Absolutely! (And I wish I could have gone, too!) But is this as much of a problem as not taking the Old Testament seriously? From what I see, a lot of preachers and christians in general are quite quick to jump to Jesus instead of taking the Old Testament texts seriously. It seems like Jesus, Paul, and the “fathers” were re-interpreting the texts in light of Christ, where as we (my self included, probably not a a professor like you, Scott) tend to read the old testament texts as if the Jesus interpretation is all there is.
I’m no expert but I know that the fathers were among those who constantly assume that all scripture was referring to Jesus (e.g., Augustine interprets ps 30:2 – ‘O Lord, My God, I have cried unto Thee, and Thou has healed me’ – to mean, “The Lord prayed in the mount before His Passion, He healed HIm. Healed Whom? Him Who was never sick, the Word of God, the Word the Divinity? No, but He bore the death of flesh, He bore thy wound, being about to heal thee of they wound. And the flesh was healed. When? When He rose again. Listen to the Apostle, see the true healing, ‘Death, saith he, hath been swallowed up in victory. O death where is they sting? O death, where is thy struggle? Therefore that exhalation will then be ours to declare, the exaltation now is Christ’s.” (Sorry about the Old English, it’s the translation I have, and my latin isn’t good enough to try to translate it myself.)
This is a beautiful reading of the psalm, but what do we lose when we assume texts that were clearly not (from a historical standpoint) written about Jesus, were written about him. What are the limits of reading scripture with an eye to Christ? At what point have we stopped reading scripture and just assumed that every passage is saying the message we are used to hearing on sundays?

Interesting post – good to think about as we consider other things like Keller’s Counterfeit God’s or yesterday’s post on Bible Snobs Anonymous

For me it seems we need to make a distinction between 1.)OT Authors, 2.)NT Authors, 3.)NT Church Fathers, 4.)Early Church Fathers, and 5.)us as modern day Christians when we talk about inspiration.
When I read 2Peter 1:21 and 2Tim 3:16 my tradition tells me that scripture as recorded by 1-3 above had special merit beyond what 4,5 had. This first group was involved in the production of what has been considered canonical. They were inspired directly and in special ways which allowed them more freedom in there application of OT texts.
I do not feel the freedom to move beyond a literal interpretation, because I do not share in the same kind of inspiration as this first group of authors.
Regarding this statement: “The books of Scripture do not bear their own significance”. I would like to ask the question, “Did the books of Scripture at one time bear their own significance?” My Hermeneutic say yes they did. And that this must be understood first in order to properly interpret an OT passage. I think this would be true even if everything else Wilkens said is applied in our interpretive process.
Regarding the use of allegory Wilkens is reported to have said, “…the Old Testament text signifies Christ.” That sounds like the definition of allegory to me. (The representation of abstract ideas or principles by characters, figures, or events in narrative, dramatic, or pictorial form.). Later Wilkens says that allegory is not required to understand these texts. I find that inconsistent.
I am not saying that in all cases an allegorical view of the OT is necessary, but it does offer me a way to humbly intimate a deeper revealed meaning of some OT passages without including myself among the original writers of Scripture and their special inspiration.

Two great books to explore this idea further:
(1) “How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now” by James L. Kugel (2008) – Kugel holds in tension how the Bible was read (a) by the earliest interpreters of scripture both Jewish and Christian and (b) by scholars in the last 150 years or so. The tension is increased because Kugel is (a) an Orthodox Jew, who has (b) taught the historical-critical method of reading the Bible at Harvard for more than three decades.
http://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Bible-Guide-Scripture/dp/0743235878/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257636220&sr=8-1
(2) “Pedagogy of the Bible: An Analysis and Proposal” by Dale B. Martin (2008) – a Yale NT scholar, trained in the historical-critical method, Martin nevertheless makes a compelling case in this short book for retrieving ancient methods of biblical interpretation both in seminaries and in churches.
http://www.amazon.com/Pedagogy-Bible-Analysis-Dale-Martin/dp/0664233066/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257636557&sr=1-3

John 5.
Jesus gives (yes, even this instant, He does) a long, detailed, and comprehensive answer to your concern about what “methods” are to be used and how to study the scriptures.
We would do well to abandon ***any*** method we use that doesn’t follow His lead.

Here are a couple of things that I would like to add (or even restate) that you guys have already said so very well. So, please, bear with me.
Jesus did say to the Pharisees that the Scriptures speak of him (I don’t have the scripture address handy at the moment). The Scriptures of his day were the Old Testament scriptures. Even more so, I believe it was the Septuagint, so there may have been apocryphal writings that we don’t even have or acknowledge. (That discussion is for another day.)
Jesus said that Holy Spirit would guide us into all truth. Therefore, I believe that Scripture has to be approached with humility and prayer. Scripture has many “layers” of reality and application, so we must be dependent on the Spirit and not rely too much on scholarship (although scholarship can be God’s gift as well).
I believe that truth has several depths of interpretation. By that I mean there can be a “historic” truth AND a “spiritual” truth. For example, it’s a historic fact (the “historic” truth) that Moses led the Israelites through the Red Sea on dry ground after God miraculously parted the waters. Paul states in 1 Corinthians 10 that this represented the Israelites being baptized into Moses and brings it forward to the Corinthian’s (and our own) baptism into Christ. The Church Fathers saw it as referring to the sacrament of Baptism. Is one “depth of truth” more true than the others? No. They are all equally true and valid. But different situations required different applications BY THE HOLY SPIRIT. I think all of us could testify of how one scripture has spoken one thing to us at one point of our growth, and then, at a later time, that same scripture would speak a whole new truth (though not anything contradictory to Truth).
One thing is for certain: God intends for all truth to be “incarnational” – it is to be “fleshed out”, lived faithfully within the context of human experience, i.e., our daily grind.

“When Paul cites Psalm 19 in Romans 10 (“their voice is gone out into all the world”), he applies the Psalmist’s statement about the heavens to the preaching of the apostles.”
Am I missing something, because it seems to me that Mr. Neff’s understanding of the relation of these two passages is faulty?? As for the Romans 10 passage referring to the teaching of the apostles I am not seeing it. It seems to me that Paul is simply restating what Ps. 19 affirms, that the truth has indeed gone out via creation and therefore Israel is without excuse.

Scot:
I want to sound a note of disagreement with Wilken.
I know we can’t use the third century and later rabbis as an exact analogy to the world of the apostles, but in the case of hermeneutics, I think we can say they were in a very similar conceptual world.
The rabbis, even the early ones, had a firm grasp on p’shat (plain) and d’rash (derived) interpretation. The plain was considered always more important. The apostles, I would argue, use d’rash in their preaching and writing, as a kind of application, not interpretation.
I am very alarmed by reductionist readings of the Hebrew Bible as a book of allegories about Christ. It’s plain message is consonant with New Testament ideas. I have a book called A New Look at the Old Testament in which I briefly and theologically sort all this out.

On point #3, above, I’d like to make a further comment. While it is true that it is not “another Christ” that the NT signifies, we do see Paul saying, “even if we had known Christ according to the flesh, we now know him [in that way] no more; therefore if anyone be in Christ there is a new creation… (2 Corinthians 5:16-17), Thus Christ in the NT is not just the historical figure of the rabbi from Nazareth, but is the salvation of the world, good news to the nations (ethne, Gentiles), the beginning and end of history. As such, the full application of the meaning and presence of Christ in all situations, “in whom is hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,” requires, it seems to me, a continual re-envisioning of the world as it is (not just as it was in the first century) and, it seems to me also, we hve ample precedent in scripture and in the work of the Fathers for applying by extension and analogy the truth of Christ to emerging circumstances, just as the Fathers and the NT writers did with respect to ancient Hebrew texts.

Just catching up on these comments, and I see Charlie attributes Robert Wilken’s understanding of the way Romans 10 quotes to Psalm 19 to me. I just want to be clear that I was summarizing Robert Wilken’s lecture in those four points.
As to the function of the Psalm 19 quote in Romans 10, I would first point out that it is made in the immediate context of Paul’s assertion that people cannot believe unless they hear the word preached. So I can understand how that would be read as a reference to the apostolic preaching.
The other reading, while possible, seems to backtrack from his insistence on the importance of preaching and allow for general revelation to carry the burden of gospel proclamation.

Colin Hansen has an article about Christ centered preaching entitled “Christ-Centered Cautions” Stating among other things that there is moral teaching that takes place in the OT. That is instructive in and of itself, without having to refer to Christ.j