Typology, Christology And Prosopological Exegesis: Implicit Narratives In Christological Texts -- By: William James Dernell

Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 24:1 (Spring 2020)
Article: Typology, Christology And Prosopological Exegesis: Implicit Narratives In Christological Texts
Author: William James Dernell


Typology, Christology And Prosopological Exegesis: Implicit Narratives In Christological Texts

William James Dernell

William James Dernell is a PhD student at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky, where he also earned his Masters of Divinity. Jim is the Minister of Music at Clifton Baptist Church, Louisville, Kentucky. Jim and his wife, Pam, are the parents of two children.

Introduction

When reading the Old Testament (OT), several early church Fathers believed that they could detect the voice of the Father, the Son, or other characters in the divine economy.1 One of the earliest descriptions of this phenomenon comes from Justin Martyr:

But when you hear the utterances of the prophets spoken as it were personally, you must not suppose that they are spoken by the inspired [i.e. “inspired ones”] themselves, but by the Divine Word who moves them. For sometimes He declares things that are to come to pass, in the manner of one who foretells the future; sometimes He speaks as from the person of God the Lord and Father of all; sometimes as from the person of Christ; sometimes as from the person of the people answering the Lord or His Father, just as you can see even in your own writers, one man being the writer of the whole, but introducing the persons who converse (1 Apol 36:1–2).2

Here, Justin Martyr explains to his readers that, in addition to predicting the future, the Divine Word can speak as other characters (e.g., the Father, Son, the church, etc.) through the prophet. This practice has recently been termed prosopological exegesis (PE)3 and a growing number of scholars suggest that this practice extends back to the New Testament (NT) itself.4 It is argued, for example, that when Peter quotes Psalm 16 in his Pentecost sermon (Acts 2:25–28), he understood the phrase, “For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor will you give your holy one to see corruption,”5 as not merely a prophecy about Christ’s resurrection (Acts 2:30–31), but Christ himself speaking through David about his own future resurrection.6 Some have disagreed with this assessment, however, and doubt that NT authors used prosopological exegesis.

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