Exegesis and Theology

The Blog of Brian Collins

Tensions in the Puritan View of Culture

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Puritanism and its Reformed-pietist successors constantly vacillated between whether they were rebuilding Christendom by making towns and eventually nations into virtually Christian societies, or whether they were advocating a pure, called out church. Edwards had strong commitments to both ideals. Heir to the Puritan establishment and part of a powerful ruling class, he was jealous of the privileges of ministerial prestige in town and province. He looked forward to a worldwide Reformed Christendom as the millennium approached.

Yet he was also a luminary among the international awakeners whose insistence in conversionism could—like earlier Puritanism—be disruptive of the standing order. The awakeners worked on the premise that many church members, including many clergy were unconverted. The implication seemed to be that true churches should be made up of true believers only. . . . Some had become Baptists, applying the logic of converts-only purity to both sacraments. It is easy to see why Edwards’ opponents would accuse him of moving toward separatism.

Edwards wanted rather to resolve the old conundrum without resorting to separatism. He would show how to maintain both the purity of the church and the establishment.

George M. Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 350-51

Creation and Social Structures

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Greg Forster has some helpful comments on how social structures are rooted in Creation while also being shaped by human action. This means that social structures are rooted in the creational order but human action can twist them in accord with the Fall or press them back toward something that conforms to God’s law.

We must avoid two errors when thinking about social structures. The first error is thinking of them as arbitrary constructs of individual human decisions. This implies that there are no limits on how social structures can be changed. We raise children in families now, but if we all decided to live differently, we could just as easily create massive nurseries and drop off all our babies there at birth. We have an economy based on ownership and exchange now, but if we all decided to live differently, we could just as easily redistribute all property to the people we think should have it, or abolish property and live communally. This is the error I described earlier as naiveté about the social nature of human beings. . . . Admittedly, there is something mysterious about this. It certainly seems like social structures ought to be infinitely changeable if they are only the result of human action. But in fact, they make no sense to us if they’re arbitrary. If we can rearrange parenthood or ownership at will just by deciding to do so, then really there is no such thing as parenthood or ownership. The reason is simple: social relationships are embedded permanently in our nature as human beings. They’re like reason and morality, which are also embedded in our nature. You can’t think logically unless you first assume, without argument, that logic is valid. You can’t think morally unless you first assume, without argument, that there is such a thing as right and wrong. Similarly, you can’t think socially unless you first assume, without argument, that social systems are real and not arbitrary. The other error to avoid is treating social structures as though they were not a result of human action at all. This implies they can’t be changed, that they’re mechanical forces that stand outside our world. They control us, but we have no power to control them. I’ve already hinted at this error, when I commented that there’s no magical force outside human will that makes people live this way.

Greg Forster, Joy for the World: How Christianity Lost Its Cultural Influence and Can Begin Rebuilding It (Crossway, 2014), 178-80.

Culture and Creation

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Culture is what we make of creation. Literally we take the stuff of creation and shape artifacts and institutions. We build things from stone and steel. We make art by arranging colors and textures, sounds and words. And our social institutions are shaped by taking into consideration the nature of human nature. Figuratively, we make something of creation—we project an appraisal in our cultural forms of the kind of world that God has made and the kind of creatures he’s made us to be. Cultural disorders often come from inadequate or false readings of creation. Many people today deny the very existence of a given human nature, arguing that cultural institutions are simply social constructions, arbitrary and freely chosen patterns guided only by human willing.

Ken Myers, Mars Hill Audio Journal 78 (Jan/Feb 2006): 00:08-00:57

Thomas Boston on the Vanity of Life

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A meditation for turning our eyes toawrd eternal realties, in preparation for the Lord’s Day:

If we look on our life, in the several periods of it, we will find it a heap of vanities. ‘Childhood and youth are vanity,’ Eccles. xi. 19. We come into the world the most helpless of all animals, young birds and beasts can do something for themselves, but infant man is altogether unable to help himself. Our childhood is spent in pitiful trifling pleasures, which become the scorn of our own after-thoughts. Youth is a flower that soon withered, a blossom that quickly falls off; it is a space of time in which we are rash, foolish, and inconsiderate, pleasing ourselves with a variety of vanities, and swimming, as it were, through a flood of them. But ere we are aware, it is past, and we are in middle age, encompassed with a thick cloud of cares, through which we must grope; and finding ourselves beset with pricking thorns of difficulties, through them we must force our way, to accomplish the projects and contrivances of our riper thoughts. And the more we solace ourselves in any earthly enjoyment we attain to, the more bitterness do we find in parting with it. Then comes old age, attended with its own train of infirmities, labour, and sorrow, Psal. xc. 10. and sets us down next to the grave. In a word, All flesh is grass, Isaiah xl. 6. Every stage, or period of life is vanity.”

Thomas Boston, Human Nature in Its Fourfold State, 287.

The Most Important Question According to Jonathan Edwards

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There is no question whatsoever, that is of greater importance to mankind, and that it more concerns every individual person to be well resolved in, than this, what are the distinguishing qualifications of those who are in favor with God, and entitled to his eternal rewards? Or, which comes to the same thing, What is the nature of true religion? and wherein do lie the distinguishing notes of that virtue and holiness, that is acceptable in the sight of God.

WJE 2:84 (Preface to Religious Affections)

Thinking about Objections to Corporate Prayer

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The latest 9Marks journal includes an insightful article about the importance of corporate prayer for the church.

What caught my attention, however, were the objections this pastor received for leading his church to begin this practice:

He felt our prayer times in the morning service were already long. They detract from the music team’s ability to get into a rhythm, and disrupt the worship experience. I’ve had others suggest it may foster legalism, by giving people something else they feel they must do.

What does it say about us when prayer is contrasted with worship? What does it say when worship identified more with the rhythm of the music than it is with prayer? What does it say when prayer is seen as a hindernace to this kind of “worship” rather than integral to worship?

Or what does it say about our comprehension of the gospel when a corporate gathering of prayer is seen as legalism because it implies that prayer is something that we must do? As if it were legalism to recognize that prayer is commanded of God for his people.

Luther, hardly a legalist, wrote:

You should pray and you should know that you are bound to pray by divine command. . . . You have been commanded to give honor to God’s Name, to call upon him, and pray to him, and this is just as much a command as the other commandments, “You shall not kill,” and so on. LW 51:169.

Luther did not see this as debilitating legalism. Rather he saw the command to pray as liberating:

Therefore, since it is commanded that we pray, do not despise prayer and take refuge behind your own unworthiness. Take an example from other commands. A work which I do is a work of obedience. Because my father, master, or prince has commanded it, I must do it, not because of my worthiness, but because it has been commanded. So it is also with prayer. So, when you pray for wife or children or parents or the magistrates, this is what you should think: This work I have been commanded to do and as an obedient person I must do it. On my account it would be nothing, but on account of the commandment it is a precious thing. LW 51:170.

I should conclude by noting that perhaps the people cited by the pastor were young believers. Or perhaps they thought better of what they said afterwards. The point is not to critique those people, as they seem to have an undershepherd who is shepherding them. The point of this post is for myself and those who read it to reflect on these ideas for our own edification and, if need be, correction.

Lucifer in Isaiah 14, Wisdom Literature and Virtue Ethics, Wisdom and Torah

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Youngblood, Ronald. “The Fall of Lucifer (in More Ways Than One).” In The Way of Wisdom: Essays in Honor of Bruce K. Waltke. Edited by J. I. Packer and Sven K. Soderlund. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000.

Youngblood argues that “Lucifer” in Isaiah 14 is not Satan. He insists that a contextual reading points toward a king of Babylon as the person under discussion. I would agree with the claim that the personage in view is not Satan, but I would argue that the context indicates an end-time setting which would lead to an identification with the Antichrist.

Wilson, Jonathan R. “Biblical Wisdom, Spiritual Formation, and the Virtues.” The Way of Wisdom: Essays in Honor of Bruce K. Waltke. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000.

Wilson’s essay examines how the wisdom literature of Scripture should shape a Christian approach to virtue ethics and spiritual formation. Wilson did a good job of distinguishing a Christian approach to virtue ethics from other approaches. For instance, he comments:

In much of the virtue tradition, reflection [on teleology] is directed toward the human community and often toward a particular conception of the polis (‘city,’ ‘political community’). In much contemporary spirituality, the concern is narrowed even further, to the individual. Such spirituality is guided not by a thirst for God but by a narcissistic preoccupation with the self turned in. Since the ‘incurved self’ is a classic Christian definition of sin, much contemporary spirituality perpetuates sin. . . . Biblical wisdom begins, continues, and ends with the fear of the Lord (Prov 1:7). Wisdom is deeply concerned with human life and issues of character, but those concerns have a larger setting. That larger setting is God’s redemptive purpose for all creation” (298).

However, he sees value in a Christian virtue ethics:

Too often we have thought that ethics is solely concerned with ‘moral quandaries’ or ‘boundary situations.’ Challenging this, the virtue tradition teaches us that ethics is concerned with the whole of life, with ordinary, everyday living. Too often we have thought that ‘spirituality’ had to do only with Sunday worship, times of prayer, a quiet time of Bible reading. Against this way of thinking, the recent recovery of spiritual formation teaches us that Sunday worship is training us for the rest of the week, that prayer is a way of life, and that ‘quiet times’ are nothing unless we live them out in our everyday relationships. Biblical wisdom provides biblical grounding and guidance for this ‘everydayness’ of our lives. In the book of Proverbs, for example, eating, drinking, laboring are all subject to the guidance of wisdom. . . . This everydayness of life is given theological grounding by the integral relationship between wisdom and creation (Prov 3:19-20; 8:22-31l Job 28, 38-39). Living wisely means living in accordance with God’s intention for the redeemed creation in our everyday lives” (301).

Hassell Bullock, “Wisdom, The ‘Amen’ of Torah,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 52, no. 1 (2009): 3-8.

Bullock sees the Wisdom literature as affirming the teaching of the Torah. He highlights the links between their creation theology, monotheism, and the covenantal foundation of the “fear of the Lord.”

Two Commentaries: Cragie on Ezekiel and Miller on Daniel

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Craigie, Peter C. Ezekiel. Daily Study Bible. Edited by John C. L. Gibson. WJK, 1983.

This is a brief commentary on the book of Ezekiel. The benefit I’ve gained from this commentary over the years is from its brevity. Some of the prophets are large enough, and their organization is opaque enough, that it is difficult to keep the whole book in mind. The solution to this is repeated re-reading. But in these initial readings some interpretive guidance is helpful in making sense of some of the prophecies. This commentary is brief enough to facilitate this kind of initial approach to the book. Cragie is at times not as conservative as could be wished, suggesting that certain parts of prophecies were added to the book by later editors. But in providing a general orientation to the book prior to more in-depth study of the book, I find him suitable.

Miller, Stephen R. Daniel. NAC. B&H, 1994.

This is an excellent commentary on the book of Daniel. It is manageable in its size while still rendering carefully argued positions on the key issues. It’s written from a dispensational perspective. I’d say dispensational interpreters would most certainly want to own a copy, and non-dispensational students of Scripture should own a copy so as to have a careful exposition of Daniel from that perspective.

Sinclair Ferguson’s The Whole Christ

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Ferguson, Sinclair B. The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance—Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters. Wheaton: Crossway, 2016.

35Sinclair Ferguson uses the Marrow controversy in 18th century Scotland as a historical lens through which to examine the issues of legalism, antinomianism, and assurance. Ferguson’s thesis, as reflected in the title of the book, is that both legalists and antinomians err in separating the benefits of Christ from Christ himself. The solution to both is to not seek the benefits of Christ apart from the person of Christ. In all, this is a helpful book full of interesting history and insightful theology. I think the one improvement could be situating the response of Boston and the Marrow men in the broader context of Reformed theology. Did they respond similarly or differently to these problems than Reformed theologians in other times and places? In the multitude of historical counselors there is oftentimes safety.