Exegesis and Theology

The Blog of Brian Collins

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

by

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.

Review of Aniol, By the Rivers of Babylon – Part 2

by

Culture

In this section Aniol surveys Niebuhr’s Christ and culture paradigm, looks at the cultural views of key historical figures, and evaluates what he labels the separatist, two kingdoms, transformationalist, and missional approaches. It is at this point that I think the book could be sharpened.

Two Kingdoms

Though Aniol doesn’t actually fully embrace the two-kingdoms view, proposing his own sanctificationist view, he does say, “Perhaps the two-kingdom approach is closest to the New Testament perspective, with its balance of both antithesis and commonality” (115). In his initial evaluation of the two-kingdoms view, the critique is muted by qualifications (“sometimes,” “impression,” “may be”): “the idea of natural law sometimes gives the impression of a neutral middle ground between believers and unbelievers . . . the antithesis may be blurred with the idea of natural law” (75). Later, however, he makes this more trenchant critique: “it fails to emphasize that a Christian’s involvement in the culture should manifest his Christian values” (115).

The attraction to the two-kingdoms view is understandable, especially for those who are concerned for the distinctiveness of the church’s mission and for culturally distinctive, sacred worship (including in the area of music). I find myself great agreement when reading two-kingdoms proponents about these matters. Nevertheless, the two-kingdoms view suffers from some fatal weaknesses.

First, it is an exegetically untenable position. David Van Drunen, the theologian who has done the most to make a historical and exegetical argument for the two-kingdoms view, proposes that the common kingdom and the redemptive kingdom are founded on the Noahic and the Abrahamic covenants, respectively. Neither of these covenants establish kingdoms, however (though the Abrahamic covenant does have promises related to future kings). The Davidic covenant, which is specifically about the kingdom, is neglected in Van Drunen’s treatments.

In addition, it is difficult to maintain that the Noahic covenant is a non-redemptive covenant or a purely natural law covenant. The redemptive aspects of this covenant are foreshadowed in Genesis 5:29. It is tied to a picture of redemption: the salvation of humans and animals through the Flood. The covenant is founded on a sacrifice, which symbolically shows the covenant’s foundation is Christ’s atoning work. Finally, the covenant includes special revelation about not eating blood, which shows the covenant is not solely a natural law covenant. To avoid these conclusions Van Drunen proposes that in 6:18 God makes a redemptive covenant with only Noah while in chapter 9 God makes a different common covenant with all creation. Van Drunen wishes to distance the covenant in chapter 9 from the sacrifice in chapter 8. These interpretations are strained, to say the least.

Second, Van Drunen errs in conceiving of the creation blessing as a command that formed part of Adam’s probation. It is better to see Genesis 1:28 as a blessing that came under covenant sanctions when man sinned. Rightly conceiving the creation blessing has significant consequences. The themes of blessing, land/kingdom, and seed are contained in the creation blessing. The curse in Genesis 3 is a reversal of the blessing in the areas of seed and land. It is no mistake that blessing, seed, and land are the major themes found in the Noahic, Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic, and new covenants. Redemption is about reversing the curse in these areas. Since human sin led to the curse, addressing the problem of human sin is at the heart of redemption.

In addition, the creation blessing is the foundation for the kingdom theme in Scripture. Man was blessed with rule over the earth under God’s greater rule. When mankind rebelled against God, that rule was marred and distorted. The kingdom of God theme is about the restoration of human rule under God’s greater rule. The glory of God’s redemptive plan is that Jesus, the man who restores that rule, is both God and man. This understanding of the kingdom theme shows the difficulty of the two kingdoms approach. The kingdom that Christ announced cannot be relegated to the churchly sphere because its ultimate end will be the restoration of the original creation blessing.

Biblically it is clear that the Messianic kingdom extends to areas VanDrunen assigns to the common kingdom. Psalm 72 says the Messiah will “defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the children of the need, and crush the oppressor!” (Ps. 72:1). He will accept tribute from the other kings of the earth (Ps. 72:10). These are activities that VanDrunen would keep in the common kingdom. The entire idea of a redemptive kingdom separate from a common kingdom seems to be read into the biblical covenants rather than out of them.

A third weakness in VanDrunen’s work is the identification of all of culture with Babylon. VanDrunen bases this key part of his argument on a particular idealistic, amillennial interpretation of Revelation. He specifically constructs his eschatological statements so as to exclude both premillennialism and postmillennialism (Living in God’s Two Kingdoms, 63). This idealistic interpretation of Babylon in Revelation 18 is then conflated with Jeremiah 29:4-14 so that it refers to all of human culture, good and bad. However, Babylon of Revelation 18 seems rather to refer to worldly culture in opposition to God (and it does so as manifested in a particular place at the end of this age). In relation to this, the Babylonian exile does not seem to be the best model for Christian sojourning in the present evil age. From the exile from Eden and the exile of Cain through the Babylonian Captivity, exile from the land is punishment for sin. The sojourning theme, by contrast, is a positive theme. When the New Testament does explicitly draw on an Old Testament example of sojourning, it looks to Abraham.

Fourth, the thrust of VanDrunen’s presentation is to minimize the antithesis that exists between Christians and non-Christians in the cultural realm. He notes for example, that there is nothing really distinctively Christian about the vocations of carpenter, firefighter, plumber, or landscaper aside from the virtues of diligence, respect, and honesty that all people recognize as good. But what if VanDrunen shifted his examples to include research biologists, philosophers, historians, or bioethicists? The minimization of the antithesis by the two-kingdoms view seems to cut at the heart of Aniol’s project, which maintains that the church cannot be conformed to the culture because of the antithesis. Aniol notes this difficulty in passing, but I think it is such a threat to his (and my) view that it deserves a more sustained critique.

None of this is to say that Aniol holds to the views critiqued above. He does not go into this level of detail in his summary of the views. However, these aspects of the two-kingdoms approach make me wish that Aniol had been more critical of it.

Creation Regained: Response to Aniol’s Critique

Aniol does provide a sustained critique of a group he labels transformationalists, with Al Wolters as the chief representative. This labeling is problematic. The label transformationalist comes from Niebuhr’s typology, but Wolters’s position does not fall nicely into Niebuhr’s paradigm. Wolters describes his position as reformational, and he uses the word “transform” only four times in Creation Regained: once in quoting Romans 12:2, twice regarding the transformed way that early Christians viewed slavery, and once of the transformation of culture in the eschaton. Some reformational thinkers have objected to being labeled transformationalists by their critics. In fact, in contrast to transformationalism, Wolters and Goheen note, “The history of this ‘time between the times,’ then, will not be one of smooth progress or an incremental linear development of the kingdom toward its consummation. Neither will our mission be one that resembles a steady victorious march toward the end” (133). Rather, “We announce and embody a victory that remains hidden until the final day. And so the embodiment of that victory often appears in what appears to the world as weakness, even foolishness” (134-35). What does it look like to live out this vision in the present world: “If we as the church want to be faithful to the equally comprehensive biblical story we will find ourselves faced with a choice: either accommodate the Bible’s story to that of our culture and live as a tolerated minority community, or remain faithful and experience some degree of conflict and suffering” (134). This is neither triumphalism nor a minimization of the antithesis.

Critique 1: Conflation of Divine and Human Creation

The specific critiques launched against Wolters seem to arise from misunderstanding. For instance, Aniol writes, “Wolters fails to distinguish between God’s creation and man’s creation. He often conflates the two categories, equating the intrinsic goodness of God’s handiwork with what mankind produces” (79). He raises the stakes by saying that this is “to slide dangerously close to Pelagianism” (79). Wolters’s view does expand the conception of creation beyond material things in two ways, but this expansion does not involve a confusion of God’s creation and human creation.

First, Wolters holds that law is built into creation. Creation is not only material things; creation includes non-physical laws like gravity and norms for marriage. Drawing on the wisdom literature Wolters observes that God designed his world to work in particular ways. Wisdom is to observe God’s world to through the lens of God’s Word to discern how best to live in the world God made. Wolters’s point here actually strengthens Aniol’s project: “Much of modern art, with its refusal to recognize any aesthetic norms, edges toward nihilism: it manifests a glorification of autonomous human creativity, and in doing so denies God’s creativity in the aesthetic realm. Not all art is good art. Both artists and aestheticians are called, each in their own ways, to discern the criteria that define good art—criteria that are not arbitrary but rooted in a given order of things that must be honored” (26). Here Wolters’s is challenging the same cultural relativity that Aniol is challenging.

It is probably Wolters’s second expansion of the concept of creation that concerns Aniol. Wolters points out that God “put an image of himself on the earth with a mandate to continue” the work of creation. In making this point, however, Wolters is not conflating what God has made and what humans make and calling both creation. He is simply making the point that the “unfolding of culture and society are integral to creation . . . , that they are not outside God’s plan for the cosmos, despite sinful aberrations, but were built in from the beginning, were part of the blueprint” (44-45). In other words, Christians should not oppose cities per se and prefer an agrarian lifestyle on the grounds that Adam lived in a garden but Cain built a city. We should not avoid all music because Jubal devised the first musical instruments. Rather, we recognize that at the center of the new creation is a city, the new Jerusalem, and that right worship of God can make use of musical instruments. Why? Because God designed his creation so that it could develop in such ways. Wolters is not saying the human development itself is God’s creation. Rather, the norms that God built into the world make such development possible and necessary.

In addition, Wolters specifically guards against Aniol’s concerns by a detailed discussion of worldliness (something absent in Van Drunen’s writings). He argues that “world describes the totality of sin-infected creation” (64). He argues that “nothing is ‘neutral’ in the sense that sin fails to affect it” (82). Goheen, who coauthored the postscript to the second edition of Creation Regained writes in another book, “After being rescued [Christians] are not to love the world or anything in the world (1 John 2:15), nor are they to conform to the pattern of this world (Rom. 12:2). When Paul exhorts the church not to be conformed to the pattern of this world, he is referring to culture” (A Light to the Nations, 182). There is no cultural neutrality here, nor is there an ascription of the intrinsic goodness of God’s creation to the works of man’s hands.

Critique 2: Confusion of Elements and Forms

Aniol’s second critique of Wolters is that his structure/direction distinction “fails to distinguish between what might be called elements and their forms” (79). This critique does not reject the structure/direction distinction, for Aniol notes, “Wolters’s structure/direction categories are a good starting point, but the situation is often more complex” (79). Wolters would not disagree with this last statement, for he has himself noted that structure and direction don’t really settle issues; they provide the framework within which the discussion takes place (cf. Creation Regained, 110).

The value of this framework should not be discounted, however. By affirming the goodness of creational structure, Wolters defends what the church has defended since the rise of the gnostic heresies, namely, the essential goodness of creation. By affirming the reality of direction no one is not able to do what Aniol fears—simply affirm that cultural practices are creationally good. One is forced to argue that such practices are not twisted in sinful directions. Structure and direction may simply be a starting point, but it is a good starting point.

Aniol disputes some of what Wolters labels as structure: “he lists technology as a structure, but technology is already a direction itself; it is a form of the more basic element of communication. The same is true for dance and music.” This kind of dispute, however, is not a critique of the framework that Wolters is laying out; it is the kind of discussion that is necessary within the framework. Having seen Wolters’s responses to questions of this sort, I think he would welcome challenges to his categorization on certain points. (However, I would personally disagree with making technology a direction of communication; I would see technology as the basic structure of tool using with the different actual technologies developed embodying various directions.)

Critique 3: Cultural is Neutral

Aniol states, “the transformationalist position eventually understands culture in general to be neutral. Any ‘sinful direction’ it recognizes is typically limited to the content of a given cultural form but not the form itself. Rather, since forms are characterized as elements (or directions as structures), very few if any cultural forms are judged to be against God’s law. The danger of this view is that anything in culture is fair game for the Christian for the Christian, and ‘cultural redemption’ means little more than adoption” (79).

Aniol is not tilting against windmills here. This does describe real people and movements. But it is doubtful that it accurately represents Wolters and Goheen. As already noted Wolters and Goheen have a robust understanding of worldliness which guards against mere cultural adoption. For instance, Goheen describes his family’s approach to the use of technology: “Ignoring this potent force in our homes is nothing short of foolish. We read Neal Postman’s Technopoly, and when new technologies were introduced into our home, we discussed them together: What will this give and what will this take away? What are its benefits and its dangers? We can record some successes and, sadly, some failures. Nevertheless, there must be an intentional plan to discuss these issues to help our children learn to use technology wisely” (A Light to the Nations, 222-23). He also describes their approach to television: “When we had television in our home in the early years, we allowed our kids to watch some children’s programing as long as they observed a simple rule after each commercial. They had to ask (out loud so we could hear): ‘Who do you think you’re kidding?’” (A Light to the Nations, 223). Notice that the television, which dominates so many American lives, evidently went by the wayside. And notice what Goheen says really filled their time: “None of our children can remember a time when we didn’t have family worship as central to our evenings. We set aside an hour to an hour and a half for family worship five nights a week (Monday through Thursday and Saturday). It was important to set a time and remain unswerving in a commitment to guard it at all costs against other intrusions. It meant starting other meetings later and not planning other evening events. During this time we taught our children the true story of the world in Scripture, using books and methods appropriate to their ages. We spent significant time singing and praying together” (A Light to the Nations, 222).

This doesn’t sound like “little more than adoption” of the culture. Nor does Goheen’s comments about technology comport with the idea that direction only has to do with content and that forms are always structural.

Concluding Thoughts Regarding Wolters and Goheen

This response to Aniol’s critiques of Wolters and Gohneen does not mean that his critiques of cultural conformity in the name of cultural redemption have no legitimate target. They do. Nor does this mean that everyone writing from Kuyperian background is equally helpful. Wolters is far better than Cornelius Plantinga, in my estimation (and on the two-kingdom side, David Van Drunen is far better than D. G. Hart on the issue of Christians and the common kingdom). My point is simply that Creation Regained actually gives Aniol a better platform from which to make those critiques than the two-kingdom viewpoint. I think that Aniol could strengthen his position by seeing Wolters as an ally rather than as a foe.

Nor does this response mean that Wolters and Goheen are above critique. For instance, Wolters’s claim that the “products of human culture” will be purified and brought into the new creation goes beyond the biblical evidence and seems unnecessary even in a redemption-as-restoration paradigm. I also question Wolters’s willingness to speak of Christians advancing the kingdom in such areas as “advertising, labor-management relations, education, and international affairs” (76). This language seems too expansive. Regarding Goheen’s A Light to the Nations, I’ve in the past called it “the most disappointing and most profitable book that I’ve read recently. Disappointing because I came to the book with high hopes and found that I disagreed with his basic thesis. Profitable because it is . . . full of wis[dom].” Nonetheless, I find their overall paradigm more biblically grounded and more practically useful than the two-kingdoms paradigm.

What is Culture? Aniol’s Proposal

Aniol concludes his section on culture by arguing that culture should be disconnected from the concept of race and connected to the New Testament category of behavior. If this is not done, then any cultural critique will be labeled racist. If that happens, then the Christian is not able to critique any culture.

Since race is a social construct, and since, given the way the construct has been developed, races exist across multiple cultures, I find the first part of the argument compelling. I also agree that when relating the New Testament to the idea of culture, the idea of behavior is a major connecting point. However, culture is more than behavior. It involves ways of thinking, and it involves artifacts. I think Aniol’s discussion of culture, while good and helpful, could be strengthened by including a discussion of the Bible’s teaching about thinking. In addition, I think expansion on the concepts of elements and forms, which he discusses at various points in the book, might help him further address the artefactual aspects of culture.

Review of Aniol, By the Rivers of Babylon – Part 1

by

Scott Aniol’s writings about music, worship, and culture present a viewpoint that is in need of careful consideration for the health of the church. He brings knowledge of theology and a knowledge of music together in ways that many people on both sides of the debate over worship do not do. Further, Scott grounds his discussions about music in a broader, theologically-rooted understanding of culture and conservatism. I am in fundamental agreement with Scott on these issues, and so I commend his latest book By the Rivers of Babylon: Worship in a Post-Christian Culture along with his other writings on religiousaffections.org.

Despite our fundamental agreements, Scott and I disagree about some matters in the central section of this book. He tends to favor a two kingdoms approach to culture and to take a dim view of Al Wolters’s reformational approach, whereas I have found great value in Wolters and have some serious reservations about the two-kingdoms approach. I thank Scott for having Kregel send me a review copy of By the Rivers of Babylon, and I hope this review serves not only to commend Scott’s book to others but also serves to foster greater agreement between us regarding these two differing approaches to culture.

By the Rivers of Babylon falls into three general sections. The first section, chapters 1-3 evaluates the missional church movement. The second section, chapters 4-7 survey different Christian approaches to culture and present Aniol’s own proposal. The third section, chapters 8-10, focuses on Christian gathered worship. Chapter 11 wraps up with implications and applications. These three areas—missions, culture, and worship—are often discussed in isolation of one another, but Aniol is wise to bring them together one’s view in one area will have implications for one’s view on others.

Missional Theology

The section on the missional church movement provides a brief history along with a summary of missional theology. In doing this survey Aniol recognizes the difficulty of defining missional. The term is used across a wide spectrum of people and organizations that range from theologically liberal to evangelical. The treatment is careful to specify who precisely is under consideration and focuses mainly on the evangelical side of the spectrum. Aniol notes three positive contributions of the missional church movement. First, evangelism is a prominent concern. Second, the missional church movement, in theory, views worship as an activity primarily of believers and rejects the evangelism-centric services of the church growth movement. Third, the missional church movement has recognized that western Christians now live in post-Christian societies. This affects how the church functions in society. It also provides an opportunity to reflect on how the Enlightenment shaped the church in less than desirable ways. Aniol then notes three negative aspects to the missional church movement. First, it takes its critique of the church of Christendom too far, thus rejecting too much of the inheritance that Christians have from past centuries. Second, it too often assumes that culture is neutral and that church practice can be easily adapted to a wide variety of differing cultural forms without loss. Third, it maintains a close connection between worship and evangelism that at times belies its critique of the church growth movement.

Aniol’s evaluation of the missional church movement seems balanced and fair, and I think his concerns are sound. A naïve view of cultural neutrality combined with a substantially negative view of prior church practice both impoverishes the church and leaves it up to cultural corruption. One of Anoil’s most telling observations relates to the difference between the tendencies among missional theologians and practitioners: “The theologians seem to emphasize the fact that culture shapes the church (especially harkening back to the ways Christendom and the Enlightenment shaped the church in the West) and warn against being shaped by the culture in ways that ‘might be compromising gospel truth.’ Most practitioners, on the other hand, tend to minimize the possibility that any culture could shape the gospel harmfully, instead emphasizing the need for the church to engage the culture and redeem it for the gospel” (34-35). If this is the case, then the practitioners are setting themselves up to repeat the errors of the past without reaping its benefits.

Since the missional church movement is concerned to contextualize the gospel within particular cultures, chapter 3 concludes with a survey of changing definitions of culture from culture as high culture to anthropological definitions that recognize that all people groups have a culture. Chapter 4 opens with a survey of the roots of the contextualization idea in the World Council of Churches. These discussions transition to the second part of the book, which examines how Christians are to understand and relate to culture.

Review of Van Reken on Christians as Pilgrims or Settlers

by

Van Reken, Calvin P. “Christians in This World: Pilgrims or Settlers,” Calvin Theological Journal 43 (2008): 234-56.

Van Reken traces and “Old Vision” and a “New Vision” in the CRC regarding the Christian’s place in the world. Interestingly he approaches this topic by looking at revisions to the denomination’s hymnals. For instance, he notes that a hymn that once read “Spirit of God, who dwells within my heart, wean it from earth” was altered in the 1987 hymnal to read “Spirit of God, who dwells within my heart, wean it from sin.” He then documents a shift from seeking the world “as so vile as to be dangerous to Christians” to seeking the world as a place that Christians should seek to redeem. In the new vision sees “the world as our home in need of our attention.” Van Reken believes that the new vision is correct in some areas. But he has two concerns: worldliness and lack of evangelism.

He notes that 1928 CRC “did not warn the church about cultural engagements in general; it warned specifically about worldly amusements.” It did not call these amusements “intrinsically sinful.” But it did recognize a danger in them that differed from other kinds of cultural engagement: “the less hazardous forms of cultural engagement, such as working in a factory or running for Congress, are not things so pleasant as to make us forget God. They have much less power to lure us away from our interest in heaven. Worldly amusements, on the other hand, are enjoyable.” Van Reken thinks that danger from worldly amusements is greater now than in 1928 but that concern about this matter has greatly diminished—making the danger even greater.

Van Reken’s other concern is an increasingly lack of attention given to evangelism. He praises the increased social outreach that the new view has generated, but he is distressed that this social work seems to have replaced an emphasis on evangelism. And what shall it profit if Christians repaired a home destroyed by a hurricane but failed to share the gospel of salvation with the homeowner?

Fundamentally, however, Van Reken believes that the new vision has forgotten that the old vision was rooted in the Bible’s teaching about the pilgrim life of the believer. Van Reken does not think that the pilgrim vision should detract from engagement with the world. But he does think that it reminds us to consider what is temporary and what is eternal. It reminds us that the life to come is eternal and that this life is transitory. In other words, Van Reken concludes, “If we completely lose the old vision, we are in danger of forgetting what is really most important.”

Books and Articles Finished in September

by

Books

DeYoung, Kevin. Why Our Church Switched to the ESV. Wheaton: Crossway, 2011.

A helpful, non-technical comparison between the ESV and NIV that shows the benefits of a translation that seeks to remain transparent to the form and metaphors of the original languages when possible.

DeYoung, Kevin and Greg Gilbert, What Is the Mission of the Church? Wheaton: Crossway, 2011.

See previous post.

Webb, William J. Corporal Punishment in the Bible: A Redemptive-Movement Hermeneutic for Troubling Texts. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2011.

William Webb applies his problematic Redemptive-Movement hermeneutic to corporal punishment. The central problem with his approach is that it seems difficult to avoid a Whiggish view of history (or in this case, ethics) with this kind of hermeneutic. He seems to imply that the judicial use of corporal punishment on criminal adults is ruled out with the redemptive-movement at its present stage. But why should an increasingly secularized 21st century West determine this. Why not a more Christianized 19th century? Or why the West; what of the East? Corporal punishment is still practiced in Singapore. Which is more humane, locking up people up in prisons for extended periods of time or instituting corporal punishment for certain crimes? These are questions that Webb fails to wrestle with. He also unhelpfully mixes discussions of child-rearing with passages that seem to deal with criminal punishments. He furthermore gives his readers false options by implying that either one adopt his redemptive-movement hermeneutic or accept as still valid various provisions of the OT Law.

Fitzpatrick, Elyse M. and Jessica Thompson. Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus. Wheaton: Crossway, 2011

The discussions of the law and the gospel could have benefited from some recognition of the third use of the law. Nonetheless, as the practical discussions unfolded, it seemed that this category was implicit. Readers would also benefit from reading and keeping in mind John Frame’s cautions on redemptive-historical preaching as they read this book. As with redemptive-historical preaching, the emphasis here is on the indicative, and there should be some cautions about not avoiding the imperatives for fear of moralism. Those caveats given, this is a good book. The overall thrust of the book is that parents should not try simply to produce good children. They should instead seek for gospel opportunities in discipline situations. This does not mean that discipline disappears but rather that it is contextualized with the gospel. The book also stresses that following the right formulas will not necessarily produce good children but that God’s grace is necessary to transform children’s hearts. Thus parents must consistently pray for God’s work of grace in the hearts of their children.

Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti. An Introduction to Ecclesiology: Ecumenical, Historical & Global Perspectives. Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2002.

Good overview of various ecclesiological proposals and the state of the discipline. Negatively, it is slanted toward unorthodox views.

Ryle, J. C. Expository Thoughts on Matthew. 1856; repr., Banner of Truth Trust, 1986.

Ryle designed this work for family devotions and it is worthy of continued use for that purpose over 150 years from its original publication.

Hannah, John D. An Uncommon Union: Dallas Theological Seminary and American Evangelicalism. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009.

Hannah provides an interesting institutional history. It doesn’t have the same narrative quality as George Marsden’s history of Fuller Seminary or Gregory Wills’ history of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Hannah goes into more detail about curricular changes and other details which break up the narrative. But the discussion of how Dallas emerged from the Bible Conference movement and developed in relation to fundamentalism and evangelicalism was interesting.  Hannah placed Dallas somewhat between fundamentalism and the neo-evangelicalism spearheaded at Fuller Seminary.

Goheen, Michael W. A Light to the Nations: The Missional Church and the Biblical Story. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011.

I think this has been the most disappointing and most profitable book that I’ve read recently. Disappointing because I came to the book with high hopes and found that I disagreed with his basic thesis. Profitable because it is not only full of wise thoughts but because even when I disagreed I found my thinking helpfully provoked. Goheen did not convince me that the church is defined by its mission. It seems that the church most be more than a “come and join us people.” Its definition must include the what for which people join. Nonetheless, missions is vital to the church, and Goheen’s discussion of mission and missions remain helpful. I also disagree with Goheen’s relation of the church to Israel. This ended up being a major theme of the book. Nonetheless, Goheen has sparked an interest into researching further OT prophecies about the role of Israel in spreading the gospel to the Gentiles.

Wilson, Douglas. What I Learned in Narnia. Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2010.

One of the reasons Lewis’s books are so enjoyable for Christians is that they help them see with fresh eyes the foolishness of evil and the wisdom of a God-oriented life. These lessons are not sermonizing within the stories. They are baked into the narratives themselves. And they are the kind of things that stick in the mind and are recalled unbidden when similar circumstances or ideas arise in real life. Wilson highlights these lessons in this book. An enjoyable read.

Articles

Schreiner, Thomas R. “A Biblical Theology of the Glory of God.” In For the Fame of God’s Name: Essays in Honor of John Piper. Edited by Sam Storms and Justin Taylor. Wheaton: Crossway, 2010.

A helpful overview of the centrality of the glory of God in every part of the biblical storyline/canon.

Dever, Mark. “The Church.” In Understanding the Times: New Testament Studies in the 21st Century: Essays in Honor of D. A. Carson on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday. Edited by Andreas J. Köstenberger and Robert W. Yarbrough. Wheaton: Crossway, 2011.

A basic unpacking of the doctrine of the church in terms of its four ancient attributes and two/three Reformation marks. Includes helpful thoughts on church membership

Kidd, Reggie M. “What John Frame Taught Me about Worship.” Speaking the Truth in Love: The Theology of John M. Frame. Edited by John J. Hughes. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2009.

He likes Frame, Clowney, Old, and Webber. But the essay is pretty thin on content.

Wolters, Al. “Reflection by Al Wolters.” in Four Views on Moving beyond the Bible to Theology (Counterpoints: Bible and Theology). Edited by Gary T. Meadors. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009.

When I referenced this book for my dissertation, I found that Wolters had the most perceptive reflection on the four views presented. In the dissertation, I drew on him for his critique of Vanhoozer’s theodramatic view. This time I read him to refresh my mind on his critique of Webb. Here too he was perceptive. He notes several problems with a redemptive-movement hermeneutic: (1) It treats ANE ethics monolithically. There were multiple ethics in multiple cultures. Further, some may have been more advanced that Israel if one assumes the “ultimate ethic” that Web lays. (2) His approach depends on the Bible reader having access to ANE background information that many ordinary readers don’t have access to and that even scholars did not have access to before the nineteenth century. Even today scholarly knowledge of the ANE is patchy. (Wolters is clear that he is not against making use of ANE background materials.) (3) “There appears to be no standard by which to measure what an ‘ultimate ethic’ might be. A clue to what is in fact the implicit and unacknowledged standard for Webb is provided by the proximity in the diagram of ‘Ultimate Ethic’ to ‘Our Culture.’ To be sure, the latter is qualified by the words in parentheses: ‘where it happens to reflect a better ethic than Y,’ but no criterion is provided by which we can judge that ‘our culture’ on this or that point reflects a better ethic than Y. This is a remarkable statement when we recall that Y represents ‘the concrete words of the text,’ that is, the biblical text. For all practical purposes it seems that Webb’s ‘Ultimate Ethic’ is pretty well equated with ‘Our Culture,’ at least insofar as the latter is the bearer of human and liberal values. It looks for all the world as though the values ‘we’ hold trump the explicit ethical instruction of Scripture” (p. 306).

McDaniel, Stefan. “Flogging: The Best Hope for Our Broken Prison System?” The Public Discourse (2011).

It was interesting to happen across this article shortly after having finished Webb’s book on corporal punishment. It comments on Peter Moskos’s work, In Defense of Flogging, which raises the issue of whether flogging might be more humane than locking people up in prison. He tentatively proposes the flogging be an option that those convicts who are not a danger to society may choose instead of a prison term. This is interesting because Webb rhetorically reacts in horror at the idea of corporal punishment as a punishment for adult criminals. But what if Webb’s trajectory toward from Scripture toward our culture isn’t a trajectory to that which is more humane after all? This article at the very least raises that question.

Campbell, Donald K. “The Church in God’s Prophetic Program.” In Essays in honor of J. Dwight Pentecost,. Chicago: Moody, 1986.

Lewis, C. S. “The Inner Ring.” In The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses. HarperCollins, 2001.

An excellent application of the tenth commandment to friendship. The best fictional correspondence to this address in Lewis’s writing is the character of Mark Studdock in That Hideous Strength.

Osborne, Grant. “Hermeneutics and Theological Interpretation.” In Understanding the Times: New Testament Studies in the 21st Century: Essays in Honor of D. A. Carson on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday. Edited by Andreas J. Köstenberger and Robert W. Yarbrough. Wheaton: Crossway, 2011.

When I was writing my dissertation on theological interpretation of Scripture, I found the literature so voluminous and diverse that I struggled in finding a structure for my analysis. In the end I focused on the role of tradition, the place of pre-critical interpretation as it relates to authorial intent, and how theological interpretation relates to biblical and systematic theology. I was therefore pleased to see that Grant Osborne’s survey of the same material covers these same key areas. Furthermore, I think he points his readers in the right direction on every point. He sees tradition as valuable but supplementary to Scripture, which retains its primacy. He argues that seeking authorial intention is correct and viable. One difference is that he seems to see Childs as a move forward after the collapse of the Biblical Theology Movement. I think that Childs carries many of the same weaknesses. That criticism aside, Osborne’s introduction to theological interpretation is a fine one.

Strange, Dan. “Not Ashamed! The Sufficiency of Scripture for Public Theology.” Themelios 36, no. 2 (2011): 238-60.

Strange provides a description of both Common-Kingdom (emphasis on natural law as the authority for the common kingdom) and Confessional-Kingdom (emphasis on the authority of Scripture for all of life) models of engagement with public life. He sides with the Confessional-Kingdom approach. His survey is helpful and his application to the UK is useful even for those in the USA.

Bookman, Douglas. “The Scriptures and Biblical Counseling.” In Introduction to Biblical Counseling. Edited by John F. MacArthur, Jr. and Wayne A. Mack. Dallas: Word, 1994.

Bookman’s concerns are entirely valid. But in making his case, Bookman seems overly reliant on arguing the definition of terms (while granting what many would identify as general revelation and its application in four affirmations), and even these definitions receive only the most cursory support from Scripture. Bookman’s discussion of general revelation would have been stronger if it had focused on the key general revelation texts, and his case against integrationist counseling would have been stronger if it focused on the substantive issue of psychological theories being equivalent to a theology rather than being revelation itself.

Mayhue, Richard L. “Is Nature the 67th Book of the Bible.” In Coming to Grips with Genesis: Biblical Authority and the Age of the Earth. Master Books, 2008.

Mayhue provides an able refutation of Hugh Ross’s claim that nature is the 67th book of the Bible. But he seems to overly limit general revelation in a few places. First, when he says that the breadth of content for general revelation is limited to knowledge of God alone, this seems to rule out natural law (though he grants Romans 2 deals with both general revelation and moral standards). When he says that the corpus of general revelation does not grow over time, Mayhue excludes history from general revelation. He says he does so on the basis that history does not show up in Ps. 19:1-6; Acts 14:17; 17:23-31; Rom. 1:18-25; 10:18, but I would have benefited from some further discussion on why many theologians include history. Does Mayhue think they wrongly see it in the texts he examines; does he think they wrongly see it in other texts that do not teach general revelation? Mayhue then says to expand general revelation beyond special revelation adds to Scripture. But this is not clear. Scripture is special revelation and general revelation is not. These reservations and questions do not affect Mayhue’s case against Ross; Mayhue successfully refutes Ross’s claims.

What is the Mission of the Church: A Brief Review

by

DeYoung, Kevin and Greg Gilbert, What Is the Mission of the Church?: Making Sense of Social Justice, Shalom, and the Great Commission. Wheaton: Crossway, 2011.

DeYoung and Gilbert argue that the mission of the church is the Great Commission: “the mission of the church is to go into the world and make disciples by declaring the gospel of Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit and gathering those disciples into churches, that they might worship and obey Jesus Christ now and in eternity to the glory of God the Father” (p. 241). Much of the book provides helpful responses to those who extend the mission of the church so broadly that the core of the Great Commission is minimized or lost. They convincingly argue that the missio dei and the mission of the church do not necessarily coincide, that incarnation is not the best metaphor for church ministry, and that Stott’s interpretation of John 21 is not the most accurate. They could have made their argument stronger, however, be canvassing Acts and the Epistles for further indications of the church’s mission.

According to DeYoung and Gilbert, the gospel can refer to all the good that results from God’s plan of redemption, but they rightly center the gospel on the provision of atonement and how it may be received by individual humans for salvation. They tell the story of Scripture as centered on humans and sin rather than on creation and corruption. This is basically correct, but there does seem to be some overcorrection on this point. The Creation Blessing/Mandate gets little play in the redemptive historical survey chapter. In a later chapter it is reduced to something that Adam failed to do, that no other human is tasked with doing, and that the Second Adam will accomplish apart from our work. This incorrectly ties the Creation Blessing with Adam’s probationary test. Genesis 1 and 9 present the Creation Blessing as something that all humans have, even though it is now twisted by the Fall. It is not uniquely Adamic.

DeYoung and Gilbert view the kingdom of God as a spiritual reign of God in men’s hearts. While Ladd, whom they draw on, is correct that “reign” rather than “realm” is foremost in the NT concept of kingdom, it is difficult to reduce the NT teaching about the kingdom to the spiritual realm alone. Involved is the regeneration of all things. They do get this right in their chapter about the new heavens and the new earth, in which they carefully delineate what we can and cannot say about continuity and discontinuity between the two. DeYoung and Gilbert rightly correct loose talk about building the kingdom or bringing in the kingdom and instead point out that Christians await the kingdom. Even so, there ought to be an emphasis on living consistently with the anticipated kingdom in one’s present vocations.

Two chapters cover the important topic of social justice, and a third deals with doing good works. They show both what social justice passages demand and they correct sloppy interpretations and applications of these passages. DeYoung and Gilbert helpfully show how to avoid pitfalls that equate social justice with particular political programs. They distinguish between the institutional church and the organic church and note that Christians as individuals sometimes must do certain things that the institutional church is either forbidden or permitted but not required to do.

Overall, DeYoung and Gilbert have tackled a complex subject and gotten a great deal right. What is more, they have offered a correction to common misconceptions. They could make their argument stronger in the future by reconsidering their treatment of the extent of the Creation Blessing and of the nature of the kingdom. In the end, however, they have provided a useful, readable contribution to a complex subject.

Distinct Living within a Particular Cultural Context

by

The early church saw itself in light of the concept of "resident aliens" (παροικοι). "The primary sense of paroikoi* is that of a redemptive tension between the church and its cultural context. These early Christians understood themselves to be different from others in their culture, and lived together as an alternative community nourished by an alternative story—the story of the Bible—that was impressed on catechumens in the process of catechism. The entire catechetical process had this pastoral purpose: to empower a distinctive people shaped by the story of the Bible."

*Note 10: "Paroikoi is the Greek world found in the New Testament (e.g., 1 Pet. 2:11) and often early church literature. It carries the sense of both being at home in a place and being a foreigner."

Micahel W. Goheen, A Light to the Nations(Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011), 7.