Exegesis and Theology

The Blog of Brian Collins

Review of Biblical Authority after Babel by Kevin Vanhoozer

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Vanhoozer, Kevin J. Biblical Authority After Babel: Retrieving the Solas in the Spirit of Mere Protestant Christianity. Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2016.

Kevin Vanhoozer’s Biblical Authority after Babel was written on the five-hundredth anniversary of the Reformation in defense of the Reformation. Vanhoozer takes seriously critiques of the Reformation made popular by Christian Smith and Brad Gregory, namely, that the Reformation led to interpretive chaos (and thus to an increasingly splintered Christianity) and secularism.

Vanhoozer rejects these claims. For instance, he observes that secularization is not a result of the Reformation. It is the result of reading the Bible in an academic, critical way rather than as Scripture. In other words, secularism is directly contrary to the Reformation approach to Scripture. Furthermore, Vanhoozer demonstrates that neo-scholastic Thomism was more amenable to secularism than the theology of the Reformation (this is a point also made by Roman Catholic Ressourcement theologians in the mid-twentieth century; see Rowland, Ratzinger’s Faith [Oxford University Press, 2008], kindle loc., 486-603).

Perhaps more plausible is the claim that Protestants cannot agree on their interpretations of Scripture, which is a problem that leads to fragmentation. However, Vanhoozer argues that “Mere Protestant Christians” actually agree on the fundamentals of the gospel story. This does not make disagreement unimportant, but it does reveal a fundamental unity that lies back of that disagreement.

Nevertheless, Vanhoozer does not leave the matter there. He engages with the issue of epistemology. He rejects an epistemology based on the church’s magisterial authority. He also rejects epistemologies based on the authority of the scholar or the autonomous individual. Instead, he argues for an epistemology based on the testimony of Scripture as self-authenticating through the work of the Spirit. As already noted, Vanhoozer by this is not advocating a raw individualism. Like the Reformers, tradition plays an important role in his theological and exegetical method. Tradition does not exercise magisterial authority, but it does serve the interpreter. The Bible alone is the final authority, but tradition gives important testimony regarding right interpretation.

So how does the preceding impact church polity and unity? Vanhoozer argues that local churches are given authority to make judgments regarding right belief and practice. They have the responsibility to rule on what Scripture teaches in these matters for the sake of “the integrity of the gospel.” (Churches typically exercise this responsibility by adopting confessions of faith and catechisms.) Vanhoozer further argues that these “local churches have an obligation to read in communion with other local churches.” (This can be seen by the way different local churches adopt the same confessions as other churches or adapt the confessions of other churches.)

Vanhoozer grants that there is a tension sometimes between unity and the purity of the gospel. As a result, he rejects ecumenism and sectarianism. He affirms denominations that hold strongly to their beliefs and that also can cooperate with denominations that differ with them.

In the end, I think that Vanhoozer successfully defends the Reformation from recent critiques. I also think his model for church unity and diversity in the present age is correct. However, based on what I know of Vanhoozer’s ecclesial situation, our judgments about implementation differ. I think this demonstrates that models can only take us so far. Spiritual wisdom is always needed to apply the model.

More on Littlejohn and Two Kingdoms Theology

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A friend emailed after I posted my review of Bradford Littlejohn’s book on the two kingdoms asking for more specifics. The following is a slightly edited version of my reply to him:

In my review I flagged the big historical contribution. Littlejohn shows clearly that the two kingdoms division was not between institutional church and institutional state, as R2K/W2K folks like Van Drunen (DVD) say. I think Littlejohn showed this conclusively, and historically this is important because DVD wants to use R2K to enforce a kind of separation of church and state, or as Littlejohn puts it, “the religious neutrality of modern liberal politics.” Historically, that’s hard to see in Luther and Calvin, and Littlejohn shows why. Their two kingdoms are different from those of R2K.

Littlejohn argues that the Reformers’ 2K doctrine is not about dividing the life into two distinct spheres but are different ways to look at all of life. So, Luther argues that “inwardly, before God, the Christian is not subject to the mediation of any human authority, or conscience-bound by its commands” (Littlejohn’s summary, p. 16). But because of love for neighbor, the Christian does outwardly submit to human rulers. I’ve read the treatises Luther wrote on this subject, and I’d say Littlejohn’s summary is accurate. But I’m not convinced that Luther is right! So I still find myself at variance from a 2K approach. Calvin is, I think, better in his formulations than Luther, though he like Luther is using the formulation to defend Christian liberty. (And here Littlejohn makes a helpful clarification: “not Christian liberty in the sense we often mean it today—the freedom of individual believers to act as they wish in matters where Scripture is silent—but is fundamentally soteriological, the proclamation of the freedom of the believer’s conscience from the bondage of external works” (p. 26). As Calvin develops it, he is not saying that “human authorities cannot prescribe outward conduct for believers in matters indifferent,” because that would do away with all government (p. 27). But he means that the conscience cannot be bound.) So government and church alike can make laws concerning church order or about things indifferent, but neither state nor church can say about such things: “this you must do to be right with God.”

As he goes on with the historical survey Littlejohn turns to Hooker’s response to the Puritan objection to various ceremonies and forms being imposed on them. Littlejohn likes Hooker, so here’s where my sympathies diverge from Littlejohn. Littlejohn sees Hooker make use of the 2K distinction of Luther and Calvin to oppose Puritanism. Littlejohn summarizes: “We can now see why Hooker’s Lawes represents such an important contribution to Protestant two-kingdoms theology, even if we might resist the conclusions Hooker himself draws for religious uniformity and royal supremacy. However oppressive these might seem to us today, they were, at least as understood and defended by Hooker, much less so than the Puritan legalism he opposed, which brooked no opposition and left no room for discretion in the outward ordering of the Christian community. Hooker deserves credit for freeing Christian consciences from the tyranny of Scripture conceived as an exhaustive law-book, desacralizing human authority in both church and state, and resisting the Puritan tendency to immanentize Christ’s eschatological rule in the visible church. In all this he both re-affirmed the core agenda of Luther’s reform, but he also clarified and filled out Luther’s sometimes paradoxical formulations by spelling out how it was that the visible church had a foot in both kingdoms, so to speak.” I’m not convinced that that Hooker stood in the breach against those bad Puritan legalists. I rather think that the Puritans were correct about their church worship concerns. So I remained unconvinced of the benefits of 2K.

As to the chapters on practical implications in the spheres of church, state, market, etc., I’m of two minds. I liked a number of conclusions he reached and disagreed with others. But I think I can get to the applications that I found insightful apart from 2K theology.

Review of Bradford Littlejohn’s Two Kingdoms: A Guide for the Perplexed

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Littlejohn, W. Bradford. Two Kingdoms: A Guide for the Perplexed. Davenant, 2017.

This brief book is helpful contribution to the discussion of Two-Kingdoms theology. Littlejohn states in the introduction, “I will argue that both the R2K advocates [Reformed Two Kingdoms view associated with David Van Drunen and Westminster Seminary, California] and their critics have largely missed something much richer, more fundamental, and more liberating and insightful for the church today: the original Protestant two-kingdom doctrine, as articulated by such giants as Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Richard Hooker” (6). I did find Littlejohn’s historical survey to be more accurate than what I’ve found in Van Drunen. He rightly notes that the distinction between the two kingdoms historically was not a distinction between the institution of the church and other institutions. Thus in the historical view the institutional church is part of the temporal rather than spiritual kingdom. When he surveys the impact of this historic two kingdoms theology on church, state, and market, I found Littlejohn’s applications a mixed bag. In the end, I’m still not convinced that “two kingdoms” is the best model for Christian involvement in the world. I would recommend Littlejohn’s book as a good entry way into understanding the debate.

B. B. Warfield on Reformation 400

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For those looking for reading to do for the five-hundredth anniversary of the Reformation, it would be hard to improve on two articles by B. B. Warfield written for the four-hundredth anniversary of the Reformation.

Warfield, Benjamin Breckinridge. “The Ninety-Five Theses in Their Theological Significance.” In The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield. Edited by Ethelbert D. Warfield, William Park Armstrong, and Caspar Wistar Hodge. 1932; Reprinted, Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003.

This article, written in 1917 for the four-hundredth anniversary of the Reformation, begins by rejecting the following thesis: When Luther posted the Ninety-Five Theses, he was only protesting the abuse of indulgences and not the entire system. Warfield debunks this thesis with an exposition of the Theses that shows that indulgences were part of a sacerdotal system that Luther had already rejected and replaced with an evangelical doctrine of salvation.

Warfield, B. B. “The Theology of the Reformation.” In The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield. Edited by Ethelbert D. Warfield, William Park Armstrong, and Caspar Wistar Hodge. 1932; Reprinted, Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003.

In this article, written on the 400th anniversary of the Reformation, Warfield argues that the Reformation was “the substitution of one set of doctrines for another.” He maintains it was not primarily a matter of Luther’s experience. It was the change in doctrine that enabled the experience. Nor was it primarily a reform of corruption in the church. That had long been tried, but only a change in doctrine made such reform successful.

Warfield argues that the center of this doctrinal claim is that salvation can in no way be merited by works but can only be obtained through Christ crucified alone by grace alone. Warfield takes Luther’s reply to Erasmus, “On the Enslaved Will,” to be the fundamental statement of Reformation theology.

K. Scott Oliphint on the Majesty of Mystery

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Oliphint, K. Scott. The Majesty of Mystery: Celebrating the Glory of an Incomprehensible God. Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2016.

In this excellent study Oliphint looks at mystery in the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation, God’s relationship with people, God’s decree, providence and human choice, and prayer. He develops each of these topics by a biblical survey of the topic followed by developing the material doctrinally. Oliphint then makes the necessary distinctions which demonstrate that though mysterious, the doctrine is not nonsensical. He closes each study with a meditation on how the mystery should give rise to worship.

Oliphint argues against both a rationalist approach to theology in which whatever doesn’t measure up to a certain standard of what is considered reasonable must be discarded and against a mystical approach to theology in which the mind is unengaged. Rather, Oliphint argues that since theology has to do with an incomparable God who has condescended to reveal himself to us, we should expect to find mystery. In fact, the mystery should cause us to worship God because it reveals a greatness that is beyond our comprehension.

Review of Pennington, The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing

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Pennington, Jonathan. The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing: A Theological Commentary. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2017.

Pennington’s commentary on the Sermon on the Mount comes in the three parts. The first, which he terms “Orientation” provides a discussions of the Sermon’s structure as well as of key terms and concepts: makarios (typically translated “blessed”), teleios (typically translated “perfect”), righteousness, hypocrisy, heart, Gentiles, the Father in heaven, the kingdom, and reward. In this section Pennington also argues that the larger context for the Sermon is the Hebrew wisdom tradition and the Greek virtue ethics tradition.

The second part of Pennington’s book is the commentary proper. This is a brief section, by section commentary of the entire sermon.

The third part of the commentary is a concluding chapter which summarizes the book’s argument in six theses:
Thesis 1: The Bible Is about Human Flourishing
Thesis 2: The Bible’s Vision of Human Flourishing Is God Centered and Eschatological
Thesis 3: The Moral View of the Bible Is a Revelatory Virtue Ethic
Thesis 4: The Sermon Teaches That Salvation Is Inextricably Entailed with Discipleship/Virtuous Transformation
Thesis 5: Virtue and Grace Are Compatible, Not Opposites
Thesis 6: Biblical Human Flourishing Provides Crucial Insight into the Meaning and Shape of God’s Saving Work

This commentary intersected with several areas that I’ve been studying recently:

  • I taught the Beatitudes in Sunday School this winter and spring
  • I wrote a paper for this summer’s Bible Faculty Summit on how beatitude/human flourishing and God’s glory work together as man’s chief end
  • John Frame’s comment in Doctrine of the Christian Life that the normative, situational, and existential perspectives on ethics that he argues Christians should have correspond to the deontological, teleological, and virtue approaches ethics, has led me to study virtue ethics.

I found convincing Pennington’s argument that makarois corresponds to the Hebrew ashre and that both refer to a state of flourishing that comes from being blessed. I also found persuasive his argument that teleios refers to wholeness of person (i.e., it affirms the need to obey the law as a whole person rather than just outwardly as the scribes and Pharisees) rather than to perfection as modern English-speakers understand the term. Pennington’s discussion of the Sermon’s structure was also well done.

As interested as I was in the possible connection between the Sermon and virtue ethics, I found that part of Pennington’s argument less convincing. That the Sermon and Greco-Roman virtue ethics cover an overlapping area is clear. But that Jesus was actually interacting with Greco-Roman philosophers seems a bit of stretch to me. It was also interesting to be reading this book while also reading Kavin Rowe’s book on Stoicism. Rowe argues against an encyclopedic approach to connecting philosophy with Christian throught. Pennington argues for a connection between the Sermon and Greco-Roman virtue ethics by virtue of its “encyclopedic context.” I wasn’t entirely sure if Pennington and Rowe were talking about the same thing by “encyclopedic,” but insofar as they were, I found Rowe more persuasive.

Another weakness is Pennington’s tendency at points to pit Reformation and Roman Catholic readings against each other. Pennington tended to favor the Catholic readings without any further comment on how those readings fit into larger systems of theology. More troubling, when I looked at Reformation and Post-Reformation writers like Thomas Watson, William Perkins, and even Martin Luther, I didn’t always see the opposition that Pennington is claiming existed. Since he tended to footnote the Catholic interpreters but not the Reformation ones, I wonder if there may have been a caricature of Reformation and Puritan authors at this point.

These criticisms aside, this is a helpful and largely correct approach to the Sermon on the Mount that I’ve benefited from reading.

D. A. Carson on the Value of the Reformation for Pastors

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In the current 9Marks Journal on the Reformation D. A. Carson has an excellent article about the value pastors receive in studying the Reformation. Included in the article are these quotable observations:

A pastor is by definition something akin to a GP (a “general practitioner”). He is not a specialist in, say, divorce and remarriage, missions history, cultural commentary, or particular periods of church history. Yet most pastors will have to develop competent introductory knowledge in all these areas as part of his application of the Word of God to the people around him. And that means he is obligated to devote some time each year to reading in broad areas.

D. A. Carson, “Should Pastors Today Care about the Reformation?” 9Marks Journal (Fall 2017): 17.

[T]he study of the Reformation is especially salutary as a response to those who think the so-called “Great Tradition,” as preserved in the earliest ecumenical creeds, is invariably an adequate basis for ecumenical unity, as if there were no heresies invented after the fourth century. On this front, study of the Reformation usefully fosters a little historical realism.

D. A. Carson, “Should Pastors Today Care about the Reformation?” 9Marks Journal (Fall 2017): 18.

But although I have read right through, say, Julian of Norwich, I find a great deal of subjective mysticism and virtually no grounding in Scripture or the gospel. And for the life of me I cannot imagine either Peter or Paul recommending monastic withdrawal in order to attain greater spirituality: it is always a danger when certain ascetic practices become normative paths to spirituality when there is no apostolic support for them.

Our contemporary generation, tired of merely cerebral approaches to Christianity, is drawn to late patristic and medieval patterns of spirituality. What a relief, then, to turn to the warmest of the writings of the Reformers, and discover afresh the pursuit of God and his righteousness well grounded in holy Scripture. That is why Luther’s letter to his barber remains such a classic: it is full of godly application of the gospel to ordinary Christians, building up a conception of spirituality that is not reserved for the elite of the elect but for all brothers and sisters in Christ. Similarly, the opening chapters of Book III of Calvin’s Institutes provides more profound reflection on true spirituality than many much longer contemporary volumes.

D. A. Carson, “Should Pastors Today Care about the Reformation?” 9Marks Journal (Fall 2017): 19.

Review of Bock, Jesus According to Scripture

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Bock, Darrell L. Jesus According to Scripture: Restoring the Portrait from the Gospels. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002.

One of the challenges in writing a study of the Gospels is how to arrange one’s approach. On the one hand, maintaining the narrative integrity of each Gospel is important for understanding that Gospel. On the other hand, understanding the parallels among the Gospels is also important. Bock addresses this issue by designing the core of this book as a unique harmony of the Gospels. Unlike a traditional harmony that seeks to arrange the Gospels in some sort of chronological order with the parallels displayed, Bock tries to keep “the basic narrative lines [of each Gospel] intact” in the way he moves through the material. This means that some parallels are covered more than once as they occur in different contexts in different Gospels.

I used this book as a guide for reading through the Gospels. At the head of each section, Bock lists the references of Gospel passage(s) being considered. I would read these and then read Bock’s summary of the passage.

The final part of this book is a well-written theology of the Four Gospels.

I worked through this book slowly over the course of several years, and in that time a second edition came out. In addition, the theology in the back of the first edition was expanded into a separate book.

Review of Harvey Mansfield’s Very Short Introduction of Tocqueville

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Mansfield, Harvey C. Tocqueville: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

This excellent “Very Short Introduction” is written by one of the translators of the excellent University of Chicago Press edition of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.

Mansfield, in a brief span of pages is able to distil Tocqueville’s thought, relate it to that of other thinkers, and to show the significance of the questions Tocqueville raises.

Some examples:

Here is another singular feature of his liberalism. Whereas john Stuart Mill, a more typical liberal, does his best to defend the value of individuality in not conforming to majority opinion, Tocqueville expands on the benefits for liberal society of associating. He is less confident than Mill that individuals can be taught to stand up to the majority, and he wants also to persuade the majority that it need not demand conformity. [25]

In noting American reliance on self-interest, Tocqueville differs from much current discussion on democratic participation, sometimes called ‘communitarian.’ Communitarian sentiment is opposed to self-interest; it wants to be altruistic and selfless, for the common good as opposed to selfish or market-oriented. For him, sentiment on behalf of the community comes out of one’s self-interest and is useful to it rather than selfless and opposed. [26]

Religion is the root of the mores that help maintain a democratic republic in America. It is considered for this function, not for its truth—and he says that what is most important is not that all citizens profess the true religion, but that they profess a religion. In this political view, religion serves politics, rather than politics serving religion, as with the Puritans. [30]

Almost immediately after introducing majority tyranny, Tocqueville speaks of the ‘power that the majority exercises over thought.’ He makes the flat statement that ‘I do not know any country where, in general, less independence of mind and genuine freedom reign than in America. It is not that a dissident need fear being persecuted or burned at the stake, but that nobody will listen, and he will be dismissed from consideration, finally shushed. This is an ‘intellectual’ violence that closes the mind and, more effectually than the Inquisition, takes away from authors even the thought of publishing views contrary to the majority’s opinion. [45-46].

“Equality develops the desire in each man to judge everything by himself; it gives him in all things a taste for the tangible and real and a contempt for traditions and forms.” In the permanent bustle of democracy men have no leisure for the quiet meditation required for the “most theoretical principles.” [64]

At the end of his master work Tocqueville discloses the political evil toward which democracy naturally tends, the culmination of his fear, repeatedly expressed, that democratic equality will overcome democratic freedom. Here, he calls this evil ‘mild despotism’; elsewhere he calls it democratic or administrative despotism….We have seen the germ of mild despotism in his description in volume 1 of the vague power of public opinion, but in volume 2 we see it embodied in the centralized democratic state. [77-78]

As these quotations show Tocqueville both has insights that remain relevant to life today (e.g., above quotations from pp. 25, 46-46, 77-78) and ideas that Christians must reject (e.g., quotations form pp. 26, 30).

Review of R. Michael Allen, Justification and the Gospel

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Allen, R. Michael. Justification and the Gospel: Understanding the Contexts and Controversies. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2013.

Allen’s book on justification is a careful, informed treatment of justification in light of current controversies. It has a number of strengths: It is defending the orthodox, Reformation position on justification; it lays out a cogent methodology for systematic theology; it interacts skillfully with the entire history of theology from the patristics to the present; it relates justification to union with Christ, the obedience of Christ, Federal theology, sanctification, and the church while still maintaining justification’s uniqueness. A number of weaknesses should also be noted. Allen too often quotes positively and without caveat theologians outside of Protestant orthodoxy such as Barth. He also overquotes certain authors. In one section of the book, he quoted John Webster so often that I thought I should put Allen down and simply read Webster for myself. Finally, his section on the church was explicitly opposed to Baptist ecclesiology. These weaknesses aside, this is a worthwhile book for someone with theological training.