The Struggle to Understand Isaiah as Christian Scripture

by Brevard S. Childs

These two movements of history and revelation are joined in an indissoluble relation with Christ, who is the source of both. The advance of prophetic history is continually adumbrated by Old Testament types pointing forward to New Testament antitypes. Revelation is not doctrine, but history. Old Testament prophecy does not consist of isolated predictions awaiting a fulfillment in the future; instead the entire Heilsgeschichte is prophetic. This sacred history gradually unfolds through different stages in an organic whole, moving toward a goal. The Bible is the record of this Heilsgeschichte, but it is not to be read "externally." Rather, the meaning of its history only comes through the experience of the new birth, which confirms that Christ is the goal of all biblical history.