“Thus New Testament, or Old Testament writers before them, can build on earlier Old Testament texts that they interpret and develop creatively, though the creativity is to be seen in understanding such texts in the light of the further developments of a redemptive-historical epoch in the Old Testament, or developments in the light of the later events of Christ’s coming and work.
In this respect, part of the creative development lies merely in the fact that fulfillment always fleshes out prior prophecy in a way that, to some degree, would have been unforeseen by earlier Old Testament prophets. Another way to say this is that progressive revelation always reveals things not as clearly seen earlier.
Geerhardus Vos’s metaphor for this creative development between the Testaments is that Old Testament prophecies and texts are like seeds and later Old Testament and New Testament understandings of the same texts are like plants growing from the seeds and flowering; from one angle the full-bloomed plant may not look like the seed (as in botanical comparisons), but careful exegesis of both Old and New contexts can show, at least, some of the organic connections.”
(Greg Beale, WE BECOME WHAT WE WORSHIP: A BIBLICAL THEOLOGY OF IDOLATRY (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2008)
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