Exegesis and Theology

The Blog of Brian Collins

Peter Gurry on Changes in Textual Criticism

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Gurry, Peter J. “How Your Greek NT Is Changing: A Simple Introduction to the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (CBGM),” JETS 59, no. 4 (2016): 675-89.

This is a readable article on a new method in textual criticism, perhaps most notable for being employed in the General Epistles in the NA and UBS texts. Helpfully, he includes an index to discussions of variant readings in the General Epistles where CBGM played a role in the editor’s decisions.

I came across this article via an audio interview with Gurry that discusses the article. Gurry also posts at https://evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com/.

Sermon on the Mount through the Centuries

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Greenman, Jeffrey P., Timothy Larsen, and Stephen R. Spencer, eds. The Sermon on the Mount through the Centuries: From the Early Church to John Paul II. Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2007.

This is a survey of the views of Chrysostom, Augustine, Hugh of St. Victor, Dante, Chaucer, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Surgeon, Yoder, Woytla, Boff, and Stott. Many chapters were well written. But the ethos was ecumenical, and the Spurgeon chapter was written entirely out of sympathy with Spurgeon.

Review of Four Articles by Dale Allison

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s-l300Allison, Dale C., Jr., “Reading Matthew through the Church Fathers.” In Studies in Matthew: Interpretation Past and Present. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005.

Allison argues that attending to the Church Fathers is a good way of becoming attuned to the kind of allusions that the Gospel writers may have been making to the OT texts. Though not all the allusions the Father’s saw may be valid, they raise possibilities for our consideration. Allison gives several examples including comparing Moses, the meekest man  with the Beatitude: “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.”

Allison, Dale C., Jr., “Seeing God (Matt. 5:8).” In Studies in Matthew: Interpretation Past and Present. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005.

Allison surveys several historical options for what it means to see God. That part of the essay was helpful. Oddly, he concludes that the meaning most likely original to Matthew is unorthodox (that God is embodied and will be seen) even though he cites Psalms in support of another option which is orthodox. Helpful data; unhelpful conclusions.

9780801048753_lAllison, Dale C., Jr. “Excursus 1: The Kingdom of God and the World to Come.” In Constructing Jesus: Memory, Imagination, and History. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2010.

This forty-page excursus is a detailed survey of Jesus’s kingdom sayings in the Synoptics. Allison first lists the 58 kingdom sayings by corpus (e.g., “From Mark,” “Common to Matthew and Luke,” etc.). He then investigates these sayings, drawing on Old Testament and related extrabiblical literature along two line: what is the “nature of the kingdom” and how does it relate to “the world to come.” He argues against the idea that βασιλεία means reign rather than realm. While not discounting reign as part of the semantic domain, Allison makes a strong case that realm is also a signfiicant part of the semantic domain. Recently, I’ve found Micahel Goheen, Jonathan Pennington, and Patrick Schreiner arguing similarly. With regard to the world to come, Allison sees a strong orientation to the world to come. In his own words, “My judgment, then, is that ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ is, in the Synoptics, a realm as well as a reign; it is a place and a time yet to come in which God will reign supreme,” though he follows this by saying, “I wish to reaffirm emphatically that מלכות and βασιλεία often do . . . refer to kingly authority or royal reign” (201).

My own assessment is that Allison convincingly demonstrates that realm is a significant part of the kingdom of God theme. I do think, however, that he under-emphasized the present aspect of the kingdom.

Allison, Dale C., Jr. “More Than an Aphorist: The Discourses of Jesus.” In Constructing Jesus: Memory, Imagination, and History. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2010.

In this essay Allison argues that the core of the Sermon on the Plain is a preserved discourse of Jesus (rather than a collection of Jesus sayings collected by the evangelist) that drew heavily on Leviticus 19. In the course of the essay Allison also highlights quotations from or allusions to the Sermon on the Plain in a variety of New Testament and early Christian writings. The documentation of these quotations and allusions along with the notation of parallels with Leviticus 19 is valuable. The rest of the essay was, given my disagreement with Allison’s critical presuppositions, a futile, if learned, exercise.

Warfield on Shorter Catechism One: To Glorify God and Enjoy Him Forever

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WARFIELD-Benjamin-B.-IpsenWarfield, Benjamin B. “The First Question of the Westminster ‘Shorter Catechism.'” In The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield. Volume 6. 1932; Reprinted, Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003.

The first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism is perhaps the most famous of all catechism questions: “Q. What is the chief end of man. A. The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.” This is an excellent article tracing the origins of this question through earlier catechisms and theologies. It also contains a helpful discussion about the “enjoy” part of the answer.

For instance:

 For justice is not done that conception if we say merely that man’s chief end is to glorify God. That certainly: and certainly that first. But according to the Reformed conception man exists not merely that God may be glorified in him, but that he may delight in this glorious God. It does justice to the subjective as well as to the objective side of the case. The Reformed conception is not fully or fairly stated if it be so stated that it may seem to be satisfied with conceiving man merely as the object on which God manifests His glory—possibly even the passive object in and through which the Divine glory is secured. It conceives man also as the subject in which the gloriousness of God is perceived and delighted in. No man is truly Reformed in his thought, then, unless he conceives of man not merely as destined to be the instrument of the Divine glory, but also as destined to reflect the glory of God in his own consciousness, to exult in God: nay, unless he himself delights in God as the all-glorious One.

Read the great Reformed divines. The note of their work is exultation in God. How Calvin, for example, gloried and delighted in God! Every page rings with this note, the note of personal joy in the Almighty, known to be, not the all-wise merely, but the all-loving too. Take, for example, such a passage as the exposition of what true and undefiled religion is, which closes the second chapter of the First Book of the Institutes. [pp. 396-97]

Jane Austen, Jacobs on the Book of Common Prayer, and Robinson’s Gilead

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s-l1000Jacobs, Alan. The Book of Common Prayer: A Biography. Lives of Great Religious Books. Princeton University Press, 2015.

In keeping with this series, Jacobs traces the origins, reception, and effect of the Book of Common Prayer. As always with Jacobs, excellently written, informative, thought-provoking.

Austen, Jane. Mansfield Park.

I would rank this, alongside Sense and Sensibility as one of my favorite Austen novels. An insightful meditation on the distinction between true manners and acted manners, the role of the clergy in society, etc. There is also food for thought here about the parent-child relationship.

Leithart, Peter J. Miniatures and Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen. Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2004.51VstTdcQkL._SY445_QL70_

This is an enjoyable exegesis of Austen’s novels. Repeatedly Leithart showed what I thought to be helpful insights. As to the subtitle, I think Leithart demonstrated Austen to have been a committed Anglican who grew in sympathy to evangelical Christians and who adroitly addressed moral issues in her novels. The book does suffer, however, from a lack of footnotes. Leithart will quote other critics by name. The bibliography provides the works, but no page numbers are supplied.

91k3cIBsWSLRobinson, Marilynne. Gilead.

Though Robinson is often praised as a Calvinist author who seeks to recover Calvin and religion for a modern audience, she often does this by pulling her punches. She doesn’t want to come across as stuffy, so the main character at times winks at ungodliness. She has a discussion of predestination between two characters, but the main character can’t bring himself to actually embrace Calvin’s view. She shies away from affirming eternal punishment. The ethos of the book is not that of the Reformation but of the Protestant Mainline.

Miroslav Volf on Human Flourishing

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Volf, Miroslav. “Human Flourishing.” In Renewing the Evangelical Mission, ed. Richard Lints. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013.

In this essay Miroslav Volf provides a brief and broad historical survey of views of human flourishing accompanied with evaluation and a proposal. Volf’s survey begins with Augustine, for whom human flourishing was found in love for God and neighbor. With the Enlightenment God dropped away, but love for neighbor remained a part of the conception of human flourishing. “The central pillar of its vision of the good life was a universal beneficence transcending all boundaries of tribe or nation and extending to all human beings” (16). In late 20th century, however, human flourishing came to be understood simply in terms of “experiential satisfaction.” Volf concludes: “ours is a culture of managed pursuit of pleasure, not a culture of sustained endeavor to lead the good life” (15).

The problem, Volf explains, with making pleasure or “experiential satisfaction” at the heart of human flourishing is that humans are never satisfied. Even when they achieve what they want, there is more to want. “Our striving can therefore find proper rest only when we find joy in something infinite” (19).

Another problem with equating human flourishing and pleasure is the disconnect between creation and human flourshing that emerges. Volf observes, “Satisfaction is a form of experience, and experiences are generally deemed to be matters of individual preference. Everyone is the best judge of their own experience of satisfaction” (25). He argues that in contrast to this approach most religions and philosophies have argued that human flourishing is tied to the nature of reality. Though Volf does not provides exegetical argumentation for this being the correct position, I would argue that the exegetical foundation is present in Proverbs 8’s teaching that God built wisdom/law into the structure of creation and in Psalm 1’s teaching that wisdom is to live in accordance with this law with flourishing as the result.

In enunciating what this fit between reality and flourishing is, Volf returns to Augustine and summarizes his position in four points: “First, he believed that God is not an impersonal Reason dispersed throughout the world, but a ‘person’ who loves and can be loved in return. Second, to be human is to love; we can choose what to love but not whether to love. Third, we live well when we love both God and neighbor, aligning ourselves with the God who loves. Fourth, we will flourish and be truly happy when we discover joy in loving the infinite God and our neighbors in God” (27-28). Again, though Volf does not bring it out, there is a connection with Psalm 1. It is in meditating on (and then living out) the law of God (which can be summarized in loving God and others) that humans flourish.

Top Ten Books Finished in 2016

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Reinke, Tony. Newton on the Christian Life. Theologians on the Christian Life. Edited by Stephen J. Nichols and Justin Taylor. Wheaton: Crossway, 2015.

This book warms one’s heart and stirs a desire to love and life for Christ. By that measure, it is the best book that I finished in 2016 (though I read most of it in 2015).

Pennington, Jonathan T. Heaven and Earth in the Gospel of Matthew. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007.

This book is tightly argued and utterly convincing in overturning some widely held assumptions about several themes and phrases in Matthew. But Pennington is not just being iconoclastic. The better analogy is that of a restorer of masterworks who must remove paint in order to reveal the original masterwork. Pennington’s work further reveals the glories of Matthew’s theology.

Robertson, O. Palmer. The Flow of the Psalms. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2015.

Pslams is a big book, and Robertson helps one better hold the whole in one’s head by showing how the individual Psalms fit together in larger groups. The flow that Robertson observes also illuminates the theology of the book.

Gerhard, Johannes. On the Nature of Theology and on Scripture. Theological Commonplaces. Edited by T. G. Mayes. Translated by Richard J. Dinda. Saint Louis: Concordia, 2009.

Protestant scholasticsm has long had a bad name (now being cleared by Richard Muller and others). This volume is a primary source vindication of Protestant scholasticsim: detailed, careful, orthodox, reverent. Thus, valuable.

Grimm, Harold J., ed. Career of the Reformer I. Luther’s Works, ed. Helmut T. Lehmann. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1957.

For someone looking to read some Luther on the 500th anniversary of the promulgation of the 95 theses, there is hardly a better book than this one. It includes: “Disputation against Scholastic Theology,” “Ninety-Five Theses,” “Heidelberg Disputation,” “Preface to the Complete Edition of a German Theology,” “Explanations of the Ninety-Five Theses,” “Proceedings at Augsburg,” “Two Kinds of Righteousness,” “The Leipzig Debate,” “The Freedom of a Christian,” and “Why the Books of the Pope and His Disciples Were Burned.” If my memory serves, these are all writings of 1517 and 1518.

I found especially beneficial Luther’s observation in the “Heidelberg Disputation” that good works done in the hope that self-righteousness will secure salvation are actually damning sins:

The person who believes that he can obtain grace by doing what is in him adds sin to sin so that he becomes doubly guilty. [p. 40]

Luther explains:

8. By so much more are the works of man mortal sins when they are done without fear and in unadulterated, evil self-security.

The inevitable deduction from the preceding thesis is clear. For where there is no fear there is no humility. Where there is no humility there is pride, and where there is pride there are the wrath and judgment of God, for God opposes the haughty. Indeed, if pride would cease there would be no sin anywhere.

9. To say that works without Christ are dead, but not mortal, appears to constitute a perilous surrender of the fear of God.

For in this way men become certain and therefore haughty, which is perilous. For in such a way God is constantly deprived of the glory which is due him and which is transferred to other things, since one should strive with all diligence to give him the glory—the sooner the better. [p. 47]

And further:

I deduce the following corollary: Since there is no righteous person on earth who in doing good does not sin, the unrighteous person sins that much more when he does good. [p. 59]

Bolt, John. Bavinck on the Christian Life: Following Jesus in Faithful Service. Wheaton: Crossway, 2015.

Bavinck is interested in how Christian faith affects every part of life, but he does not lose sight of the inner piety that must be at the heart of the Christian life.

Thornbury, Gregory Alan. Recovering Classic Evangelicalism: Applying the Wisdom and Vision of Carl F. H. Henry. Crossway, 2013.

Thornbury does an excellent job of capturing the value of Henry’s theology for the present and of summarizing that theology

Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man.

Gregory inlcudes some rich meditations like this one about God stating what he will do prior to his actually making man:

O marvellous! a sun is made, and no counsel precedes; a heaven likewise; and to these no single thing in creation is equal. So great a wonder is formed by a word alone, and the saying indicates neither when, nor how, nor any such detail. So too in all particular cases, the æther, the stars, the intermediate air, the sea, the earth, the animals, the plants,—all are brought into being with a word, while only to the making of man does the Maker of all draw near with circumspection, so as to prepare beforehand for him material for his formation, and to liken his form to an archetypal beauty, and, setting before him a mark for which he is to come into being, to make for him a nature appropriate and allied to the operations, and suitable for the object in hand. [III.2]

Or this on why man, the ruler, seems weaker than the beasts he rules:

…but man alone of all is slower than the beasts that are swift of foot, smaller than those that are of great bulk, more defenceless than those that are protected by natural arms; and how, one will say, has such a being obtained the sovereignty over all things?

2. Well, I think it would not be at all hard to show that what seems to be a deficiency of our nature is a means for our obtaining dominion over the subject creatures. For if man had had such power as to be able to outrun the horse in swiftness, and to have a foot that, from its solidity, could not be worn out, but was strengthened by hoofs or claws of some kind, and to carry upon him horns and stings and claws, he would be, to begin with, a wild-looking and formidable creature, if such things grew with his body: and moreover he would have neglected his rule over the other creatures if he had no need of the co-operation of his subjects; whereas now, the needful services of our life are divided among the individual animals that are under our sway, for this reason—to make our dominion over them necessary.

3. It was the slowness and difficult motion of our body that brought the horse to supply our need, and tamed him: it was the nakedness of our body that made necessary our management of sheep, which supplies the deficiency of our nature by its yearly produce of wool: it was the fact that we import from others the supplies for our living which subjected beasts of burden to such service: furthermore, it was the fact that we cannot eat grass like cattle which brought the ox to render service to our life, who makes our living easy for us by his own labour; and because we needed teeth and biting power to subdue some of the other animals by grip of teeth, the dog gave, together with his swiftness, his own jaw to supply our need, becoming like a live sword for man; and there has been discovered by men iron, stronger and more penetrating than prominent horns or sharp claws, not, as those things do with the beasts, always growing naturally with us, but entering into alliance with us for the time, and for the rest abiding by itself: and to compensate for the crocodile’s scaly hide, one may make that very hide serve as armour, by putting it on his skin upon occasion: or, failing that, art fashions iron for this purpose too, which, when it has served him for a time for war, leaves the man-at-arms once more free from the burden in time of peace: and the wing of the birds, too, ministers to our life, so that by aid of contrivance we are not left behind even by the speed of wings: for some of them become tame and are of service to those who catch birds, and by their means others are by contrivance subdued to serve our needs: moreover art contrives to make our arrows feathered, and by means of the bow gives us for our needs the speed of wings: while the fact that our feet are easily hurt and worn in travelling makes necessary the aid which is given by the subject animals: for hence it comes that we fit shoes to our feet. [VII.1-3]

Hamilton, James M., Jr. With the Clouds of Heaven: The Book of Daniel in Biblical Theology. New Studies in Biblical Theology. Edited by D. A. Carson. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2014.

Though disagreeing with Hamilton regarding structure, typology, and Daniel’s 70 weeks, I neverthless found the book full of insights and fill my notebook on Daniel with quotations from this book.

Gentry, Peter J. and Stephen J. Wellum. Kingdom through Covenant: A Biblical-Theological Understanding of the Covenants. Crossway: 2012.

Again, despite some disagreements, I neverhtless filled my notebooks with observations and insights from this volume. It’s certainly a valuable work, and I think the title “Kingdom through Covenant” marvelously captures the relationship of these two major biblical themes. Even though I’m only listing a “top ten,” here I should also note Oren Martin’s Bound for the Promised Land. Again, despite disagreeing with aspects of his thesis and argumentation, there is also significant insight.

Review of Aniol, By the Rivers of Babylon – Part 3

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Gathered Worship

In the final section of By the Waters of Babylon Aniol turns to the issue of worship. In this section he does an admirable job of defining worship, defining the mission of the institutional church, and establishing the regulative principle of worship. Though differing with an exegetical point here or a detail there, I am in full agreement with the general thrust of the argument in this section.

One of the best parts of this section is the discussion of “authentic worship” versus worship as a shaper of behavior. Aniol notes that according to some understandings, authenticity is presented as being who you are―with no discussion of whether who you are needs to change. In contrast to this Aniol argues that worship should reshape who we are. Being authentic should not excuse being unlike Christ. Rather, worship should reshape us so that we are authentically more and more like Christ. This is profound and worthy of careful meditation.

Also helpful is Aniol’s argument that the worship heritage that western nations enjoy should be passed along to people of other cultures. This makes sense to me, given that cultures change over time as well as by place. Thus even western nations are making use of the riches from previous cultures when they draw on their own tradition. I would raise one caution here. There should be no assumption that non-western cultures are simply fallen and do not contain the resources for right worship. While on the one hand, one should argue that every culture is totally depraved (meaning that there is no area of culture untouched by the Fall), no culture is as bad as it could possibly be. Thus there is the need for discerning structure and direction in every culture. Further, while Christians in new cultures do not need to re-invent the wheel, missionaries should make a careful distinction between passing on the rich heritage of Christian worship and simply imposing American ways of doing things. American ways are not necessarily biblical ways, and it may well be that in many areas the indigenous culture is less fallen than American culture.

Finally, Aniol makes the intriguing point that Scripture comes with inspired literary forms that are authoritative for our worship. This is a significant point, but it begs for enlargement. What are these forms and what are some concrete ways that they should be regulating worship at present? I would like to see some development of this idea in Scott’s future writing.

Conclusion

In some ways this has been a critical review, but the criticism comes not because I oppose Scott’s project but because I support it and hope to strengthen it. My largest disagreement has to do not with the substance of Scott’s proposal or even with the viewpoints that critiques but with a tendency to favor the two-kingdoms approach and to associate the reformational viewpoint with transformationalism. I think balancing the assessment of these two groups will actually strengthen the overall thesis of the book. I commend By the Waters of Babylon to everyone interested in missions, culture, and worship.

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.