Is the OT inspired or not?

I’ve posted some stuff that hovered around the false claim that we can only make typological statements about OT passages if we find them made already in the NT. For unrelated reasons I stumbled on Dr. Reggie Kidd’s notes on the conference presented by Richard Gaffin and N. T. Wright. There I find:

Contrasting parallel between Christ & Adam. Adam as sinner, his one transgression; 1Co 15 the contrast is even broader, pre-fall Adam parallel to Christ as life-giving Spirit. Mt. Everest vantage point: Adam & Christ as representative figures. Adam is 1st; Christ is last (no one after him). But not only Last, but Second. No one between Adam & Christ. Sweep of P’s covenantal outlook: nobody in between, e.g., Noah, Abe, Moses, David … P’s story line: Israel’s storyline falls beneath the horizon. Israel’s storyline serves this story line — two humanities, each with an Adam of its own. From this mega-perspective, P’s statements about justification have to be evaluated. Timeless devices — not tied to particular ethnicity, point of reference prior to Israel’s ethnicity. P’s doct of justif including opposition between faith and works prior to Israel’s story. Ecclesiastical epiphenomenon emerging from its soteriological core.

Can anyone claim that this treatment of Paul’s statements about OT stories is representative of Reformed exegesis? Is this how we deal with the proper recipients for baptism or the claims of the Sabbbath or the question of a covenant or covenants before Christ?

N. T. Wright has pointed out copious evidence that Noah is presented as a New Adam, and so is Abraham (and thus, Israel). Yes this can be summed up in ways that simply jump from the first. And yes, all these “Adams” were failures ultimately because they were all “in Adam” and not truly “new.” Jesus is the Second Adam, as Paul states. But this sort of reasoning strikes me as in danger of encouraging a shallow, NT-only, reading of the Bible. The problem seems similar, to my mind, to the one regarding typology.

It is all fine to say that the Apostles tell us what the OT was really about and that we should have a Christ-centered interpretation. If these become excuses not to carefully read the OT, then I think they are being misused. I don’t want to lay all that at Gaffin’s feet. But I am concerned it could become the de facto results, quite against his own intentions, I trust.

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