The Hermeneutical Christ (Senus Christos)

By Jason Strange
4/3/2010

Man's big failure happened when he misinterpreted Gods word. Through the cunning and craftiness of the serpent man has lost his ability to rightly interpret God, God's world, and his relationship to both. Satan had introduced a bold new hermeneutic deconstructing Gods word and then reconstructing it in a way that led Eve to be the first human practioner of eisegesis, thus leading the human race into an epistemological wilderness.

Ever since that dark day we needed someone to step in and interpret Gods will for man. God did not see fit that we should be left in this dismal state without proper interpretation . Israel was chosen out of all the nations to be a mediatorial race, a light to the nations, an epistemological beacon. God sent mediators by way of the prophets, priest, and judges to mediate on behalf of the nation, but they failed as they bought into the Satanic man-centered Hermeneutic of the surrounding nations and they too like their parents were led away to a false interpretation of God's word. The tabernacle and the temple were the meeting grounds for this mediation, but then God's presence departed just before their deportation (Ez. 10).

We see the travesty when Gods interpretation of reality is stiff-armed: Angels rebel, man is ousted from his paradise, Gods presence is removed, Cain kills Abel, wickedness increases in the earth, Gods watery wrath is unleashed on the world, Babel is built, Sodomites are blinded, Lots wife becomes a salty pillar, Sarah laughs, Esau sells his birthright, Jacob walks with a limp, Joseph is sold into slavery, Moses strikes the rock, David commits adultery, Solomon sleeps around. Israel resorts to cannibalism. When man becomes his own interpreter he begins to unravel . Thus God's glory is profaned.

But the time of Reformation had come and the final mediator has arrived. He being the very Word of God, the first communicator before the world began, the one who spoke everything into existence comes to earth and speaks again. He communicates the message as Gods perfect messenger, that he is the focal point of all of Scripture, all of life, and all of history. He perfectly takes the words given to Him by his Father and communicates the gospel message to the world. He comes to fulfill a message already given and gives the proper interpretation of it. He incarnates Gods word, so that he is Word walking, Word talking, Word, receiving, and word responding; He is Word suffering, Word dying, Word resurrecting, Word purchasing, Word conquering, and now Word sending through His Spirit. He is the One who perfectly unveils all of history's meaning as He himself is the originator, and in Him history finds its apex.

This is also the reason way Jesus is the interpretative norm for all of Scripture. Colossians 1:15-16 says that all reality was created by Christ, through Christ, and for Christ and in Colossians 2:2-3 it says that in Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and understanding. Jesus has created all things for himself and He is the one who ascribes meaning to all that he has made. And being that all treasures of wisdom are found in him he is the only key to unlock those treasures. Man may be able to cut across the grain of certain truths about the universe but he can never tap into the weighty mysteries of the Godhead and the profound nature of Christ and the Gospel. Without Christ as the interpretative norm- the Scriptures become vandalized and the interpretative graffiti of the world is sprayed over the pristine wall of truth. Nevertheless, Christ stands as the epicenter for all interpretation. He makes all Scripture quake with seismic activity. Just as Galileo discovered that the sun is the center of our solar system and made astonishing gains in scientific study and inquiry so too, when we see that every passage orbits around Christ, the Church will realize its blazing center.

And last, I agree that the whole of the Bible is the Gospel. John 20:31; *Heb. 4:1-2,11; Romans 15:4; *John 5:39, *Lk 24:27, *Lk 24:24; *2 Tim. 3:15. The OT was a book of promise and the NT is a book of fulfillment, therefore the Gospel is a uniting of both, and the message of the Gospel is interwoven throughout the whole story line.