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Latest revision as of 15:14, 7 April 2025

Here’s a sensus plenior-informed review of A Survey of the Life and Teachings of Jesus (© L.D. Underwood and R.C. Jones, 2020), with attention to how it both aligns with and misses key insights when read through the lens of Christ-centered fulfillment and riddle-language interpretation.

Review of A Survey of the Life and Teachings of Jesus: A Sensus Plenior Perspective

This work by Underwood and Jones makes a noble attempt to structure biblical understanding around the theme of fulfillment—a concept rightly recognized as central to the New Testament. Its historical and theological overview is helpful for students and new readers of Scripture. But where the book succeeds as a didactic survey, it stops short of uncovering the prophetic riddle that Jesus said was hidden from the beginning and only revealed through the cross (Luke 24:27, 44–45).

This critique reads the book in light of the sensus plenior—the deeper, Christ-revealing meaning of the Old Testament known only through spiritual discernment after the cross. Through this lens, we assess each major section.

I. Structure and Fulfillment: A Good Beginning

Underwood and Jones begin with a correct observation: the structure of the Bible is ordered not chronologically but thematically. They divide both the Old and New Testaments into three major sections: history, teaching (poetry/epistles), and prophecy. This triadic pattern is compelling and helpful.

Where the survey truly shines is in its insistence that the New Testament is unintelligible without the Old. The authors emphasize that the Gospels are filled with echoes of the Old Testament, and that almost every chapter in the NT makes some allusion back. This harmonizes perfectly with the sensus plenior perspective, where the New does not just reference the Old—it unveils it.

However, there is a missed opportunity to clarify how fulfillment works. It is not just that prophecy predicts and Jesus performs—it’s that Jesus is the mystery the Old Testament conceals in riddle form. Fulfillment is not merely a checkbox of predictions completed—it is the unveiling of a hidden Christ-pattern embedded within all Scripture, as Jesus showed on the road to Emmaus.

II. Six-Day Structure: A Subtle Yet Untapped Insight

Jones' proposed correlation between the six days of creation and the sections of Scripture is fascinating and deserves further attention. He hints that:

  • Day 1 (Light = Holiness) corresponds to Genesis
  • Day 5 (Life from water) aligns with the Gospels
  • Day 6 (Man and Bride) aligns with the Epistles

This structure holds promise for deeper sensus plenior application. The “man and his bride” on Day 6, for instance, is more than typological—it is a direct metaphor for Christ and the Church (Eph 5:32). Unfortunately, the book does not expand this correlation far enough. The six-day structure should serve not merely as literary symmetry, but as a symbolic key to unlock the spiritual progression of revelation, culminating in the cross and the spiritual fruitfulness of the Bride.

III. Historical Books: The Pattern of the Cross

The summary of Old Testament history—creation to monarchy to exile to return—is accurate and helpful. Yet the real power lies in the sensus plenior interpretation:
Each historical cycle is a death and resurrection story. The conquest, decline, and restoration are not just national moments—they’re spiritual portraits of Christ taking on sin, being rejected, and restoring the Bride.
This truth is hinted at but not fully developed. The author observes that the book of Hosea is a play, but he stops short of seeing all history as prophetic drama. In SP, every event is a pericope of the cross. Judges becomes seven cycles of death and resurrection. The division of the kingdom becomes the split between flesh and spirit. The exile becomes the burial. The return is resurrection. Christ is hidden in every phase, and the bride—Israel—is transformed along the way.

IV. Poetical Books: Questions with Hidden Answers

The poetic books (Job through Song of Solomon) are rightly described as asking profound existential questions. But the authors see these as merely unanswered longings. In sensus plenior, they are not unanswered—they are intentionally veiled until the cross.
Job, Ecclesiastes, and the Psalms are mystery-wrapped prophecies, each written from the perspective of the suffering Messiah, the longing Bride, or the war between flesh and spirit.
The survey misses that Job is Christ—not just a moral sufferer, but one who declares innocence while suffering unjustly, just as Jesus did. Ecclesiastes, “life under the sun,” is not merely pessimistic but shows the vanity of fleshly wisdom apart from the Spirit. The real resolution comes not in Revelation alone but in the cross, where God’s wisdom is revealed as foolishness to men but power to save.

V. Prophets: The Riddling Witnesses

The prophets are described as “unfulfilled” in the OT—a valid conclusion from a surface reading. But sensus plenior would say the fulfillment is embedded in their words, wrapped in mystery language. Isaiah 53, Hosea’s marriage, Jonah’s descent—these are not vague symbols but explicit prophecies of Christ, though veiled in narrative and riddle.

Revelation is mentioned as the fulfillment point, but the SP lens sees Revelation not as future fulfillment, but as the Rosetta Stone of the riddles. It speaks in the symbols already used by the prophets—clouds, swords, beasts, lambs, virgins, and judgment—but with the key now inserted: the Lamb who was slain.
Revelation is not about the end of history but about the unveiling of the mystery hidden from the foundation of the world—the cross.

VI. The Man and The Inheritance: Echoes of the Pattern

The authors draw a parallel between Adam and Christ, law and grace, Israel and the Church. But here again, they reduce these parallels to thematic continuity rather than seeing the prophetic reversal at the heart of the gospel.
Christ doesn’t just contrast Adam—He is Adam, made sin for us. He becomes the fallen man so He can raise us as the new man. He is both Israel the failed servant and Israel the true Son.
Likewise, inheritance isn’t just a shift from land to heaven—it is the transformation of the bride through death and resurrection. The “land” is the place where man meets God, and now that place is Christ Himself (John 14:6). Heaven is not a location but the presence of God known in the Spirit.

VII. The Old and New Testaments Together

The survey ends with an appeal not to separate the Old and New Testaments—an important and timely word. However, their claim that the Old Testament is like “an unfinished symphony” is still subtly misleading.
The symphony is finished—it is heard in its fullness only after the cross, when the missing melody becomes clear.
That hidden melody is Christ. Not just Jesus in history, but Jesus in every man, in every woman, in every moment of the text. As the authors themselves suggest: when the prophet, priest, king, and judge all speak together at the cross, the song is no longer fragmented. It is unified, whole, beautiful.

Final Thoughts

Underwood and Jones have written a useful and structured overview of Scripture, especially for students and pastors unfamiliar with biblical themes. But in its current form, the survey only scratches the surface of the mystery it references.

Where it could grow is in its acknowledgment that Jesus did not teach plainly, but in riddles, and that everything in Scripture is written of Him—not in allegory alone, but in prophetic pattern. The call now is not only to teach the story of Christ but to unveil it from within the story of Israel, the words of the prophets, the drama of Job, and the poetry of Solomon.

This is the deeper fulfillment: Christ revealed in the Scriptures—not added to them.

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