A. J. Jacobs gave what is now a well-known TED talk on My Year of Living the Bible in December 2007. He turned that speech into a book entitled: The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible (click to open). This book was on the NYT bestseller list for three months.
A. J. Jacobs did this experiment for one year. Here is the reason for his experiment: “I'm concerned about the rise of religious fundamentalism, and people who say they take the Bible literally, which is, according to some polls, as high as 45 or 50 percent of America.[1]
So, I decided, what if you really did take the Bible literally? I decided to take it to its logical conclusion and take everything in the Bible literally, without picking and choosing.”
Here is his first takeaway from one year of seeking to prove the Bible cannot be taken literally: “The first is, thou shalt not take the Bible literally. This became very, very clear, early on. Because if you do, then you end up acting like a crazy person and stoning adulterers.”
God’s chosen people in the OT was the nation of Israel. When Jesus came and offered the kingdom and himself as king to the nation, Israel rejected him. In response, Jesus postponed the kingdom and set aside Israel temporarily. The church today is the people of God not the nation of Israel. While God commanded capital punishment for certain sins in the OT with the nation of Israel, God does not command the church to put to death its members for any sin. God takes sin just as seriously today as He did in the Old Testament. According to 1 Corinthians 5, the church does not stone adulterers in this age but rather the church disciplines them.
Progressive Revelation is necessary to understand God’s Word
Peter before Acts 10 could not eat Boganles' ham biscuits or even his mother's. Nor could he eat "endless shrimp" at Red Lobster or Dave's BBQ. Why do we not circumcise all baby boys on the eighth day for spiritual reasons? Why do we not lobby for capital punishment for all church members guilty of running around on their mates?
In the Old Testament pork was forbidden to be eaten. The New Testament reversed that in Acts 10. God said to Peter, "Rise, Peter; kill and eat" all the country ham biscuits you want. There is no Bible diet that is more spiritual than another.
Progressive revelation, according to Roy Zuck is the Biblical truth that "God progressively revealed more truths about many subjects."[1] The classics on hermeneutics (Biblical interpretation) affirm this important principle of rightly dividing the Word of truth. Milton Terry wrote in his Biblical Hermeneutics,
It is impossible to trace the record of these ten generations of the Book of Genesis without observing the steady progress of divine revelation .... With each new series of generations some new promise is given, or some great purpose of God is brought to light."[2]
The reason we can eat pork and other forbidden "unclean" meats in the Old Testament is because God changed 2000 years of tradition in Acts 10 so Peter would no longer consider Gentiles as unclean and take the Gospel to them.
Progressive revelation also reveals that there are important distinctions in Scripture. One major distinction is that the nation of Israel was the people of God in the OT but the Church is the people of God today. Sins that were capital offenses in the OT with the nation are not capital offenses in the church because the church is not a nation. The same sins are still to be taken seriously.
Progressive revelation means God added to His revealed truth in previous Scripture
For example, Wayne Grudem writes about the doctrine of the Trinity, that "the doctrine of the Trinity is progressively revealed in Scripture" and "more complete revelation of the Trinity is in the New Testament."[3] Isaiah 48:16 and 63:7-10 are glimpses of the three Persons in the Old Testament while the New Testament is replete.
Another example is the doctrine of the Church. This doctrine is not in the Old Testament. Paul will explain this new doctrine in Ephesians 2:11-3:13. The doctrine of the Church is a Biblical mystery or a truth heretofore not revealed but now revealed by God. There is no rapture in the Old Testament. Christ gave some teaching on the rapture in John 14:1-6. Paul, however, gives the fullest description of the rapture in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18. The last word on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is in the Epistles. Before Pentecost, the Holy Spirit did not permanently indwell believers nor were believers baptized by the Holy Spirit. Jesus said, "For he dwells with you, and shall be in you ... at that day (Day of Pentecost in Acts 2) you shall know that I am in my Father, and you in me (Baptism of the Holy Spirit), and I in you (Indwelling of the Holy Spirit)" (John 14:17 and 20). Paul gives the last phase of progressive revelation on the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in Romans 8:9: "Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his" and the baptism of the Holy Spirit in 1 Corinthians 12:13. Zuck says this about progressive revelation,
This is not to suggest that what was recorded in earlier portions of the Bible was imperfect and that the later revelations were perfect. Nor does it suggest that earlier portions were in error and the later portions were truthful .... Recognizing this progress of revelation means that the interpreter will be careful not read back into the Old Testament the New."[4]
I recently heard a chapel speaker say, “We read the Bible from the front (the Old Testament) to the back (the New Testament), but we study the Bible from the back (New Testament) to the front (Old Testament).” This violates progressive revelation. Another warning must be issued. Progressive revelation doesn’t mean we can change the meaning of Old Testament covenants with Israel to be partially or completely fulfilled by the church today. God has changed the way He is dealing with the new people of God today, the church, as with our being permitted to eat pork, but He has not altered His promises to Israel. Progressive revelation is not the same as complementary hermeneutics that changes the Davidic Covenant to say the church has already started allegorically fulfilling part of the promises but has not yet seen all the promises literally fulfilled. For example, progressive dispensationalism has Jesus now sitting on David’s throne in heaven, which demands an allegorizing hermeneutic, but all the promises have not yet been fulfilled as when Jesus literally sits on David’s throne in the future kingdom which flips back to a normative hermeneutics. For further study consider Robert Lightner’s Progressive Dispensationalism in Conservative Theological Journal [5] and Robert Thomas’ The Hermeneutics of Progressive Dispensationalism in Progressive Dispensationalism: An Analysis of the Movement and Defense of Traditional Dispensationalism.[6]
Progressive revelation also means that God has not changed the basis of salvation but He has changed the content of faith
Charles Ryrie explains, "The basis of salvation in every age is the death of Christ; the requirement for salvation in every age is faith; the object of faith in every age is God; the content of faith changes in the various dispensations."[7] Ryrie quotes from the Dallas Seminary doctrinal statement on this aspect of progressive revelation relevant to salvation:
We believe that according to the 'eternal purpose' of God (Eph. 3:11) salvation in the divine reckoning is always 'by grace, through faith,' and rests upon the shed blood of Christ. We believe that God has always been gracious, regardless of the ruling dispensation, but that man has not at all times been under an administration or stewardship of grace as is true in the present dispensation .... We believe ... that the principle of faith was prevalent in the lives of all the Old Testament saints. However, we believe that it was historically impossible that they should have had as the conscious object of their faith the incarnate, crucified Son, the Lamb of God (John 1:29), and that it is evident that they did not comprehend as we do that the sacrifices depicted the person and work of Christ. (Article V) (page 116).
In Genesis 15:6, Abraham believed God and God imputed to him righteousness. Paul quotes this verse in Romans 4:1-3 to prove his doctrine of justification by faith. But what was the content of Abraham's faith in Genesis 15:1-5? The revelation that God was going to multiply the seed of Israel as the sand of the sea. What is the content of our faith today in order to be justified by faith? Paul answers clearly in Romans 4:24, "But for us also, to whom it shall be imputed if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead."
Progressive revelation is absolutely necessary to properly understand and apply God's Word to our lives. Probably, most of the readers of this chapter are grounded in God’s Word. But, are you still studying God’s Word to feed your hungry soul?
Homer Kent (1958) in his commentary, The Pastoral Epistles, commented on Paul’s request that Timothy bring books with him (2 Tim 4:13) when he comes to see him in prison before he is martyred for his faith. Kent wrote: “Books are tools. The quality of some sermons heard today makes one suspicious that some preachers haven’t read a serious book since they graduated from seminary.” [8] Blackaby in his Spiritual Leadership provides the following example from the ministry of D. L. Moody:
At the apex of D. L. Moody’s success, he realized he had grown stale. He was leading enormously successful evangelistic campaigns in Great Britain and the United States, and he had become one of the most famous religious leaders of his day, but he had grown spiritually and intellectually malnourished. He had been continually preaching, but he had not been learning. Moody’s biographer, John Pollock, notes, “At the moment of reaching a height of influence in the United States he stood in danger of spiritual insolvency.” Moody realized he had told people everything he knew and that he had nothing new to say. Moody confessed: “My lack of education has always been a great disadvantage to me. I shall suffer from it as long as I live.” Moody moved to Northfield and refused to accept major speaking engagements until he felt he had studied enough to have fresh, new insights from God’s Word to share with people. He set a rigid schedule that included six hours of study every morning. Even after he began traveling once again, Moody carried a small library with him. He was determined that despite the press of people and responsibilities upon his time, he could not afford to stop learning and still be effective as a spiritual leader.[9]
Moody went from a 17-year-old who could not find 1 Timothy 5:12 to a famous preacher who preached to thousands to a man of God who had stopped studying to a repentant believer who once again hungered and thirsted after righteousness. Where are you in this spectrum?
Every believer can interpret God’s Word when he/she sits under Holy Spirit gifted Bible teachers and pastors. Every believer can understand and apply God’s Word to his/her life by these five principles of interpretation in his/her personal Bible study. Therefore “Study to show yourself approved.”
[1] A. J. Jacobs, The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible (Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition, 2009), 6.
[2] Roy Zuck, Basic Bible Interpretation (Wheaton, IL: Victor, 1991), 271.
[3] Melton S. Terry, Biblical Hermeneutics (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1890), 568.
[4] Wayne Grudem, (1994). Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1994), 226, 230.
[5] Roy Zuck, Basic Bible Interpretation (Wheaton, IL: Victor, 1991), 73.
[6] Robert Lightner, (Progressive Dispensationalism in Conservative Theological Journal, 2000, 4, 11.
[7] Thomas, Robert L., Evangelical Hermeneutics: The New Versus the Old (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 2002).
[8] Charles Ryrie, Basic Theology (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1999), 115.
[9] Home Kent, Pastoral Epistles, (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1958), 301.
[10] Henry & Richard Blackably, Spiritual Leadership: Moving People on to God’s Agenda (Nashville, TN: B & H Publishing Group, 2011), 330.