Prophecy & 'Fulfilment'?

1.  Some people think in terms of two categories: 'prophecy' and 'fulfilment'. Like the meaning of all prophecy was concrete and single and so was its fulfilment. 

Some details in some Bible Prophecies were indeed like that. But the New Testament didn't always only treat all Old Testament prophecies with those two categories. It sometimes treated Prophecy a bit differently to that. 

2.  Others think of 'Prophecy' and 'fulfilment' plus 'double fulfilment'. But that's not precisely what the New Testament was always doing with all Old Testament prophecies either.

For example, when David wrote that 'they pierced my hands and feet'; and that God would not allow his flesh to decompose, the New Testament didn't say that it was in the first instance about David himself and then that it was also about Jesus in some sort of 'double fulfilment' kind of way. No, Peter said 'David was NOT talking about himself'. It was about Jesus, period!

Same with the prophecy of the virgin birth. There's only ever been one virgin birth, hasn't there? So Jesus' birth by the virgin Mary wasn't a 'double' fulfilment: it was 'the' one and only fulfilment! 

A problem with claiming a 'double fulfilment' hermeneutic, without explaining it better, is that it could leave open the possibility of a third fulfilment. In fact, some people are already expecting a third fulfilment of some of Daniel's prophecies (the first fulfilment having been, they claim, in the time of the Maccabees; the second, at the hands of the Romans; and an alleged ultimate and third fulfilment in future with the involvement of an 'Antichrist'). So why not a fourth fulfilment or fifth or sixth? It would mean we could hardly ever be sure that a current fulfilment is definitely the last. 

Another problem with it would imply that other themes in the same prophecy must also see a repeat fulfilment today - but in some cases that would be tantamount to reversing the achievement of the cross.

For example if we claim that a prophecy which predicted the return of Jews to their land is seeing a 'double fulfilment' today, it would imply that other themes in the same prophecy must see a repeat fulfilment too, themes such as the nations taking flocks of rams to the altar in the temple - but that would nullify the achievement of the cross. So even if it's correct to see some sort of relationship between the modernday return of Jews to their land and those ancient prophecies, simply citing 'double fulfilment' can't adequately explain the link. 

No, the New Testament was doing something different than that, with Old Testament prophecy. The New Testament unpacked Prophecy a little differently to that. 

The New Testament was claiming a certain story. And it explained Prophecy in such a way that Prophecy was now seen as having touched on all the elements which ended-up comprising that story.

3.  The story claimed in the New Testament was that JESUS - and His cross and resurrection - was the pinnacle of Prophecy and the Law and types and promises. Certain things were achieved by the cross - and it was irreversible, for the better. And the revelation of the New Testament was that promises and prophecies had been fulfilled, but in two comings of the Messiah, not one. Inauguration (already), and completion (not yet). 

The Apostles came to see that timeline and all of those elements and their outcomes and aftermath, in Old Testament prophecy. So that's how Old Testament prophecy is to be unpacked! In accordance with the Apostles' doctrine - the story the New Testament is telling us!

That is, Prophecy included some concrete, single predictions and their one-and-only fulfilment; it also included themes some of which are timeless and ongoing, and it also spoke of achievements as a result of which things would forever be irreversibly changed for the better. Some details in prophecy were written in prose, others described vision and included imagery which required interpretation. 

But not private interpretation. Everything was declared by the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. John the Baptist was a witness. The Apostles declared it. The Old Testament must be 'rightly divided' Paul said - and the way we do that is in light of Jesus the Messiah - His cross and resurrection - and the significance given to it in the gospels and in the sermons and epistles of the apostles. 

The 'gospel' was Prophecy-explained. So if we don't interpret Prophecy in accordance with the apostles' doctrine as our rule, we could end-up making 'prophecy' something separate to the 'gospel'. We could think that some details in ancient prophecies are meant to be repeated, when really they're not (like Levitical worship). 

If we don't distinguish between a historical timeline and the aftermath of a world-changing event, we could downplay the significance of the cross and of the gospel. We could drag details into the future which belong in the past. That could develop a wrong picture of the future. Our focus in the present could shift. The way we understand the present could shift. 

We could confuse shadow for substance; type for the ultimate; physical metaphor for spiritual reality; a historical timeline for the aftermath of an achievement - and it can also cause some to not see when and how the physical fit into that process, as if the physical never mattered. It did matter, and some of it still does, to the extent it was meant to matter, and in the way it was always going to.

The gospel meant that certain things changed forever. That came about in an exact historical order. Other things weren't ever revoked by the gospel. But how that's expressed now may have changed. While some things didn't change.

All of that can't be explained adequately enough by simply claiming the categories of 'prophecy', and 'fulfilment' or 'double fulfilment' - all of the elements of history, and of the old and new covenants, and of the reality of Jesus, and of the significance of His cross and resurrection, and His first and second comings are each touched-on in the Old Testament. 

So it's like reading an eye chart. The New Testament described for us how it's all meant to look, even the bottom line. The problem is that some have read the Old Testament through a lens that blurred some of it. But Jesus and the Holy Spirit - the gospel; the New Testament - tells us how it really is, how it really looks.

Answering N. T. Wright's Critics

I've only read about 2,000 pages of N. T. Wright books so far, and only listened to a handful of podcasts and videos - which is only a small proportion of his works. So I can't claim to be an expert on what he believes.  But my very non-academic impression so far is that Wright doesn't seem to flat disagree that there is an action which God does to individual human hearts which saves them (what we might have called 'justification'); only, he seems to think Paul's main focus when using the term 'justified' probably wasn't mainly to describe that individual, spiritual action. Rather, I think Wright may think that in using the term 'justified', Paul was probably mainly reassuring the early community of believers in Jesus that they were indeed the people whom God deemed to be 'in the right' - even ahead of the ultimate Day of reckoning - without them needing to become proselytes to Judaism - a body of people identified simply by the faith of Jesus. And I think Wright seems to understand Paul as a person who came to understand that the Lord Jesus Christ - and His cross and resurrection, and second coming - was and is the fulfilment of the hope of first century (in Paul's case, Pharisaic) Judaism (a hope which extended beyond the salvation of individual souls to include also the resurrection of the body and even the restoration of God's good creation itself).  So the 'gospel', I think Wright believes Paul to have been saying, was the glad announcement that that larger hope or story - Israel's story - the story of a fully restored creation, was now being fulfilled. It was a story in which, as it turned out, the cross and resurrection of Jesus indeed was central - a story which indeed had individuals being acted-upon inwardly and spiritually and then becoming themselves actors in the bigger story. It had a personal and spiritual plot, yes; but the plot also had a corporate plot, and will ultimately include the physical body and even the whole created world in its plot. The 'gospel' was the announcement that the glad ending to that long story had now been inaugurated in a sense, even though it is yet to be culminated at Christ's Second Coming. All of that was the 'gospel', in Wright's understanding of Paul. So it was indeed a bigger story than just how individual souls got saved - but at the same time it didn't deny that individual salvation was intrinsic to the story. So none of that, as I understand Wright, seems to me to be a denial that there is an action which God takes to and in an individual which saves him in the present (what we might call 'justification') with a salvation which will be seen full-bloom at the last Day. Only I think Wright perhaps might want to suggest that that personal, spiritual action wasn't what Paul was mainly discussing when he used the term 'justified'. I've heard Wright say that his only goal is to be true to what Paul was saying in context: not to deny that there can't also be a more particularly-focused view of a mountain-peak that one can take than the more panoramic view which Paul for his own purposes may have been taking of the wider mountain-range (the 'mountain-view' is my own metaphor, not Wright's). I've even heard Wright suggest a term which might better describe that inner, individual experience or action which God takes - and it was a Biblical term! (Don't quote me, but I think it may have been 'atonement'.) So Wright isn't denying the reality of such an experience: he's just wanting to identify what Paul was mainly having to deal with and what he was discussing and his use of terms in answer to the issues his first-century readers were facing. I personally think it might help to understand Wright's interpretation of Paul, if we imagine that we are countering the modern Hebrew Roots movement (because that's the closest thing we have today to the type of issue which Paul was constantly having to respond to for the sake of the early churches). The modern Hebrew Roots movement - like the early 'Judaizers' whom Paul was constantly contending with - have somewhat different issues and questions to those which Martin Luther was grappling with. And if we were to answer their specific rethink of the message of the New Testament and its relationship to the Old, we might have to deal with questions of eschatology, ecclesiology and soteriology, etc. in a broad, corporate sense, as Paul did - but that wouldn't be a denial of any individual aspects and experiences within those themes. Same with Paul, perhaps. Maybe the term 'justified' itself can aptly describe both a particular mountain-peak that's part of a larger mountain-range, and a more panoramic view of the whole mountain range? Include both what God says about the redeemed community; and the action which God initially does for an individual to bring him into that community in the first place. Both. Perhaps. Or maybe there really is another Biblical term which describes that initial individual experience more aptly. I don't know. I haven't read enough of Wright yet, and I'm not as academic as many of his more avid readers.