There are two fundamentally different ways of reading a text. The first treats it as a collection of propositions - statements that are true independently of their narrative setting, which can be extracted, systematised, and applied directly. The second treats it as a story - a sequence of events unfolding through time, in which the meaning of any part depends on where it stands in the whole.

Most Christians read the Bible as the first kind of text. The HRM reads the Torah specifically as the first kind of text - a list of commands, equally and permanently applicable regardless of where in the story they appear. This is the source of much of its error. Because the Bible is emphatically the second kind of text.

What the Redemptive-Historical Method Is

The redemptive-historical method is an approach to biblical interpretation associated primarily with the Dutch theologian Geerhardus Vos (1862–1949) and developed by scholars including Herman Ridderbos, Richard Gaffin, and Graeme Goldsworthy. Its central claim is simple: the Bible is the unfolding story of God's redemptive work in history, and every part of it must be read in light of where it stands in that unfolding story.

This has a straightforward implication for how we read the Torah. A command given at one stage of the story does not necessarily function the same way at a later stage - not because God has changed, but because the story has moved. A military campaign command given to Joshua for the conquest of Canaan does not automatically transfer to twenty-first century Christians. A sacrificial regulation given to Levitical priests does not transfer to believers after the priesthood has been fulfilled in Christ. The question is not merely "what does this command say?" but "at what stage of the story was this command given, and what does that stage's relationship to the whole story tell us about how it functions now?"

The Structure of the Story

The Bible's redemptive-historical story has a clear structure, even if scholars describe it in different ways. There is creation - the good world God made, the original covenant of life. There is fall - the rupture of the relationship, the entry of sin, death, and curse. There is promise - the protoevangelium of Genesis 3:15, the covenant with Abraham, the Davidic covenant - God's commitment to reverse the fall and restore blessing. There is law - the Mosaic covenant given at Sinai, structuring Israel's life as the people of the promise in anticipation of what is coming. There is fulfilment - the coming of Christ, who is simultaneously the true Israel, the true Adam, the true David, the true temple, and the true high priest. And there is consummation - the final restoration of all things, inaugurated at the resurrection and awaited at the return of Christ.

Each stage of this story has its own texture, its own character, its own appropriate response. The Mosaic law belongs to the stage of promise-in-anticipation. It structures Israel's life during the long wait for the fulfilment. It encodes the promise in ritual form - every sacrifice pointing forward to the true sacrifice, every feast rehearsing the drama of redemption, every distinction between clean and unclean anticipating the new creation in which all things will be made clean in Christ.

Once fulfilment arrives, the role of the Mosaic law in the story changes. Not because God has changed his mind, but because the story has moved. The scaffold is removed when the building is complete. The map is set aside when you arrive at the destination. The letter of introduction is superseded by the relationship it was designed to initiate.

Covenant Epochs and Their Logic

The redemptive-historical method recognises that God's dealings with humanity have taken different forms at different times - what theologians call covenant epochs or administrations. The Noahic covenant, the Abrahamic covenant, the Mosaic covenant, the Davidic covenant, and the new covenant are not competing or contradictory arrangements. They are successive stages of a single unfolding purpose, each appropriate to its moment in the story, each pointing forward to what is coming.

This is exactly how Paul reads them. In Galatians 3:15–25, he argues that the Mosaic law, given 430 years after Abraham's covenant, does not annul the promise but serves it - functioning as a guardian (the Greek word is paidagōgos, a household slave who supervised children's education and conduct) until the promised offspring arrived. The law's role was preparatory and temporary. Its time was the period between Sinai and Christ. Now that faith has come - now that the promised offspring has arrived - we are no longer under the guardian.

This is not Paul inventing a novel theological framework. It is Paul reading the story the way the story demands to be read - attentively, sequentially, with sensitivity to where each element stands in the whole.

How This Exposes the HRM's Error

The HRM reads the Torah as if it were a document that dropped from heaven without a narrative context - a collection of binding commands equally applicable at any point in history. This is precisely the flat, non-historical reading that the redemptive-historical method identifies as a hermeneutical category error.

Every part of the Torah was given at a specific point in the story, to a specific people, for a specific purpose within the larger narrative of redemption. The dietary laws separated Israel from the nations as a holy people in anticipation of the new community in Christ where Jew and Gentile eat together at the same table. The sacrificial laws enacted atonement in anticipation of the definitive atonement of the cross. The Sabbath rest pointed forward to the eschatological rest that believers now enter through faith in Christ (Hebrews 4:1–11). The feast calendar rehearsed the drama of redemption that the gospel has now enacted in history.

To read the Torah as permanently binding regardless of where we stand in the story is to misread it - not by getting individual verses wrong, but by getting the genre wrong. The Torah is not a timeless code. It is a chapter in a story. And like every chapter, it cannot be understood except in relation to the chapters that precede and follow it.

The chapter that follows is the gospel of Jesus Christ. And once that chapter is read, the previous chapter looks different - not less true, not less inspired, but differently functional. It has served its purpose in the story. The story has moved on.

But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code. - Romans 7:6