Exegesis and Theology

The Blog of Brian Collins

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.

Brandon Crowe, The Last Adam: A Theology of the Obedient Life of Jesus in the Gospels

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Crowe, Brandon D. The Last Adam: A Theology of the Obedient Life of Jesus in the Gospels. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2017.

The apostle Paul calls Jesus the Last Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45), and theologians have developed the concept of the active obedience of Christ in which the righteousness of Christ’s entire life is imputed to the believer. Crowe’s book doesn’t develop these ideas theologically. Rather, he makes the case that the concept of Jesus as the Last Adam whose life of obedience is imputed to the believer is rooted in the Gospels. I found the book useful. I filled a OneNote page full of notes on Jesus as the Last Adam and made references back to Crowe in notes on individual Gospel passages.

In terms of summarizing the book, it is hard to better than Crowe’s own summary:

In this volume I have argued that Jesus is the last Adam who lived a life of vicarious obedience necessary for salvation. To recap, in chapter 1, I argued that the two-Adam structure that is prominent in the history of interpretation provides a helpful compass for those today who are interested in the theology of the Gospels. Jesus is consistently identified in the history of interpretation as the second and last Adam whose obedience overcomes the disobedience of the first Adam. In chapter 2 we considered the multifaceted Adam Christology in the Gospels. The Gospels present Jesus as the last Adam in various ways, including in the temptation narratives, by means of the role of the Holy Spirit, and through the Son of Man imagery. These observations provided momentum for chapter 3, where the focus was specifically on Jesus’s sonship—a central theme in the Gospels, with numerous implications. First, Jesus’s filial identity also relates Jesus to Adam, the first covenantal son of God. Third, in light of these canonical links, Jesus’s sonship strongly emphasizes his obedience. We also considered in chapter 3 the key roles of the baptism and temptation narratives, noting how these accounts draw attention to Jesus’s sonship and obedience and set the stage for Jesus’s obedience throughout the Gospels.

In chapter 4 we considered in more detail some of the ways in which Jesus fulfills Scripture, along with statements that speak of the divine necessity of Jesus’s obedient life for salvation. Jesus is portrayed as the Holy and Righteous One whose obedience excels that of Adam. In chapter 5 we looked in greater detail at the contours of John’s Gospel, which portrays Jesus’s glory as greater than Adam. In John, Jesus is also portrayed as the obedient Son who was always working and always doing the will of his Father, accomplishing salvation for those who believe in the Son of Man. Jesus’s work in John must be viewed as a unity, which means his life and death are both necessary for the perfect completion of his work. In chapter 6 we considered the work of Jesus that was necessary to inaugurate the kingdom of God, which is a kingdom of righteousness instituted by a righteous king. Jesus’s power is corollary to his holiness and includes his binding of the strong man, by which he overcomes the sin of Adam. In chapter 7 we looked more explicitly at the death of Jesus and considered how the perfection of Jesus’s life enabled him to serve as the perfect sacrifice for sin, since in Jesus we find the unity of heart devotion and outward obedience. Jesus’s blood is therefore uniquely able to serve as a ransom for many. We also considered the judicial nature of the resurrection. The last Adam embodied perfect obedience through his life and was therefore crowned with new-creational, resurrection life.

In this study I have not provided a thorough definition of salvation. Instead, I have preferred to consider inductively some of the ways that Jesus’s multifaceted work is necessary for salvation. As we approach the end of this study, I repeat the simple, working gloss on salvation from chapter 1: deliverance from sin unto everlasting life in fellowship with the Triune God. In light of the preceding discussion, it should be emphasized that Jesus’s lifelong obedience as the (divine) Son of God leads to resurrection life, and all those who trust in Christ likewise will participate in resurrection life. Thus, to say that Jesus’s perfect obedience is necessary for participation in eternal/resurrection life.

In sum, I have argued that Jesus’s life is necessary for salvation. However, the complexity of Jesus’s mission renders it impossible to say all that needs to be said in one volume. By no means should this study be considered exhaustive; I do not claim to have covered every possible angle of the richness of what Christ has done to accomplish salvation. Additionally, I have focused almost exclusively in this volume on the accomplishment of salvation and have said little about the application of salvation, though the latter is equally as necessary as the former. My hope is that this study will interject new life (and some new arguments) into some old conversations…. Woe betide me if I were to suggest that the revelation that comes through Christ or his death is somehow less important [than the life of Christ]. However, another danger is failing to appreciate the theological significance of the life of Jesus, which makes the Gospels such fertile ground for theological reflection. Jesus does many things in the Gospels, including (quite prominently, as I have argued) vicariously accomplishing salvation as a representative man. [199-201]

Review of C. Kavin Rowe, One True Life: The Stoic and Early Christians as Rival Traditions

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Rowe, C Kavin. One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016.

This is one of those books that stands head and shoulders above other recent books. It comes in three parts. In Part I Rowe examines the Stoic philosophers Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. In Part II Rowe summarizes the thought of Paul, Luke, and Justin Martyr. In Part III Rowe investigates the question of whether these two rival traditions can be compared.

I began reading the book to gain a better understanding of Stoicism, and Rowe’s treatment in Part I is an outstanding introduction. It involves a close reading of three specific Stoics. This gives a good sense of both continuities and discontinuities between Stoics. Rowe also interacts with scholars of Stoicism, so his notes are a good guide for further study.

I only skimmed Part II. I wasn’t reading this book to be introduced to the thought of Paul, Luke or Justin. And were I to summarize the thought of Paul or Luke my treatment would be different (for instance, his treatment of faith and works was influenced by E. P. Sanders; he did not discuss union with Christ).

In Part III Rowe made a compelling case that Stoicism and Christianity were rival and incommensurable traditions. In this part of the book Rowe’s argument reminded me a great deal of Van Til, though Rowe was actually dependent on Wittgenstein and may not have read Van Til.

Rowe’s case can be summarized:

“These examples reflect the dominant assumption about the use of the word God in the Stoic and Christian texts, that is it is used in the same or similar enough ways that we can treat it as referring to the same object/subject. The Christians and the Stoics both speak of the same basic thing called God. The trouble with this assumption is that they do not…. If we pose the question of how to ‘translate’ the Stoic use of the Word theos/deus into Christian usage so that the Christians would say the same thing with the word God in their grammar that the Stoics said in theirs…it is best approximated not by God but by cosmos/ktisis.” And even then it is only an approximation since Christians have different view of creation. If one were to reverse the process and try to translate “the Christian use of the word theos into Stoic usage so that the Stoics would say the same thing with the word God in their grammar that the Christian said in theirs”—we would find no equivalent concept. The Christian would need to explain his entire narrative. “Of the many implications of this asymmetry, we need mention only two…. First, the fact that God does not mean anything like the same thing for the Christians and the Stoics makes it all but obvious that patterns of language that are directly tied to God in the grammars of the different traditions will not mean the same thing. Providence, for example, no more names a shared conviction about a God/world relation than it does a shared sense of what that God or world is. Second, precisely because of the role that God plays in each tradition, the patterns of language that are inextricably bound to God are constitutive of each traditions identity as a distinctive tradition in the first place. The consequence, therefore, of the fundamental different ‘God’ makes for the tradition’s existence as a tradition is the expectation of incommensurable (and incompatible) difference elsewhere” (227-28).

Danger of Conforming Theology to Contemorary Cultural Mores

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Certain kinds of religious leader gravitated toward eugenics in the early twentieth century, ministers anxious about the changing culture but also eager to find solutions to its diagnosable ills. Theirs was a practical spirituality better understood in terms of worldviews than theologies. Many of the religious leaders who joined the eugenics movement were well-known, even notorious, for their lack of coherent doctrinal vision; of one Congregationalist advocate for eugenics it was said, “He is not a theologian in the ordinary sense, for he loves flowers more than botany.” Of another, a well-known Baptist minister, one critic noted the impossibility of constructing even a preliminary image of his beliefs: “No painter who ever lived could make a picture which expressed the religion of the Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick.” These were preachers who embraced modern ideas first and adjusted their theologies later. Theirs were the churches that had naves and transepts modeled after gothic European cathedrals—as well as bowling alleys. And it was when these self-identified liberal and modernist religious men abandoned bedrock principles to seek relevance in modern debates that they were most likely to find themselves endorsing eugenics. Those who clung stubbornly to tradition, to doctrine, and to biblical infallibility opposed eugenics and became, for a time, the objects of derision for their rejection of this most modern science.

Christin Rosen, Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 5.

The evidence yields a clear pattern about who elected to support eugenicstyle reforms and who did not. Religious leaders pursued eugenics precisely when they moved away from traditional religious tenets. The liberals and modernists in their respective faiths—those who challenged their churches to conform to modern circumstances—became the eugenics movement’s most enthusiastic supporters. Theologically, these men were creative, deliberately vague, or perhaps even, as their critics contended, deeply confused. In terms of solving social problems, however, their purpose was clear: They were dedicated to facing head-on the challenges posed by modernity. Doing so meant embracing scientific solutions.

Christin Rosen, Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 184

Iain Murray’s Biography of J. C. Ryle

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Murray, Iain H. J. C. Ryle: Prepared to Stand Alone. Banner of Truth, 2016.

Iain Murray writes history like J. C. Ryle wrote history. He writes with the desire to edify God’s people. He makes use of church history to instruct in doctrine and to exhort to holy living. This does not mean Murray writes hagiography, overlooking faults or trimming the truth. But it does mean he writes history that is not the bare recitation of facts and context. Murray, like Ryle, seeks to draw out the significance of events.

One example. Ryle tells the sad story of how J. C. Ryle’s son Herbert left the faith his father defended. In their lifetimes Herbert gained the greater scholarly acclaim. “Yet,” Murray observes, “a century is a small time in the history of the kingdom of God. It takes the long term to judge what is of enduring value. Herbert Ryle’s last book, a Commentary on the Minor Prophets, on which he spent many years, was never published. It found no publisher; the ‘latest scholarship’ was already out of date by the time of his death in 1925. His father as a teacher rested on a different authority and, as one who delighted in the law of the Lord, he inherited the promise, ‘He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither’ (Psa. 1:3)” (196).