Exegesis and Theology

The Blog of Brian Collins

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.

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.

Romans 16:7 and The Nature of Theology: Brief Notes on Some Recent Reading

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CPJ-11-FrontCover-forCBMcGraw, Ryan, trans. “Johannes Wollebius’s Paecognita of Christian Theology from Compendiusm Theologiae Christianae,” Confessional Presbyterian 11 (2015).

Excellent discussion of the definition and nature of theology along with a defense of canonical Scripture as the sufficient and final theological authority.

Burer, Michael. “ΈΠΙΣΗΜΟΙ ΈΝ ΤΟΙΣ ΆΠΟΣΤΟΛΟΙΣ in Rom 16:7 as ‘Well Known to the Apostles’: Further Defense and New Evidence,” JETS 58, no. 4 (December 2015): 731-55.

JETS_LogoThe thesis of Burer and Wallace in their NTS article is that one should take “ἐπίσημος genitive as inclusive (e.g., ‘notable among’)” and ἐπίσημος plus (ἐν plus) dative as exclusive (e.g., ‘well known to’).” (JETS 58, no. 4, p. 755). In his JETS article Burer responds to critiques of their thesis to show that it still holds and brings forth additional evidence from Greek literature to demonstrate that this pattern holds.

Justo González: Christian History from the Fathers to the Reformation

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González, Justo. The Story of Christianity. Volume 1. Revised edition. New York: HarperCollins, 2010.

González’s history of Christianity is an excellent survey of church history. His style is engaging, the chapters and chapter sections are brief, and the is largely accurate. González is not an evangelical, so the reader will want to be discerning. For instance, I found him too open to the idea that there was not settled orthodoxy in the earliest history of the church. But in general I found his telling of the Christian story to be fair and accurate. Volume one ends just prior to the Reformation.

Was Edwards an Intellectualist, Voluntarist, or Concurrentist

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Waddington, Jeffrey C. “Which Comes First, The Intellect or the Will? Alvin Plantinga and Jonathan Edwards on a Perennial Question,” The Confessional Presbyterian 11 (2015): 121-28, 252-53.

Alvin Plantinga, in Warranted Christian Belief, proposes a concurrentist model of the relation between the intellect and the will while identifying the position of Jonathan Edwards as intellectualist, or giving priority to the intellect. Waddington argues that Edwards’s position was closer to Plantinga’s than Plantinga realized.CPJ-11-FrontCover-forCB

In the course of the article Waddington helpfully classifies various positions on the relation of the intellect and will. The first noted is “absolute intellectualism,” a position associated with Thomas Aquinas. On this view “the will is considered blind, and is seen as a slave of sorts to the intellect.” A second position is “functional intellectualism.” In this view the intellect is primary because it presents the will with the “object to which it is either attracted or repulsed.” But ontologically the will and intellect are equals. Waddington notes this view is akin to the Trinity in which each of the persons are ontologically equal while a functional order among the members exists. A key difference between these two positions is that the sin has only affected the intellect in the first, since the will is a slave to the intellect. But on the second view, both intellect and will are affected by sin and in need of regeneration. A third position is “scholastic voluntarism.” On this view the will takes such priority that it is “self-determining.” A fourth position is “Augustinian voluntarism.” In this view, the will is the orientation of the person toward or away from God. This orientation his primacy over the intellect. Finally, there is the concurrentist position is which there is no primacy of intellect or will over the other.

Though Plantinga identified Edwards as an intellectualist, Edwards scholars such as Norman Fiering and Allen Guelzo have identified Edwards as an Augustinian voluntarist. Waddington notes that this is a valid option, and the view that he had held. However, he now recognizes the legitimacy of functional intellectualism to  describe Edwards. Both categories seem to fit elements of Edwards work. In the end, however, Waddington now thinks that Edwards fits best into the concurrentist position

Thinking about the Development of Doctine

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91dj-uoppxlOne question I face in class as a church historian is, ‘If doctrine develops, does this mean that what unites us to Christ changes over time too?’ This is an excellent question and, indeed, a rather obvious one when one is investigating the history of doctrine. Two things need to be borne in mind here.

First, Scripture gives no hint that that which saves changes: it is always trust in Christ that unites one to Christ. Thus, someone who was a believer in the first century is saved in the same way as someone who believes in the twenty-first.

Second, as noted above, the public criteria for what constitutes a credible profession of faith do change over time, as do the standards for office-bearing. As the church reflected upon the identity of Christ and upon Scripture over time, the limitations and inadequacies of certain formulations became more apparent. We noted above that in the third century, the view that Christ was subordinate to the Father in terms of his being was considered acceptable because the implications of that position had not been fully worked out. Once this had been done, and the unacceptable, unbiblical implications of such a position had become clear, the church put in place statements that ruled such views out of bounds. It is not that people who believed in Christ’s subordination in the second century could not therefore have been saved—we are all, after all, saved despite some of the things which we believe. It is rather that the church had come to an understanding that to protect and to articulate the gospel, accurate concepts and appropriate language were necessary, and some of these had to change over time as the in adequacy and abuse of earlier forms became clear.

Carl R. Trueman, The Creedal Imperative, (Wheaton: Crossway, 2012), 96-97.

Review of Bratt’s Biography of Kuyper

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Bratt, James D. Abraham Kuyper: Modern Calvinist, Christian Democrat. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013.

This is a well-written academic biography of Abraham Kuyper. It does a fine job in setting the context of Kuyper’s life and documenting the intellectual currents which influenced Kuyper. It also is valuable in providing the context for Kuyper’s thought (a particular political situation, for instance). This may affect the evaluation of certain aspects of Kuyper’s thought. Bratt provides a warts and all kind of biography, which is useful when evaluating the thought of an influential figure. The major weakness of this work, to my mind, is Bratt’s own left-of-center viewpoint. There were several occasions in which Bratt declared Kuyper’s thought to be contradictory (and the part deemed the outlier was the conservative part). I often wondered at these points if a right-of-center biographer would have seen Kuyper as contradictory at these points or whether he would have found Kuyper’s thought more cohesive.

Luther on Praying Thy Kingdom Come

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“Thy kingdom come.” Say: “O dear Lord, God and Father, thou seest how worldly wisdom and reason not only profane thy name and ascribe the honor due to thee to lies and to the devil, but how they also take the power, might, wealth and glory which thou hast given them on earth for ruling the world and thus serving thee, and use it in their own ambition to oppose thy kingdom. They are many and mighty; they plague and hinder the tiny flock of thy kingdom who are weak, despised, and few. They will not tolerate thy flock on earth and think that by plaguing them they render a great and godly service to thee. Dear Lord, God and Father, convert them and defend us. Convert those who are still to become children and members of thy kingdom so that they with us and we with them may serve thee in thy kingdom in true faith and unfeigned love and that from thy kingdom which has begun, we may enter into thy eternal kingdom. Defend us against those who will not turn away their might and power from the destruction of thy kingdom so that when they are east down from their thrones and humbled, they will have to cease from their efforts. Amen.”

Luther, Works, 43:195-96.

On the Reformation in England

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Modern champions of the Catholic position like to support a view of the Reformation, that it was entirely a political imposition by a ruthless minority in power against both the traditions and the wishes of the pious people of England. . . . The energy which affected every human life in northern Europe, however, came from a different place. It was not the result of political imposition. It came from the discovery of the Word of God as originally written . . . in the language of the people. Moreover, it could be read and understood, without censorship by the Church or mediation through the Church. . . . Such reading produced a totally different view of everyday Christianity: the weekly, daily, even hourly ceremonies so lovingly catalogued by some Catholic revisionists are not there; purgatory is not there; there is no aural confession and penance. Two supports of the Church’s wealth and power collapsed. Instead there was simply individual faith in Christ the Saviour, found in Scripture. That and only that ‘justified’ the sinner, whose root failings were now in the face of God, not the bishops or the pope.

Daniell, Tyndale, p. 58 as cited in Piper, Filling up the Afflictions of Christ, 30.

Origins of Allegorical Interpretation and Christian Theology

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To spin the straw of traditional religious narrative into the gold of philosophically coherent and elevating theology, Hellenistic intellectuals availed themselves of allegory. . . . Allegory enabled the enlightened reader to see through the surface level of a text to its spiritual message, to understand what the text truly meant in contrast to what it merely said. Grammar, rhetoric, philological finesse: all these tools of classical paideia might be brought to bear on an ancient story to turn it into a philosophically lucid statement of timeless truth.

Paula Fredriksen and Judith Lieu, "Christian Theology and Judaism," in The First Christian Theologians: An Introduction to Theology in the Early Church, ed. G. R. Evans (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), 86.

From Fredriksen and Lieu’s description, it seems the purpose of allegory is to evade the original meaning and worldview of a text so that it can be conformed to an alien worldview. If this is so, allegorical readings of the OT are singularly unfit for Christian theologians, for the resort to allegory is an implicit confession that the NT and Christian theology are alien to the theology and worldview of the OT. For those who see the problems with Enlightenment hermeneutics and wish to return to pre-critical approaches, the Reformers are better models than the Fathers.