Alan S. Bandy and Benjamin L. Merkle. Understanding
Prophecy: A Biblical-Theological Approach.
Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2015.
See here to buy the book.
Understanding
Prophecy is about prophecy in the Hebrew Bible and the New
Testament. It looks at prophecies that
were fulfilled historically, as well as Messianic prophecies: prophecies in the
Hebrew Bible that Alan Bandy and Benjamin Merkle believe predicted or
foreshadowed Jesus Christ, and prophecies in the New Testament about Jesus
Christ’s return. Bandy and Merkle also
present their contrasting perspectives on the millennium (i.e., whether it will
be a literal future reign of Christ on earth or is a present spiritual reality)
and the salvation of the Jews in Romans 11 (whether a large number of ethnic
Jews will convert to Christ, or only a remnant).
Overall, Bandy and Merkle were judicious in their
discussions, as they discussed the positives and negatives of a variety of
views and interpretations. The topics in
which they explored and critiqued different views included whether Jesus was predicting
that his second coming would occur within the generation of his contemporaries
(Mark 13, Matthew 24), and whether Jesus in Matthew 24:40 was suggesting a
pretribulational rapture (Bandy and Merkle somewhat beat a dead horse in
arguing “no,” but they are convincing).
I have some critiques, though.
First of all, Bandy and Merkle contend that many
prophecies in the Hebrew Bible predict or foreshadow Christ, and they note
examples in which the New Testament interprets those prophecies in a non-literal
fashion. They contend that the focus of
prophecies in the Hebrew Bible on Israel’s restoration from exile and revival
as a nation are not always literal but are often about Christ’s work or
heaven. As an assessment of how New
Testament authors interpreted prophecies in the Hebrew Bible, that is probably
accurate, though I would note possible exceptions that Bandy and Merkle should
have addressed. I think of Jesus’
statement in Matthew 19:28 that the disciples would judge the twelve tribes of
Israel, which seems (to me) to be faithful to a literal interpretation of the
Hebrew Bible’s prophecies that focus on ethnic Israel. In terms of what the prophecies in the Hebrew
Bible were originally intended to communicate, I doubt that their authors meant
them to be symbolic of Christian themes.
If they were, then that raises some questions. Was God being misleading by making
predictions that seemed to be about ethnic Israel’s restoration, when actually
they were not about that? And why would
God in the Hebrew Bible start talking about Christ or Christian themes when
addressing ethnic Israel’s trials and dilemmas?
What was the relevance of that to Israel’s historical situation, in
short? Bandy and Merkle should have
tackled these issues more than they did.
Second, in discussing Isaiah 7:14, Bandy and Merkle
in one place maintain that it is a type of Jesus Christ’s virgin birth, rather
than a direct prediction of it. Bandy
and Merkle realize that Isaiah 7:14, in its original context, appears to relate
to the time of Isaiah rather than the distant future, the time of the
historical Jesus. What they should have
done, however, was discuss how Isaiah 7:14 in its original context could have foreshadowed
Jesus Christ. How did the story in
Isaiah 7 foreshadow the story of Jesus’ birth?
Are there similar themes in the two stories? Bandy and Merkle maintain that a typological
interpretation does not do violence to a literal interpretation of a text but
is consistent with it, on some level. They
should have shown how that was the case in terms of the Gospel of Matthew’s
interpretation of Isaiah 7:14. Their
discussion of Isaiah 7:14, as it stands, makes it look like they were superficially
trying to take the easy way out, appealing to typology to solve a challenge to
a Christian claim rather than fleshing that alleged typology out.
Third, Bandy and Merkle say that the New Testament
maintains that Jesus inaugurated the end times, and they point to examples of
New Testament authors presuming that they themselves were living in the end
times. For Bandy and Merkle, the end
times have been with us since the time of Christ’s first advent, meaning that
we have been in the end times for about two thousand years. In some places, however, Bandy and Merkle
seem to use “end times” to refer to the time that is right before the end of
the world. Bandy and Merkle may want to
save Jesus and early Christians from the possibility that they envisioned an
imminent eschatology, which did not historically materialize, at least not
literally. My question would be whether Bandy
and Merkle, in effect, make the term “end times” a meaningless term, if it can
encompass two thousand years.
Fourth, Bandy and Merkle did not really interact
with prophecies in the Hebrew Bible that many scholars would claim went
unfulfilled (as in the prophets predicting one thing, and something different
happened). I think of Ezekiel’s
prophecies about Tyre and Egypt. Bandy
and Merkle should have wrestled with that in their discussion of the historical
fulfillment of prophecies.
I received a complimentary review copy of this book
from Kregel Academic, in exchange for an honest review.