Exegesis and Theology

The Blog of Brian Collins

Electronic Resources

by

My friend Mark Ward has proposed that we enter into a discussion of electronic resources. You can see his initial post at βλογάπη.

In our personal discussions, Mark tends to favor electronic resources, and I tend to favor print resources.

This is evident in the amount we’ve chosen to invest in electronic resources. Mark estimates that he’s spend around $3,602 on electronic resources. The only electronic resources I’ve purchased are BibleWorks (version 4, 6, & 7; with the Wallace add-on), the ESV for Libronix, and the Theological Journal Library for Libronix.

This is not to say I’m entirely opposed to electronic resources. I’ve accumulated quite a number of electronic resources for free. There are a number of reasons, however, that I’ve avoided purchasing electronic resources.

I’ll speak of those reasons in future posts, but for now I simply note some of the electronic resources that I’ve accumulated. In addition to collecting a several of the free modules available for BibleWorks, I’ve collected a number of books and articles from around the internet. Below are the electronic books and articles currently listed in my Zotero library.

[snip – the point was that there are a lot of free electronic resources worth gathering]

Thoughts on N. T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope

by

In Surprised by Hope, Wright does a good job defending the historicity of the resurrection (albeit with problematic concessions about inerrancy; e.g., the illustration of Wittgenstein’s poker, pp. 31ff). He is also correct to point out that the hope of Christians is not a disembodied soulish existence in heaven but a resurrected body on the new earth.

Wright’s main argument about the resurrection and the new creation is correct. Conservative who know they agree with Wright on these points may be surprised by how much they end up disagreeing with Wright along the way in this work.

For instance, because he’s not willing to fully challenge Darwin (83), Wright is forced to concede that death is part of the good creation of God (94-95). This puts in jeopardy the truth that bodily resurrection is the Christian hope in the face of a fallen world. That truth is close to the heart of Wright’s argument in Surprised by Hope, but this concession puts an otherwise good argument off-kilter from what the Bible is actually saying. Wright says, “Death as we now know it is the last enemy, not a good part of the good creation” (p. 99, emphasis added). This is very different from Rom 5:12 (to name just one passage).

Wright is not always quite fair when dealing with other positions. For instance, he brings up Harold Lindsell and Tim LaHaye when discussing dispensational theology, but he nowhere deals with scholarly dispensationalists like Darrell Bock, Craig Blaising, or Alva McClain who have actually made some of the points Wright is making before Wright made them. This is all the more annoying because Wright has a habit of speaking as if he has finally discovered truth that everybody else has missed when often time he seems simply to have failed to do the requisite research in historical theology.

Wright’s aberrant soteriological views also appear in Surprised by Hope. Wright either distorts or fails to mention the Reformation view of justification when presenting his own view on the matter (139f.). Those who hold to the traditional view are "overanxious" and wish to "rigorously exclude" any "mention of works." While such a person can be found, Wright ignores the concerns of a number of careful evangelical scholars who have argued his views on justification contain unbiblical deviations from what Protestants have historically accepted since the Reformation.

In getting justification wrong Wright gets the gospel wrong. In other works, Wright also foregrounds the end of the exile when it comes to the cross (JVG, 592), repentance (JVG, 247-51, 256-58), and forgiveness (JVG, 268-72). As a result the larger story of the Bible about creation, fall, and salvation from sin becomes the story of Israel about election, exile, and return from exile.

This distortion of the gospel is clear in what Surprised by Hope omits. Wright wrote an entire book about the resurrection of Jesus and bodily resurrection as the hope of Christians without actually coming around to telling his readers how they could be saved from sin and included in the resurrection of believers. Though he included a chapter about Jesus as judge, there is nothing to tell a reader how he can escape God’s judgment. Even the section on evangelism deals primarily with mistakes that evangelicals have too often made. Wright does not handle how an individual can be saved from his sin.

Though Wright is correct that salvation is more than an individual’s relationship with God, salvation is certainly not something less than an individual’s salvation from sin. The Fall was cosmic in extent, but it sprang out of the actions of individuals. Likewise, redemption is cosmic in effect, but it too centers on the rescue of individuals from sin and the restoration of fellowship with God.

In the end, Wright’s main argument about the resurrection is correct, but because Wright has so many other central things wrong, the book itself disappoints.

Thoughts on Dale Martin’s Pedagogy of the Bible – 2

by

After establishing to his satisfaction the inevitability of a reader-oriented understanding of meaning, Martin then provides examples in which Christian interpretation of Scripture demands a reader-oriented approach.

In the first example, Martin points out that Christians read Psalm 22 in terms of the crucifixion of Jesus. Martin says that this is impossible based on a historical-critical approach. The Psalm was written by an Israelite many years before Christ (probably not by David according to most critics), and thus it cannot be interpreted by authorial intention in a Christian way.

Martin does note that many Christians have appealed to the divine authorship of Scripture, but he does not stop to consider the challenge this poses to his approach. By refusing to consider the possibility of prophecy of some sort and the role of the Divine Author, Martin fails to realize that the Bible actually demands its readers to be socialized into a particular way of reading Scripture.

By refusing to submit to the demands the Bible makes on its readers, Martin is bound to misread Scripture. This is most unfortunate, since by failing to read the Bible correctly, Martin fails to receive the meaning intended for him by the Divine Author.

Thoughts on Dale Martin’s Pedagogy of the Bible

by

Martin begins chapter 2 arguing for a reader-response approach to Scripture interpretation. Martin repeatedly says that this approach is "common sense," that it is "empirically" the way things are, and that it is accepted by almost all people except a few holdout theologians. This reader interpreted these statements intertextually with the works of Shakespeare: methinks he doth protest too much.

To argue his case Martin gives several examples in which readers created meaning other than the original intention of the author: the famous Stanley Fish poem of author names, Culler’s nonsense sentence, misspoken Spanish in which the speaker meant one thing and the hearer understood another, the placement of a STOP sign in a museum (giving it a different meaning than it has on the road), and a class assignment to read a phone book as poetry.

But do these examples really demonstrate that readers (as opposed to authors or texts) create meaning? The first two examples merely demonstrate that when a professor gives misleading clues about words stripped of context, divergent understandings can be reached. They seem to say little about normal communication (see Carson, Gagging of God, 114f.). The third statement is an example of miscommunication because the speaker did not know how to ask a question in the correct Spanish idiom. Nonetheless, even in the example, the hearer was after a moment’s reflection able to comprehend the speaker’s intention, and the speaker received the answer to the question he asked. The fourth example merely demonstrates, as Martin intended, that people need to be socialized into a common understanding of symbols. But this does not necessitate an embrace of reader-response theory. Most simply it is a way of saying that people need to learn vocabulary and grammar if they are to read a language. This example also shows the importance of context. The final example shows how existing texts can be creatively reused. Many lines from Shakespeare and the King James Version of the Bible show up in a myriad of contexts, many far removed from the original contexts in which those lines appeared. There is no problem with this unless people try to import these foreign contexts back into Shakespeare or the Bible. In other words, turning the phone book into poetry may be a fine exercise, but if those engaged in this exercise fail to understand that the phone book was created to help people find others’ phone numbers and addresses, there is something wrong.

Martin is aware of objections to his approach. He focuses on the objection that if reader-response theory is correct, then people can make texts mean anything. The result of this is social chaos. Imagine if everyone read the STOP sign as he pleased. Martin replies that this is not the case because people are socialized into how to read. Thus those in a shared community of readers know how to interpret texts together. Thus drivers are socialized to know to stop their vehicles at a STOP sign. Nonetheless, Martin insists that the reader is always the one who gives meaning to the text. The reason so many readers give the same texts the same meaning is due to their common socialization on how to read that text. He intimates that to say that texts have meaning is to say "words [as "marks on the page"] magically or metaphysically have their meaning within themselves" (17).

But those who argue for authorial intention and textual meaning don’t claim that words magically or metaphysically contain meaning. They are happy to view words as signs. Nor does Martin’s talk about socialization undercut a historical-grammatical approach to reading. It simply means that to understand an author a reader must be socialized to read the text according to the norms of the author. In other words, interpreters of Shakespeare are concerned to understand if a meaning of a word has changed between his time and ours. They are concerned to know the various kind of genres in which drama was performed in the 17th century. In other words, one could say that the historical approach to interpretation means that readers should be socialized into the world of the author to understand him. If so, this makes sense of all the empirical, common sense observations made by Martin. It also relieves him of a problem with one of his examples. When he ordered breakfast in Spanish, he expected to receive breakfast. The waiter wasn’t satisfied with his misreading of Martin’s mis-spoken Spanish. Instead he tried to make sense of the authorial intention. Because the waiter did not share Martin’s approach to making sense of texts, Martin received breakfast.

Book Notes: Telford Work, Deuteronomy, BTCB

by

Work, Telford.  Deuteronomy. Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible Edited by R. R. Reno. Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2009.

Telford Work organized his comments on Deuteronomy in the categories, “Plain,” “Faith,” Hope,” and “Love.” These categories are meant to roughly correspond to the medieval fourfold sense: plain equals letter, allegorical equals faith (what is to be believed), tropological equals love (that is, what is to be done corresponds to the law of love), and the anagogical equals hope.

In the commentary proper, therefore, each section of text is followed by comments under the headings Plain, Faith, Hope, Love. Work purposely kept his comments on the plain sense to the minimum since, he noted, others have already provided plain sense commentaries that are better than what he could hope to produce (19). 

This does not mean, however, that Work’s commentary is heavy on allegory. His comments often amount to helpful theological meditation and application. For instance on Deuteronomy 1:2-3a, Work notes under the heading “Love” that Israel’s disobedience at Kadesh-barnea not only led to a wilderness wandering but also resulted in Israel gaining land in the transjordan. Work perceptively ties this to Romans 5:20 (26).

Other times Work addresses a theological issue that the text raises for the modern reader. Under the heading “Plain,” he notes the regulations regarding females taken in battle (21:10-14) are hardly what a woman herself would desire (he doesn’t mention potential conflict with biblical ethics elsewhere). He responds to the challenge in the next section (“Faith”) by appealing to Matthew 19:8. The law here is not laying out the ideal. It is seeking to restrain sin while nevertheless making concession for the hardness of the Israelite’s hearts (192).

Work also attempts to make Christological connections when possible. Some of these are forced. For instance, on the passage about not muzzling the threshing ox (25:4), Work ends up talking about harvest imagery used of Jesus’ ministry in the Gospels (224).

Other attempts are more insightful. A comment (under “Faith”) on the requirements regarding a rebellious son notes that this accusation was brought against Jesus (Luke 7:34) but that Jesus was shown to be a pleasing Son (and his enemies rebellious sons) by the resurrection (193).

In general, Work’s commentary provides a light treatment of Deuteronomy’s plain sense and a more detailed treatment of theological connections to the New Testament and Christian doctrine and practice. A number of these connections are insightful; others are a bit of a stretch. Though uneven, there’s enough good to be worth consulting.

Book Notes: Radner, Leviticus, BTCB

by

Radner, Ephraim  Leviticus. Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible. Edited by R. R. Reno. Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2008.

Ephraim Radner recognizes the primary problem with a commentary on Leviticus is the relevance of the book to Christians today. He clearly states in the introduction to the commentary his dissatisfaction with critical and even Reformation approaches to the book of Leviticus.

Historical-critical approaches end up providing an account of the state of Israel’s religion at a certain period. At best, they may comment about the function of the book as a tutor that would lead God’s people into greater (and less opaque) spiritual truth in the future.

Radner criticizes Reformation approaches for being too repetitious. They are right, as far as they go, to make connections between the sacrificial system and Christ. But one can only make this point so often before growing tedious. Radner prefers the approaches of Origen and of medieval Jewish commentators.

In practice, Radner comments very little on the details of the sacrificial regulations but instead launches directly into figural interpretations that range from connections to Cain and Abel to Christological interpretations grounded in Hebrews.

In other sections, however, Radner’s comments are more traditional. In chapter 18, for instance, he addresses the modern questions raised by this passage’s treatment of homosexual behavior before moving to his figural interpretation of the passage as relating to the church as a family.

Overall Radner’s comments seemed distant enough from the actual text that I didn’t come away with a better understanding of Leviticus. In making his commentary relevant for Christians today, Radner seemed to leave Leviticus in the shadows.

Book Notes: Godfrey, John Calvin: Pilgrim and Pastor

by

Godfrey, W. Robert. John Calvin: Pilgrim and Pastor. Wheaton: Crossway, 2009.

Sample Pages

This book is an ideal introduction to Calvin’s life and theology. Godfrey begins not with Calvin’s birth but with Calvin at Strassburg producing his first commentary (on Romans), the first major revision of his Institutes, and his “Reply to Sadoleto.” The remainder of the first chapter places Calvin and his theology in his Reformation context by examining the reply to this Roman Catholic Cardinal.

Chapters two through five provide a brief survey of Calvin’s life. Chapters six though eleven provide a survey of various topics.

I found the biographical chapters enjoyable but without information that I hadn’t heard elsewhere. The chapter on worship was my favorite of the topical chapters. The chapter on the sacraments was, as expected, the chapter where I most disagreed with Calvin.

Book Notes: Lincoln, Paradise Now and Not Yet

by

Lincoln, Andrew T. Paradise Now and Not Yet: Studies in the Role of the Heavenly Dimension in Paul’s Thought with Special Reference to His Eschatology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981; reprint, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1991.

This book is reworking of Lincoln’s 1975 University of Cambridge dissertation (supervised by C F. D. Moule) (ix). Lincoln organized his material by biblical book in chronological order (Galatians, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Philippians, Colossians, Ephesians). The final chapter synthesizes the material.

Paradise Now and Not Yet contains many helpful exegetical discussions. I found his treatments of 2 Corinthians 5; Philippians 3:20-21; and Colossians 3 especially helpful. I often found myself making notes in BibleWorks to remind me to consult this book when working through these passages.

Philippians 3:20 provides one instance.  Like other commentator’s Lincoln rejected the translations “citizenship” and “colony” and opted for “commonwealth” as the correct translation of πολίτευμα in Philippians 3:20 (cf. O’Brien, 360; Fee, 379, n. 17; Silva, 184; Bockmuehl, 233). Lincoln goes on to make the following observation: “The Christian’s commonwealth and government is εν ουρανοῖς and it is there because that is where his or her Lord is, as the following clause clearly implies. If Christ is to come from heaven, then he is envisaged as being there until that time” (101). In this comment Lincoln shows that Paul’s statement about our commonwealth being in heaven demonstrates connects to the return of Christ in that his return will establish this commonwealth on earth. Furthermore, Paul speaks of this in terms of the transformation of our bodies. Thus the previous reference to not having minds set on earthly things is not a critique of the material world. Instead, heavenly things are those things related to Christ and his kingdom since that is the current location of the reigning Christ. Earthly things are sinful because the earth is the sphere where sin is worked out.

The latter part of Lincoln’s concluding chapter is also very helpful. He notes, for instance, that Paul’s use of heaven can have “local, spatial or cosmological connotation[s]’” but that they also often develop “a qualitative force” (185). Or, Christ’s presence in heaven means that “this realm can be seen as the present sphere of fulfillment of God’s promises of salvation” (186). Though Lincoln develops this in a supercessionist direction, it need not be. I thought a better way to develop this insight would be to integrate it with Richard Gaffin’s proposals relating to walking by faith and not by sight. As Lincoln notes, our union with Christ connects us to Christ in heaven so that we can say that we are seated in heaven with Christ (Eph 2:6; cf. Col 3:1ff.) or that we are part of the heavenly Jerusalem (Gal. 4:26). Though we can’t see these realities, we must live in by faith in light of them. Lincoln helpfully discusses how the reality of our heavenly existence should affect our life on earth now. He also relates the fact of our present relation to heaven to the Holy Spirit, though this could have been developed further.

On the negative side, at times Paradise Now and Not Yet reads like a Cambridge dissertation. Sometimes Lincoln leads readers through a discussion of a possible Jewish apocalyptic antecedent to Paul’s thought simply to conclude that the possible parallel isn’t really justified. Even when Lincoln does think there are valid parallels, the exegetical insights they yield are do not seem significant enough to warrant the discussion. Lincoln also doubts the Pauline authorship of Ephesians (197, n. 29) and the integrity of 2 Corinthians (55).

For those interested in reading Lincoln’s work, I would suggest reading pages 184-95 first and then working through the previous chapters.

Caveats

by

The nature of Leithart’s theological commentary varies. At times he is connecting the passage to redemptive history (as with the introduction, noted previously). Other times he demonstrates how a passage sheds light on a theological issue (e.g., a discussion about the rightness of prophetic declarations of judgment concludes with a reflection on the justice of eternal punishment in Hell). Most often, Leithart identifies various typological connections between Scripture texts. Some of these typologies are probably legitimate (i.e., though I don’t see a Moses-Elijah typology as Leithart does, I do think that the text presents parallels between Moses and Elijah for the purpose of demonstrating that even the great prophet Elijah is not the Prophet like Moses that the people are to anticipate),in many cases the parallels are more dependent on Leithart’s imagination and clever phasing than on the text (e.g., taking the three year drought during Ahab’s reign to foreshadow the three days that Christ, “the true Israel,” was in the tomb [133]).

So while I enjoyed Leithart’s introduction (especially after having a read a number of non-evangelicals on theological interpretation), I’m not inclined to actually buy this volume.

Leithart on Kings

by

Peter Leithart’s contribution to the “Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible” is clearly evangelical.

By contrast, Stanley Hauerwas in his BTCB contribution interprets Matthew according to his political paradigm.

Matthew’s gopspel is about ‘the politics of Jesus,’ which entails an alternative to the power politics of reading the gospel. a right reading of the gospel requires a people who are shaped by the ‘oblation familiar to the faithful,’ that is, a community whose fundamental political act is the sacrifice of the altar—an alternative to Herodian power politics. A theological reading of Matthew, therefore, reaffirms that the church be an alternative politics to the politics of the world. [28]

Leithart, however, interprets Kings according to the evangel.

He notes that in the Hebrew canon Kings is one of the Former Prophets. According to Leithart,

The message of the prophets is not, ‘Israel has sinned; therefore, Israel needs to get its act together or it will die.’ The message is, ‘Israel has sinned; therefore, Israel must die, and its only hope is to entrust itself to God who will give it new life on the far side of death.’ Or even, ‘Israel has sinned; Israel is already dead. Cling to God who raises the dead.’ [18]

Leithart also relates Kings to the wisdom books:

After Solomon, wisdom simply disappears from 1-2 Kings. The words ‘wise’ or ‘wisdom’ occur twenty-one times in 1 Kgs. 1-11, but never again after those chapters. Never again does Israel or Judah have a philosopher-king, a sage on the throne. Royal wisdom, touted so heavily at the opening of the book, fails to deliver, showing that Israel’s hope for restoration, blessing, and life does not lie in human wisdom, no matter what heights it attains. [18f.]

And to the Torah. He notes that Joshua 1:8 promises success to the one who obeys the Torah,

Yet, the only king connected to Torah in 1-2 Kings is Josiah, and we are no sooner assured that he keeps Torah to perfection (2 Kings 23:25) than we learn that Yahweh still intends to destroy Judah" (1 Kings 23:26). "Once Israel sins, wisdom cannot save Israel and Judah; nor can Torah obedience. [20]

The Temple plays a similar role. The Temple is the place to which Israel can pray when facing the curses (1 Kings 9:3).

But no Davidic king ever prays in or toward the temple until Hezekiah is threatened by the Assyrians (19:1), and in the following generation Hezekiah’s son, Manasseh, defiles the sanctuary more than any other king of Judah when he places a sacred pole for Asherah in the temple precincts. After a history of neglect and abuse, 2 Kings ends with an account of Nebuchadnezzar’s destruction of the house. [20]

Leithart then relates all of this to the gospel:

Wisdom cannot save Israel from division; Torah cannot save Judah from destruction; and the last refuge of hope, the temple, is torn apart and burned by a Babylonian king. All that made Israel Israel—king and priest, Torah and temple—is destroyed. As a prophetic narrative, 1-2 Kings makes it clear that there is no salvation for Israel within Israel. Having broken covenant, it faces the curse of the covenant: in the day you eat, you will be driven from the garden. Dying, you shall die. [20]

Against this dark backdrop Leithart turns to discuss the longsuffering of God in Kings which points to the hope of the gospel.

I would like to see the gospel developed in terms of Jesus, the king who accomplished what Solomon, Hezekiah, and Josiah could not; the prophet who faithfully declares God’s word and turns people’s hearts as Elijah could not; the priest and sacrifice who fulfilled God’s Torah; the builder and sanctifier of a temple of living stones; and the Wisdom who will instruct those who fear him how to be like him.