Rethinking the Israel of God by Hans LaRondelle

Koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Visiting Professor

Department of Liberal Arts Education

Kyungpook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

Conjoint lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

When I undertake this comparative criticism of LaRondelle’s orientation on the subject, the difference between us is in the following way: Whereas he would say that the Old Testament 0.5 + 0.5 + 0.5 + 0.5 = the New Testament 2; my own orientation on it is that the Old Testament does not say 0.5 but 2 ÷ 0 = the New Testament 2. Let me explain.

It is well-known in the works of LaRondelle that he would use preteristic commentators who describe like historicists the Old Testament passages regarding King David/Messiah; Palestine Israel/whole earth and that he would favor the historicist take on it if those Messianic or Israel of God passages permits a wider scope by these preteristic scholars. Many times he would cite Herman Ridderbos or Nygren for Romans or P. Diepold (1972] or other scholars to make his point. He would take Psalm 37 and say that it has an Old Testament local application [which is the 0.5 to which I referred above] but that Jesus transformed this Old Testament pericope into an additional rephrasing to add 0.5 + 0.5 + 0.5 to end with a New Testament consensus total of 2. He says the same of Paul with passages like Isaiah 11 or Abraham and his heritage for Romans 4. He presents the Old Testament passages sometimes as if the passages were supposed to be realized in the Old Testament times but because of conditionality, Christ, Paul, John, and other New Testament writers and interpreters reformulated the Old Testament promises to a universalism that included the Gentiles of the whole earth.

At this point many readers already pulled out the yellow card and their hands are itching to get out the red card and dump this writing in the wastebasket, and I do not blame them, for dr. LaRondelle was one of my most favorite preachers and teachers. I travelled far to listen to him because it was a devotional experience, very uplifting, very encouraging, very fulfilling. I also need to add, that I was one of his readers for his manuscript of the unpublished book that he was writing, cut short by his sudden death. What I am saying here, I have presented to him personally in every chapter (12 of them) that I was given by him to read.

The older generation scholars in our denomination suffers from what I call “a meager glow of Eichrodtism”. Walther Eichrodt wrote a two-volume Theology of the Old Testament back in the sixties of the previous century. It was in the heyday of modernism with post-modernism just starting. Eichrodt had a developmental view of Old Testament Theology. The way he came to this evolutionistic view of Theology of the Old Testament is to use the biblical corpus as the data and in his view, wrongly unfortunately, “as the complete and full corpus of data” and he subsequently treated it as the analyzing content in the absolute. His error was, in my view, that he treated the data of the Bible as if it is the only data and that it represents reality on a 1/1 basis. If you read little about angels in a book, it is because the Theology was not yet developed and the evolution of that thought would have kicked off later. He used Wellhausen et al’s scheme to allocated books of the Bible to Exilic and post-exilic times and employed Persian period Zoroastrianism to allocate eschatological thoughts to dates. The concept of Resurrection is a late invention since there are [in his view] not many examples earlier in the older parts of the corpus. This mechanistic data count = reality of the past is the fallacy of Eichrodt and that is Eichrodtism. LaRondelle never gave the idea that he suffered the same problem as Eichrodt. What is the truth of the matter is that when a subject was well-known it was not necessary for Revelation to focus on this issue. Thus, the picture is upside down. These subjects were continuously entertained in every generation since Adam and Eve and deterioration of the concept, like Resurrection, called for Revelation of God to Inspire and Illuminate the prophets to focus on the issue. It is the same with the Torah to Moses in vivid presentation by God. The Torah of God was in danger of been swept aside by the New Israel who left Egypt in 1450 BCE, religious Habiru and secular Habiru together. That is why Sinai was essential. The concepts of the book of Revelation is spread out in the book of Isaiah and they knew of those concepts already back in Isaiah’s day. Even the millennium is in Job and Isaiah. Latter Rain, Time of Trouble, Second Coming, Millennium, Hell, New Earth created, Heavenly New Jerusalem, Heavenly Zion, all these are in the prophets of the Old Testament.

Jesus and Paul did not transform what is not there into what is there. They transformed what is there into what is there. What is 2 in the Old Testament is 2 in the New Testament. It was given by God to David in Psalms or a prophet like Isaiah as 2 but Judaistic interpretation has diminished the impact to 0.5 and that is why the Samaritan woman was surprised at Jesus teaching in John 4. He was reiterating the 2 of the Old Testament proper. Christian preteristic commentators of the Reformed and Orthodox Liturgical traditions have done the same. Isaiah 53 is such an example in which Judaism has diminished 2 of the New Testament fulfillment in Christ to 0.5 their own way, with remodeling, rephrasing, pluralizing what is singular in the literal Hebrew text of the chapter. Judaism was derailed from proper Revelation in Isaiah 53. Only when they come back to a proper understanding of the literal impact of this text without additions, omissions, rephrasing and remodeling of the literal text, can they be successful.

Jesus did not make what was Palestine Israel in the Psalms into the whole earth as LaRondelle pointed out in the Israel of God book of his. Isaiah was explaining the universalism of God’s salvation in no uncertain terms throughout the book in many passages. It is as clear as daylight. The people of the Old Testament knew that God wanted mission and evangelism of the whole world. The protectionism and partisanship that one encounters from time to time was because of the strong influence that endangered the remnant of God in a particular generation.

When Jesus took an Old Testament passage and seem to enlarge the scope of it, it was not the case. It was already embedded in that passage and careful consideration reveals that case by case. It was not that 0.5 of David in whatever Psalm, 110 or 37 or other was made by Jesus or Paul into 2 in the New Testament. LaRondelle feels then that we look at the Old Testament through ecclesiological eyes of the New Testament with Jesus’ hermeneutics included but the problem with his analysis is that he presents Jesus as adding or modifying what was not there in the Old Testament or what was incomplete in the Old Testament.

The work of Old Testament scholars in Adventism is not complete. It is only well on its way. There are still lots to discover and work on in the Old Testament. Correct doctrinal delineation is not the end of the Research Task of the Holy Spirit. The well is deep and scholars need to dig deep.

In my commentaries to LaRondelle on his last book, I reiterated that what Jesus and Paul was expounding or present as Theology or concept of idea was already embedded in the Old Testament on an equal basis. Not more not less. Eichrodt would opt for a less situation and that it developed in the New Testament through Jesus and Paul or John as something larger and different. This is not what a careful analysis of the Old Testament leads us to.