Pastors, professors, and Bible students everywhere are grateful for the long and faithful work of Alec Motyer. His various works have demonstrated not only an unusual proficiency in the Old Testament but also an unusual grasp of “whole Bible” theology, of themes that connect Old Testament and New together as an inseparable whole. If you are not yet acquainted with him, then his new A Christian’s Guide to Loving the Old Testament is a great place to start. It’s a wonderful little book – a real gem. You’ll be surprised how much he delivers in such short space, and you will come away with a new appreciation of how Scripture really is a book about Christ.
Today we are pleased to have Dr. Motyer talk to us about his work and his new book.
Books At a Glance (Fred Zaspel):
Since this is your first time with us, may we begin on a personal level? Please tell us something about your background and how you came to Christ.
Motyer:
I was born and educated in Dublin (The High School, Dublin: Dublin University). It was my good fortune, under God, to be brought up for my first six or seven years by my maternal grandmother, and, therefore from earliest years to be nourished on Bible stories and Bible truth. I cannot remember a time when I did not love the Bible and hold it to be God’s Word. In conversation with Grandma I was called to Christian Ministry at the age of six, and young though I was, this conviction never waned. Aged 15 I heard the Gospel invitation for the first time and responded to it – as we used to say in those days, I received the Lord Jesus into my heart as my own personal Saviour.
Books At a Glance:
The focus of your writing and academic career has been in Old Testament studies? Can you tell us how you came to this interest?
Motyer:
I entered University in 1943 on a scholarship (called a sizarship) in classics, and discovered that one would enroll for any classes that were being conducted. Since I knew I was heading for Christian Ministry I thought it would be a good thing to add Hebrew to such Greek as I already knew. My first assistantship (in Church of England terms, curacy) was in Wolverhampton, England, and, during my third year there I was approached by the Principal of a College training men for the ministry (Clifton Theological College, Bristol, England) who was looking for someone to teach Hebrew. After a few years this expanded to become head of the Old Testament department of the work, a job I did for the next twelve years – and to which, after a break during which I was minister of a church in London, I returned for a further ten years.
Books At a Glance:
What changes in Old Testament studies have you seen over the course of your career? Are you generally encouraged in this regard?
Motyer:
Encouraged? Yes and no! My Grandma has inoculated me against the siren voices of liberal Old Testament studies. My professors found me stony ground! My own main interest in the Old Testament was through the language into the truth – i.e., to discover and share the Old Testament as the word of God; its meaning and message; its theology and truth. The aridity of the then dominant fragmentarist/documentary approach offended me and seemed incapable of helping anyone. It has therefore been an encouragement to see what is generally called the ‘canonical’ approach coming more and more to the fore. Specialists are now much more ready to take Old Testament books as they stand and to try to seek to establish their testimony rather than theorize about their pre-history. There is thus much for positive writing about the Old Testament than used to be the case.
On the other hand it seems that people with sound evangelical convictions are much less likely than used to be the case to adopt a conservative stance on disputed points (e.g, the unity or otherwise of Isaiah) and much readier to acquiesce in the ‘findings’ emanating from ‘liberal’ and rationalist presuppositions. I find this sad and discouraging. To hold to one Isaiah or an early date for Daniel is to be classed as a dinosaur by those who ought to be ones wholehearted colleagues.
Books At a Glance:
Of the many books you have written, do you have a favorite?
Motyer:
My favourite tends to be whatever is the latest to be published – at present the book now under consideration, A Christian’s Pocket Guide to Loving the Old Testament. But my continuing favourites are the three Isaiah books – The Prophecy of Isaiah, Isaiah (Tyndale Commentary), and Isaiah by the Day.
Books At a Glance:
You make a wonderful observation in your new book (A Christian’s Pocket Guide to Loving the Old Testament) about what the Old Testament is designed “above all” to do. When I read this I found it very helpful. Could you summarize your point here for us?
Motyer:
If my memory serves me, the ‘above all’ sentence refers to the Old Testament as designed to prepare us for the Lord Jesus Christ. ‘Without the Old Testament we could not know the Lord Jesus properly.’ This is a point of view with huge ramifications. First, it means that the Bible is not two Testaments but one book with one great subject, and since the subject is Jesus the Saviour, it means that in this one book there is one way of salvation, therefore one ‘love which drew salvation’s plan, one God, one people destined for salvation. That summarises the essential point positively. But the more negative truth is equally important: the Old Testament is our book, it belongs to the people of Jesus, and to no one else. It is not ‘our’s’ at second hand or by some sort of fudge. The exodus, for example, is our pre-history: we came out of Egypt through the blood of the lamb. This is something I could go on about endlessly (and boringly!)
Books At a Glance:
How would you summarize the message of the Old Testament?
Motyer:
The Old Testament is the first flowering of the fundamental truth of salvation through grace, by faith, accomplished by substitutionary sacrifice, and leading to obedience of life to the word of God. The New Testament is the full, final and definitive flowering. The flowers are in all essentials identical.