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The diversity within the Bible makes it hard to navigate. Between the individual books and the two parts of the Bible, Old and New Testaments, there is diversity in literary styles, themes, writing styles, historical contexts, and messages. How does it all fit together? How can we possibly navigate through a maze of such complexity and diversity?

    Making matters worse, Dispensational theology has thrown a grenade into the biblical story.[1] This blast has ripped the Bible apart. Dispensationalism is a system of interpretation that inserts an artificial discontinuity in the story of Scripture and mechanically attempts to piece it back together. But this mechanical construction is foreign to the Bible’s interpretation of itself. The result is something like the hideous toys that Sid constructs in Toy Story. Though a newcomer in terms of church history, Dispensationalism has dominated the way Christians read their Bibles in the West.

    However, the Bible must determine how we interpret its own diversity. The writer of Hebrews takes Christians to the garden of God’s revelation and explains how supernatural revelation organically progresses from seed to full bloom. The seed looks nothing like the plant when it is fully mature. Each stage of growth contains diversity and differences from the previous stage. The seed is incomplete compared to the fully ripened plant because the seed is the shadow of the good things to come. Yet the seed contained everything needed for the plant to grow up into maturity. The stages of the plant grow out of the seed. There are no artificial stages mechanically forced on the plant. The diversity of stages is within the unity of the singular plant, which began in the seed. In other words, the diversity within the Bible is a diversity within unity.

    Hebrews 1:1-2a gives us a summary of God’s supernatural revelation from Genesis to Revelation and teaches us how to interpret the Bible’s diversity within its unity as a single story. Wrestling with the diversity within the Bible and growing up under Dispensational theology, Hebrews 1:1-2a helped me put my Bible back together. My aim in this article is to help you put your Bible together as one organic story with Jesus Christ as the integrating focus.

 

Hebrews 1:1-2a: Two Covenant Stages with Christ at the Center

The writer of Hebrews opens his epistle with no formal introduction. He is intensely concerned that his Jewish Christian readers grasp the progressive character[2] of God’s supernatural revelation in its two covenantal stages, with the Son of God at the center. If the Hebrews are going to understand the nature of their fellowship with God in the superior New Covenant, then they must understand how the story of Christ moves towards (Old Testament) and out of (New Testament) Jesus Christ!

 

Hebrews 1:1-2a ESV, “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.”

 

The single story of Scripture unfolds in two distinct yet inseparable stages which are organically related. These two stages are the Old and New Testaments. The writer of Hebrews explains the two stages of this singular story with four contrasts.

 

1. The contrast of the redemptive time- “Long ago” and “in these last days.”

2. The contrast of the messenger- “by the prophets” and “by his Son.”

3. The contrast of the recipients- “to our fathers” and “to us.”

4. The contrast of the fullness of revelation- “at many times and in many ways, God spoke” and “he has spoken.”

 

Both stages are God's supernatural revelation, but the first stage (Old Testament) is an organically related, preparatory picture of the fullness of the second stage (New Testament). The Old was clothed in types and shadows that pointed to the good things to come (Heb. 9:11; 10:1), but the New reveals the full mystery of Christ as the substance of the shadowy Old revelation (Col. 2:17).

    God spoke in the Old Testament at many times through a variety of prophets. God made known His supernatural revelation to them in a variety of ways. God’s revelation to the prophets does not just refer to the prophetic books of the Old Testament, but encompasses the whole Old Testament period. This testament’s story was in promissory form and incomplete by itself.

    But in the New Testament, God has spoken with a finality and fullness in the last days through His Son. The eternal Son is the ideal and final revealer of God. His nature is superior to the Old Testament prophets because He is the Word of God in flesh. His office as Messiah is superior to the Old Testament office of prophet because He is the promised Messiah and the substance of the Old Testament prophets’ message. He brings the fullest message from God as the God-man. As God, He is the “exact representation” of the Father (Heb. 1:3). As man, He was “made like his brothers in all things” (Heb. 2:17).

    The “many times” and “many ways” of the Old Testament revelation are united in God’s Son. He is the integrating focus and center of all Scripture. His Word in the New Testament finalizes, completes, and synthesizes God’s revelation in the Old Testament. The New Testament is the fulfillment of the promissory form of the Old Testament. Furthermore, the speech of “His Son” spoken of in Hebrews 1:2a is not simply the direct quotations of Jesus in the Gospels. This speech is the whole New Testament for the Spirit of Christ teaches the apostles the depths and significance of Christ’s work for God’s people (Jn. 16:13-14). The special revelation given to the apostles and their close associates through inspiration comes to the church from the Father, speaking through His exalted Son, by the sent Spirit of Christ. 

    The writer of Hebrews takes Christians to the garden of God’s revelation and explains how supernatural revelation organically progresses as one diverse, unified Christocentric story from promise to fulfillment. This is why Geerhardus Vos says, “The whole organism of revelation lies in these words.”[3] This short text disarms the artificial and mechanical storylines of Dispensationalism, and equips Christians to engage with the completed canon of Scripture from the vantage point of New Testament finality.

 

The Theological Consequences of Hebrews 1:1-2a

By way of concluding our engagement with this text, I want to lay out five theological consequences that should regulate how we read the Bible. Each of the subsequent theological consequences will cohere with the Analogy of Scripture, which maintains that Scripture must determine how Scripture is to be read.

 

1. The history of special revelation unfolds in two stages or two testaments, which are inseparable from their covenantal counterparts: the Old and New Covenants. You cannot understand the single story of Scripture apart from the covenants of Scripture. This is especially true when considering the Old and New Covenants, which stand as the two dominant covenants in the unfolding of God’s Word. 

2. God’s Son is the consummate focus, unity, and finality of this history of special revelation. Neither the nation of Israel, the physical land of Canaan, nor the physical temple in Jerusalem is the focus of the Old Testament. To read the Old Testament in this way is to allow the types to eclipse the substance.

3. This Christ-centered redemptive history is marked by diversity with unity. This diversity is not an enemy to unity, but rather magnifies and accentuates the unity of Scripture.  

4. The Old Testament cannot be rightly read apart from Christ and the finality of the New Testament. The New is concealed in the Old, and the Old is revealed in the New. The fullness and finality of the New Testament requires that we read the Old in light of the New. Nehemiah Coxe state this point concisely in this way, “The best interpreter of the Old Testament is the Holy Spirit speaking to us in the new.”[4]

5. God’s supernatural revelation has ceased and is completed in the Bible. 

 

These five principles will equip you to say no to artificial storylines and to read the Scriptures in the way God intended.  

 

Work Cited:

[1] It is beyond the focus of this article to expound the tenets of this theological system. I am aware that there are differences between Classic, Modified/Revised, and Progressive Dispensationalism. Progressive is a far healthier version than Classic. However, all variations of Dispensationalism are guilty of inserting an artificial and mechanical structure on Scripture that undermines the Bible’s storyline.

[2] The word “progressive” is not a denial that the whole Bible is the infallible and inspired Word of God. Rather, it is the recognition of the historical and unfolding character of God’s revelation in Scripture.

 [3] Geerhardus Vos, The Teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1956), 70.

[4] Nehemiah Coxe and John Owen, Covenant Theology from Adam to Christ, eds Ronald D. Miller, James M. Renihan, and Francisco Orozco (Palmdale, CA.: RBAP, 2005), 36.

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About the Author:  John Sweat Jr. is a pastor of Heritage Reformed Baptist Church in Fayetteville, Georgia and author of Simple Truths for Communion with God: An Experiential Commentary of the Baptist Catechism.