Can You Really Read The Bible Like That?!

This episode of Mere Fidelity is about the boundaries and controls on theological and typological biblical interpretation - essentially asking "what are the brakes on theological exegesis?"

—

This month: The Body God Gives: A Biblical Response to Transgender Theory by Robert Smith - a weighty volume addressing crucial contemporary issues with biblical faithfulness.

Get 40% off at lexhampress.com/merefidelity

—

Derek Rishmawy, Alastair Roberts, and Brad East explore the tension between:

The Promise: Rediscovering richer, deeper ways of reading Scripture that go beyond simple historical-grammatical methods - finding typological patterns, narrative connections, and symbolic meanings that link Old and New Testament figures and events (like seeing Jesus as the new David, or Joseph as a type of Christ).

The Problem: The legitimate concern that once you start reading Scripture typologically or allegorically, where do you stop? What prevents interpretation from becoming purely subjective, limited only by the interpreter's imagination?

Key Discussion Points:

1. Steelmanning the critics - Derek asks Alastair to acknowledge valid concerns about "wax nose" interpretations that can be twisted to support any position
2. Historical precedent - How the apostles themselves read the Old Testament in ways that seem to go beyond original authorial intent
3. Different paradigms for meaning - Brad argues for multiple faithful readings within proper bounds, using his "infinite sets" mathematical analogy, while Derek pushes back with concerns about authorial intention
4. Practical controls they suggest:
   • Alastair emphasizes grounding readings in the text's own literary patterns and connections
   • Reading within the "rule of faith" (basic Christian orthodoxy)
   • Alastair's "tree" metaphor - distinguishing between core interpretations (strong branches) and speculative ones (thin branches you don't put weight on)
   • Reading in community rather than in isolation
   • Alastair's key point - Understanding meaning as something that unfolds through time, not just locked in original context
   • Brad advocates for reading Scripture with multiple paradigms (not just Paul's argumentative style, but also narrative like Song of Songs)

The conversation shows Derek wrestling with concerns about going beyond authorial intention, while Brad takes a more "maximalist" approach and Alastair provides detailed textual grounding for typological readings. They ultimately argue that while there are real dangers in uncontrolled typological reading, the solution isn't to abandon these deeper interpretive methods but to practice them more carefully and responsibly.

—

Chapters

01:21 Grammatical Historical vs. Typological Exegesis
03:40 Steel Man Strikes Again
06:07 If This Were Wrong, How Would We Know?
09:05 Wax Nose
11:07 Gifted Interpreters and Accessibility
13:01 The Gigi Rule
16:48 Infinite Ways to Get It Right
19:08 Stories and Arguments
22:05 It's Alive!
26:19 Choose Your Own Adventure
29:14 More Anachronism Please
30:23 Anachronism and Authorial Intention
34:39 How Meaning Works
40:10 Asking the Text a Question
43:02 Practice Safe Reading
51:32 Resources