Andy Naselli recently posted a review of John Frame’s The Doctrine of the Christian Life by Douglas Moo. If Moo or Frame write a book, I tend to purchase it and attempt to read it. I found it interesting, therefore to read a review by the one of a book by the other. I also found surprising , given the influence of both of these authors on my own thinking, the amount of disagreement highlighted by Moo.

My thoughts on their disagreements are as follows:

I find myself more in agreement with Frame than with Moo in the section on Sola Scriptura. Having read a fair bit on natural law in the past few months I’m convinced that Van Til and Frame have a very high view of natural law that comports well with Paul’s use of it in Romans while at the same time recognizing the limitations and difficulties of natural law argumentation. Frame in DCL demonstrates quite easily that certain natural law arguments divorced from Scripture are fairly unconvincing (the Roman Catholic arguments against contraception are the example that come most readily to mind). Moo wonders if the Van Tillian/Framian approach will cripple efforts in the public square. Frame does address that point: he notes that when speaking in the public square, one need not cite Scripture to make one’s arguments; his point was simply that a Christian should be dubious about natural law arguments for ethical positions if those positions lack support in Scripture. Also in response to Moo one could note that natural law arguments are often not given any more respect in the public square than Scripture arguments. [For two recent articles that address these issues, see Paul D. Miller, “Christ and Culture: Engaging the World,” The City (Summer 2011): 39-57; Dan Strange, “Not Ashamed! The Sufficiency of Scripture for Public Theology,” Themelios 36, no. 2 (Aug 2011): 238-60.]

Regarding adiaphora, I find myself in sympathy with Frame’s general direction. Moo’s caveat is significant, but I think Christians would be better served by approaching their lives in general as if large categories of adiaphora did not exist. In other words, Moo may be more technically correct, but the general attitude that Frame’s approach fosters may be more fruitful.

Regarding William Webb, I am in firm agreement with Frame. I find it surprising, and even disturbing, that so many top evangelical NT scholars praise Webb’s problematic approach. Frame is correct that "Webb’s approach violates the authority of Scripture . . . , since it allows us to do what Scripture forbids, and denies the sufficiency of Scripture . . . , since it requires us to find ultimate principles of ethics outside of Scripture—principles of authority equal to or greater than those of Scripture" (641). One could add that Webb’s view also profoundly misunderstands why the transitions that do take place from Old Covenant to New Covenant did take place. These systematic theology issues must be reckoned with before Webb’s hermeneutical proposals can be seriously entertained. Moo raises his own set of questions to Frame: "Why, since the biblical writers explicitly speak to Christian slave owners about their responsibilities, do they not simply forbid Christians to own slaves? Were the biblical writers suddenly overcome with a case of “cultural cowardice,” reluctant to tackle a moral evil because it was so deeply rooted in their culture? Or were the biblical writers themselves not fully aware of the implications of the principles they themselves enunciated?" It seems that these questions are more easily answered than the theological questions raised about Webb’s approach. Second, Frame does offer some brief answers to Moo’s questions. In his discussion of Greco-Roman slavery (658-60) Frame notes that it was not cultural cowardice but lack of cultural power that caused Christians not to tackle the problem of slavery in the first century. Frame also implies that it may be that early Christians were not fully aware of the implications of their principles. Related to this, it must be granted that the horrors of slavery may be more thoroughly impressed on the modern mind than on the ancient mind. There is also the ethical issue of how to deal with systemic injustice. Are there times when one tries to mitigate the evil rather than seek (fruitlessly) to eliminate it immediately. What would the effects be of all Christians freeing their slaves immediately? Would they have been better than all Christians beginning to treat their slaves as image bearers of God? In other words, the slavery question raises complicated issues, but other answers than Webb’s theologically problematic hermeneutic are available.

On issues of Frame’s use of the law and the Decalogue, I find myself divided. I am in greater agreement with Moo’s framework for how the law relates to the new covenant believer than with Frame’s. In other words, I agree with Moo that the Mosaic law is not binding on the new covenant believer. He is not under that covenant. And yet within that framework, I think that Frame’s insistence on the continuing relevance of the OT law is important. It seems to me that the NT authors do make a great deal of use of the OT law in orienting Christians to their responsibilities. It seems that an understanding of both the OT law and the redemptive-historical transformations are necessary for Christians to develop the mind of Christ in all sorts of areas not directly addressed in Scripture.

I am similarly sympathetic with Moo’s criticism of Frame’s attempt to root all ethical commands in the Decalogue. However, the fact that some OT scholars think that other parts of the law, especially Deuteronomy, follow the outline of the Decalogue in broad strokes prevents me from entirely dismissing the approach of Frame and the tradition in which he stands. In regards to the appropriateness of the Decalogue as a framework for NT ethics, the Decalogue overall focuses broadly on commands that remain valid across the convents. In this way it seems similar to the two greatest commandments. Thus while largely agreeing with Moo’s approach to law issues, I’m willing to value and benefit from Reformed authors who use the Decalogue as a framework for NT ethics.

Finally, Moo criticizes Frame for his focus on the normative perspective. On the one hand, there is little that I would want to see cut from Frame’s 1,000+ page book. If anything some of his discussions could be expanded; some sections would make worthy books in their own right. Nonetheless, even Frame would have to admit the deficiency of examining ethics primarily from one of his three perspectives. A volume by Frame or in sympathy with his approach that examined ethics from the existential and situational perspectives would therefore be most welcome.

Poythress, in ch. 10 of the The Shadow of Christ in the Law of Moses, looks at Deuteronomy 13:1-18 and the conquest of Canaan in Joshua as primarily types for the Christian’s inner struggle against Satan and the spread of the gospel throughout the world. I think this overly spiritualizes the matter. I prefer to go where Poythress goes at the end of the chapter: to the Second Coming as the final fulfillment of what is anticipated in Deuteronomy and Joshua.

Thus, in Joshua, God is setting apart a pure land where his kingdom and people may exist as a beacon to the nations, to draw them to come and worship him. Therefore the land and the people had to be purified of false worship. The physical, land aspect of this is not unimportant; it ought not be presented as a type to spirituality in the NT/NC era. The real culmination of what happens in Joshua is the Second Coming of Christ. The tribulation and return of Christ to earth is a purification and conquest of the land (in this case, the whole earth) for the setting up of Christ’s kingdom on earth.

The reason the church does not carry out the death penalty for false worship or conduct holy wars against pagan nations is that it is not a national entity like Israel, and its purpose is not to establish a physical earthly kingdom. Rather, in God’s grace, a gap has appeared between the inauguration of Christ’s kingdom and its consummation in which all nations are invited and commanded to repent and enter the kingdom before the judgment arrives. Its role in God’s kingdom plan therefore differs from Israel’s and these Mosaic stipulations do not directly apply. They do apply as a warning against the greater wrath that is to come.

Christian liberty seems to me to consist of three parts. First, the consciences of believers, while seeking the assurance of their justification before God, must rise above the law, and think no more of obtaining justification by it. For while the law, as has already been demonstrated (supra, chap. 17, sec. 1), leaves not one man righteous, we are either excluded from all hope of justification, or we must be loosed from the law, and so loosed as that no account at all shall be taken of works. For he who imagines that in order to obtain justification he must bring any degree of works whatever, cannot fix any mode or limit, but makes himself debtor to the whole law. Therefore, laying aside all mention of the law, and all idea of works, we must in the matter of justification have recourse to the mercy of God only; turning away our regard from ourselves, we must look only to Christ. For the question is, not how we may be righteous, but how, though unworthy and unrighteous, we may be regarded as righteous. If consciences would obtain any assurance of this, they must give no place to the law. Still it cannot be rightly inferred from this that believers have no need of the law. It ceases not to teach, exhort, and urge them to good, although it is not recognized by their consciences before the judgment-seat of God. The two things are very different, and should be well and carefully distinguished. The whole lives of Christians ought to be a kind of aspiration after piety, seeing they are called unto holiness (Eph. 1:4; 1 Thess. 4:5). The office of the law is to excite them to the study of purity and holiness, by reminding them of their duty. For when the conscience feels anxious as to how it may have the favor of God, as to the answer it could give, and the confidence it would feel, if brought to his judgment-seat, in such a case the requirements of the law are not to be brought forward, but Christ, who surpasses all the perfection of the law, is alone to be held forth for righteousness.

Calvin, Institutes (trans. Beveridge), 3.19.2.

They [the authors of the textbook Lewis is critiquing] see the world around them swayed by emotional propaganda—they have learned from tradition that youth is sentimental—and they conclude that the best thing they can do is to fortify the minds of young people against emotion. My own experience as a teacher tells an opposite tale. For every one pupil who needs to be guarded from a weak excess of sensibility there are three who need to be awakened from the slumber of cold vulgarity. The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts. The right defense against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments. By starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes. For famished nature will be avenged and a hard heart is no infallible protection against a soft head.

C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: HarperCollins, 1947), 13-14.

The Davidic covenant "also reestablishes the universal horizon of [Israel’s] calling: a king in David’s line becomes the object of future hope. God makes a covenant with David, promising that one day one of David’s descendants will rule over a universal and everlasting kingdom (2 Sam. 7:11-17). This is more than a promise of political success: it anticipates the goal of God’s redemptive work through Israel—the incorporation of the nations into God’s covenant people. Thus the psalmists celebrate the promise of God’s universal rule through Israel’s king (e.g., Pss. 2:7-9; 72:11-17)." Note, esp., the echo of the Abrahamic covenant in Ps. 72:17. See also the prophets: Isa. 11; 55:3-5; Jer. 33:14-22.

Goheen, A Light to the Nations (Baker, 2011), 55-56.

"There is a general failure in antiquity to make a clear distinction between allegorical expression and allegorical interpretation. What we call ‘allegorical interpretation’ in this context normally takes the form of a claim that an author has expressed himself ‘allegorically’ in a given passage. . . . There is never any suggestion that the goal of the commentator is anything but the elucidation of the intention or meaning (διάνοια) of the author. Neither does the interpreter normally feel compelled to justify his claim that the text under consideration ‘says other things than the obvious. His goal is to find the hidden meanings, the correspondence that carry the thrust of the text beyond the explicit. Once he has asserted their existence, he rarely feels the need to provide a theoretical substructure for his claims. If such a substructure is implied, it is often no more than the idea that a prestigious author is incapable of an incoherent or otherwise unacceptable statement, and that an offensive surface is thus a hint that a secondary meaning lurks behind."

Lamberton, Homer the Theologian: Neoplatonist Allegorical Reading and the Growth of the Epic Tradition, 20.

“This is the prime way of honouring God. We do not so glorify God by elevated admirations, or eloquent expressions, or pompous services for him, as when we aspire to a conversing with him with unstained spirits, and live to him in living like him.”
Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God, 453 cited in Beeke, Puritan Reformed Spirituality, 404.

I do not think for a moment that the church should aspire to become irrelevant. There is always a need for Christians to speak the gospel into their own context. Rather, my concern is with the ever present danger of over-contextualizing. Consider what happens to a church that is always trying to appeal to an increasingly post-Christian culture. Almost inevitably, the church itself becomes post- Christian. This is what happened to the liberal church during the twentieth century, and it is what is happening to the evangelical church right now. As James Montgomery Boice has argued, evangelicals are accepting the world’s wisdom, embracing the world’s theology, adopting the world’s agenda, and employing the world’s methods. In theology a revision of evangelical doctrine is now underway that seeks to bring Christianity more in line with postmodern thought. The obvious difficulty is that in a post-Christian culture, a church that tries too hard to be relevant may in the process lose its very identity as the church. Rather than confronting the world the church gets co-opted by. It no longer stands a city on a hill, but sinks to the level of the surrounding culture."

Philip Graham Ryken, City on a Hill: Reclaiming the Biblical Pattern for the Church in the 21st Century (Moody Press, 2003), 22.

Students of New Testament theology have the benefit of multiple New Testament Theologies written from many perspectives and utilizing many methodologies. Two recent New Testament theologies (Thielman and Marshall) proceed by examining the themes of individual New Testament books.

To my knowledge, there has been no comparable Old Testament theology. Walter Kaiser’s Toward and Old Testament Theology and his more recent The Promise-Plan of God move through the individual books of the Bible, but they do not examine them thematically. The Dallas Seminary compendium, A Biblical Theology of the Old Testament approximates this approach, but it deals with larger corpora: the Pentateuch, the Minor Prophets, etc. Paul Houses’s Old Testament Theology does move through the Old Testament book by book, but he does not examine these books thematically. Bruce Waltke’s acclaimed An Old Testament Theology, has a helpful introductory section, but it is heavy on Genesis and extremely light by the time it reaches the prophets.

Bell’s The Theological Messages of the Old Testament Books provides a thematic study of each of the books of the Old Testament. (The exceptions to this book-by-book approach are Judges and Ruth and the three minor prophets Obadiah, Joel, and Zephaniah. Intriguingly, Bell suggests that Judges-Ruth may have once been one book. Obadiah, Joel and Zephaniah are treated together because they share the common theme “Day of the Lord.”) In general, Bell discusses the structure of the book, he follows this with a thematic analysis, and he concludes with suggestions for pastoral application. He does not hold himself to following the pattern in every case (see explanation on p. 14).

Preceding the individual book theologies, Bell provides the reader with a brief orientation to biblical theology and to the method he employs in this volume. Regarding the nature of biblical theology, he contrasts Vos’s popular view that biblical theology and systematic theology are distinguished only by method with the view that the two disciplines differ in nature. Bell thinks a better approach limits biblical theology to studying what God revealed in Scripture (by which, I understand him to mean the primary messages that God intended each book to convey). Systematic theology, on the other hand, extends to investigating what is true about God using Scripture statements, implications from those statements, natural theology, and historical theology (4-5).

The introduction also reveals the two great advantages that Bell sees in biblical theology. First, biblical theology provides a way for the Christian to find relevance in the Old Testament without resorting to allegory or mere moralizing (1). Bell’s concern for enabling Christians to see the significance of the Old Testament is emphasized by the application sections that conclude each chapter and by two appendices which provide example sermons based on the methodology exhibited in this work. Second, while granting the “legitimacy of systematic theology” (5, n. 15), Bell believes Biblical Theology enables the Christian to see what God explicitly says. In his words, “It is very important for Bible students and pastors to be able to distinguish between what the Bible says and what the theologians have concluded, even when these conclusions may correctly reflect God’s truth” (5-6).

Bell notes that book theologies of the sort he proposes could easily match the dimensions of standard commentaries on those books. His work is therefore a starting point for deeper investigations.

The BJU Campus Store has the book available in the store and at their website. According to the website, books purchased before October 7th will received a signed copy. There is also a live book signing at the Campus Store on October 7 from 11:30 to 1:30.

Disclosure: I am an employee of BJU Press and I received a review copy from the BJU Campus Store.

Mark Ward has an excellent post summarizing an excellent message by our pastor last night.