz' understanding of revelation in terms of history and election.

Seitz' reading of the Old Testament is based on an appreciation of God's disclosure in the text from the

perspective of the election of Israel. This reading is not based in a historical reconstruction of events, but

in Seitz' canonical approach. This approach focuses on the text's final form and content, the plain sense in

its canonical form. While his approach involves a critique of historical criticism at a basic level, Seitz is

not opposed to the use of historical-critical tools in understanding the text in its final form. Seitz'

exegetical work in the book of Exodus has demonstrated how the canonical approach is able to move

beyond source-critical divisions of the Pentateuch, as well as illustrate God's disclosure of himself

through Israel's election. In both cases, the final form of the text takes on theological significance for

Seitz' reading of the Old Testament as scripture. The following chapter will continue to explore Seitz'

approach to reading the Old Testament, particularly in light of the diversity of the world behind-the-text.
36

CHAPTER II - CANON & UNITY: THE OLD TESTAMENT,


AUTHORSHIP & SEITZ’ CANONICAL APPROACH

In this chapter I will continue to critically assess Seitz' canonical approach by focusing on the

concept of unity. What role does unity play in reading the Old Testament as scripture? The legacy of

historical criticism has been, in part, to point to the diversity and complexity of the world behind-the-text.

The diversity of authors, traditions, life situations, etc. behind the books of the Old Testament have filled

out a historical view of biblical texts that emphasize a broad diversity of contexts, perspectives, and

traditions. Can Seitz' canonical approach account for the unity of the text's final form without denying the

diversity and complexity of the world behind-the-text?

I will continue to develop my overall thesis in this chapter by arguing that the concept of unity is

a function of the integrity of the Old Testament as the scripture of God's elect people Israel. Seitz'

canonical approach focuses on the unity available in the world within-the-text, in the plain sense of the

canonical text in its final form. This unity is understood primarily by those addressed as readers of the

Old Testament canon.

Throughout this chapter I will draw on Seitz’ work in the book of Isaiah. The first section will

focus on the concept of unity in relation to the world behind-the-text. The second section will again turn

to the world within-the-text, looking in particular at Seitz' work on the unity of the book of Isaiah. Finally,

in the third section I will focus on the concept of unity in relation to the world in-front-of-the-text. How is

the reader involved in assessing the unity of the Old Testament?

A. Behind-the-Text: Unity, Authorship & the Text

While it admits no theological relevance to historical criticism, Seitz' canonical approach does not

deny any of its findings in principle, particularly concerning the multiple and complex authorship of the
37

Old Testament and the books it contains.65 At the same time, Seitz' canonical approach offers an

alternative account of scripture's authorship and revelatory character that doesn't depend on historical

reconstruction to grasp the unity/diversity of Old Testament books. This begins from drawing out the

implications of Seitz' understanding of revelation.

1. Revelation, Authorship & Unity

In the first chapter I began with Seitz' understanding that the Old Testament is a revelation of who

God is. This is based on the hermeneutical point of access to the text, God's election of Israel. Election is

the hinge point of revelation as it places the initiative in God’s choosing of a people to reveal himself to

through the text.

Seitz' understanding of revelation leads to consideration of the Old Testament's authorship

theologically. While it is recognized to be a document with human dimensions, Seitz' view places the

agency and initiative of authorship not in the Old Testament's human authors but in God's self-disclosure,

his revelation of himself.


The singular revelation from God, the act of communication beginning in speech and
ending in written form, and the assent to that agent and that speech as divinely
inspired...all three conspire to create authority culminating in written texts with a given
form and scope, regarded as authored by the original agent of revelation.66

For Seitz revelation is not only a historical category behind-the-text in events. Ultimately it is a textual

category derived from the plain sense of the text in its canonical form. Because God's revelation of

himself is found within-the-text, Seitz is able to speak of the divine authorship of the Old Testament. The

'original agent of revelation' is God himself, and thus it makes sense to speak of God "authoring" the text.

For Seitz, unity is about the expectation of coherence across a book's final canonical form. This

coherence makes it possible to read the text intelligibly from a single perspective. “What is theological

about an emphasis on Isaiah's unity is this expectation of larger coherence, which will be differently

65 One of the purposes of biblical criticism that Seitz appreciates is, "the task of spotting repugnance, of showing how it is that
the Bible is not a simple, single-authored document, free of seams and tensions, literary, theological and logical." Seitz, "Biblical
Authority in the Late Twentieth Century," in World Without End, 99.
66 Seitz, "Isaiah And The Search For A New Paradigm," in Word Without End, 127.
38

evaluated by interpreters, as it has always been.”67 This single perspective has ultimately to do with

God's self-disclosure in the text. Seitz reads the Old Testament with the expectation that this disclosure is

accessible by paying close attention to the text's plain sense, and that the text presents this from a unified,

coherent perspective.68 The question then, is how does Seitz understand the human authorship of the text,

and the complex world behind-the-text unveiled by historical criticism? How does the incredible diversity

behind-the-text relate to the unity Seitz expects from the Old Testament?

The issue for Seitz is that unity becomes problematic in cases where human authorship of the Old

Testament is understood primarily in terms of inspiration, that God inspired the human authorship of the

text. Understanding how Seitz relates inspiration and revelation will assist us in grasping his theological

account of the Old Testament’s unity.

2. Seitz’ Account of Inspiration & Unity

In some accounts of scripture the connection between divine authorship and biblical texts is based

in the doctrine of authorial inspiration rather than revelation. In this model God inspires the human

author’s writing. Alternatively I want to suggest, along with John Webster, that revelation is more

fundamental to an account of scripture than inspiration.69 In fact, inspiration is best understood as a

derivative of revelation. While Seitz does not explicitly state this or argue along this line, I will argue here

that his account of scripture gives appropriate priority to revelation, and that this lays the groundwork for

properly grasping the role of inspiration and the unity of the Old Testament through the canonical

approach.

Seitz' most helpful discussion of inspiration is found in his essay, “Isaiah and the Search for a

New Paradigm: Authorship and Inspiration”. Here Seitz addresses questions about Isaiah’s unity, and the

67 Seitz, Ibid. 128.


68 "Authorship, divine authority, unity - all three are intimately related, giving rise to an expectation of coherence and the
possibility of synthesis within a given corpus. " Seitz, "Royal Promises in the Canonical Books of Isaiah and the Psalms," in
Word Without End, 167.
69 Webster, John. Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch (UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
39

importance of Isaiah as a historical figure to the book’s interpretation. How these questions are answered,

Seitz argues, depends largely on our understanding of inspiration.

Seitz contrasts two understandings of inspiration for which I have coined my own terms.

"Authorial inspiration" focuses on the human author(s) of a text. "Textual inspiration" focuses on the text

itself as the final product of inspiration.70 Seitz recognizes that both models of inspiration have been

applied to texts like Isaiah in various ways.

The key is how each model understands the unity of the text and revelation. Seitz argues that

authorial inspiration shifts interpretive focus away from the text in its final canonical form to matters

behind-the-text. This was especially the case when interpretation of Isaiah was shifting from single-

authorship to multiple-authorship.
On such a model, what was of utmost importance was not the actual book itself, or
its larger shape, since these could no longer with confidence be assigned to the
traditional author, but rather a critical reconstruction of a variety of inspired
individuals and the communities addressed by them. The focus had shifted from
the inspired book to inspired individuals.71

By shifting away from the book as the object of study, the unity of the text became a problem. The world

behind-the-text became the focus of study, and the text became a means to revealing that there was more

diversity than unity behind-the-text.

In Seitz view the search for unity or coherence was still a key to the interpretive process, but this

had shifted to finding unity or coherence at the level of human authorship in a historical context, rather

than finding it in the text itself.72 Inspiration then becomes the basis for a historical investigation that

ignores the final form of the text.


The prophet Isaiah and other anonymous individuals, under divine compulsion,
at various historical moments in the book's development, were inspired to write
or speak what God had spoken to them. Yet the book of Isaiah did not come to
us in a form that made the connection between these inspired individuals and

70 Seitz does not use these phrases exactly, but they cover the contrast between an interpretive focus on the author vs. the book.
In some cases they converge on one another, and there is little distinction between authorial or textual inspiration. This happens
when a text has only a single author and the inspiration of the individual author is thought to coincide with the inspiration of the
text. But in most cases, especially when it comes to the Old Testament, historical-critical work has revealed that texts like Isaiah
have more than one author.
71 Seitz, "Isaiah In Parish Bible Study," in Word Without End, 197-98.
72 "To know the mind of an author or redactor was to be privy to a distinct point of view, though the more of these one
accumulated and detected in the first place on the basis of inconsistency or tension, the less theological and the more ideological
or tendentious they began to appear." Seitz, "Isaiah And The Search For A New Paradigm," Word Without End, 121.
40

their inspired speech clear. So historical criticism received its mandate: to


uncover the connection and thus show us how theology had been generated,
inspiration lying at the heart of the process.73

Whether or not the process of generating theology conveyed through the text and discovered by historical

criticism is worthy of being described as a unity becomes the key theological question, and then

determines if the text can also be understood as a unity.

Seitz recognizes that this historical investigation has sometimes continued without concern for

theological justification. In addition, scholars armed with literary and reader response approaches to

interpretation have more recently shifted to reading the text as a unity apart from historical-critical

concerns.74 The problem is whether or not this shift represents merely a new interest of readers, or is

justifiable theologically.
The question now is: how is one to understand from a theological point
of view a conception of the book of Isaiah as 'unified' and at the same
time as divorced from the older authorial or editorial understanding of
inspiration?75

Seitz claims that his interest in the unity of the text is more than a literary or aesthetic concern, but a

theological concern with reading the text as scripture.

Rather than focusing on authorial inspiration, Seitz' changes his focus based on his understanding

of scripture’s fundamentally revelatory nature. He focuses interpretive attention on textual inspiration.

While he hints at the connection between inspiration and revelation, it is not entirely clear. "The point I

am trying to make here is that a concept of inspiration and revelation was what led to a claim for

authorship, not the other way around."76 Seitz points to Jon Levenson's discussion of the divinity and

unity of the Torah as a helpful understanding of authorship in relation to the text and revelation, but he

doesn't spell out clearly the role that inspiration plays.

Given Seitz' focus on the final form of the text in his canonical approach, I believe it is in line

73 Seitz, Ibid. 113.


74 "Now, with an interest in unitary readings or canonical approaches, questions of a theological character have once again
resurfaced. But we should stop and ask: why a focus on the book as a unitary whole? For theological reasons or for aesthetic
reasons? Because older fragmentation has tired us out? Or because meaning is regarded as the imposition of a reader's concerns
on a text, and we now have readers interested in unity? This is clearly problematical. If readers are the ones finding unity, how
would this shift be any more theological than what obtained in an older model? Questions such as these point to a considerable
degree of confusion among Isaiah interpreters at present. " Seitz, Ibid. 113-114.
75 Seitz, Ibid. 121. Emphasis original.
76 Seitz, Ibid., 125.
41

with his approach to speak of textual inspiration. Inspiration is properly understood as a derivative of

revelation when inspiration is defined in relation to the text of scripture, rather than in relation to the text's

authorship77 or history. Webster can be helpful here to explain what Seitz is hinting at. Webster defines

inspiration in such a way that it derives from the concept of revelation, that God discloses himself through

the text of scripture.78 In this light, inspiration is defined in terms of God's action to produce the text in

its final form.


It is certainly true that, with declining confidence in the viability of a dogmatic
notion of verbal inspiration, the range of the term ‘inspiration’ has in some modern
theology been considerably broadened... A more orderly account of the matter will,
however restrict the application of the term [inspiration] to the specific set of divine
acts in respect of the production of the biblical texts...79

By focusing on the text as the object of God's inspiration, Webster provides a helpful support to Seitz'

canonical approach. Webster is not interested in denying the complexity and diversity of the world

behind-the-text, what he calls its 'natural history.'80 Rather, he focuses on the production of the text as

inspiration's object, instead of the author(s) or the historical development of the text. This notion of

textual inspiration helps us approach textual unity from a different perspective.

Seitz' canonical approach can make sense of unity because the world behind-the-text plays no

positive theological role in interpretation. Reading the Old Testament as scripture begins not from

recognizing the text as having inspired authorship, but from recognizing the text as part of God's

revelatory self-disclosure, for the sake of which the text is inspired in its final canonical form. Its

revelatory character is appreciated through the plain sense of the text in its final canonical form and

77 I have used the term authorship in this chapter to cover the broad complexity and variety of textual origins and development,
which has been discovered in the world behind-the-text. Throughout the history of interpretation the authorship of particular Old
Testament texts has been understood variously in terms of single human authors, to complex reconstructions of layers of tradition
and editing compiled into single documents. The term authorship is meant to capture this wide array of possibilities.
78 “In thesis form, the argument to be set out here may be stated thus: revelation is the self-presentation of the triune God, the
free work of sovereign mercy in which God wills, establishes and perfects saving fellowship with himself in which humankind
comes to know, love and fear him above all things.” Webster, John. Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch, 13. While I am in
general agreement with Webster's definition of revelation, it is weakened by its broad terms and lack of textual specificity in
reference to God's self-disclosure in Christian scripture.
79 Webster, Holy Scripture, 10.
80 “For a Christian theological account of Scripture, the problem raised here is a matter not so much of what is affirmed but of
what is denied. The problem, that is, is not the affirmation that the biblical texts have a ‘natural history’, but the denial that texts
with a ‘natural history’ may function within the communicative divine economy, and that such a function is ontologically
definitive of the text. It is this denial – rather than any purely methodological questions – which has to form the focus of the
dogmatic critique.” Webster, Holy Scripture, 19.
42

therefore there is no reliance on the world behind-the-text to grasp the unity of the text. To illustrate this I

will look at the book of Isaiah.

3. Illustration: Inspiration & Unity in Isaiah

Consider the book of Isaiah. Especially to modern ears, the book's name carries the assumption of

single authorship. This assumption supports a linkage of the book's inspiration to the prophetic voice of

Isaiah, as an individual in history. Given this starting point, the further assumption is made that the unity

of the text coincides with the unity between the text and the world behind-the-text. This leads to

understanding the text in light of the author Isaiah as a person in history and his context.

But historical-critical work has revealed that a lone author, Isaiah of Jerusalem from the 8th

Century, is not the sole author in the world behind-the-text of Isaiah. Contemporary scholarship offers

various reconstructions of the text's complexity of authorship and development, which include only a few

attempts to account for the unity of Isaiah by arguing for single authorship.81 One of the main reasons for

holding to single authorship of a book like Isaiah is the assumption that the unity of the book depends

upon the inspiration of a single author.

The problem with this approach is that the book's unity is thought to depend on our understanding

of the book's authorship and our reconstruction of the world behind-the-text. As argued above, this makes

the inspiration of authorship primary, and the text's revelatory character secondary and dependent on an

account of authorship. Even further, it ignores the theological significance of the final form of the text,

and attempts to find unity between the text and the world behind it historically.

For Seitz the unity of Isaiah does not depend on any particular understanding of how the text was

inspired in history. Rather, because Isaiah is read as scripture, as part of the Old Testament canon, reading

the text begins from the recognition that the final form of the text was inspired as a whole to be part of

81 see B. S. Childs, Isaiah, 3-4: "First, I remain deeply concerned with the unity of the book, which I agree cannot be formulated
in terms of single authorship....The complexity of the issue is especially clear when one considers that the historical eight-century
prophet does not appear in the book after chapter 39. With the majority of modern scholars, I strongly doubt that the problem can
be resolved by portraying the eight-century prophet as a clairvoyant of the future."
43

God's self-disclosure, as part of the revelation which makes it scripture.

When we consider the case of Isaiah, Seitz’ outlook carries with it the expectation of unity

because Isaiah is Israel's scripture. He notes:

What is theological about an appeal to unity is in the first instance negative:


a rejection of a theory of inspiration too narrowly tied to a historical search
for the original inspired subject, his speech, and that of his successors. More
positively, concern for the book of Isaiah in its entirety involves the expectation
that a single perspective - that of God or that of Isaiah as God's spokesman -
pervades all sixty-six chapters.82

The canonical approach sets up an expectation of unity in Old Testament texts, in their final form.

However, the question we must ask is this: Is Seitz’ account of unity, inspiration and revelation a

theological account that floats above the text without ever coming to grips with the particulars of the text

itself? If it is theologically grounded within-the-text, then Seitz’ account of unity should be able to help us

read texts like Isaiah with some sense of unity and coherence.

B. Within-the-text: Expecting Unity in the Canonical Text

In this section of our study I will seek to illustrate Seitz' canonical approach, particularly

regarding Isaiah's unity, through a selective display of his exegetical work on the book. Seitz' canonical

approach focuses the search for the unity of Isaiah in three related areas: the structure and form of Isaiah,

the content of Isaiah, and Isaiah's canonical context. While considering these areas, Seitz deals with

particular questions and challenges that form the horizon for comprehension of Isaiah's unity in

contemporary scholarship.

1. Unity of Isaiah - Structure and Form

The contemporary context of Isaiah studies and the understanding of the book’s structure have

been shaped by a shift from single authorship to complex accounts of multiple authorship and historical

82 Seitz, "Isaiah And The Search For A New Paradigm," in Word Without End, 127. Emphasis original.
44

development. Traditionally considered to be a prophetic book bearing the words of the prophet Isaiah of

Jerusalem from the eighth century, the unity of the book was thought to stem from the perspective of the

prophet extending across it. But as biblical scholars brought historical-critical tools to bear on the text of

Isaiah, it became clear that there was more than one author behind the final form of the text. Some of the

material, especially chapters 40-55, appeared to be situated historically during the Babylonian exile. The

final section, chapters 56-66, seemed to be even later, likely written in a post-exilic context.

Rather than having one author, it now seemed that the book of Isaiah had at least three. Or what

if, as Bernhard Duhm argued at the beginning of the 20th century, these units of the book were actually

three separate books, that happened to be put together under the name Isaiah?83 The final form of Isaiah

seemed to be a mere collection of texts that didn't originally belong together. The long standing practice

of referring to First Isaiah (chs. 1-39), Second Isaiah (chs. 40-55), and Third Isaiah (chs. 56-66) stems

from Duhm's argument, even though current analysis of Isaiah has gone well beyond him and developed

an even more complex account of Isaiah's authorship, editing and development as a text or collection

thereof.

Instead of challenging the argument that the book Isaiah has a complex historical backdrop, Seitz

challenges two related assumptions. 1) That this backdrop determines the literary and theological

structure of the text, and 2) that the literary and theological structure of the text is shaped by the person

Isaiah's writing of his own prophetic word, joined by subsequent prophetic voices.

Unlike other Old Testament prophetic books, Seitz notes that the book of Isaiah does not begin

with a call narrative of the prophet. What is often referred to as Isaiah's call narrative does not appear

until chapter 6. In his commentary on Isaiah 1-39 Seitz writes:


Isaiah is less a prophet who presents himself to us than he is a prophet who
has been presented by others to us. Prophetic agency in delivering the word
of God is less central than the word of God itself and that word's own
presentation of the prophet Isaiah. Here we may also find an explanation of

83 As Seitz notes, B. Duhm argued that Isaiah was originally three distinct texts that were brought together much later than their
original completion. "Bernhard Duhm, for example, was prepared to argue that at one time chs. 40-55 never even circulated in
connection with Isaiah at all and that when they were first combined with an extent prophetic collection, Jeremiah and not Isaiah
was chosen. Such was the fully artificial and external nature of the connection of this material to Isaiah, when that eventually
occurred. The first part of his theory- that chs. 40-55 (and 56-66) once had no connection at all to Isaiah- has dominated the
discussion until the recent period, and it remains a very popular conception." Seitz, "How is the Prophet Isaiah Present in the
Latter Half of the Book?: The Logic of Isaiah 40-66 Within the Book of Isaiah," Word Without End, 174.
45

why the book does not open with a call narrative of the prophet.84

Rather than making the historical person of Isaiah and his prophetic call fundamental to the structure and

form of the book, Seitz reverses the order and suggests that it is the book of Isaiah that presents Isaiah the

prophet as the bearer of God's word. Given the lack of priority for Isaiah's call narrative, which doesn’t

form the initial outlook of the book, Seitz argues this indicates the priority of the final form of the book

over the historical person of Isaiah. The perspective or coherence that governs the final form of the text

will have to come from something other than the historical person of Isaiah.

On this basis, we can see that Duhm's division of Isaiah into First, Second and Third Isaiah rests

on the assumption that each section is to be understood as the record of a distinct prophetic voice. The tri-

part division of Isaiah was derived from the traditional view that the book of Isaiah was presented as the

writings of Isaiah the prophet. This view then expands and multiplies to three prophetic voices

corresponding to each section.


In short, the genre designation "call narrative" is all but required by the theory
of a new prophetic voice, Second Isaiah. It has seemed reasonable to assume that
as one left sections of the book depicting Isaiah of Jerusalem (36-39), one would
encounter at the opening of chaps. 40-55 a call narrative introducing the new
prophet. This is the theory defended by a majority of modern scholars, especially
in Anglo-Saxon circles.85

Despite the fact that the complexity of the historical backdrop and literary dimensions of the book of

Isaiah are now considered more complex than Duhm’s model suggests, Seitz notes the tri-part division of

Isaiah persists as a common account of the book's basic structure.

Seitz does not think the division between First and Second Isaiah is entirely without merit though,

as there is a clear literary distinction in the text between chapter 39 and chapter 40. Chapter’s 40ff do

signal a new movement in the text, where the voice of Isaiah (the 8th century prophet) is no longer present

in the rest of the book. In “The Divine Council: Temporal Transition and New Prophecy in the book of

Isaiah”, Seitz seeks to articulate what is happening in Isaiah 40:1-8, and how this passage shapes the rest

of the book. Seitz does not read this passage as a ‘call narrative’ for Second Isaiah as a new prophet, as if

84 Seitz, Isaiah 1-39 (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1993), 22.


85 Seitz, "Divine Council: Temporal Transition and New Prophecy In The Book of Isaiah" Journal of Biblical Literature 109
n.2: 231.
46

it were mirroring the call of First Isaiah in chapter 6. Instead, Seitz reads this text as a commissioning

from Yahweh’s divine council, where God speaks directly without prophetic agency. Instead of a new

prophetic voice, Isaiah 40:1-8 initiates a different perspective carrying through the rest of the text.

This new perspective in Isaiah 40-66 is not entirely new though. Seitz recognizes a shift in his

own understanding of the text from when he wrote “Divine Council” to his more recent essay, “How is

the Prophet Isaiah Present in the Latter Half of the Book? The Logic of Chapters 40-66 within the Book

of Isaiah.” Seitz continues to uphold the view that the voice of Isaiah the prophet appears as such only up

to chapter 39. But instead of chapters 40ff ushering in 'new' prophecy, Seitz argues that the second half of

the book seeks to bring the former word of the prophet Isaiah forward to be heard again.
What is central to the opening unit of Isaiah 40-66 [40:1-8] - the appeal to God's
word once spoken- is maintained in the same manner in the chapters that follow,
especially 40-48. That constitutes their governing force and gives explanation
for why no new prophet, or Isaiah, is depicted as speaking. Isaiah the prophet
does speak, of course, but not as a 'persona.' He speaks through the word he
spoke in a former time, a word that God reminds Israel it did not heed.86

Seitz' exploration into the structure of Isaiah seeks to move beyond historical contextualization of textual

units within Isaiah, and instead looks for the internal coherence and structure that makes it a unified text

in its final form. As we have seen, Seitz’ proposal is to see the second half of the book not as new

prophecy to be contrasted or differentiated from the former things of the prophet Isaiah, but rather as an

attempt to rehear Isaiah's prophecy anew.

Is this argument for the structure of Isaiah consistent with Seitz' canonical approach? I think that

it is, for a number of reasons. First, it doesn't depend on historical reconstruction of the world behind-the-

text. Seitz seeks to pay attention to the plain sense of the text's final form, which in this case, involves

Isaiah's prophetic agency as it is presented in the book. Instead of articulating a theory regarding how

Isaiah's prophecy was initiated in history and resulted in a textual record, Seitz seeks to pay attention to

how the text presents its material, and how it presents Isaiah as a prophet.

Second, Seitz demonstrates how the unity of a text with regard to its structure doesn't depend on

86 Seitz, "How is the Prophet Isaiah Present in the Latter Half of the Book? The Logic of Chapters 40-66 within the Book of
Isaiah” in Word Without End, 183.
47

any particular model of inspiration or historical coherence in the world behind-the-text. Instead, Seitz

begins from the view that Isaiah is part of the Old Testament and is scripture. This leads to considering

the final form of the text with the expectation of what I have labeled revelatory coherence. From this

perspective Seitz then engages the text with the expectation of unity, which needs to be demonstrated in

the plain sense of the text's final form.

This offers a way to move beyond the strict historical division of Isaiah's final form. Rather than

being neatly divided into historically contextualized units that distinguish sections of Isaiah from the rest

of the text, Seitz offers a way to see how the second half of the text depends on and builds upon the first

half. Thus we can ask if this holds true for the content of Isaiah.

2. Unity of Isaiah - Content

Some of Isaiah's content appears to lend itself to distinction and diversity on particular themes.

Seitz is particularly interested in Isaiah’s messianic or royal promises. The expectations and promises of

the Davidic kingdom are present in Isaiah 1-39, but disappear in chapters 40-66. Instead of speaking of a

messiah as God's divine agent, passages in the later half have God acting directly as king without the

messianic figure of chapters 1-39. If the structure and form of the book that Seitz argues for above is

correct, why aren't the royal promises carried throughout Isaiah? Perhaps Second and Third Isaiah modify

or drop the messianic expectations of First Isaiah. Does this not lead to a lack of unity in the final form of

the text?

Seitz notes that even among interpreters that are interested in the unity of Isaiah, this distinction

between First Isaiah and latter material seems unavoidable.87 Seitz also observes that without attention to

the final form of the text and its structure, there is a strong tendency towards linking sections of material

87 "We are now working in a climate in which many are interested in reading Isaiah as a unity. Yet no unitary reading I am
aware of would merge sections of the book in such a way as to imitate the perspective of Qumran, where sharp distinctions
within the book fall to the side concerning God's appointed messiah. Instead, even interpreters interested in the unity of Isaiah
maintain a fundamental distinction between the lively hopes of First Isaiah chapters and the modification of these in the second
main section (40-66)." Seitz, "Royal Promises in the Canonical Books of Isaiah and the Psalms,” in Word Without End, 152.
48

developmentally, as though Second and Third Isaiah were responding to or improving on First Isaiah.88

Seeing this difference in content as a matter of divergence assumes the book is structured to distinguish

between different sections of the material. As mentioned above, Seitz’ understanding of the structure of

Isaiah points to the way the second half of the book builds upon and assumes the first half.
But what if chapters 40-66, whatever their point of origin in time and space,
were intended to be far more synthetically read - if not as Isaiah's own
contribution, then as an organic extension of that original contribution,
neither modifying or recalibrating, but filling out an original word with a fuller
divine word, so that the word first sent forth would accomplish what God had
intended and not return to him empty (so 55:11)?89

This offers a different way to understand the relationship between the royal promises of Isa. 1-39 and

God's kingship in Isa. 40-66. Seitz' view opens the possibility that while different sections of the text are

from different historical contexts, it doesn't follow that their proper interpretation happens in isolation

from one another, as though later chapters of Isaiah didn't originate and develop in relationship to Isaiah

1-39.

Here we can see the expectation of unity that Seitz sets before us with his canonical approach. To

read a text as scripture carries the expectation of finding coherence in the text as a whole. This coherence

and unity doesn't require a denial of the world behind-the-text and its complexity, nor does it require a

denial of literary complexity. Rather, Seitz seeks to pay attention to the plain sense of the text in its final

form.
To shift the focus back to the book itself is not to ignore this significant,
substituted theory of inspired individuals, but it is to shift attention to the
possibility that the final shaping has itself crafted these various voices into
an organic whole, capable of speaking with one voice. But the chief point
to be made here is that 'capacity to speak with one voice' is not the same
thing as either an obliteration of historical depth, nor the production of a
static text with only one possible meaning.90

In Isaiah's case, we have seen how this meant paying attention to the structure and form of the text as

something other than a record of oral prophetic speech in one historical context. It has also meant that

variations in content from different sections of the book don't necessarily imply a rejection, modification

88 Seitz, Ibid. 161.


89 Ibid.
90 Seitz, "Isaiah in Parish Bible Study: The Question of the Place of the Reader in Biblical Texts," in Word Without End, 198.
49

or divergence from earlier material. However, we are still left with the question of how the royal promises

of Isaiah 1-39 are related to God's kingship in Isaiah 40-66.

3. Unity of Isaiah - Canonical Context

Here we come to the third dimension of the canonical approach to unity. Just as textual units of

Isaiah, though historically distinct, ultimately need to be interpreted together as part of Isaiah's final form,

Seitz also argues that the canonical approach requires biblical texts to be read and understood in the

context of the rest of the Old Testament canon.


Isaiah does not exist in isolation as an ancient unitary witness, brilliantly
constructed and hermetically sealed. Rather Isaiah belongs within the specific
hopes of a specific people with a specific interpreting literature. All of
these form what could be called a "canonical context."91

This plays out in Seitz’ work in two ways. First, an Old Testament text cannot be interpreted without

considering its relation to other texts in the canon of which it is a part. Second, the canonical approach

expects a particular readership for the Old Testament, since revelation is addressed to a particular

audience. I will develop each of these in more detail.

a) Isaiah & Other Canonical Texts: The Psalms. One example of this is found in Seitz' proposal

for interpreting the book of Isaiah in light of the Psalter. To answer the question of Isaiah's unity with

regard to messianic promises, Seitz turns to the Psalms and asks, "Has the Psalter as a whole reflected on

the question of messianic future in a way that might help us understand the same question in the book of

Isaiah?"92 God's promises to David and Israel regarding the future of the Davidic kingship figure

prominently in the Psalms. Key to his argument is that Seitz does not compare parts of Isaiah with this or

that Psalm, but instead he asks if the canonical shape of the Psalter sheds light on this question as it plays

out in the shape of Isaiah. How will this be helpful? Is this not attempting to answer one question by

asking another that may obscure rather than illuminate the issue? Seitz appears to be aware of this

91 Seitz, "Isaiah And The Search For A New Paradigm," in Word Without End, 114.
92 Seitz, “Royal Promises in the Canonical Books of Isaiah and the Psalms,” in Word Without End, 158.
50

concern, though it is not entirely clear how cautiously he proceeds.93

Seitz views the structure of the Psalter as less complex and more linear than Isaiah. He tracks a

dramatic movement across each of the five books of the Psalter with respect to David's kingship. Book 1

has David in most of the Psalms superscriptions. Book 2 a little less so, but still prominent and

highlighted by events of David's life. Book 2 closes with the annotation that the prayers of David have

ended (Psalm 72:20), and Seitz argues that Book 3 shows this to be true. Book 3 has only Psalm 86

ascribed to David, where he pleas for deliverance, and questions God's faithfulness to him. But it is not

that Book 3 over all doesn't see God's promises to David as important. The closing Psalm (89) stresses the

importance of God's promises to David and laments God's apparent breaking of the Davidic covenant.

Book 4 stands in stark contrast to the preceding material. Seitz notes that following a prayer of

Moses at the opening of Book 4, where no reference is made to David as God's anointed, God's kingship

in proclaimed throughout the following Psalms.94 Between Book 3 and the opening psalms of Book 4 a

significant transition takes place, from focus on David's kingship to God's kingship. But Seitz argues that

Book 3 does not end with a move away from or denial of David's kingship, but a strong call for God to

honor it.
Book 3 has not forgotten God's promises to the Davidic house, and as the
close of the book indicates, these promises are vital to the purposes of God
for his people Israel at large, if not also God's purposes with all peoples and
nations and the created realm itself.95

Rather than downplaying or moving away from David's kingship, Psalm 89 brings Book 3 to a close with

concern for a broken monarchy that needs to be restored.

The transition to Book 4 then, as Seitz sees it, is not a denial of David's kingship, but a response

to the concerns of Book 3. The initial response comes in the form of God reasserting his own kingship

over all creation and other gods. But then Seitz says, "a surprising development takes place, the

93 "What does it mean to talk about the Psalter as a whole, and why would the shape of the Psalter be any more perspicuous than
the shape of Isaiah, such that understanding one might be of help in understanding the other? Are we not just doubling up on
problems?" Seitz, "Royal Promises," in Word Without End, 158.
94 "Instead, God himself is the source of Israel's strength. Not his faithfulness with David, so 89:49, but his faithfulness as such,
is shield and buckler before the assaults of the enemy...In the psalms that follow in Book 4, what is most striking is the frequency
of reference to God's own kingship instead of the kingship of David as before" Seitz, Ibid. 162-163.
95 Ibid. 160.
51

significance of which is difficult to judge."96 Later in Book 4 David reappears, to sing of God's loyalty

and justice. It seems that the proclamation of God's kingship didn't come as a denial of David's kingship,

but as a particular response to the questions of Psalm 89. Book 5 closes the Psalter, with psalms of David

throughout, but Seitz chooses not to infer anything from this.

What Seitz argues is that a key transition takes place between Book 3 and 4 in the Psalter much

like the transition between chapters 39 and 40 of Isaiah. Both have a significant move from earthly to

divine kingship.
What is similar, then, is not a lamenting of the death of kingship, but an
apparent need in both Book 4 of the Psalter and Isaiah 40-49, for God to
reassert his own kingship - over all gods, over creation, and especially over
his own people Israel.97

The key is that David reappears later in the Psalms, implying that the assertion of God's kingship was not

a denial of David's kingship.

Seitz recognizes at this point that the analogy with the Psalter is slightly broken. Royal promises

do not return later in Isaiah, but Seitz argues he isn't implying Isaiah be read with the same structure as

the Psalter. My sense is that Seitz' reading is meant to demonstrate that David's kingship and God's

kingship are not mutually exclusive in the Psalms, and that the treatment of these themes throughout the

Psalter covers a significant dimension of the shape of the Psalter as a whole. While Seitz doesn't claim to

have exhausted the interpretive possibilities that shape the entire Psalter, he is at least claiming that it is

possible to discern one level of intentionality in the final shape of the book to do with royal promises. He

is also claiming that it is possible to discern a level of intentionality across the final shape of the canonical

book of Isaiah, which is analogous to the Psalms.

Seitz recognizes how David and his kingship are handled somewhat differently in Isaiah. He

argues that the prophecy in Isaiah 11, that a royal shoot of Jesse will usher in a reign of peace, must be

heard across Isaiah as a whole because the development of the second half of the book isn't meant to

diverge from the first half. "Does silence regarding this rule in chapters 40-66 mean that such a prophecy

is a thing of the past, or at that point are we struggling to understand what it means to read Isaiah as a

96 Seitz, Ibid. 164.


97 Ibid.
52

unity, in both literary and theological terms?98

The answer does not seem clear to Seitz, as he doesn't offer strong conclusions on how the

canonical context of Isaiah shapes our understanding of Isaiah's unity regarding royal promises. "We

cannot know for sure why royal promises have not been given the same prominence in chapters 40-66

that they have in chapters 1-39."99 His argument is helpful though, in that it opens up further possibilities

for interpreting the final form of the text that don't assume divergence or contrast is necessary to

understanding the content of Isaiah.

This example illustrates Seitz’ argument that canonical context serves the expectation of unity by

helping illuminate the final form of particular books like Isaiah. He implies this should be true for the rest

of the Old Testament canon as well. However, it is not clear that the canon always functions in this way.

In some cases it seems the canonical context functions as a critique of other parts of the canon. I will offer

an illustration of this from the work of Richard Middleton.

In The Liberating Image, J. Richard Middleton explores the imago dei in Genesis 1. Part of his

work addresses the canonical context of Genesis 1, where he disagrees with Gerhard von Rad's comment,

that "the canonical placement of Genesis 1 is mere 'circumstance' with no theological significance..."100

As we've seen Seitz would agree with Middleton's view that the canonical placement of biblical texts like

Genesis 1 do have theological significance.

However, Middleton argues that Genesis 1's theological significance has in part to do with its

ability to critique other parts of the canon. Middleton is concerned with creation myths that legitimate

violence, particularly creation-by-combat myths where the gods or God create out of battle with chaos.

Middleton discusses some non-biblical creation myths, but also looks at Old Testament texts that suggest

similar creation-by-combat motifs. In Psalm 89, for example, this motif functions to legitimate the

Davidic monarchy, much like the legitimating of kings in other non-biblical myths.

Middleton argues that Genesis 1 displays an account of creation that critiques not only non-

98 Ibid. 165.
99 Ibid.
100 Middleton, J. Richard. The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Brazos Press, 2005)
268-69.
53

biblical myths of creation-by-combat, but also Old Testament canonical texts like Psalm 89 as well.101 In

Genesis 1 God's creative generosity stands in stark contrast to creation by violence that legitimates

political authority. Middleton suggests reading biblical texts that seem to legitimate violence in light of

the image of God in Genesis 1, where he argues humanity is called to image God's creative generosity.102

This poses two challenges to Seitz' understanding of 'canonical context.' First, Middleton

suggests that the canon may serve the function of critique within itself based on the significance discerned

in canonical arrangement, which casts doubt over Seitz’ view of the canon as a basis for the expectation

of textual unity. Second, Seitz' particular reading of Isaiah in light of the Psalter, if it is to be understood

in light of the broader canonical context of the Old Testament, must address the disparity between the

view of God and violence in Psalm 89 that legitimates the Davidic monarchy, and the critique of this that

Middleton argues stands against it in his reading of the image of God in Genesis 1. This critique does not

go entirely against Seitz' canonical approach, but it does suggest that further work must be done in

comprehending this dimension of Isaiah's unity and the concept of 'canonical context' in general.

b) Isaiah: A Text Shaped for Canonical Readers. The second aspect of canonical context in Seitz

work draws out the implications of Israel's Scripture as a canon of texts addressed to a particular people.

As discussed above in chapter one, Seitz’ most basic understanding of the Old Testament as scripture

involves its function as God's revelation to a particular people. The Old Testament is not just literature in

a vacuum, or universally accessible documents addressed generally to all. It is the scripture of Israel, for

God's elect people, and can only be understood as scripture from this standpoint in its final canonical

form. Not only does Seitz argue that this applies to the canon of scripture as a whole, but also that the

questions of readership and who is being addressed by the text are at play in the interpretation of

individual books such as Isaiah.

However, Seitz does not ask the question of readers and address from the standpoint of historical-

101 See Middleton, 'Created in the Image of a Violent God?' in The Liberating Image, 235-269, especially 244-269.
102 "Rather, Genesis 1 artfully shatters both ancient and contemporary rhetorical expectations and, instead, depicts God as a
generous creator, sharing power with a variety of creatures (especially humanity), inviting them (and trusting them - at some risk)
to participate in the creative (and historical) process." Middleton, Liberating Image, 296-97.
54

critical study. His concern is not to ask who the original reader or hearer of the text is on historical

grounds, or the original reader or hearer of a historically isolated unit of text. Rather, Seitz argues that a

text's final form was intentionally shaped to address readers, and that this intentionality is evident in the

plain sense of the text itself.103 Thus it is possible to discern how the final form of canonical books is

shaped to address readers in a particular way.


A canonical approach to reading scripture begins with the recognition that
biblical books have diverse origins and a complex history of development before
their final shape is achieved. At the same time, and in distinction to most forms
of redaction criticism, to speak of 'canonical shape' is to imply a degree
of intentionality stretching over an entire biblical book in its final literary
scope.104

Instead of focusing on the authorial intention of the author(s), which draws us into historical investigation

in the world behind-the-text, Seitz suggests that interpreting a text as a unity will involve asking questions

of Isaiah such as, "how does the book function as a whole, directed toward potential readers?"105

Seitz' work on Isaiah draws out the implications of the canonical approach for reader-shaped texts

in the Old Testament.


The concern is to comprehend the final shape of the book of Isaiah, without
ignoring the fact of its complex prehistory, with the hope that by understanding
this shaping, clues might be given as to how readers are to appropriate the message
of the book.106

The concern for the unity of the text lies close at hand, since the readers' ability to appropriate the

message of the book involves engaging the text as a whole. Given that Isaiah is part of Israel's scripture,

Seitz argues that the text was shaped to be read by Israel, those who are among God's people.
The remaining question, in my view, is just what sort of reader is ideally
being addressed? My very broad answer will be: a specific reader within
the religious life and hope of Israel, addressed by Isaiah and other explicitly
ordered religious literature.107

The canonical context of Isaiah requires it to be read alongside the rest of Israel's scripture, and

103 "First, original authorial intention, difficult to reconstruct on an older historical-critical model, is but one level of
intentionality and it may well have been recast and reshaped in the final organization of a biblical book. Therefore one needs to
develop other sorts of instincts when reading biblical texts than ones chiefly concerned with what was early or original... I have
shifted the focus from author as subject to reader as intended object of address. I have not rejected intentionality, but asked about
it from the standpoint of readers." Seitz, "Isaiah in Parish Bible Study," Word Without End, 203.
104 Seitz, Word Without End, ix.
105 Seitz, "Isaiah In Parish Bible Study," in Word Without End, 198-199.
106 Seitz, Ibid. 199.
107 Seitz, "Isaiah And The Search For A New Paradigm," in, Word Without End, 114.
55

determines the broad sense of the readers for whom the text's final form was shaped.

In looking at the structure of Isaiah, it is possible to ask if the book presents its material in such a

way as to anticipate its readers. As we saw above, the book does not present itself as the written record of

prophetic speech by a historical prophet named Isaiah. The prophet Isaiah and his calling are not

presented until chapter 6. However, by exploring the opening chapter of the book of Isaiah, Seitz tries to

show how the book anticipates it readers.

Instead of filling the role of a call narrative, Seitz argues the opening chapter of Isaiah serves a

different role. "Where frequently in the opening chapters of prophetic books attention is paid to the

prophets reception of the word of God, here [in Isaiah 1] a divine word, with heaven and earth as

witnesses, is addressed directly to sinful Israel."108 Seitz notes that some scholars have suggested reading

this introductory chapter as an overture or summary of what is to come in the rest of the book. But this is

problematic because chapter 1 does a poor job of summarizing much of the book's later content. Instead

of functioning as a summary or overture, Seitz suggests that the first chapter offers a lens through which

to interpret Isaiah's subsequent material. "Chapter 1, then, is not an overview, but the lens through which

to read what follows, with special attention to the sinful people who have not seen in Zion's sparing the

hand of God and the cause of repentance."109 Seitz notes it as significant that "in chapter 1, instead of a

call narrative we have an exhortation to a sinful people, already chastised and curiously unwilling to heed

God's call to cleansing and obedience."110 Instead of offering the reader prophetic credentials, Isaiah

begins by announcing God's plans for Israel and the nations and calling the reader to consider their stance

in the midst of this drama. Seitz notes how the images of destruction and judgment in vv.28-31 are

directed towards the reader as an individual rather than nations or groups.111

These images of judgment and God's plan to redeem Zion and those who are faithful carry

through to the end of Isaiah, but not with a sense of completion in a sealed universe or historical past.

108 Seitz, "Isaiah In Parish Bible Study," Ibid. 206.


109 Ibid.
110 Ibid. 205.
111 "This final scene of destruction, depicted in vv.28-31, is not aimed at nations or the collective Israel: it involves individuals
and the decisions they chose to make as individuals.... Attention to the reader has not been secondarily spliced into a past
historical record...it belongs to the warp and woof of Isaiah in its emerging and final presentation." Seitz, Ibid. 209.
56

"What chapter 1 strains to see, the final chapters simply reiterate, with the same mixed tone of caution

and exhortation, promise and expectation."112 Could these elements of the text's final form be clues for

the reader to highlight the unity of Isaiah as a whole, as well as to signal the reader's entry point into the

text? By reading the final form of the text with attention to how it is intentionally shaped for its readers,

Seitz articulates a way to grasp the unity of the text over all.

Seitz' broader argument is that Isaiah's message has to do with God addressing Israel in the

context of God's plans for all nations.


Central to understanding Isaiah is God's dealing with Israel within the destinies
of the nations at large. This is Isaiah's unique and sustained contribution within
the major prophets...It is that the one God of Israel announces to his people
through the vision of Isaiah that he means to have fellowship with all flesh, if
even against their will or as a consequence of their submission and sacrificial
offering within and on behalf of Israel and Zion.113

In his essay Isaiah in Parish Bible Study, Seitz summarizes his earlier extensive work on Isaiah and

focuses on how the plain sense of the text is constructed to address readers with this message in the text's

final form.114 The sense of Isaiah's message quoted above involves a complex pattern of historical

reference and temporal transition throughout the work that constructs its own symbolic world, without

smoothing over the history to which it refers.115 By doing so, Seitz argues that Isaiah, "places the reader

in a world where judgment has occurred, but where the final climax of God's plans lies on the horizon, for

both the reader as well as reconstructed speakers and audience in the book itself."116

Instead of interpreting the images of Isaiah 1 in a historical context, Seitz points to the possibility

that these opening words may have been formed intentionally to function with the readers of Isaiah's final

form in mind. And given the complex nature of Isaiah, it is helpful to consider if the text opens by

112 Ibid.
113 Seitz, "Isaiah And Parish Bible Study," in Word Without End, 209.
114 For Seitz' earlier work see Seitz, Zion’s final destiny: the development of the Book of Isaiah: a reassessment of Isaiah 36-39
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, c1991.) & Seitz, Isaiah 1-39. (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1993.)
115 "In order to make sense of the book of Isaiah's final form, we are inevitably drawn into a world of real historical reference,
where distinctions between the Assyrians and Babylonians, between Cyrus and Sennacherib, between an intact temple and one
destroyed, are cleanly registered. But then the book does a surprising thing. Having made such distinctions, it begins to construct
its own analogies and linkages, long before we get there as readers of this ancient witness, concerned with recasting the text
chronologically, and then moving from ancient historical context to modern twentieth-century application. " Seitz, "Isaiah In
Parish Bible Study," in Word Without End, 198.
116 Seitz, Ibid. 204.
57

intentionally inviting the reader to consider the broad scope of Isaiah's message and to offer the reader a

stance from which to read the subsequent text from a unified perspective.

While I think Seitz work is helpful in this way, there are still unanswered questions with Seitz’

canonical approach. Given the strong focus on the canon as determinative for interpreting the text, Seitz

does little to address the question, "which canon"? Is the "Old Testament" equal to the "Tanak,"? These

are different canons, with different book orderings. Some biblical scholars prefer the Masoretic

manuscripts, while others the Septuagint. Do the differences matter? And if so, which one is

fundamental? For this issue of 'canonical indeterminacy' we must move to the world in-front-of-the-text.

C. In-front-of-the-text: Unity and Readership

As I have pointed out above, Seitz argues that the world within-the-text is not understood by

going behind-the-text historically. Instead, by looking intently at the world within-the-text in its present

form we should expect to find unity and coherence. But the text also reaches out from the world within-

the-text to the world in-front-of-the-text and shapes it, making expectations of its readers. Our final

example of canonical reading above involved demonstrating how the text of Isaiah was intentionally

shaped to address readers in a specific way. But Seitz is aware that this is not a one way street. What

about the claims that readers make on the text? Does the world in-front-of-the-text have any bearing on

the world within-the-text? I will now turn to consider this third dimension of our discussion of canon and

unity.

Consistently, readers have differed over the meaning of texts. The Old Testament is no exception.

Yet Seitz' canonical approach to the Old Testament places high expectations of revelatory, authoritative

and interpretive fruitfulness on the text. God's revelation in Israel's Scripture is available given the

particular constraints and condition's we have discussed so far. How then does the canonical approach

account for the variance of readers' interpretations? Does the lack of consensus over the meaning of texts

call into question the unity of the Old Testament canon?

I want to suggest that Seitz' canonical approach accounts for interpretive variability in a number
58

of ways. While it is not always clear that he articulates this well, I will suggest the primary account of

textual unity and reading involves a theological account of the canon & the reading community. While

Seitz makes suggestions that point in this direction, further work must be done to develop this approach.

Readers, including their presuppositions, social locations and communities, populate the world in-

front-of-the-text. All these factors are at play in how a reader engages a text and combine in complex

ways to shape the interpretive process. These factors have come into greater prominence in contemporary

studies, as the power of historical-critical method to determine the meaning of a text objectively has been

exposed to serious doubt by the subjective variance of biblical interpreters.117 For some this has cast

doubt on the possibility of interpretation in general, where as others have embraced the world in-front-of-

the-text and its role in interpretation, along with the result of a diversity of readings.

Seitz shows an awareness of the world in-front-of-the-text and how it plays a significant role in

biblical interpretation, but he is generally doubtful about the success of reader-focused interpretation, or

interpretive solutions from 'in-front-of-the-text'.118 This is generally in line with his focus on the world

within-the-text, the text’s plain sense as it appears in its final canonical form. At the same time, Seitz

seems to recognize that his methodology will not mechanically produce interpretive consensus.
But the chief point to be made here is that 'capacity to speak with one
voice' is not the same thing as either an obliteration of historical depth,
nor the production of a static text with only one possible meaning.119

The unity of Israel's Scripture, which Seitz argues we should expect when we approach the Old

Testament, does not equal a single determinative meaning of the text. Perhaps it could be said of Seitz

that interpretive consensus can be reached in a negative sense, rather than a positive one. Biblical

interpreters should be able to agree on what the text does not mean, while still leaving room for more than

one possible reading or meaning. This seems to be consistent with Seitz' conviction that the text is God's

117 "Exhaustion or restlessness with forms of historicist reading have given rise to a concern with the social location of the
modern reader or meaning as tied to the reading process itself." Seitz, "Introduction,” in Figured Out, 8.
118 Seitz' low estimation of in-front-of-the-text interpretation is evident here. "This locus is making a comeback in recent days.
A prime example is Stephen Fowl's Engaging Scripture. Hauerwas, Yoder, and others have flirted with this "in-front-of-the-text"
solution to the problem of scripture at our end-of-the-millennium period....One searches in vain in Stephen Fowl's recent work for
any comprehensive, public, agreed-upon statement of what actually counts for virtue, such that we could see it and believe it was
under God's providential care as it went about the business of 'engaging scripture.'" Seitz, Figured Out, 28-29.
119 Seitz, "Isaiah In Parish Bible Study," in Word Without End, 198.
59

Word, and that it may mean more than it has previously, but not less.120 To some degree, this accounts

for the interpretive differences that readers can have, while maintaining the text of the Old Testament as a

unity.

I want to suggest that Seitz’ canonical approach can account for some further levels of

interpretive indeterminacy, but that it does not offer general guidance to navigating the world in-front-of-

the-text. Rather, Seitz' canonical approach points to how a canon of texts is not a neutral set of free-

standing documents, but often belongs to or resides in a particular community. In the case of the Old

Testament, various communities lay claim on the text and its various canonical arrangements.

Seitz does not make much of the difference between the Hebrew Masoretic and the Greek

Septuagint versions of Israel's scripture. Yet, they are not only in different languages, with different

versions of various passages, but the texts are also ordered differently in each canon. While some readers

will include both versions in their interpretation of the Old Testament, the canonical approach cannot

offer any guidance to discerning between them when they conflict. Jewish and Christian communities,

two of the primary communities engaged in reading Israel's scripture, also interpret it in light of other,

distinct canons of literature. As Seitz notes along with Jon Levenson, neither Jews nor Christians read

Israel’s Scripture on its own, but in concert with the Talmud and the New Testament respectively.121

D. Conclusion

In this chapter I have explored Seitz' understanding of textual unity in light of his canonical

approach to revelation. Grasping the unity of the Old Testament does not begin with historical

120 "It is one thing to consider enlargement of promises toward a new end, and that even may be the force of Isa. 55:11. But to
say that the word of God will not return empty but accomplish its true purpose, 'the things for which I sent it,' could not mean in
the case of royal promises a transfer that left what was first uttered behind in its wake, empty of fulfillment, an overstatement in
need of correction." Seitz, “Royal Promises,” in Word Without End, 166.
121 "How is the Old Testament a book for and about those who stand outside a circle it assumes as operative by the very logic of
its own discourse?" (footnote 5: The Jewish scholar Jon Levenson has also remarked that 'the Hebrew Bible is largely foreign to
both traditions [Jews and Christians] and precedes them both" (The Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and Historical Criticism
[Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1993] 105). I am not suggesting that modern Judaism is equivalent to "Israel," though even
here a distinction between Christians and Jews in respect of access to the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible/Tanak is still relevant.
Seitz, "Conclusion," in Word Without End, 342.
60

reconstruction. The world behind-the-text, which Seitz admits is inhabited by a complex history of

authorship and textual development, does not control the final form of the text. Rather the revelatory

character of Israel's scripture lends the expectation of coherence across the final form of the text. In the

case of Isaiah Seitz demonstrated, independent of an account of the world behind-the-text, that the book's

unity is available when close attention is paid to its final form. This final form not only displays a literary

unity, but a theological unity in the canonical context of Israel's scripture. Further work must be done in

Seitz' canonical approach, however, to account for the canon's ability to function not only as a unifying

context, but also as a basis for critical engagement of other canonical texts.

At the same time, Seitz' approach acknowledges that the unity of the Old Testament and its

meaning does depend on the particular community in which it is read. In the case of the Christian

community, there is a distinct canon of literature that inhabits the world in front of Israel's scripture. Seitz

wants to claim that together with the New Testament, the Old Testament can be read as Christian

scripture. On what basis does he make this claim? The following chapter will continue to explore Seitz'

canonical approach to the Old Testament, in light of this particular community in front-of-the-text.
61

CHAPTER III - SCRIPTURE & COMMUNITY: THE OLD


TESTAMENT AS CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURE

In this final chapter, I will assess Seitz' understanding of the relationship between scripture and

community as part of his canonical approach. In particular, what does it mean for the Christian

community, the church, to claim the Old Testament as Christian scripture? Is this a claim imposed on the

text, entirely foreign to the Old Testament's plain sense? Or, does Seitz’ canonical approach offer

theological justification for naming Israel's scripture 'Old Testament', so that together with the New

Testament, it can be named Christian Scripture?

First we will look to the world behind-the-text and address Seitz' canonical approach in light of

his account of scripture and the early church. In the second section, we will look in more detail at the

world within-the-text, and the relationship between the Old & New Testament canons. Finally, in the third

section we will turn to the world in-front-of-the-text to ask what role the Christian community plays in

reading the Old Testament as Christian scripture.

I will continue to develop my overall thesis in this chapter by arguing that Seitz' understanding of

the Old Testament as Christian scripture is consistent with and built upon the canonical approach's

account of Israel's scripture. For Seitz, Christian scripture is composed of Israel's Scripture as Old

Testament, together with the New Testament, in light of the church's confession that Jesus Christ is Lord.

While Seitz' reflections on the world within-the-text of Christian scripture are immensely helpful

to the church's reading of the Old Testament, I will argue his account falls short of fully addressing the

church's role as readers in the world in-front-of-the-text.

A. Behind-the-text: Old Testament as Israel's Scripture for the Church

As the two previous chapters have made clear, Seitz' understanding of the Old Testament's claim

to be scripture is based on God's election of Israel and God’s self-disclosure to Israel as privileged

communication for a particular people. How does this fit with claiming this text as scripture for
62

Christians? Does Seitz' insistence on the text's necessary link with Israel not undermine his attempt to

uphold the Christian community's claim on the Old Testament?122

While historical factors are involved, Seitz does not rest his account on a history of the early

church to determine what Christian scripture is. Rather than going behind-the-text to sort out the

relationship between the Old Testament and the church, Seitz focuses on the relationship between the Old

Testament and the New Testament, as two canons that together define Christian scripture. In turn, Seitz

looks to the final form of Christian scripture to define the relationship between scripture and the Christian

community. At the same time, Seitz cannot entirely avoid the fact that the relationship between the Old

Testament and the church involves a historical dimension. To sort out these issues our study will begin

with Seitz' account of revelation in light of his view of the central claims of the church. This will lead us

into the New Testament, and into the use of the Old Testament in the early church, raising historical

issues and questions from the world-behind-the-text.

1. Revelation & the Form of Christian Scripture

The theological basis of Seitz’ canonical approach to the Old Testament is that God has revealed

himself to Israel, that God elected this particular people to receive his disclosure of himself. This lays the

foundation for the authority of Israel's scripture, and leads to Seitz’ claim that the text of the Old

Testament cannot be read as scripture apart from its final, canonical form.

Seitz' theological understanding of revelation makes a clear connection between Israel as God's

elect people, and the canon of literature in question. Whether or not this understanding of Israel's

Scripture would be acceptable to non-Christians, Jewish scholars, or Jews in general is neither Seitz goal

nor his primary concern. Nor does he claim to be reading the text as an objective observer, or with any

illusions about reading it from a Jewish perspective, ancient or contemporary. Rather, based on his

122 See the following question posed by Robert Jenson. “Indeed, the question is not whether the church has this canon but
whether this canon acknowledges the church: May Israel’s holy book be so read, without violence to its coherence and historical
actuality, as to accept Jesus’ Resurrection and the appearance of the church as its own denouement.” Jenson, Robert W. "The
Norms of Theological Judgment," in Systematic Theology: Volume 1 - The Triune God (New York: Oxford University Press,
1997), 30.
63

reading of the text of the Old Testament as a Christian, Seitz has articulated a theological basis for the

text's authority for Christians. He expects that his account should be and needs to be acceptable to other

Christians, but that non-Christian readers will have other, differing parameters for reading the text.123

There are several crucial steps that Seitz takes to argue this point:

a) Old Testament as Israel's Scripture. The first step of Seitz' argument in claiming the Old

Testament as Christian scripture involves recognizing its particularly as God's revelation to Israel. Seitz

argues as a Christian that the church must recognize, from their own standpoint and theological

justification, that the Old Testament is Israel's scripture and that this is the basis for its authority. Rather

than arguing that the Old Testament must be read as something other than Israel's scripture, this is in fact

Seitz' starting point. He follows Karl Barth to argue that the 'strange world within the Bible' is not to do

with its historical distance from us, but rather that God's revelation of himself was made in particular to

Israel.124
God's revelation to Israel is fully encountered when one respects the
particular canonical shape into which Israel has cast its testimony to God,
hence the priority given to final or fuller literary form. 125

Here Seitz consistently maintains that the Old Testament must be read as God's revelation to Israel.

Reading it as Christian scripture does not mean a departure from this view of the text, but rather a

recognition of it as such.

b) Old Testament & Hermeneutical Access. Seitz repeatedly notes Paul van Buren's image of

Christians reading the Old Testament as "reading someone else's mail."126 Do Christian readers have

123 An example of this comes as Seitz refers to the church's 'rule of faith' as a set of exegetical constraints. "The rule of faith sets
the parameters for the exegetical reflection, and in that rule the holiness of God is comprehended in reference to the holiness of
his Son, to choose one example. Let it be emphasized that these parameters are Christian ones, based upon the New Testament's
understanding of adoption. Jews have different parameters. The generally curious - anyone who can read and buy one of the
many new translations - will have other parameters; historical knowledge, morality, the enjoyment of a good story, and so forth."
Seitz," God As Holy, God as Other," in Word Without End, 22.
124 Seitz, "Isaiah In The New Testament, Lectionary, Pulpit," in Word Without End, 214.
125 Seitz, Ibid., 214.
126 Seitz makes numerous references to Paul van Buren and this view of the OT as 'someone else's mail' throughout the essays
of Word Without End, 4, 31, 62, 68, 73, 196, 214, 215, and 340. See Van Buren, Paul. “On Reading Someone Else’s Mail: The
Church and Israel’s Scriptures” in FS R. Redntorff. Die Hebräische Bibel und ihre zweifache Nachgeschichte. (Neukirchen-
64

legitimate access to this text addressed to Israel? Seitz agrees with van Buren at a basic level, but then

presses further to consider how Israel's scripture becomes accessible as Christian scripture for the church.

In Seitz view, the Christian community has access to the Old Testament as scripture through

Christ. Seitz argues throughout Word Without End along this line, that Christians are given access to the

Old Testament because of their inclusion in Christ.


The church gains beneficial access to the Old [testament] on account of Christ's
inclusion of the Gentiles in God's eternal plans with his people Israel. Christians are
given an invitation, then, to read the Hebrew Scriptures, someone else's mail, as their
own, in the form that they were received, an 'Old Testament' witness now related to
the New Testament. 127

Rather than making the Old Testament universally accessible, Seitz maintains the primary connection

between God and Israel as the basis of the Old Testament. Instead those outside are brought in:
And, of course, Christians are only issued library cards to read in the first place
by Jesus, else they would always remain outsiders to this privileged discourse
between God and his people. This too counts as a 'Christological reading' of the
Old Testament, though it does not entail tracking down types of Christ inside
every burning bush or rock in the wilderness.128

Seitz is keenly aware that he is bumping up against 'Christological readings' of the Old Testament, but he

does so from a different angle. Rather than justify the Old Testament by claiming that Christ is vocally or

referentially present in every passage, Seitz focuses on the form of the Old Testament as God's revelation

to Israel and how it is made accessible through Christ.

For the church then, the Old Testament is not separate from claims made about Jesus Christ, but

rather Christ is the point of access to the Old Testament. How does this work?

c) Atonement as access to God, with Israel. In Seitz view the Christian doctrine of atonement is

not only about humans being reconciled to God in Christ, but also about the nations being brought into

relationship with Israel.


In Christ, those 'without God in the world' (Eph 2:12) gain access to the life
of Israel and the record of God's revelation of himself to the world through them.
This too, constitutes a benefit of Christ's atonement. For if by that is meant the

Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1990), 595-606.


127 Seitz, "Isaiah In New Testament, Lectionary, Pulpit," in Word Without End, 214.
128 Seitz, "The Old Testament As Abiding Theological Witness: Inscripting A Theological Curriculum," in Word Without End,
8.
65

reconciling of strangers to God, it is Israel's scriptures that reveal who that God is,
now for us Gentiles in Christ and no longer far off or fundamentally estranged.129

God is not just reconciled to humanity in some universal sense; rather the atonement is about drawing

together those who are elected (Israel) and those who were adopted (from the nations) in Christ and

reconciling them together with God.130 One of the corollary benefits of this reconciliation and inclusion

is the nation's access to Israel's scripture.

Though Jesus is the defining center of Christianity, Seitz argues strongly that Jesus is not defined

unto himself, in isolation. Rather, Jesus' identity must be coordinated with the Old Testament, and the

God it reveals. He even goes so far as to describe this as 'the gospel.'


The larger point is that the Christian community is not related to a 'person-event
Jesus of Nazareth' apart from the claims of the triune God. This God is known in
Israel's scriptures and in the second witness, the New Testament, whose purpose is
to relate Jesus and his heavenly Father and the Holy Spirit as distinctively and as
intimately as possible. This constitutes the gospel at its most basic expression, and
it is this that the church lives by.131

Here we begin to see that Seitz is concerned not only with Christ's role in giving the church access to the

Old Testament, but also the importance of the Old Testament in knowing the identity of Jesus in the first

place. It would be impossible to appreciate Jesus and his identity apart from the Old Testament. This

raises the question, is Jesus more foundational or is the Old Testament?

2. Christian Scripture: Old Testament & New Testament

Given the thrust of Seitz' canonical approach, it should be no surprise that Seitz does not attempt

to uncover the foundations of this account historically, but rather seeks to address them based on his

assessment of the relationship between the Old & New Testament. Rather than going behind-the-text via

historical-critical method to reconstruct the social, cultural or political genesis of Christian scripture, Seitz

takes the final two-testament form of Christian scripture itself as constitutive of its essential character.

129 Seitz, "And Without God in the World: A Hermeneutic of Estrangement Overcome," in Word Without End, 42.
130" In these, general hermeneutical theory - even grounded theologically in the manner of Stuhlmacher - must encounter the
specific claims of election and estrangement, for Jew and Gentile respectively, and their reconfiguration in Christ." Seitz, Ibid.
42.
131Seitz, Ibid. 45.
66

Thus, the two-testament canon is itself the starting point for defining Christian scripture. Seitz defines the

relationship between Old & New Testaments in two primary ways:

a) Intertextuality. The first is intertextuality, meaning the textual connections between the plain

sense of each testament. Old Testament texts find internal references not only within the OT canon itself,

but in the New Testament as well.132 In reference to the strict division of Old & New Testament studies,

historically contextualized apart from one another, Seitz argues for their reconnection to appreciate, "the

way the New has heard the Old - its own MS-DOS - and the way the Old, in the light of the New, renders

God in Christ for those who were once without God in the world."133 Thus the intertextual connections

between texts from each canon give, for Seitz, some patterns to the relationship between each testament.

b) Canonical Function of the New Testament. The second dimension of the Old & New

Testament relationship that is important for Seitz is how the New Testament is defined canonically in

relation to the Old Testament. It is at this point that historical matters play a role. The New Testament

came into existence not in a vacuum, but dynamically in relation to Israel's pre-existing scripture.134 In

my view, Seitz defines the New Testament in relation to the Old in certain ways because the Old

Testament precedes it historically. Thus, Seitz argues for particular textual characteristics present in the

New Testament's plain sense that define its canonical form in relation to the Old Testament. This second

dimension of intertextuality can be further defined in terms of deference, and accordance.

1. First, the concept of deference. Seitz argues that the New Testament not only explicitly refers

to Old Testament texts, but that the New Testament also defers to the Old Testament's scriptural

authority. Here it is the absence of textual reference that Seitz points to as significant. Seitz argues that

132"A fresh intellectual horizon for Old Testament studies is the rediscovery of the complex network of intertextuality that binds
all texts together, not only in their canonical shape in the Old, but more especially as this intertextuality is taken up and filled to
fullest capacity in the New." Seitz, "The Old Testament as Abiding Theological Witness," in Word Without End, 12.
133Seitz, Ibid., 12.
134Seitz argues strongly that Israel's scripture had formed into a stable and finalized canon by the time the New Testament
writings began. See Seitz, "Two Testaments and the Failure of One-Tradition History," in Figured Out, 35-47.
67

some New Testament authors do not explicitly refer to theological concepts because it was assumed that

Israel's scripture would continue to witness to them. This will be explored further in section 3.2 as we

look to the world within-the-text.

2. Secondly, accordance. Seitz argues that the New Testament witnesses to Jesus Christ not on its

own, but in accordance with the Old Testament. As already noted above, Seitz claims the highest

authority possible for the Old Testament, that it is God's disclosure of himself in particular relation to an

elected people. At the same time, as a Christian he claims Jesus Christ as the Son of God, as one having

the most intimate relationship possible with the Father, The Holy one of Israel.135 Seitz argues that one

of the primary characteristics of the New Testament is to demonstrate this connection between Jesus and

the God of Israel.


The writings of the New Testament, from the beginning and as they began to
form an analogous collection, are about showing that Jesus is the Messiah of Israel
and the fulfillment of the one scriptures' hopes and originating rationale - not about
setting themselves up as a rival or overshadowing witness to the Old as scripture.136

Its purpose is to witness to Jesus Christ, not in isolation, but as the fulfillment of things hoped for in

Israel's scripture. This requires a dependence on Israel's scriptural authority, rather than a competition

with it.

In comparison to other genres of literature that accompany Israel's scripture in Judaism, Seitz

distinguishes the New Testament by its focus on Jesus' accordance with scripture.
The New Testament is not midrash on the Old, but a hard reading of a
closed literature based upon a conviction as to its point, its goal, its messiah,
and its word of address- not captive to historical description- in relation to the
Word made flesh. All this means a form of appropriation quite different from
midrash, halakah, aggada, even when points of similarity can be seen. That is
because for Christians the words of the Old Testament are connected to the
Word made flesh.137

Again, Seitz is helpful in pointing out that Jesus is not being offered as an alternative to Israel's scripture

135 "God is - in Christian reflection - One. Yet the biblical presentation and exegetical reality is that God is known through his
persons: Holy One of Israel, disclosed to adoptees in Christ, in and through the power of the Holy Spirit." Seitz, "God As Other,
God As Holy," in Word Without End, 26.
136 Seitz, "Old Testament Or Hebrew Bible? Some Theological Considerations," in Word Without End, 63.
137 Seitz, "The Old Testament As Abiding Theological Witness," in Word Without End, 5-6.
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but rather that Jesus is claimed to be God's "Word made flesh." Such a radical conviction inspired the

writers of the New Testament to demonstrate how the Word made flesh was coordinated with the God

revealed in Israel's scripture.

This points to how the New Testament is dependent on the Old Testament in a way that is not

often emphasized. Seitz argues that the New Testament cannot witness to Jesus' identity on its own, but

requires Israel's scripture to show that Jesus is in accordance with the God who was revealed there.
Rather than establishing a distinction between the risen Lord and the scriptures
of Israel, faith in Jesus and in the God of Israel would demand that they be
associated, and the New Testament is about demonstrating this association.138

Instead of the New Testament pointing to Jesus in isolation, as if Christ on his own reveals who God is,

Seitz argues that the New Testament depends upon the Old in such a way that it assumes the Old

Testament continues to function as scripture.139 This second dimension of the New Testament's canonical

function, accordance, will also be explored in further depth in section B of this chapter.

Intertextuality and the canonical function of the New Testament flesh out particular

characteristics of the relationship between the Old & New Testament. In addition, it is this relationship

between each testament that is foundational to Seitz canonical approach. By reading each testament in its

final form, Seitz argues the Old Testament is Christian scripture in co-ordination with the New

Testament. This gives us a sense of how the Old Testament fits into Seitz’ understanding of Scripture. But

there is still the question of how this scripture is understood in the Christian community, the church. What

implications does this account of scripture have for Seitz' understanding of the historical community

behind the New Testament, the early church?

3. Community Behind-the-text: the Early Church & Christian Scripture

The early Christian community, the church, gave birth to the documents we now call the New

Testament. Yet, as I made clear above, Seitz does not rest his account on a history of the early church to

138 Seitz, "And Without God in the World," in Word Without End, 44.
139 “… the New Testament witness itself makes no sense without attention to its literary dependence upon a prior witness it
assumes will continue to sound forth as Christian Scripture." Seitz, "Conclusion," in Figured Out, 193.
69

determine what Christian scripture is. Rather, the final form of the Old & New Testament together defines

Christian scripture. Surely, the dramatic birth and development of the Christian community shaped the

New Testament and the reading of Israel's scripture in significant and undeniable ways. What is Seitz’

understanding of the early church and how does it fit with his account of the Old Testament as Christian

scripture?

On a historical level, one could say that the early church was necessary for the New Testament to

come about. My sense is this argument would not be opposed by Seitz, as it is a strictly historical

statement. Yet, some scholars have extended this historical observation through to a theological

conclusion about the relation between scripture and community. In particular, some would argue that the

early Christian community is theologically prior to the New Testament. This argument has far-reaching

implications, one of which involves the Christian community's interpretive authority over the text of

scripture.

As this historical account continues to develop, historical observation also reveals that Jesus as a

historical figure preceded the early church, and thus Jesus should have theological priority over the

Christian community. This view has fueled attempts to search for the 'historical Jesus' independent from

the New Testament, as the historical progenitor of the Christian community. In the end, the history of the

early church is given interpretive authority over the New Testament, and the historical Jesus has

interpretive authority over the development of the early church, then being used to legitimize or question

the direction of that history.

Seitz argues that this account distorts the reality of the early church on two accounts. First, this

picture ignores the existence of Israel's scripture preceding the existence of the church. While it is

important for Seitz to establish this priority historically,140 even more important for Seitz is the

theological priority of Israel's scripture over the early church. Before the early church stood in relation to

the New Testament, the early church read and received Israel's scripture as their scripture.

This is integrally connected with the second problem in the historical account above. As we

140 Seitz, "Two Testaments and the Failure of One-Tradition History," in Figured Out, 35-48.
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discussed above in section A.1.c, Seitz is keenly aware that Jesus is not an independent reality, with an

isolated and self-referential identity in history. In this sense, it is a distortion to suggest that the early

church was primarily related to and fundamentally defined by Jesus as an isolated historical reality. Seitz

spells out an example of this historical account:


It has been argued that an important difference exists between the status and
function of scripture within Israel and Judaism, as against what evolved in the
church. This is due, it is claimed, to the 'person-event Jesus of Nazareth...the
new focus of divine-human identity which cannot be extended to any written
representation, either primary or secondary.'141

Seitz notes this view assumes there is a tension between revelation in the text of scripture, and revelation

in the person of Jesus. Did the early Christian community really arise through a shift away from scripture

toward Jesus?

The primary resources the church had for recognizing, acknowledging, and witnessing to Jesus

were drawn from the only scripture they had. The early church began as a movement within Judaism,

with Israel's scripture as the authoritative scriptural voice.142 Seitz suggests that the early church was

founded theologically, not historically, on Israel's scripture and access to it through Christ.
The more general view of the matter understands, as von Campenhausen
once put it, that the problem facing the early church was not what to do
with the Old Testament. Rather, in the face of a scriptural legacy everywhere
seen to be God's very word, what was one to do with Jesus?143

I think that Seitz' dependence on Von Campenhausen's account is somewhat simplistic, and yet it clarifies

the relative importance and authority of scripture and Jesus in the early community. I think it may be too

simplified and over-reaching to say that Israel's scripture is, "a scriptural legacy everywhere seen to be

God's very word," even if this refers to its status within Israel/Judaism itself.

At the same time, this account is helpful in clarifying that the early church is not defined by a

141 Seitz, "Two Testaments and the Failure of One-Tradition History," in Figured Out, 43.
142 Seitz' account needs to be developed at this point because it isn't clear what implications flow from the fact that Jewish
Christians received Israel's scripture by election, and Gentile Christians received it by adoption.
143 Seitz, “In Accordance With the Scriptures,” in Word Without End, 54. I can only guess about the depth of Seitz’
understanding of 1st century C.E. Judaism, but I would suggest that Christianity may have grown the most in the quarters of
Judaism that acknowledged the authority of scripture the most, rather than saying scripture was valued across the board in
Judaism as an unqualified statement.
71

conflict or tension between scriptural authority and Jesus' authority.144 Rather, as Seitz has suggested, the

only identity the church received, through inclusion in the community 'in Christ', depended on the

authority of Israel's scripture. The authority of the New Testament then depends on this account as well.
Behind the decision of the early church to assent to Israel's scriptures lies no decision
at all, but rather the awareness - coterminous with faith in Christ - that God's word to
Israel is the first-order inheritance for those adopted in Christ, the fully sufficient and
necessary broker of God's very self to Israel and the world. Whatever authority the
New Testament will in time come to possess is no rival to such a view, but is based on
it, without which its corollary claim to be scripture, alongside that first scripture, is
groundless.145

Seitz argues that it distorts our picture of the early church to suggest that they 'decided' to receive Israel's

scripture as scripture, rather than receiving it again with a new authoritative role in the community

through Jesus.

Seitz again observes that the authority of the New Testament is dependent on Israel's scripture

and its role in the early church. While it may be true in a historical sense that the early church 'gave birth'

to and collected the writings of the New Testament, these writings derive their authority from Israel's

scripture, and the New Testament's ability to witness to Jesus in accordance with Israel's scripture. While

they are historically dependent on the early church, they are theologically dependent on Israel's Scripture.

Here it is clear that Seitz is venturing into the world 'behind-the-text,' making a historical

argument about scripture and the early church. At first glance, it may appear that he is stepping outside

the bounds of his own canonical approach by making an argument from the world behind-the-text. When

we look more closely though, it becomes apparent that Seitz intends this as a negative argument. It seems

that Seitz' goal is to actually limit the significance of the early church historically, by suggesting that it

does not have theological priority over scripture, Old or New Testament.

This becomes clear in Seitz' echo of B. S Childs suggestion that we read scripture with this

statement in mind, that, "we are not prophets or apostles."146 Seitz explains that Childs is reminding

144 "Modern Christians are now almost entirely non-Jewish in background. This creates a strong tendency to see in Jesus'
interaction with the Judaisms of his day a critique of the content of their scriptures rather than an argument over scripture's true
governing center." Seitz, "The Old Testament as Abiding Theological Witness," in Word Without End, 4.
145 Seitz, "And Without God in the World," in Word Without End, 50.
146 Seitz, "We Are Not Prophets Or Apostles: The Biblical Theology of Brevard S. Childs" in Word Without End, 106.
72

modern readers not to strive to identify with initial agents of revelation in the past through historical-

critical reconstruction. "The point of canonical shaping is to distinguish between original recipients of

revelation ("prophets") and those who come to this revelation through a textualized witness ("Israel").147

Here Seitz is emphasizing the need for contemporary readers to avoid entering the text by overcoming our

historical distance from it. Christian readers should avoid historical reconstruction as an entry into the

text.
I would add that Christian readers come to the material, not only not as 'prophets,'
but also outside the circle of Israel; we only receive as Old Testament these Hebrew
Scriptures because of beneficial inclusion in God's plans for his own people, witnessed
to in their scriptures, in a particular given form. Let the form be shown to be an empty
theological lens before one runs too quickly to either a historical orientation or one
focused on the reader's quest for meaning, a now-popular alternative to older historical-
critical approaches.148

This holds true and extends into Childs suggestion that we are not "apostles" either. Our goal today is not

to read the Old Testament the way the historical Jesus might have, or even the way the early church or

apostles did. This ignores the form of the New Testament as an additional scriptural reality that we read

together with the Old Testament.149 While it doesn't come through explicitly in Seitz’ arguments, there

seems to be a theological boundary between the early church before the final form of Christian Scripture,

and the early church after the final form of Christian scripture.

This explains Seitz' purpose above in making the negative argument about scripture and Jesus in

the early church, suggesting that we live on the far side of that theological boundary, without access to the

early church. Seitz has no problem exploring the early church historically, but the early church can only

have theological significance as it is displayed in the plain sense of the final form of the New Testament.

Unfortunately, I find this theological boundary between the "early church" and the rest of the

church's history is not entirely clear. Seitz does not suggest some clear line in history that defines

Christian scripture, nor do I think he would want to. This becomes problematic though, in sorting out

147 Seitz, Ibid. 106.


148 Seitz, Ibid. 107.
149 “The Christian exegete is not an unfortunate "latecomer" to a purer form of revelation, vouchsafed once to prophets and
apostles, or even apostles reading the prophets; the same God is revealed, but through a different form of witness, whose form
must be respected as constitutive for what it means to be a church that gains its identity and life from the scriptural legacy of the
prophets and apostles.” Seitz, "We Are Not Prophets Or Apostles," in Word Without End, 107-108.
73

what historical factors contributed to the formation of Christian scripture, and which of those factors is

theologically relevant.

For example, the passing references that Seitz makes to Marcion in his writings are often

simplistic or severely distort the reality of scripture in the early church. John Miller has argued that

Marcion's actions of establishing a collection of Christian writings, along with his rejection of Israel's

scripture, were a significant catalyst to the formation of the New Testament.150 It was not until after

Marcion that the collection of writings we know today as the New Testament was made, let alone given

that name.

However, Seitz compares some contemporary approaches to Christian scripture with Marcion by

suggesting that Marcion not only rejected Israel's scripture as Old Testament, but that he also "truncated"

or "rejected" parts of the New Testament.


Marcion, of course, was not content merely to reject the Old Testament but
also a vast majority of the New. Marcion's truncation was not just bad politics
or ecumenical insensitivity, but an assault on the Jesus of the church's memory.151

Seitz is at least at fault for anachronistically referring to the early Christian writings that Marcion rejected

as 'New Testament' writings, given that these writings were not collected under that title up to that time,

and did not carry the same authority.152 I am also critical of Seitz for a lack of recognition of the

significance of Marcion's role in the formation of the New Testament. John Miller points out how it was

other quarters of the church that formed the New Testament out of response to Marcion's collection of

Christian writings, and not the reverse. While Marcion was moving in a different direction than the two-

testament canon, he played a significant role as a catalyst for its formation.

This example points to the need for further work to be done in this area of Seitz' canonical

approach. To what degree do significant historical factors such as Marcion and his agenda, which do not

150 Miller, John. How the Bible Came to Be: Exploring the Narrative and Message. (Paulist Press, New York, 2004) see 62-75.
151 Seitz, "Old Testament Or Hebrew Bible? Some Theological Considerations," in Word Without End, n. 16, 68.
152 Here are two other references to Marcion in Seitz' work. "It was not a simple Marcionism that dogged the church so long,
because Marcion's extreme truncation of the biblical canon cut away most of the New Testament witness as well as the Old and
was judged early on as sub-Christian." Seitz, 'Scripture And A Three-Legged Stool," Figured Out, 65. And also, "Bultmann had
his own very sophisticated version of this, and, like Marcion before him, it cut with reductive force at the New Testament as
well." Seitz, "The Historical-Critical Endeavor as Theology," in Word Without End, 31. See also Word Without End, 315, 342.
74

show up prominently in the final form of the New Testament, have a theological impact on our reading of

Christian scripture? I would like to suggest, following John Miller's work, that perhaps Marcion is a

prime example in the early church of missing the church's theological dependence on Israel's scripture,

and the response of the formation of the New Testament as the church's affirmation of the theological

significance of Israel's scripture.153 Understood in this light, perhaps there is a way for Seitz' canonical

approach to account for Marcion's wide diversion from the church's later course.

However, this still leaves us with questions surrounding Seitz' seemingly arbitrary or fuzzy

theological distinction between the early church period, which we must avoid historically identifying

ourselves with, and the slightly later creedal era of the church which he is keenly interested in making

normative for the church today. This issue will be explored further in the final section of this chapter,

where I will turn to questions that arise from Seitz work on scripture and community from the world 'in-

front-of-the-text.' First, we must turn to the world 'within-the-text' to explore the intertextuality at the

heart of Seitz' approach.

B. Within-the-text: Old Testament Accordance & Deference in the New Testament

Seitz claims the Old Testament's role as Christian scripture plays out in the final form of the New

Testament in two significant ways. First, Seitz argues that the New Testament witnesses to Jesus, but that

it does so by showing Jesus to be in accordance with the Old Testament. Second, the New Testament

defers to the Old Testament’s own voice as scripture. It does not attempt to repeat everything that is

important from the Old Testament, but instead assumes that it will continue to be heard as scripture. Seitz

uses both elements to suggest that there are inherent within the final form of the New Testament some

clues regarding the Old Testament's role as scripture in the Christian community.

153 Miller, How the Bible Came to Be, 47-52.


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1. Seitz on New Testament Accordance

Seitz finds it significant that the New Testament makes claims about Jesus being 'in accordance'

with the Old Testament. These claims come in a variety of ways, both explicitly and implicitly suggesting

accordance. What exactly is accordance then? Two examples stand out from Seitz' work.

a) The Nicene Creed & 1 Corinthians 15. Seitz offers numerous reflections on the Nicene Creed

and its theological discourse in his writings. One phrase he finds significant is the creed's claim that Jesus

died and was raised 'in accordance with the scriptures.' Seitz admits that in his youth he thought this

meant, "according to the New Testament, Jesus died and then rose again. In other words, a claim was

being made by Christian sources about the nature of Jesus' death, namely, that it was not the final

word."154

However, the very phrase 'in accordance with the scriptures' is quoted from a New Testament

text, from 1 Corinthians 15. Since the New Testament did not yet exist as such, Seitz came to realize that

'scriptures' referred to the Old Testament.


'In accordance with the scriptures' means: consistent with the plain-sense
claims - not of the New Testament - but of the Old. Within the New Testament
the Old Testament is not yet sufficiently old to be referred to with anything but
the generic term 'the scriptures'.155

This suggests that there are texts from the Old Testament that support the claims that Paul makes

regarding Jesus in 1 Corinthians 15. Surprisingly though, Paul does not quote any passages from the Old

Testament, or make reference to any particular book or theme.

While Paul does not refer to any passage in particular there may in fact be some good candidates.

Seitz notes Isaiah 53:5-12, Hosea 6:2, and Psalm 16:10 as passages that could be behind Paul’s claims

regarding Jesus’ death and resurrection. However, citing Old Testament passages is not what Paul does in

1 Corinthians.

In light of this lack of particular references, Seitz suggests that a claim is being made in

154 Seitz, "'In Accordance With The Scriptures': Creed, Scripture and 'Historical Jesus'," in Word Without End, 52.
155 Seitz, Ibid. 52.
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accordance with scripture as a whole. Rather than relying on a verse or passage as a proof text, Seitz

argues that Paul is making a claim about the canonical narrative of Israel’s scripture, and how what God

has done through Jesus accords with that narrative.


In accordance with the scriptures" means: related to claims about God and
God's promises as presented in the Old Testament scriptures - not to individual
proof texts about the details of Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection. To speak
of God raising Jesus is to ask how such raising fits into a larger scriptural
depiction of God's plans with the world.156

This suggests that the New Testament bears a relationship with the Old Testament, or the 'scriptures', that

goes beyond selective proof-texting for evidential claims about Jesus. Rather, Seitz is suggesting that the

New Testament's claims about Jesus signify the foundational role of the Old Testament in revealing God

and his plans with Israel and all of creation. Apart from the Old Testament, Jesus would float free as a

historical particularity without mooring in God's ways with the world.

This is precisely what Seitz fears has happened in contemporary searches for the 'Historical

Jesus.' Seitz notes that not only does the historical Jesus diverge from the witness of the New Testament,

"but that in addition this Jesus stands apart from the witness of the Old Testament scriptures and their

claims about what God was and is and will be doing, in and through Jesus."157 For Seitz, taking Christian

scripture seriously as Old & New Testament requires an understanding of how each witness depends on

the other, particularly the relationship of accordance between the New Testament and the Old Testament.

It should be noted, however, that Seitz' argument above does not resolve the issue of accordance,

but merely defines the parameters of what accordance looks like. This does not resolve the question of the

relationship between the Old Testament and New Testament, but rather suggests a frame of reference in

which accordance can be discovered and demonstrated through reading the text.

b) Jesus & God's Name. A second form of accordance found in the New Testament deals with

Jesus and God's name. The New Testament does not use the language of 'accordance' between Jesus and

God's name as revealed in the Old Testament. Nor does Seitz use the language of accordance to describe

156 Seitz, Ibid. 55.


157 Seitz, Ibid. 59.
77

this form of intertextuality in his account of Christian scripture. Yet I would like to suggest that Seitz’

discussion of the New Testament's handling of God's name is analogous to Paul's language of 'accordance

with scripture' discussed above.

In the first chapter we discussed Seitz' account of the Exodus narrative and revelation as God's

self-disclosure in the events of the Exile. God's disclosure of God’s name was taken to be the most

personal revelation possible, and with this name, the narrative disclosed God's intention to be known by

Israel in the events of their liberation from Egypt. For Seitz this is the heart of Israel's scripture, God's

revelation to Israel in God’s name.158 Seitz notes that Isaiah 45 affirms God's name will not only be

known within Israel, but that God will be known in all of creation by his name. How does the New

Testament account for this in light of its claims regarding God's revelation of himself in Jesus?

Building on the work of David Yeago and Richard Baukham, Seitz explores the Christological

hymn of Philippians 2:6-11 as a central text for the New Testament's handling of God's name.159 Here

God's name is handed over to Jesus, signifying that at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow and every

tongue confess that Jesus is LORD. Seitz notes, "The intertextual connection to Isaiah 45 is unmistakable.

The name above every name, to which every knee shall bow and every tongue confess is the holy name,

YHWH."160 What is the character of this intertextuality though? Is Philippians substituting Jesus' name

for YHWH, and reformulating the Isaiah text, or is this a New Testament insight into the deeper meaning

of God's name?

Seitz argues that this New Testament text is aiming at neither of these options. Rather Philippians

is seeking to take the promise made in Isaiah 45 seriously as an abiding promise of a scripture whose

continued authority is not isolated from God's character and work in Christ. Seitz suggests that God is

coming through on his promise to make his name known in all creation through Jesus. By identifying

God's name with Jesus, the text is making the closest possible connection between the God of Israel and

158 "One can see how a special burden is here carried by the Name in the Old Testament and in Christian Theology. Is it not the
self-revelation of God, in his name, that stands at the very center of the Old Testament? It is hard to imagine a more personal
form of disclosure. It is the word 'God' that opens itself to abstraction and depersonalizing manipulation." Seitz, "Handing Over
the Name: Christian Reflection on the Divine Name YHWH," in Figured Out, 138.
159 Seitz, "Handing Over the Name: Christian Reflection on the Divine Name YHWH," in Figured Out, 131-144.
160 Seitz, Ibid. 141.
78

Jesus.
The name of Jesus is not a vocalization of YHWH! God has a name, and it
is the name above every name. He gives this name to Jesus. In so doing, the
personal character of the exchange is preserved. It is not that we are discovering
a deeper intention or secret, lying below the plain-sense promises of God in the
Old Testament. God really did swear by himself that his name would be confessed
throughout creation; he was not being indirect or subtle in an ingenious sense.161

While the language of accordance is not employed here, I think we can say that in Philippians we have

another instance of the New Testament's aim of speaking of Jesus in light of prior scriptural claims. The

New Testament's claims for Jesus do not rival the Old Testament's revelation of God in his name. They

are 'in accordance' with it, and Philippians claims that scriptural promises have been fulfilled in Jesus

through God's name being handed over to Jesus.

What is striking in this case, is Seitz' attempt to pay particular attention to the plain sense claims

of both the Old & the New Testament. By carefully paying attention to each text as a serious scriptural

witness and the degree of intertextual dynamics at play, Seitz is able to display how Christian scripture

functions in its final canonical form. In this case, the New Testament does not function independently of

the Old Testament. Rather the intertextual relationships between them tell us not only how to read the

New, but also that the Old Testament is to be taken seriously as an abiding scriptural witness for the

church. The New Testament witnesses that the God known by his name among Israel, has come through

on his promise that this name would be known in all of creation, in the name of the LORD Jesus Christ.

2. Seitz on New Testament Deference

The second key form of intertextual relationship between the New Testament and the Old in

Seitz' work is the way in which the New Testament defers to the Old Testament's authoritative voice.

Here I will explore Seitz' reflections on how the book of Isaiah is used in various New Testament texts.

Isaiah is one of the most often quoted books in the New Testament. What does this set of intertextual

relationships reveal about the Old Testament's role as Christian scripture?

161 Seitz, Ibid., 142.


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Seitz begins this reflection by noting that the book of Isaiah is well known for its emphasis on the

Davidic line and the royal promises for the kingship. Seitz asks the question, "does the heavy distribution

of Isaiah references in the New [testament] involve Jesus' claimed messiahship, or does it reflect

something else?"162 This leads to a survey of the Gospels, Acts, Paul’s letters, and the book of Revelation

with striking results.

Seitz finds that instead of tying Jesus to the royal promises of Isaiah, the majority of New

Testament quotations and references from Isaiah are to do with God being known among the Gentiles.

Matthew opens with three quotes from Isaiah in the first few chapters and Seitz notes that, "what is

striking is none of them pick up Isaiah's royal texts for their own sake to show that Jesus is the messiah

promised of old by God's prophets."163 On through other New Testament texts, Seitz observes a

significant silence regarding God's promises to establish the kingdom of David compared to the numerous

quotes from Isaiah regarding the inclusion of the Gentiles.

What are we to make of this? Seitz considers numerous options, some of which tie in to our

discussion of Isaiah's canonical unity in chapter two. One option suggests that a new historical context in

the early church required an emphasis on Gentile inclusion rather than the royal promises. The weakness

of this for Seitz is that, "while this may be true, it would still explain neither the degree of overshadowing

nor the absence of these texts from so wide a range of New Testament witnesses, making different

arguments for different contexts."164

A second option is that the New Testament distinguished between Isaiah's address regarding

things of the past versus things of the future. Perhaps Isaiah was addressing the royal line of kings in his

day, and not for the distant future. Seitz argues unconvincingly that the New Testament would not have

approached Isaiah this way. He merely says, "a sharp distinction between Old Testament word directed to

the future and word riveted to the past is doubtless an artificial one for the New Testament."165 Seitz

would improve his argument by explaining just in what way the word of the Old Testament is not merely

162 Seitz, "Isaiah In New Testament, Lectionary, Pulpit," in Word Without End, 216.
163 Ibid.
164 Seitz, Ibid. 218.
165 Ibid.
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past for the authors of the New Testament. My sense is that by 'riveted to the past' Seitz means to say that

Old Testament claims are not isolated in a historical context which contemporary or even New Testament

authors did not have access to. Whether the content of the claims being made goes beyond the scope of

foreseeable time is a separate issue, addressed in part here by Seitz noting Isaiah 11 points to a

future royal figure. Whether the New Testament understands the Old Testament in this way is merely a

suggestion at this point, and has not been well argued by Seitz.

The third option would be to interpret the New Testament's silence over royal promises as a

rejection of Isaiah's vision of the Davidic kingship as a political authority in favour of a crucified Jesus

who did not take on such a role. Seitz does not reject this option outright, but rather moves to a fourth

possibility with the expectation of its explanatory power over the previous three options. The problem

with all three of these initial options is that they,


basically understand the Old [Testament] in the first instance as a more or
less appropriate means by which to make arguments and clarifications
regarding the mission and identity of Jesus, the success of which will further
the gospel... In each case, the New is understood as the proper lens by which
to hear the Old.166

Seitz is not interested in accounts of Christian scripture that pigeon hole the Old Testament as merely a

background document to be drawn from and updated in the New Testament where necessary and useful.

Yet we are still left with the question, how do we account for the New Testament's picture of Jesus given

the resounding silence of Isaiah's royal promises there? If Isaiah's promises are to be more than just

background, why do they not appear in the New Testament?

Seitz suggests an entirely different approach to answering this question. He reflects on the

relationship between the Old Testament and New Testament with a thoughtful question.
What if the New Testament operates with full knowledge that the Old will
continue to be heard as its own per se witness, including passages that speak
of hope for a coming righteous king, and not just on the terms in which the
New hears it?167

This opens up some entirely different possibilities. Seitz suggests that New Testament texts do not quote

royal promises of Isaiah, not to imply disagreement with or divergence from them, but because it is

166 Seitz, Ibid. 219.


167 Ibid. 220.
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assumed they will continue to be heard as scriptural promises directly from the book of Isaiah itself.

As we have already discussed in this chapter, the New Testament is dependent on the Old

Testament for its authority, in terms of both form and content. The Old Testament continues as scripture

for the church, and in this case, Isaiah's royal promises continue to be heard as scripture by the church

directly from Isaiah. While Seitz is aware of the difficulty of arguing from the absence of such use of

Isaiah in the New Testament, he thinks it is possible to account for this in light of the final form of the

book of Isaiah itself.168

As discussed in the previous chapter, the presence of royal promises in the first part of the book

and their absence in the latter part, does not mean those promises have been dropped in the book's final

form. The second half of Isaiah is built upon and assumes the content of the first half.

Seitz makes the fascinating argument that in this light, Isaiah can be seen as a type of Christian

scripture. The division between 'former things' and 'latter things' within Isaiah's final form is a way of

understanding the relationship between the Old Testament and New Testament and their interaction as

Christian scripture.
It is this dialectic that reveals the Book of Isaiah to be a type of Christian
scripture. The New is dependent upon the Old for its logic, its sense of
fulfillment, its vis-à-vis authority, and its radicality. The Old requires the New's
authority of Newness and finality to complete its own picture of God's final ways
with creation... and yet it is in the Old that the promises and the hope and the judgment
become ingredients in a much larger plan of former-latter sovereignty.169

Seitz is not interested in arguing historically that the formation of Christian scripture took its cues from

Isaiah's final form, but rather in observing the patterns and relationships between texts in the final form of

Christian scripture. By suggesting Isaiah is a type of Christian scripture, Seitz makes the case that the

New Testament defers to the Old Testament not only in terms of its content, but also in terms of its form

and structure.

This example of deference to the Old Testament's voice reveals another dimension of what it

means to read the Old Testament as Christian scripture.

168 "Now what are we to make of the strong overshadowing of Isaiah's royal texts by those concerning God's purposes for the
Gentiles? Obviously it is tricky to conjecture and draw conclusions from what is not said. Having said that the New Testament's
hearing of the Old ought not totalize the Old's per se voice, we can hardly object when it has not done that." Seitz, Ibid., 218.
169 Seitz, "Of Mortal Appearance: Earthly Jesus and Isaiah as a Type of Christian Scripture," Word Without End, 113.
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The Old Testament is not authoritative only where it is referred to in the


New, but also when it is deferred to; when what it has to say forms the final
horizon of the church's hope under the present reign of Jesus Christ.170

Not only does the New Testament draw from the Old Testament through accordance, but the New

Testament also makes room for the Old Testament to be read with its own authoritative voice.

These examples of accordance and deference point to the character of Christian scripture as Seitz

has observed it from looking at the final canonical form of the Old & New Testaments, and the

intertextual relationships between them. They reveal that the New Testament is not an improvement on or

bypassing of the Old Testament, but rather a testament that shares the place of Christian scripture with the

Old Testament, upon which it depends for its authority, in terms of both content and form.

Thus far, we have explored a theological account of how the church receives the Old Testament

as Christian scripture, and how the Old Testament's role as Christian scripture is displayed within-the-text

itself. We must now turn from the world within-the-text to explore Seitz' proposal for how the church,

which stands in the world in-front-of-the-text, will read the Old Testament in light of his canonical

approach.

C. In-Front-of-The-Text: How the Church Reads the Old Testament

In the previous two chapters I have explored Seitz' account of the world in-front-of-the-text in a

less concrete manner. Now we must consider what it means for Christian readers to interpret the Old

Testament as scripture for the church. Seitz makes two basic moves in his account. The first is to

appreciate how scripture has formed the community that reads it, the second to appreciate how the

community forms the reading of its scripture. Seitz' understands the world in-front-of-the-text in these

two dimensions, and it will be significant for us to ask how they integrate with one another.

170 Seitz, "Isaiah In New Testament, Lectionary, Pulpit," in Word Without End, 222.
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1. Church as the Community Formed by Scripture

One of the most significant contributions in Seitz’ work is his understanding of the church's

reception of the Old Testament. This comes through most clearly in an essay where Seitz explores reading

Christian scripture with a hermeneutic of assent or suspicion, and an alternative to both options. Seitz

argues that any account that poses assent or suspicion as the main interpretive options has misconstrued

the relationship between the reader and the text of scripture. What impact does this relationship have on

how the text is read?

As we explored above, Seitz is keen to note that Christians do not have any special claim on the

Old Testament. For Gentile Christians in particular, Christ is the only basis upon which access to the Old

Testament is possible.171 The Old Testament is thus received by those newly adopted in Christ as a gift,

rather than as a text claimed by right. Seitz argues that this suggests a particular posture be taken as

readers of scripture, particularly of the Old Testament.


The Old Testament tells a particular story about a particular people and their
particular God, who in Christ we confess as our God, his Father, and our own,
the Holy One of Israel. We have been read into a will, a first will and testament,
by Christ. If we do not approach the literature with this basic stance -of
estrangement overcome, of an inclusion properly called "adoption"- historical-
critical methods or a hermeneutics of assent will still stand outside and fail to grasp
that God is reading us, not we him.172

Postures of either suspicion or assent are undercut by the more fundamental theological reality of

adoption in Christ, which lays the basis for reading the text in the first place. In Seitz view then, it is

scripture that establishes its readership, rather than readers who establish what counts as scripture. Again,

Seitz stands by this claim in his account of the early church:


Christian readers did not choose to assent or dissent from a scripture that
preceded their existence. Rather, scripture was the means by which the only
identity the church had, in Christ, came to form...Scripture was not being
chosen or rejected - it was choosing and creating and addressing and establishing
its readership, in the estimate of those newly adopted in Christ.173

171 This is less clear for Jewish Christians. However, in this case Seitz is particularly focused on the contemporary church and
how Christians who are predominantly Gentile approach the text.
172 Seitz, "The Old Testament as Abiding Theological Witness," in Word Without End, 11.
173 Seitz, "'And Without God in the World': A Hermeneutic of Estrangement Overcome," in Word Without End, 43.
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It is here, for Seitz, that Christian readers are to take their first cues in approaching scripture, by

acknowledging scripture itself gave birth to their existence as the church. The implication is that it makes

no sense to consider reading postures, such as suspicion of the text, that deny the text as the very grounds

for reading in the first place.

Here Seitz has not positively spelled out what reading posture Christians should take, but rather

has suggested that some reading postures are outside the boundaries of the relationship between the

Christian community and the text. It is the text of scripture that has formed the community to be what it

is, and the church's reading posture must be considered from this vantage point.

I think that Seitz is right to remind us that our posture, in reading the Old Testament in particular,

begins from receiving the text as a gift of our inclusion through Christ. However, it is not clear that Seitz'

canonical approach spells out what reading postures are allowed by our grateful relationship to the gift of

the Old Testament. Does Seitz offer any guidance in laying this out for the Christian community?

One of the main guideposts that Seitz offers is the form of the canon itself. The Christian

community will be guided in reading each testament of scripture in relation to the other.
The task of the church is to hear the Old in light of the New, and the New
in light of the Old; to undo either side of this equation is to renounce what
it means for the church to take seriously its specific point of standing under
a particularly formed scriptural witness.174

For Seitz this principle is meant to avoid a number of misreadings from the start. First, Christian reading

of either testament will not happen independent from the other. Second, the relation between each

testament is not developmental, historical or even literary. As Seitz points out, the New Testament is not

an improvement on the Old, nor does it form a seamless continuity with the narrative of Israel's scripture.

It does bear a heavy literary dependence on the Old Testament, but this literary relationship serves

fundamental theological claims. The relationship between each testament is ultimately theological.

This theological connection between Old Testament and New Testament, in Seitz’ view, finds its

substance in witness to the reality of Jesus Christ as Lord. "Having set these parameters, the interpreter’s

task is to explore the witness of the Old and New with reference to its subject matter, Jesus Christ."175

174 Seitz, "We Are Not Prophets Or Apostles," in Word Without End, 108.
175 Seitz, Ibid. 104.
85

This outlook is based on the text itself, but then asks the Christian reader to return and explore the text for

how it witnesses to Jesus Christ, particularly how the Old & New Testament do this in relation to one

another. "Establishing the proper relationship in and among different texts, in Christ, through the Holy

Spirit, remains the task of the Christian interpreter.176 In this, scripture forms the fundamental reading

posture of the church, and the church’s role as a witness to Jesus Christ.

This could sound like a dogmatic limitation of how the church is to read scripture, but Seitz

understands this as a starting point for exploration. He claims that he is not interested in generating a

formulaic and static reading of scripture.177 Rather, he believes that reading each testament in light of the

other is precisely the place where "combustion takes place and fresh theological hearing, in a modern

context under the influence of the Holy Spirit, occurs."178 Seitz offers numerous readings of biblical texts

based on this approach of reading each testament in light of the other, some of which I have already

explored above.179 One of Seitz’ particular concerns in this domain of his work is to appreciate the role

the Old Testament has in contributing to the overall witness of Christian scripture.

What does it mean that the Old Testament witnesses to Jesus Christ? Is Seitz hoping to 'bend' the

text towards something to which it does not easily refer? One brief example will illustrate the kind of role

Seitz expects the Old Testament to have. Without evaluating or explaining this reading in depth, we can

trace how Seitz seeks to read the Old Testament in this fashion.

In his essay, “The Old Testament, Mission, and Christian Scripture”, Seitz explores the concept

of mission from within the Old Testament. He does so by offering a reading of Genesis and Isaiah that

seeks to pay attention to how God acts in the world. Through his reading of these texts, Seitz paints a

broad picture of God's role in blessing Israel and the nations, and a picture of God's plans beyond the

176 Seitz, "And Without God In The World: A Hermeneutic Of Estrangement Overcome," in Word Without End, 49.
177 “Setting the parameters for Christian reflection on the canon does not mean generating timeless theological truths. Those
who come to this biblical theology looking for a standardized outline of overarching themes and loci, ready-made for modern
consumption and application, will be disappointed.” Seitz, "We Are Not Prophets Or Apostles," in Word Without End, 105.
178 Ibid.
179 For an engaging example of see Seitz, "Dispirited- Scripture as Rule of Faith and Recent Misuse of the Council of
Jerusalem: Text, Spirit, and Word to Culture," in Figured Out, 117-129.
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present horizon. Seitz argues that instead of beginning with the New Testament and grasping what

mission is there as a contrast to, critique of, or fixing of the Old Testament, we must begin with this Old

Testament picture of God's 'mission' in the world, and understand what the New Testament says about the

mission of proclaiming Jesus in light of this. It is not that the Old Testament is bent to refer to Jesus and

mission in some convoluted or awkward manner, rather the sense of the church's mission to proclaim

Jesus which Christian scripture has to offer is incomplete without being framed by the Old Testament's

witness.

While this reading of Genesis and Isaiah, and some of Seitz’ other readings, offer much that is

insightful and fresh, other readings raise further questions about his understanding of the church's role in

reading scripture. Key to his argument is that reading the Old Testament as Christian scripture requires it

to be received in its final form by the readers it addresses. Scripture thus has a clear and significant role in

shaping those who read and forming the reading process itself.

To what extent though does Seitz' location as a reader and his particular context influence his

reading of the text? Clearly, Seitz avoids an extreme reader-centered approach to interpretation, where

readers impose meaning on the text out of their own experience. At the same time, says Seitz, "I am

mindful I have no "view from nowhere" and have heard scripture as a Christian within an Anglican

Christian upbringing and formal seminary education, such as it is."180 Seitz is not unaware that he brings

his own perspective to reading scripture. More broadly, he is aware that readers bring a significant

contribution to interpretation, and that the Christian community has played a role in shaping scripture

beyond its 'final form.'

I will now turn to explore how Seitz understands this second dimension of the world in-front-of-

the-text where the church shapes how scripture is read and the form of Christian scripture itself. Seitz

must articulate how the canonical approach accounts for this, particularly in light of how the church has

had a significant role in the form and reading of scripture.

180 Seitz, "Scripture and a Three-Legged Stool," in Figured Out, 63.


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2. Scriptural Reading formed by the Church

In section A.3 above, we discussed how Seitz echoed Child's principle that in the church today,

'we are not prophets or apostles'. This was meant to dissuade us from reading the text via historical

identification with the early church. At the same time, Seitz makes a number of proposals that do call

Christians to read scripture in continuity with later developments of tradition in the history of the church.

How then does Seitz understand, in light of the canonical approach, the formation of scriptural reading by

the Christian community? Two examples address this:

a) What's in a Name? Old Testament or Hebrew Bible? First, Seitz must account for how the

Christian community has named its scripture. For all of Seitz' insistence on the centrality of the final form

of Christian scripture in the Old & New Testament, it is significant to consider the titles each canon bears

and their importance to the final form of the text. Both 'Old Testament' and 'New Testament' are titles not

used within scripture to refer to the text itself. These titles reflect decisions made long after each

collection had formed as distinct canons. Seitz is fully aware of this and does not shy away from

acknowledging that the church played a significant role in forming scripture by giving each canon these

titles.181 This raises questions about what the 'final form' of the text really is. Is it essential to name

Christian scripture by these titles?

Seitz does not explicitly answer this question, but my sense is that he would answer no. To say

that it is not necessary for the canons of Christian scripture to carry the titles 'Old Testament' & 'New

Testament' is to say that it could have been otherwise. I would argue that other titles could have

developed within the Christian community and been accepted as the names for this literature, and that

Seitz would not have a problem with this.

However, this does not mean that Seitz is open to changing 'Old Testament' to 'Hebrew Bible' or

to 'Jewish Scriptures.' While the titles of the Old & New are not essential or necessary to the final form of

181 "One thing that should be clear is that the Christian terms "Old Testament" and "New Testament" arose as distinct
impositions on the literatures in question." Seitz, “Old Testament or Hebrew Bible?” in Word Without End, 64.
88

Christian scripture, Seitz clearly argues that the titles 'Old' & 'New' testament reflect faithful readings of

each canon in co-ordination with the other, and are thus suitable titles. In this sense, the church has

formed Christian scripture in a significant way, but it was done so based on a faithful reading of the text

itself.

What is at stake here?182 Rather than arguing for the necessity of the traditional titles, Seitz is

more concerned with the motivations that lie behind the suggestion of alternative titles. We find this in his

essay “Old Testament or Hebrew Bible? Some Theological Considerations”, where he focuses on

deconstructing the criticisms of 'Old Testament.'

Seitz defends the title 'Old Testament,' not because it is theologically necessary or perhaps even

the best title that could be offered. Rather, Seitz is not willing to sacrifice continuity with the reading of

scripture in the traditions of the Christian community reflected in the title 'Old Testament.' More

importantly for Seitz, the modes of reading reflected in the desire to use a title such as 'Hebrew Bible'

reflect a focus on historical-critical analysis, or ecumenical sensitivity that does not account for the

particularity of Israel's scripture received by the church in Christ.

In this debate over the name 'Old Testament,' there are two steps which reveal Seitz' approach.

First, the suitability of 'Old Testament' as a title, while it was a decision made 'in-front-of-the-text' by the

Christian community, is based on a reading of the text itself which Seitz judges as a faithful reading. This

reflects Seitz’ understanding of how scriptural reading is to be formed by scripture itself. Second, it

reflects the fact that the Christian community has played a significant role in shaping the Old Testament

to be read through the lens of this title. Seitz embraces the Christian community's role in this, and I would

argue this is consistent with the canonical approach.

My sense is that while the canonical approach focuses primarily on the plain sense of the text and

its final form, Seitz understands that for the Old Testament to function as scripture within the Christian

community, it must be transmitted through patterns and traditions of reading that reflect the nature of

Christian scripture itself. In this sense, the titles 'Old Testament' and 'New Testament' function as

182 "But what does it mean for a specifically Christian reader to adopt this term [Hebrew Bible] instead of 'Old Testament'?
What is at stake in this decision? It may be wrong to think one can just add new title without any effect at all, finitude not having
as yet been eliminated." Seitz, "Old Testament or Hebrew Bible?" in Word Without End, 70.
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hermeneutical keys to reading the text. Having already explored Seitz' understanding of the relationship

between each canon above, I will not further explore how these particular titles shape the process of

reading the text. Instead, I will move forward to consider Seitz' understanding of creeds and the 'rule of

faith' as other aspects of the church's formation of scriptural reading.

b) The Creed & The 'Rule of Faith' as Essential Guides? Alongside and often in this midst of

Seitz’ exegetical reflections we find his keen interest in the Nicene Creed, and the concept of a 'rule of

faith.' Both creeds and the 'rule of faith' are understood by Seitz to offer exegetical guidelines for the

proper reading of scripture. In the introduction to his book Figured Out, Seitz makes this clear and strong

statement regarding the concept of a ‘rule of faith’.


The essays in this book all operate with an assumption about the rule of faith
as constructive and essential to theological work. The rule of faith is assumed
by historians to be a principle at work in the early church. Some believe it was
a sort of creedal deposit or précis of the apostolic faith (...) that guided Christian
interpreters toward ascertaining when scripture's word was being heard and
applied in a proportional way, as consistent with the literal sense, both in the
parts and in the whole of scripture.183

More interesting than Seitz’ understanding of how this 'rule of faith' may have developed and functioned

in the early church, is his claim that such a rule is essential to his theology.

Seitz makes similar claims about the role of creeds. In the midst of assessing the exegetical basis

for the language of the Nicene Creed, Seitz defends the creed against such criticism with this flurry of

rhetoric.
Creed is more than putting out theological bushfires. It is letting scripture come
to its natural, two-testament expression. Just as the Old Testament leaves its
father and mother and cleaves to the New, so the scriptures cleave to the creed,
and the creed to them, and they become one flesh.184

Clearly Seitz has a high view not only of how the creeds contributed to the development of the church’s

theology, but also that they are another essential part of how the church reads scripture and hears its 'two-

testament' witness.

183 Seitz, "Introduction," in Figured Out, 6.


184 Seitz, "'Our Help Is in the Name of The LORD the Maker of Heaven and Earth': Scripture and Creed in Ecumenical Trust,"
in Figured Out, 178.
90

In the same essay Seitz goes on to defend the Nicene Creed's phrase "Our help is in the Name of

the LORD, maker of heaven and earth." He notes that while some have attacked such language,

particularly 'maker of heaven and earth' as post-biblical metaphysical language that was foreign to biblical

discourse, David Yeago and others have done work to uncover the deeply exegetical tones of such

language. Based on Yeago's work and others, Seitz goes on to defend the phrase 'maker of heaven and

earth,' which appears numerous times in the Old Testament, as an essential link between the creeds

confessional statement and its exegetical basis, particularly in grounding Christian speech in the Old

Testament.

While I think Seitz is correct in judging the language of the Nicene Creed as deeply biblical at

this point, I am less confident that it is worth defending this particular creed as essential to theology.

Clearly for Seitz, this has much to do with his context in the Anglican Communion, where creedal

statements such as the Nicene Creed have traditionally played a prominent role, and have more recently

been deeply disputed and rejected by some in that community. In this situation, which I am not in a

position to fully assess, there may be a place for Seitz defense of the creed's biblical character.

At the same time, I cannot support Seitz' view that the Nicene Creed is essential to theology or to

reading scripture. Independent from an assessment of the creed itself, and its value as a confessional

statement, I disagree with Seitz' that any creed or other post-biblical text is an essential resource for the

Christian community's reading of scripture. The degree to which Seitz expresses these 'in-front-of-the-

text' resources as necessary to understanding scripture does not fit with his canonical approach. The

central claim of the canonical approach is that God's revelation of himself is accessible in the plain sense

of the final form of Christian scripture, and that we do not need to go behind-the-text to reconstruct it, nor

is there anything necessary in the world in-front-of-the-text for the text to be read as Christian scripture.

Seitz approach is meant to uphold the text as sufficient in itself.

In an earlier essay, Seitz seems to acknowledge this, addressing a particular audience about

whether,
The Bible will retain its effectiveness as the unique, indispensable witness to
God in Christ. My question concerns how much modern liberal Christianity
still feels confident that the scripture of the Old and New Testaments, in their
91

final form and in reciprocal relationship with one another, have the power to
witness to divine reality - without a heavy dose of human rationality, on the one
hand, or experiential identification with the prophets and apostles on the other,
directly, individually, and without interference of church or any corporate
claim whatsoever.185

Seitz asks the question from the conviction that scripture does have this power to witness to divine reality.

This may be a reflection of earlier thought that stands at a distance from the later position reflected in the

quotes above about the essential role of creeds. However, my sense is that this is not the case, but rather

an area where Seitz has not consistently worked out how the world in-front-of-the-text relates to the world

within-the-text of scripture.186

In the same way that the titles of the Old & New Testaments, while not essential, are born out of a

faithful reading of scripture in Seitz view, I agree the creeds may be judged this way as well. However,

they are not scripture. I do not think they are authoritative statements binding on the church. Yet, Seitz

seems to speak of them this way. Quoting from the Nicene Creed Seitz says, " 'I believe in One God, the

Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth' is language God has given us to use, so that we can call

upon him and know that he knows himself to be addressed."187 Does Seitz mean that the creed reflects

biblical language that God has given us, or is he saying that God has given us the creed? I would prefer

the first option, but my sense is that Seitz leans toward the second. He may in fact only mean that the

creed is a sign of God's providence, without attaching any claims of authority in this comment. In light of

his other statements though, this seems to imply a claim to divine authority that is inconsistent with Seitz'

canonical approach.

185 Seitz, "We Are Not Prophets Or Apostles," in Word Without End, 108.
186 See these earlier references that speak just as strongly of the rule of faith. "The point of the rule of faith in the early church
was to insure that the separateness of the persons of God be seen as complementary with the confession that God is One. There
was an exegetical dimension to this confession as well. The Bible was to be read within this rule. That is, the theological
confession began with the Bible and then returned to it, with exegetical constraints or parameters. " Seitz, "God as Other, God as
Holy," in Word Without End, 17. Another quote, "The rule of faith sets the parameters for the exegetical reflection, and in that
rule the holiness of God is comprehended in reference to the holiness of his Son, to choose one example. Let it be emphasized
that these parameters are Christian ones, based upon the New Testament's understanding of adoption. Jews have different
parameters." Seitz, Ibid., 22.
187 Seitz, "Our Help Is in the Name of the LORD," in Figured Out, 190.
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While Seitz speaks of a specific rule of faith in the church's early history, he also refers to it as an

open practice that could be newly developed today. "What is needed now is a 'rule of faith' that refuses to

divide the persons of the Holy Trinity in the name of setting portions of scripture off against

themselves."188 This opens the possibility that Seitz wants to encourage new practices and resources for

reading scripture well. Consistently though, these proposals reflect Seitz' concern with the debasement of

Trinitarian language in Christian speech, which is tied to his prior concern with the rejection of the

ancient creeds.

Again, I have found Seitz' exegetical reflections on Trinitarian language fascinating and

engaging, and worthy of serious attention. For example, his unpacking of the logic of Trinitarian speech

of God as Father, and its essential connection to Jesus' role as Son in addressing the LORD is itself

worthy of attention for its fresh exegetical insights into the centrality of God's name.189 However, Seitz'

work in this area also reflects the particular community of readers in which Seitz finds himself, where

debate in his ecclesial context over these issues fiercely contests Trinitarian doctrine, scriptural authority,

and creedal formulations of Christian speech. My sense is that this fits with Seitz' view of scripture and

his reading of it, but that he is defending the concept of 'rule of faith' in too narrow and specific a fashion

as a particular thread of Christian tradition which is in itself necessary to reading scripture.

3. Critique: A More Robust Sense of the Reading Community

In this light, we can see a particular case of how the world in-front-of-the-text has shaped a

particular reader and the discourse of his community. Seitz has articulated the canonical approach as his

methodological practice of reading scripture. His essays addressing Christian practice and speech reflect

his reading of scripture and how scripture forms and informs the issues he has applied it to.

The exegetical and biblical work that Seitz has put forward is fresh, and engaging. However, I think the

188 Seitz, “Scripture and a Three-Legged Stool: Is There a Coherent Account of the Authority of Scripture for Anglicans after
Lambeth 1998?” in Figured Out, 64.
189 Seitz, “The Divine Name in Christian Scripture,” in Word Without End, 251-262.
93

radical attention to scripture that he offers has been constrained by the limitations of the creeds, and other

resources from the church's tradition that Seitz feels compelled to use a filter for interpreting scripture.

Seitz’ attention to detail and fascination with the text of scripture comes through in so much of

his work, and yet it seems like he aims his arsenal much too low when it comes to the impact scripture

could have in the Christian community, and how readers of Christian scripture could receive and shape its

witness in their lives. Speaking broadly about how he understands his work and the impact that he hopes

it will have, Seitz says the following:


The intention of this book will have been met if it satisfies one final criterion.
Do the various judgments...that it seeks to render collectively and individually,
match those of the vast witness of Christian hymnody and worship, as the
church has sung and praised God throughout its long history? If what I have
written permits the reader to move into traditional worship practices of the
church without stumbling over a ditch of historicism or a scriptural legacy now
'figured out,' my goal will have been met.190

This seems to be where Seitz aims much lower than he could, perhaps even pointing backwards into

history instead of forward to where God may be leading the church.

My own proposal would be to build upon Seitz' canonical approach and adjust our understanding

of the world 'in-front-of-the-text' and what it means to be a reader of Christian scripture. I am not

interested in following Seitz back to particular creeds and traditions offered by the church as necessary

components of what it means to read the Old Testament. However, this does not mean that scriptural

reading will happen in some direct and individualistic fashion that is unmediated by a reading community.

I propose that Seitz' account of the world in-front-of-the-text needs to be broadened to include a more

diverse account of the history of interpretation in the church.

My sense is that this need is inherent in Seitz' own account. As his approach itself suggests, while

the Old Testament is sufficient in its textual form as God's self-disclosure, it must be read within the

community to which it is addressed to function as scripture. Seitz has spelled out the dynamics of this

function in three ways. First, as I argued in Chapter I, revelation is addressed to the particular community

of Israel. In this, he grounds the text's authority in the theological reality of God's disclosure, while also

highlighting the necessity of the community who receives the text. Second, we are able to discern the

190 Seitz, "Conclusion," in Figured Out, 196.


94

text's unity through paying attention to the canonical shaping of the text's final form. As I argued in

Chapter II, Seitz' view is that this canonical shaping consists in discerning how the text has been

addressed to Israel as the particular reading community. Third, Christians participate in this reading

community as the church, which is adopted into Israel through Christ. Each dimension of Seitz' account

highlights the crucial link between scripture and the reading community to which it is addressed.

These are good and helpful concepts as far as they go, but my sense is that there are implications

for the world in-front-of-the-text that are broader than Seitz is willing to admit. The world in-front-of-the-

text needs to be broadened to include not just a few of the early creeds, but an openness to the rest of the

church's life as it has been displayed and preserved in its rich memory and tradition. I affirm Seitz' desire

to engage the Nicene Creed, and am willing to admit that this may be particularly appropriate in his

context. However, it is the process of recognizing and being open to the church’s witness in all its

expressions and fullness throughout history that is essential to reading scripture, rather than narrowly

engaging particular threads or streams of tradition as necessary to such reading. There is a difference

between applying the Nicene Creed to scriptural reading as a necessary theological step, and being open

to live engagement with such resources for dialogue and conversation that are part the community reading

scripture today.191

Every Christian community will be formed by and also shape its reading of scripture with its own

patterns and practice of engaging the text. To read the text with the community extends not only past the

individual reader, but also beyond the local and present community of readers to the rich diversity of

resources that constitute the church's living memory and tradition. Yet, these are also included as

conversation partners whom we judge before the text of scripture, even while they judge our own reading

of it. This will expand Seitz' sense of the world in-front-of-the-text to represent a more dynamic and

vibrant engagement with the text by the reading community.

191 I am indebted to Lydia Harder for this distinction between 'necessary theological construct' and 'resource for dialogue and
conversation.' Drawn from a private conversation, November 2006.
95

D. Conclusion

In this chapter, we have explored what it means for the Christian community to claim the Old

Testament and read it as scripture. Seitz’ canonical approach has laid the ground work for appreciating

the particularity of Israel’s scripture, and by reading the Old & New Testament in light of one another, the

church will be formed by scripture and will form their reading of scripture in accordance with it. Seitz’

approach runs into some snags and inconsistencies in the world in-front-of-the-text, and Seitz’ practice of

reading the text often aims too low, but his basis for engagement offers the church fresh possibilities for

reading the Old Testament as Christian scripture.


96

CONCLUSION: CRITICALLY ASSESSING SEITZ’


CANONICAL APPROACH

In this study my aim has been to critically assess Seitz' canonical approach to reading the Old

Testament as Christian scripture. Seitz' approach not only suggests helpful ways of reading the text, but

addresses deeper, related questions about what it means to claim the Old Testament as scripture for the

Christian community at the most basic level. Fundamental to Seitz' approach has been his claim that the

final form of the text has theological significance. This claim has been displayed throughout each chapter,

in relation to the world behind-the-text, within-the-text, and in-front-of-the-text.

In the first chapter, History & Revelation, I described Seitz' argument that historical-critical

methods are unhelpful when used to approach the Old Testament as though revelation of God is

accessible behind-the-text in history. Rather, the plain sense of the Old Testament witnesses to the

particularity of God's election of Israel as the hinge point on which God's disclosure of himself turns.192

In the Exodus narrative, when taken seriously in its final form, we see God revealing himself through the

history of Israel's liberation from Egypt. While this is an event of history, its revelatory dimensions are

only accessible through the particularity of Israel's scripture, in its final form. Historical-critical

approaches which go behind-the-text's final form, hoping to 'get at history' may be seeking access to

God’s disclosure of himself, but forfeit the capacity to receive the text as scripture in the process.

At the same time, Seitz does not want to deny the complexity and diversity of the world behind-

the-text, especially in the Old Testament's historical development. Thus in chapter two, Canon & Unity, I

sought to account for Seitz' understanding of the unity of the Old Testament through an illustration of his

work on the book of Isaiah. The multiple authorship that stands behind the book of Isaiah does not sit

easily with Seitz' suggestion that the book offers a coherent message as part of the Old Testament

192 Along with Seitz, I am indebted to R. Kendall Soulen and Scott Bader-Saye for their work on the importance of Israel’s
election. For further reflection on the theological significance of God’s election of Israel see R. Kendall Soulen, The God of
Israel and Christian Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996) & Scott Bader-Saye Church & Israel after Christendom: The
Politics of Election (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1999).
97

canon.193 Yet, by reading Isaiah with the expectation of unity as a text of revelation in Israel's scripture,

Seitz exposes modern assumptions about authorship and development that hinder the book from

functioning in its canonical form. By interpreting Isaiah as a book intended to be read as part of Israel's

scripture, Seitz is able to suggest ways in which its complex and wide-ranging message finds coherence.

Finally, I sought to address Seitz' understanding of the Old Testament as scripture for the

Christian community. Reading the Old Testament together with the New Testament requires some

account of how these two canons come together and relate. Seitz' canonical approach again pays attention

to the final form of Christian scripture as essential. Seitz avoids downplaying the role and authority of the

Old Testament as a historical backdrop or development stage towards the New Testament, but also avoids

giving the New Testament theological priority beyond its own form and content. This is achieved in his

continued stress on the Old Testament's grounding in revelation as Israel's scripture, and the theological

relationship it has with the New Testament. The church receives the Old Testament as scripture through

its confession that Jesus is Lord, as this confession is made in accordance with the Old Testament, which

provides that basis for the only authority the New Testament has.

However, Seitz' practice of reading the Old Testament as Christian scripture did not, in my

judgment, live up to the potential of his methodology. As I noted in chapter 3, Seitz aims much lower

than he could have, or perhaps he is even aiming back into the past.194 While his biblical defense of

creedal language may be correct, and his insights into the exegetical basis of Trinitarian doctrine are

illuminating, Seitz seems to put these readings of scripture in service of a narrow concern with particular

creeds and other threads of Christian speech. While the church is called to speak faithfully of God and all

things in relation to God, this must be understood in a broader practice of reading scripture in

conversation that is open to all of the church's living memory and tradition. Seitz’s approach seeks to

193 John Barton recognizes this challenge to Brevard Child’s canonical approach. “We know (from historical criticism) that the
biblical texts did not in fact have a single author; but the meaning they have as a canon is the meaning they would have had if
they had had a single author.” John Barton, “Canon As Context” in Reading the Old Testament: Method in Biblical Study
(Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996), 102. For Seitz’ attempt to address Barton’s critique of Childs, see
Seitz, “Isaiah and the Search for A New Paradigm: Authorship and Inspiration,” in Word Without End, 122.
194 Richard Coggins reaches a similar conclusion, though from stronger critical stance overall: “Seitz makes many valuable
points, while still giving the overall impression of wishing to live in a pre-critical age…Despite much contemporary illustrative
detail, from the world of information technology, overall this is a book looking firmly backwards.” Richard Coggins, review of
Word Without End: The Old Testament As Abiding Theological Witness, by Christopher R. Seitz, Theology, Vol. 101 1998, 370.
98

uphold scripture’s authority and importance, but his implementation blurs the line between scripture and

the creeds of the early church.195

This takes on further importance as we seek to make sense of the canonical arrangement of the

Old Testament. As I noted in chapter two Seitz’ approach does not account for the role of canonical

arrangement as critique, particularly in the case of how creation motifs play out in Genesis and the

Psalms. Seitz’ exploration of the royal promises in Isaiah and the Psalms reflect a desire to take the text

seriously. At the same time, the search for canonical unity must not overshadow the Christian

community’s need to read the canon as a judge of itself, and not just a legitimating of its own voice.

There are some areas that I have disagreed with Seitz or suggested where further work is required

to develop his approach. However, in the end I believe that Seitz’ canonical approach has advanced the

reading of the Old Testament as Christian scripture. I applaud Seitz for grounding the authority of the Old

Testament in the particularity of Israel's experience and witness to election and revelation. His approach

has inspired and challenged me to read the Old Testament in new ways that bring fresh insight, and has

fed me with a desire to return to the text as an abiding theological witness.

195 Terence Fretheim also notes this concern: “…Seitz virtually collapses the distinction between Scripture and tradition, at least
as far as the early creeds are concerned. This linkage apparently enables him to claim, "The Holy Spirit does not provide fresh
insights," but only equips us to hear what has already been revealed. At times, one gets the impression that, for Seitz, the
formulations of classical theism are the "revelation" with which the Spirit works.” Terence Fretheim, review of Word Without
End: The Old Testament As Abiding Theological Witness, by Christopher R. Seitz. Theology Today 1998, 55 no3 478.
99

BIBLIOGRAPHY
This bibliography is divided into five sections.
1. Primary Works by Christopher R. Seitz. These are works of Seitz that have been referenced in
this study.
2. Secondary Works by Christopher R. Seitz. Other works by Seitz that were part of the research of
this project, but were not referenced in this study.
3. Secondary Literature. The works of other authors referenced in this study.
4. Background Reading. The works of other authors that were part of the research for this project,
but were not referenced in this study.
5. Reviews of Seitz’ Work. Reviews of Seitz’ work that were part of the research for this project, but
were not referenced in this study.

1. Primary Works By Christopher R. Seitz

Seitz, Christopher R.

2001 Figured Out: Typology and Providence in Christian Scripture. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John
Knox Press.

1997 Word Without End: The Old Testament as Abiding Theological Witness. Grand Rapids, Mi.:
Eerdmans Publishing.

1994 “Pluralism and the Lost Art of Christian Apology” in First Things no 44, June-July, 15-18.
Accessed on April 17, 2005 at: http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9406/opinion/opinion.html

1993 Isaiah 1-39: Interpretation – A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. Louisville:
Westminster John Knox Press.

1990 “The Divine Council: Temporal Transition and New Prophecy in the book of Isaiah” Journal of
Biblical Literature 109 n.2: 229-247.

2. Secondary Works By Christopher R. Seitz

Seitz, Christopher R.
----- On Letting a Text ‘Act Like a Man’ The Book of the Twelve: New Horizons for Canonical
Reading, with Hermeneutical Reflections. “Professor Christopher Seitz.” St. Mary’s College.
http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/divinity/Seitz-SBET.doc. (Accessed March 20, 2007).

----- “Fixity and Potential in Isaiah.” Unpublished paper presented at Society of Biblical Literature,
Cambridge. Received from Seitz in June 2004.

2003 “What Lesson Will History Teach? The Book of Twelve as History” in “Behind” the Text:
History and Biblical Interpretation. Carlisle, Cumbria: HarperCollins Canada / Zondervan Book:
443-469.
100

2002 Nicene Christianity: The Future for a New Ecumenism. Grand Rapids, Mich. Baker Book House.

1999 Seitz with K. Greene-McCreight (eds.) Theological Exegesis: Essays in Honor of Brevard S.
Childs. Grand Rapids, Mi.: Eerdmans Publishing.

1999 “Christological Interpretation of Texts and Trinitarian Claims to Truth; An Engagement with
Francis Watson’s ‘Text and Truth’ ” Scottish Journal of Theology 52 n.2: 209-226.

1999 “Old Testament Apocalyptic” Evangel 17 n.3: 74-76.

1993 “Account A and the Annals of Sennacherib: A Reassessment” Journal for the Study of the Old
Testament 58: 47-57.

1993 “The Patience of Job in the Epistle of James” Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Konsequente
Traditionsgeschitchte Switzerland: Universitätsverlag Freiburg Schweiz, 373-382.

1992 “Ezekiel 37:1-14” Interpretation 46: 53-56.

1989 “Job: Full-Structure, Movement, and Interpretation” Interpretation 43: 5-17.

1989 “The Prophet Moses and the Canonical Shape of Jeremiah” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche
Wissenschaft 101 n.1: 3-27.

1988 ed. Reading and Preaching the Book of Isaiah Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 105-126.

1985 “The Crisis of Interpretation over the Meaning of the Exile: A Redactional Study of Jeremiah xxi-
xliii” Vetus Testamentum XXXV, 1: 78-96.

3. Secondary Literature

Bader-Saye, Scott
1999 Church & Israel after Christendom: The Politics of Election. Boulder, Colorado: Westview.

Barton, John
1996 Reading the Old Testament: Method in Biblical Study. Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John
Knox Press.

Childs, Brevard S.
2004 The Struggle to Understand Isaiah as Christian Scripture. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B.
Eerdmans Publishing Co.

Jenson, Robert W.
1997 "The Norms of Theological Judgment" In Systematic Theology: Volume 1 - The Triune God.
New York: Oxford University Press, 23-41.

Levenson, Jon D.
1993 The Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and Historical Criticism: Jews and Christians in Biblical
Studies. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press.
101

Middleton, J. Richard.
2005 The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1. Grand Rapids, Mich: Brazos Press.

Miller, John
2004 How the Bible Came to Be: Exploring the Narrative and Message. Paulist Press: New York.

Scobie, Charles H. H.
2003 The Ways of Our God: An Approach to Biblical Theology. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans
Publishing Company.

Soulen, R. Kendall
1996 The God of Israel and Christian Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.

Tate, W. Randolph
1991 Biblical Interpretation: An Integrated Approach. Peabody Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers.

van Buren, Paul


1990 “On Reading Someone Else’s Mail: The Church and Israel’s Scriptures” in FS R. Redntorff. Die
Hebräische Bibel und ihre zweifache Nachgeschichte. Neukichen-Vluyn: Neukirchener. 595-606.

Webster, John
2003 Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

4. Background Reading

Alter, Robert
1983 The Art of Biblical Narrative. Canada: Harper Collins / Basic Books.

Bacote, Vincent (ed.)


2004 Evangelicals and Scripture: Tradition, Authority and Hermeneutics. Downers Grove, Ill.:
Intervarsity Press.

Barr, James
1999 The Concept of Biblical Theology: An Old Testament Perspective. Minneapolis, Min.: Augsburg
Fortress Publishers.

1970 The Bible in the Modern World. London: SCM Press Ltd.

1964 Old and New in Interpretation: A Study of the Two Testaments. London: SCM Press Ltd.

Bartholomew, Craig G.
2003 “Behind” the Text: History and Biblical Interpretation. Carlisle, Cumbria: HarperCollins Canada
/ Zondervan Book.

Bauckham, Richard
1996 “James and the Gentiles (Acts 15.13-21)” chapter 7 in B. Witherington III ed., History,
Literature and Society in the Book of Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 154-184.

Birch, Bruce C. et. al.


1999 A Theological Introduction to the Old Testament. Nashville: Abingdon Press.
102

Black, C. Clifton
2001 “Stephen E. Fowl, Engaging Scripture: A Model for Theological Interpretation;
K.E. Greene-McCreight, Ad Litteram: How Augustine, Calvin, and Barth Read the ‘Plain Sense’
of Genesis 1-3; Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text? The Bible, the Reader, and
the Morality of Literary Knowledge” reviewed in Pro Ecclesia X.1: 103-107.

Bockmuehl, Marcus
2000 Jewish Law in Gentile Churches: Halakhah and the Beginning of Christian Public Ethics. Grand
Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic.

Brueggemann, Walter
2003 Introduction to the Old Testament: Canon & Christian Imagination. Louisville, Kentucky:
Westminster John Knox Press.

2000 Deep Memory, Exuberant Hope: Contested Truth in a Post-Christian World. Minneapolis, Minn.:
Augsburg Fortress Publishers.

2000 Texts That Linger, Words That Explode: Listening to Prophetic Voices. Minneapolis, Minn.:
Augsburg Fortress Publishers.

Childs, Brevard S.
2000 Isaiah: A Commentary. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press.

1998 “Jesus Christ the Lord and the Scriptures of the Church” in E. Radner and G Sumner, Eds. The
Rule of Faith: Scripture, Canon and Creed in a Critical Age. Harrisburg, Pa: Morehouse, 1-12.

1998 “The One Gospel in Four Witnesses” in E. Radner, G Sumner, Eds. The Rule of Faith: Scripture,
Canon and Creed in a Critical Age. Harrisburg, Pa: Morehouse, 51-63.

1998 “The Nature of the Christian Bible: One Book, Two Testaments” in E. Radner and G Sumner,
Eds. The Rule of Faith: Scripture, Canon and Creed in a Critical Age. Harrisburg, Pa:
Morehouse, 115-125.

1993 Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments: Theological Reflection on the Christian Bible.
Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Publishers

1990 “Analysis of a Canonical Formula: >it shall be recorded for a future generation<” in FS R.
Redntorff. Die Hebräische Bibel und ihre zweifache Nachgeschichte. Neukichen-Vluyn:
Neukirchener. 357-364.

1979 Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture. Philadelphia: Augsburg Fortress Publishers

1970 Biblical Theology in Crisis. Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox Press.

Clements, R.E.
1990 “The Immanuel Prophecy of Isa. 7:10-17 and Its Messianic Interpretation” in FS R. Redntorff.
Die Hebräische Bibel und ihre zweifache Nachgeschichte. Neukichen-Vluyn: Neukirchener. 357-
364.
103

Cummins, S. A.
2004 “The Theological Interpretation of Scripture: Recent Contributions by Stephen Fowl, Christopher
R. Seitz and Francis Watson.” Currents in Biblical Research 2:2, 179-196.

Davis, Ellen F. & Richard B. Hays (eds.)


2003 The Art of Reading Scripture. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing.

Dunn, James D. G.
1988 The Living Word. Philadelphia: Fortress Press.

Dulles, Avery
1992 Models of Revelation. New York: Orbis Books.

Edwards, James R.
1999 “What’s in a Name? Why we shouldn’t call the Old Testament the ‘Hebrew Scriptures’.”
th
Christianity Today 43: Aug 9 : 59-61.

Ellis, E. Earle
1991 The Old Testament in Early Christianity: Canon and Interpretation in the Light of Modern
Research. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr.

Fisher, Eugene J.
1997 “Hebrew Bible or Old Testament: A Response to Christopher Seitz”
Pro Ecclesia VI: 133-136.

Fowl, Stephen E.
1998 Engaging Scripture: A Model for Theological Interpretation. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell
Publishers.

Fretheim, Terence E. & Karlfried Froehlich (joint)


2001 The Bible as Word of God: In a Postmodern Age. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock Publishers.

Gese, Hartmut
1981 Essays on Biblical Theology. Minneapolis: Augsburg Pub. House.

Goldingay, John
2003 Israel’s Gospel: Old Testament Theology. Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press.

1987 Theological Diversity and the Authority of the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B.
Eerdmans Pub. Co.

Greenberg, Moshe
1990 “Three conceptions of the Torah in Hebrew Scriptures.” in FS R. Redntorff. Die Hebräische
Bibel und ihre zweifache Nachgeschichte. Neukichen-Vluyn: Neukirchener. 365-378.

Gilkey, Langdon B.
1961 “Cosmology, Ontology, and the Travail of Biblical Language” Journal of Religion 41, 194-205.

Hafemann, Scott J.
2002 Biblical Theology: Retrospect and Prospect. Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press.
104

Harder, Lydia Marlene


1998 Obedience, Suspicion and the Gospel of Mark: A Mennonite-feminist Exploration of Biblical
Authority. Waterloo, On.: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Pr (Studies in women and religion).

Haynes, Stephen R.
1995 Reluctant Witnesses: Jews and the Christian Imagination. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John
Knox Press.

Hays, Richard B
2002 “Can the Gospels teach us How to Read the Old Testament?” Pro Ecclesia XI.4: 402-418.

1989 Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Hengel, Martin
2002 The Septuagint as Christian Scripture: Its Prehistory and the Problem of its Canon. New York,
USA: T. & T. Clark Publishers, Ltd.

Holmgren, Frederick C.
1999 The Old Testament and the Significance of Jesus: Embracing Change — Maintaining Christian
Identity: The Emerging Center in Biblical Scholarship. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans
Publishing.

1994 “Israel, the Prophets, and the Book of Jonah – The Rest of the Story: The Formation of the
Canon” Currents in Theology and Mission 21:127-132.

Harrison, William H.
2002 “Prudence and Custom: Revisiting Hooker on Authority.” Anglican Theological Review. 84
n.4:897-913.

Hillmer, Mark
1998 “Faith in the Old Testament: Pentateuch and Prophets for Pentecost” Word & World. 28 n.3: 318-
324.

Jenson, Robert W.
2002 “The Bible and the Trinity.” Pro Ecclesia XI.3: 329-339.

Kathleen Cunningham, Mary


2002 What Is Theological Exegesis?: Interpretation and Use of Scripture in Barth’s Doctrine of
Election. Valley Forge, Pa.: Morehouse Pub Co.

Kraftchick, Steven I., Charles D. Myers Jr., Ben C. Ollenburger (eds.)


1995 Biblical Theology: Problems and Perspectives: In Honor of J. Christiaan Beker. Nashville,
Tenn.: Abingdon Press.

Leinhard, Joseph T.
2000 “Doctores Ecclesiae – Origen and The Crisis of the Old Testament in The Early Church” Pro
Ecclesia IX.3: 355-367.
105

Levine, Amy-Jill
2000 “Jewish-Christian Relations from the ‘Other Side’: A Response to Webb, Lodahl and White”
Quarterly Review 20, 297-304.

Lindbeck, George
1987 “The Story Shaped Church: Critical Exegesis and Theological Interpretation” in Garret Green &
Hans W. Frei (eds.) Scriptural Authority and Narrative Interpretation Philadelphia: Fortress
Press.

Linebarger John M.
1991 “History Meets Theology: Three Recent Books about the Canon – a review article; F. F. Bruce,
The Canon of Scripture; Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: its Origin,
Development, and Significance; Lee Martin McDonald, The Formation of the Christian Biblical
Canon” reviewed in Crux XXVII.3: 34-37.

Macdonald, Lee Martin & James A. Sanders (eds.)


2002 The Canon Debate: On the Origins and Formation of the Bible Peabody. Mass.: Hendrickson.

Meade, David G.
1987 Pseudonymity and Canon: An Investigation into the Relationship of Authorship and Authority in
Jewish and Earliest Christian Tradition. Grand Rapids, Mich.: W. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co.

Nelson, Richard D.
1998 “Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy- by Walter Brueggemann”
reviewed in Word & World. 28 n.3: 318-324.

Sawyer, John F. A.
1996 The Fifth Gospel: Isaiah in the History of Christianity. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Van Campenhausen, Hans


1972 The Formation of the Christian Bible. Philadelphia: Fortress Press.

Watson, Francis
2002 Text, Church and World: Biblical Interpretation in Theological Perspective. Grand Rapids,
Mich.: Eerdmans Pub. Co.

1999 “The Old Testament as Christian Scripture: A Response to Professor Seitz”


Scottish Journal of Theology, 52:2, 227-232.

1997 Text and Truth: Redefining Biblical Theology Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Pub. Co.

Yeago, David S.
1994 “The New Testament and Nicene Dogma: A Contribution to the Recovery of Theological
Exegesis.” Pro Ecclesia 3, 154-162.

Zerbe, Gordon (ed.)


2001 Reclaiming the Old Testament: Essays in Honour of Waldemar Janzen. Winnipeg, Mann.: CMBC
Publications.
106

5. Reviews Of Christopher R. Seitz’ Work

Anderson, Gary A.
1999 Review of Word Without End: The Old Testament as Abiding Theological Witness by
Christopher R. Seitz. Modern Theology, 15: 378-380.

Coggins, Richard
1998 Review of Word Without End: The Old Testament as Abiding Theological Witness by Christopher
R. Seitz. Theology, 101: 369-370.

Cummins, S.A.
2002 Review of Figured Out: Typology and Providence in Christian Scripture. By Christopher R.
Seitz. Anglican Theological Review, 84 n.4: 1048-1051.

De Groot, Christina
2000 Review of Word Without End: The Old Testament as Abiding Theological Witness by Christopher
R. Seitz, Christian Scholar’s Review, 29:3, 617-618.

Fretheim, Terence E.
1998 Review of Word Without End: The Old Testament as Abiding Theological Witness by Christopher
R. Seitz, Theology Today, 55: 478-482.

Köchert, Matthias
2000 Review of Word Without End: The Old Testament as Abiding Theological Witness by Christopher
R. Seitz. Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 112 n.2: 150.

Johnson, Jannell
1999 Review of Word Without End: The Old Testament as Abiding Theological Witness by Christopher
R. Seitz. Koinonia: Princeton Theological Seminary Graduate Forum XI.1: 143-145.

Mays, James L.
1999 Review of Word Without End: The Old Testament as Abiding Theological Witness by Christopher
R. Seitz. Interpretation 53: 187-188.

Moberly, R. W. L.
1998 Review of Word Without End: The Old Testament as Abiding Theological Witness by Christopher
R. Seitz. The Expository Times 109 n.12: 375-376.

Murphy, Roland E.
1998 Review of Word Without End: The Old Testament as Abiding Theological Witness by Christopher
R. Seitz. The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 60: 545-546.

Nobel, Paul R.
1998 Review of Word Without End: The Old Testament as Abiding Theological Witness by Christopher
R. Seitz. Horizons in Biblical Theology 20: 162-163.

Patton, Corrine L.
2000 Review of Word Without End: The Old Testament as Abiding Theological Witness by Christopher
R. Seitz. Pro Ecclesia IX.1: 114-115.
107

Polk, Timothy
2000 Review of Word Without End: The Old Testament as Abiding Theological Witness by Christopher
R. Seitz. Anglican Theological Review 82 n.1: 191-193.

Wilson, John
1998 “The Word That Has No End: Theology and Biblical Studies in the life of the Church.” review of
Word Without End: The Old Testament as Abiding Theological Witness by Christopher R. Seitz.
Books & Culture 4:4, 36-37.

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