Exegesis and Theology

The Blog of Brian Collins

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.

The Significance of Our Union with Christ

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First, we must understand that as long as Christ remains outside of us, and we are separated from him, all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value for us. Therefore, to share with us what he had received from the Father, he had to become ours and to dwell within us. For this reason, he is called ‘our Head’ [Eph. 4:15], and ‘the first-born among many brethren’ [Rom. 8:29]. We also, in turn, after said to be ‘engrafted into him’ [Rom 11:17], and to ‘put on Christ’ [Gal. 3:27]; for, as I have said, all that he possess is nothing to us until we grow into one body with him.

Calvin, Institutes, 3.1.1.

Wise Counsel from John Newton

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Grant, George, ed. Wise Counsel: John Newton’s Letters to John Ryland, Jr. Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2009.

51UXb8yEwBL._SY344_BO1204203200_This is a collection of letters, many previously unpublished, from the Anglican minister John Newton to the Baptist minister John Ryland, Jr. The name of John Ryland, Jr. may be unknown to many, but he was one of the rope-holders for William Carey, who is well-known for his pioneer missionary work in India. The letters begin when Ryland is a young man and continue into Newton’s last years of life. The title of the book captures their nature. These are letters of wise counsel from an older minister to a younger. Since they cover such a long span of time, a whole variety of life’s experiences are commented upon. These are well worth reading and meditation.

Thoughts on VanDoodewaard’s Quest for the Historical Adam

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VanDoodewaard, William. The Quest for the Historical Adam: Genesis, Hermeneutics, and Human Origins. Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage, 2015.

VanDoodewaard provides a helpful survey of views about Genesis, Creation, and Adam from the time of the church fathers until the present. He holds to a young earth and a normal day creation, but most of the book is simply a very helpful summarizing of viewpoints.

In reading the book, I concluded that some of the criticisms that I read of this book were off mark. For instance, VanDoodewaard has been critiqued for describing his view as literal, and I did once see him describe a view positively as literalistic. But he notes toward the beginning of the book the various ways the word literal can be used and how he is going to use it.I think since VanDoodewaard expresses awareness of the various ways this term can be used and specifies how he is using it, he should not be critiqued on this point (further, reviewers should provide his working definition if they use the word in the review to describe his position).

I came to a similar conclusion regarding his discussion of racism on the part of evolutionists but not on the part of creationists. If my memory serves me correctly, he alludes to the racism on the part of some creationists, but he does not discuss it because it does not flow from their view of creation as the racism of certain evolutionists did. I think these criticisms are simply asking VanDoodewaard to write a different book than he intended to write.

I do, however, wish that he had provided more information on the motivations of those who were abandoning a literal interpretation of Genesis prior to Darwin. They obviously were not motivated by a desire to accommodate themselves to Darwinism, but they did seem to be influenced by Enlightenment thought. Knowing precisely what it was that motivated these changes in interpretation would have been useful.

Also, VanDoodewaard strongly critiqued Kuyper, Bavinck, and Schilder for acknowledging that the first three days of creation could have been longer or shorter than ordinary days, implying that this set a slippery slope for compromise in the next generation. I didn’t quite follow this argumentation, since these men were not saying (in fact, they explicitly denied) that these first three days were long ages. It seems to me that they were simply saying that since there was no sun until day 4, perhaps the first three days could have been only 18 hours long or 36 hours long. I don’t see a reason to adopt this supposition, but it seems in line enough with an ordinary day view of the creation week that I felt like I was missing the information on how this position led to compromise. Were there other aspects to it?

These quibbles aside, however, I highly commend VanDoodewaard’s work. His historical work is careful and accurate. His understanding of the issues invovled and the significance of the views taken is incisive.

Poythress on “Correlations with Providence in Genesis 1”

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Poythress, Vern S. “Correlations with Providence in Genesis 1,” WTJ 77 (2015): 71-99.

160px-Westminster_Theological_JournalThis article is the second in a recent trilogy of articles by Poythress on the opening chapters of Genesis. The heart of the article is a step through the creation week with particular attention given to correlations between God’s creation activity and normal providence. For instance, in normal providence heavy rains may cause water to cover dry land. Later the water recedes to show the dry land. This ordinary providence aligns with God’s causing the dry land to appear out of the water in creation. Or, God specially created the animals, but animals are “created” providentially though the normal processes of birth. I thought that Poythress sometimes showed real correlations between creation and providence, but other times I thought he was trying too hard. For instance, he sees a correlation between the original gift of food to eat in Genesis 1:29 and eating of plants today by humans. However, this is a stretch because God’s speech is looking beyond the creation week to the future. It’s not clear that something beyond ordinary providence was ever intended.

Poythress draws two conclusions from his observations regarding correlations between creation and providence. First, he looks at ANE creation myths and their similarities to the Genesis account. After noting that the differences between Genesis and the myths are far greater than the similarities, Poythress posits that many of the existing similarities developed as pagans  shaped their creation myths from observations of a providentially ordered world—a providential ordering that God had correlated with the true creation. This is an intriguing thought, but it would have been nice of Poythress had worked through some specific examples.

In conjunction with this first conclusion, Poythress considers John Walton’s claim that the creation account is concerned with functional rather than material creation. Poythress notes that his emphasis on correlations with providence has a functional bent to it, but he denies that this means that material creation is excluded from the account. The material creation is necessary for there to be functions.

Second, Poythress concludes that the days of creation are functional days rather than a week of six normal days. He says that since God rested from creation on the seventh day, the day of God’s rest is everlasting. This seems to be to be an unwarranted assumption. God’s rest from creation may be everlasting, but it does not follow from this that the seventh day is everlasting. In addition, I’m not sure how to make sense of the claim that the days of the creation week are somehow “God’s days,” days that are only analogous to human days in normal providence. God is eternal and, as I understand eternity, there are no successive God-days for human days to be analogous to. Nor is there anything in the text of Genesis to indicate that the first week is different from succeeding weeks in human history. Just because some things in the creation week are analogous to ordinary providence (e.g., special creation of animals correlates to the birth of animals) does not mean that the water of Genesis 1 is only analogous to water in ordinary providence (as Poythress suggested of Genesis 1:2) or that the days of Genesis 1 are only analogous to ordinary days.

I found Poythress’s first conclusion intriguing but in need of further support. I found his second conclusion less than persuasive.

William Perkins, Two Articles

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William Perkins could be called the father of Puritanism. His works, now being reprinted by Reformation Heritage Press, are well worth reading.

These two articles look at different aspects of Perkins’s thought:

Barry Waugh, “William Perkins: Augustine’s Protégé and Father of Puritan Theology,” The Confessional Presbyterian 11 (2015): 129-41.WilliamPerkinsPortrait

In this article Waugh provides some background to the Puritan movement and to William Perkins, noting the influence of his Laurence Chaderton as a patristics scholar at Cambridge before examining the use of Augustine in Perkins writings. Waugh’s quantitative analysis showed that Augustine played a significant role in Perkins’s writings, and his qualitative analysis of Perkins’s use of Augustine in one work showed significant influence on Perkins’s thought, though not a slavish following.

Ballitch, Andrew. “‘Not to Behold Faith, But the Object of Faith’: The Effect of William Perkins’s Doctrine of the Atonement on his Preaching of Assurance.” Themelios 40, no. 3 (Dec. 2015): 446-59.

Some, such as R. T. Kendall, have asserted that William Perkins’s belief in particular atonement prevented him from pointing people to the gospel or to Christ for the assurance of salvation since Perkins could only affirm that Christ atoned for the elect. This, it is claimed, led to an introspective approach to assurance. Ballitch surveys Perkins’s belief regarding the atonement and confirms that he did hold to a particular, rather than universal, view. But he looks at Perkins’s statements of how assurance should be preached and at his actual practice and concludes that Perkins points people in need of assurance to the gospel and to Christ and not inward alone.

Lloyd-Jones’s Evangelistic Sermons

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085151362XLloyd-Jones, D. M. Evangelistic Sermons at Aberavon. Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1983.

My pastor recommended these sermons to our church. Lloyd-Jones wrote and preached these messages shortly after his own conversion, and pastor commented that these sermons demonstrate  great insight into how the mind of unconverted people work. In this regard, they serve as a helpful tool to prepare one for evangelism. I found them also to be personally challenging and edifying as well.

N. T. Wright and Resurrection in the Old Testament

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Though appreciating a great deal of Wright’s argumentation in Resurrection and the Son of God, I did interact critically with him in my dissertation regarding his views on resurrection in the Old Tetament.

I quote Wright’s summary of the typical reconstructon of the development of resurrection beleif in Israel:

Surveys and studies of ancient Israelite beliefs about life after death have thus tended to plot three distinct types of phases. In the early period, there was little or no hope for a life of joy or bliss after death: Sheol swallowed up dead, kept them in gloomy darkness, and never let them out again. At some point (nobody knows when; dating of developments in such matters is notoriously difficult) some pious Israelites came to regard the love and power of YHWH as so strong that the relationship they enjoyed with him in the present could not be broken even by death. Then, again at an uncertain point, a quite new idea came forth: the dead would be raised. [RSG, 86]

Wright is willing to accept this position as “broadly accurate,” though he will adjust it to fit his unique emphasis on the exile of Israel (RSG, 86, 121-24).

In contrast, I would argue that the early parts of the Old Testament affirm the resurrection. For instance, Job claims that in the future, when his Redeemer stands on the earth (which will occur after the decomposition of his body), he will see God himself in his flesh (Job 19:25-27).

Wright says on this passage, “The passage in Job often thought to be an exception to this rule [that in Job there is no concept of life after death] is almost certainly not.” In Wright’s view, Job 19:25-27 is full of translational difficulties. Since other, clearer, passages in Job deny life after death, Wright finds it unlikely that this difficult passage should be understood differently (RSG 97-98).

But these other passages are not as clear as Wright supposes. Job 7:7-10 does say that once a man dies he never returns to “his house” or “his place.” But this is a true statement even for those who believe in resurrection. Resurrection occurs at the end of the age, and people do not return in this age to their own houses and places (Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition of Job , trans. Anthony Damico [Atlanta: Scholars, 1989], 148-50).

Likewise Job 14:1-2, 7-14 applies only to this present world. A time limit is placed on the period in which people will not rise: “Till the heavens are no more he will not awake or be roused out of his sleep” (14:12). But after God’s wrath is past, Job desires to be remembered (14:13). Wright also prejudices his readers by cutting off the quotation in verse 14 with the question and providing “no” as the answer, whereas Job continues in verse 14 with a hope of his “renewal.” Even if the question of 14:14a should be answered, “no,” the remainder of the verse reveals that the “no” is not a denial of the resurrection (Aquinas, 228; Andersen, Job, TOTC, 169-70, 172-73; Talbert, Beyond Suffering, 111, 317-18, n. 66-67).

Thus Wright’s first example does not prove the absence of resurrection, and his second example actually points toward belief in resurrection. The way is therefore cleared for a look at Job 19:25-27 itself.

Wright says that nobody can really know whether the key word in 19:26 should be translated “in my flesh” or “without my flesh” (RSG, 98). But Job insists that his very own eyes will see his Redeemer (19:27), and eyes presuppose a body (Talbert, 121, 324, n. 51, 52, 57; Andersen, 193-94). Though not every phrase of Job 19:25-27 is entirely clear, the translation that affirms bodily resurrection is, on balance, the most likely.

I would also argue that the promises of God to Abraham also imply a resurrection. God had told Abraham, “I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession” (Genesis 17:8). But Abraham never received this promise during his lifetime (Heb. 11:13). It is this truth that lies behind Jesus’s affirmation that Exodus 3:6 teaches the resurrection (Matt. 22:23-33 || Mark 12:18-27 || Luke 20:27-40). God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob because he has covenanted with them, and in the Exodus he is fulfilling some of the covenant promises made to them (Ex. 2:24-25). He is not the God of the dead but of the living, because the patriarchs must be raised one day for the promises to them to be fulfilled.
Wright correctly concludes that this passage is not only about the patriarchs in the intermediate state but that it also deals with their future bodily resurrection (RSG, 423-36). Given what Hebrews 11 says about what Abraham beleived, concerning these promises, I think we must conclude that Abraham beleived in resurrection.

Several Davidic Psalms also imply resurrection: 11:7; 16:8-11; 17:15; 23:6; 139:18. And yet a number of Psalms speak in a way that would seem to deny resurrection (Psalm 6:5; 30:9; 88:3-7, 10-12; 115:17; cf. 2 Samuel 14:14). Their presence together in the Psalter, along with the ascription of Davidic authorship to passages in both categories, argues that passages that seem to deny life after death should be harmonized with passages that affirm the afterlife and resurrection.

Hosea 13:14 is a borderline passage. In affirmation of ressurrection, see the NIV and HCSB. For an alternative approach, see NASB and ESV. On this passage Wright attempts to divorce later inspired interpretation of this passage from the original author’s intention (RSG, 118-19). I don’t find this an acceptable approach.

Isaiah clearly promises, “Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a dew of light, and the earth will give birth to the dead” (Isa. 26:19).Isaiah’s affirmation of resurrection here is doubted by few, though Wright seems to indicate that many (not including him) wish to date the passage late simply because it affirms bodily resurrection (RSG, 116).  Daniel 12:2-3 is almost universally acknowledged to teach bodily resurrection (RSG, 110).

Given this evidence from the Old Testament, I would argue that bodily resurrectionis affirmed throughout the entire Old Testament, from patriarchs (or earlier) to prophets.

This material is adapted from my dissertation, available here for purchase as a paperback or for free download as a PDF.

Review of N. T. Wright’s Resurrection and the Son of God

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Wright, N. T. The Resurrection of the Son of God. Christian Origins and the Question of God. London: SPCK, 2003.

This is the best of Wright’s “big books” in my reading thus far. It contains insightful, well written observations like this one, found at the beginning of the book:

Proposing that Jesus of Nazareth was raised from the dead was just as controversial nineteen hundred years ago as it is today. The discovery that dead people stayed dead was not first made by the philosophers of the Enlightenment. The historian who wishes to make such a proposal is therefore compelled to challenge a basic and fundamental assumption—not only, as is sometimes suggested, the position of eighteenth-century scepticism, or of the ‘scientific worldview’ as opposed to a ‘pre-scientific worldview’, but also of almost all ancient and modern peoples outside the Jewish and Christian traditions. (10)

It also contains detailed and rigorous argumentation. Wright takes particular aim at those who hold that the earlies Christians held to some kind of “spiritual resurrection,” that the appearances of Jesus to his followers were visionary (akin to Paul on the Damascus Road), and the idea of a bodily resurrection developed later. In arguing for the bodily resurrection Wright begins by looking at Old Testament and Second Temple Jewish materials as well as pagan materials on death and the afterlife. He establishes that resurrection refers to something bodily. Further, the Jewish material reveals that real expectation for a bodily resurrection existed among the Jews of Jesus’s day. Wright then surveys New Testament writings from Paul to the Gospels. He argues that the New Testament authors reveal that the earliest Christians believed that Jesus rose bodily from the dead. He notes that this belief required both an empty tomb and appearances. If the tomb was empty, but Jesus did not appear in his body, resurrection would not be the resulting belief. Likewise, if there were appearances but the tomb still contained the dead body, resurrection would not have been affirmed. Wright therefore concludes: “It is therefore historically highly probable that Jesus’ tomb was indeed empty on the third day after his execution, and that the disciples did indeed encounter him giving every appearance of being well and truly alive” (687). He then makes a case for these being both necessary and sufficient reasons for finding a bodily resurrection “highly probable.”

The argument is compelling, but a few flies in the ointment should be noted. First, I found Wright overly skeptical of finding bodily resurrection in the early Old Testament texts. Second, though Wright often challenged critical orthodoxy, there were places where his approach was itself too critical. Third, I agree with Van Til that Christian apologists ought not simply argue from evidence that the Christian religion is probable. In other words, I would start with the affirmation of the resurrection because it is revealed and mount the apologetic from that ground. Many of the arguments that Wright uses would be the same, but the standpoint of the apologist would be different.

William B. Evans on Union with Christ: A Book and Two Articles

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I worked my way backwards through some articles by Evans to his published dissertation. I’ll need to do further reading from adherents to these different positions in order to really evaluate Evans’s presentations.

Evans, William B. “Three Current Reformed Models of Union With Christ,” Prebyterion 41, nos. 1-2 (Fall 2015): 12-30.

The three models that Evans notes are the “bifurcation model,” which he connects especially to Michael Horton and others at Westminster, CA; the “pneumatological-realism” model, which he connects to Geerhardus Vos and Richard Gaffin; and the “pneumatological-incarnational realism model,” which he connects with Calvin, John Williamson Nevin, the Southern Presbyterian John Adger, Thomas F. Torrance, and Robert Letham. It seems to me that Evans is least inclined toward the “bifurcation model” and is most inclined toward the “pnumatological-incarnational realism model.”

Evans, William B. “Dèjà Vu All Over Again? The Contemporary Reformed Soteriological Controversy in Historical Perspective,” Westminster Theological Journal 72, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 135ff.

This article also divides union with Christ views into three groups: (1) “Vos, Murray, Gaffin, et al”; (2) “The Revisionist Wing—Norman Shepherd and the Federal Vision,” (3) “The Repristinationist Wing—Westminster California.” The “Dèjà Vu” part of the title is due to similarities that Evans sees between these contemporary divisions and similar divisions in the 19th century. He thinks the Federal Vision and New England Theology are similar in their “repudiation of merit, and the foregrounding of sanctification,” though not in their ecclesiology. He thinks the Repristinationist Wing is similar to Hodge and the Princetonians because of their strong defense of federal theology, the ordo salutis, and the Law/Gospel distinction. He links the Vos, Murray, Gaffin group to Mercersberg, Shedd, and some Southern Presbyterians.

Evans, William B. Imputation and Impartation: Union with Christ in American Reformed Theology. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2008.

This reworking of Evans’s dissertation looks at the theme of Union with Christ in Calvin and the Reformed Orthodox before turning to Edwards, the Edswardeans, Nevin and the Mercersburg School, and the Hodges at Princeton. He notes different ways that union of Christ has been related to other elements of soteriology and the impact those different configurations. The tone seemed rather negative, focusing on descriptions of how different configurations caused various theological problems. Noting such things is necessary, but I would have appreciated having this balanced out by noting the positives of each position culminating in a clear statement of the way forward.