Exegesis and Theology

The Blog of Brian Collins

Articles and Notes on Holiness and Sanctification

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Peter J. Gentry, “The Meaning of ‘Holy’ in the Old Testament,” Bibliotheca Sacra 170, no. 677–680 (2013): 400–417.

Gentry challenges the traditional understanding of holiness as denoting “moral purity,” and “transcendence” or set-apartness. He first challenges the idea קדש can be defined by means of the surmised etymological link with קד, “to cut.” Gentry proposes that a usage study, done by Claude Bernard Costecalde in 1986, of both the Hebrew word and its equivalent in congate languages does not support either “moral purity” or “transcendance” as the meaning of holy. In line with Costecalde’s analysis Gentry concludes: “The basic meaning of the word is ‘consecrated’ or ‘devoted.'” Gentry surveys texts in Exodus 3, 19, and Isaiah 6 to establish this point.

In the end, I’m sympathetic to the idea that the basic meaning of קדש is “devoted,” but I didn’t see “set apart” or “moral purity” to be as decisively excluded from the range of meaning as Gentry argues. Gentry also seems to have a fairly negative view of the discipline of systematic theology in comparison to biblical studies: “Indeed, systematic theologians of the last five hundred years have not been helpful in explaining what Scripture teaches on this topic due to reliance on doubtful etymologies and connection of the term with moral purity and divine transcendence.” But more than Gentry’s exegesis, it was a theological observation from Sinclair Ferguson’s Devoted to God that convinced me that at its root holiness about being devoted. Ferguson observes that holiness, as an attribute of God, has to have a meaning that works apart from the created order. Being transcendent or set apart does not work theologically whereas devoted does.

O’Donovan, Oliver. “Sanctification and Ethics.” In Kelly M. Kapic, ed. Sanctification: Explorations in Theology and Practice. Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2014.

I find O’Donovan’s writings difficult to comprehend, as if I’m not yet acquainted with his dialect. In this essay I at points wondered about his commitment to the Reformation distinction between justification and sanctification. More positive were his helpful reflections on the relation of ethics to dogmatics and his observation that age does not confer sanctification. Each period of life has its own challenges to holiness that must be met.

Eglinton, James. “On Bavinck’s Theology of Sanctification-As-Ethics.” In Kelly M. Kapic, ed. Sanctification: Explorations in Theology and Practice. Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2014.

Eglinton argues that Bavinck was just as much an ethicist as he was a dogmatician. He was actually working on a Reformed Ethics at the same time he was writing the Reformed Dogmatics. He seemed to give up the ethics project when he moved to the Free University and the professor of ethics there was writing, and completed, a Reformed Ethics. At that point Bavinck turned to writing essays that were, in effect, applied ethics. Eglington’s article is largely helpful historical situation of Bavinck as ethicist with a brief summary of his approach and with many useful works to follow up in the footnotes.

Bavinck on Sanctification

The kingdom of God is a gift granted by God according to his good pleasure (Matt. 11:26; 16:17; 22:14; 24:22; Luke 10:20; 12:32; 2:29), yet it is also a reward, a treasure in heaven, which has to be aggressively sought and gained by labor in the service of God (Matt. 5:12, 20; 6:20; 19:21; 20:1ff.; and so forth). Believers are branches in the vine who cannot do anything apart from Christ, yet at the same time they are admonished to remain in him, in his word, in his love (John 15). They are a chosen people, and still have to be zealous to confirm their call and election (2 Pet. 1:10). By a single offering of Christ they have been sanctified and perfected (Heb. 10:10, 14). God effected in them that which is good (13:21), yet they must still persevere to the end (3:6, 14; 4:14; 6:11-12). They have put on the new self and must continually clothe themselves with the new self (Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:10). They have crucified the flesh with its desires, and must kill its members who are on the earth (Gal. 5:24; Col. 3:10). They are saints and sanctified in Christ Jesus, and must nevertheless become holy in all their conduct (1 Pet. 1:15; 2 Pet. 3:11), pursuing and perfecting their sanctification in the fear of God (2 Cor. 7:1; 1 Thess. 3:13; 4:3), for without it no one will see the Lord (Heb. 12:14).

Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 4:254.

On the one hand this union of believers with Christ is not a pantheistic mingling of the two, not a ‘substantial union,’ as it has been viewed by the mysticism of earlier and later times, nor on the other hand is it mere agreement in disposition, will, and purpose, as rationalism understood it and Ritschl again explained it. What Scripture tells us of this mystical union goes far beyond moral agreement in will and disposition. It expressly states that Christ lives and dwells in believers (John 14:23; 17:23, 26; Rom. 8:10; 2 Cor. 13:5; Gal. 2:20; Eph. 3:17), and that they exist in him (John 15:1-7; Rom. 8:1; 1 Cor. 1:30; 2 Cor. 5:17; Eph. 1:10ff.). The two are united as branch and vine (John 15), as are head and members (Rom. 12:4; 1 Cor. 12:12; Eph. 1:23; 4:15), husband and wife (1 Cor. 6:16-17; Eph. 5:32); cornerstone and building (1 Cor. 3:11, 16; 6:19l Eph. 2:21; 1 Pet. 2:4-5). This mystical union, however, is not immediate but comes into being by the Holy Spirit….The very first gift that believers receive is already communicated to them by the Spirit, how takes everything from Christ (John 16:14). It is he who regenerates them (John 3:5-6, 8; Titus 3:5); gives life to them (Rom. 8:10); incorporates them into fellowship with Christ (1 Cor. 6:15, 17, 19); brings them to faith (2:9ff.; 12:3); washes, sanctifies, and justifies them (6:11; 12:13; Titus 3:5); leads them (Rom. 8:14); pours out God’s love into their hearts (5:5); prays in them (8:26); imparts to them an array of virtues (Gal. 5:22-23; Eph. 5:9) and gifts (Rom. 12:6; 1 Cor. 12:4), especially the gift of love (1 Cor. 13); prompts them to live by a new law, the law of the Spirit (Rom. 8:2, 4; 1 Cor. 7:9; Gal. 5:6; 6:2); and renews them in intellect and will, in soul and body (Rom. 6:19; 1 Cor. 2:10; 2 Cor. 5:17; 1 Thess. 5:23). In a word, the Holy Spirit dwells in them and they live and walk in the Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:1, 4, 9-11; 1 Cor. 6:19l Gal. 4:6; and so forth)

Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 4:250-52.

Justification and sanctification, accordingly, while distinct from each other, are not for a moment separated. They are distinct: those who mix them undermine the religious life, take away the comfort of believers, and subordinate God to humanity. The distinction between the two consists in the fact that in justification the religious relationship of human beings with God is restored, and in sanctification their nature is renewed and cleansed of the impurity of sin. At bottom the distinction rests on the fact that God is both righteous and holy.

Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 4:249.

But there is something else as well: the moral law that confronts us in the Decalogue, in the Sermon on the Mount, and further throughout the Old and New Testaments is not the case of ‘precept upon precept, line upon line, here a little, there a little’ [Isa. 28:10, 13] but comprises universal norms, great principles, that leave a lot of room for individual application and summon every believer to examine what in a given situation would for them be the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God (Rom. 12:2). Since the moral law is not a code of articles we merely have to look up in order, from moment to moment, to know exactly what we must do, there is in its domain a freedom that may not be curbed by human ordinances but must—precisely to safeguard the character of the moral life—be recognized and maintained. On the one hand that freedom includes the permissible, the adiaphora, and on the other what Rome calls the ‘counsels.’ Error begins in both schools of thought when the adiaphora and the counsels are located outside or alongside of, below or above, the moral law and are therefore detached from the moral life. There is no right or reason for this either in the one or in the other case. There are cases in which what is in itself permissible becomes impermissible (Rom. 14:21, 23; 1 Cor. 8:13; 10:23); and there are also circumstances in which abstention from marriage (Matt. 19:11; 1 Cor. 7:7), giving up remuneration (1 Cor.9:14-19), the renunciation of all earthly goods (Matt. 19:21), or the like is a duty. But in ‘doing’ these good works one is not accomplishing anything that is outside the moral law or surpasses it. For there is a difference between a law that furnishes universally valid rules and a duty that is inferred from that law in a given case for everyone personally. Those who lose sight of this and assume the existence of a series of good works that really lie outside of and surpass the moral law fail to honor its unity and universality and degrade it.

Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 4:259-60.

Naselli, No Quick Fix

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Naselli, Andrew David. No Quick Fix: Where Higher Life Theology Came From, What It Is, and Why It’s Harmful. Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2017.

This book, a popularization of Andy’s first dissertation, does just what its subtitle says it does. It gives a history of higher life theology, describes what it is, and provides ten reasons for rejecting it. An appendix provides resources that make a positive contribution to understanding and applying the doctrine of sanctification.

The book is brief, the writing is clear, the theology it espoused is sound. At times Andy provides exegetical treatments of key passages (e.g., Ephesians 5:18). These were often so good that I dropped them into my notebooks on those passages. Highly recommended.

Naselli and Gons, “An Examination of Three Recent Philosophical Arguments against Hierarchy in the Immanent Trinity.”

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Naselli, Andrew David and Philip R. Gons, “An Examination of Three Recent Philosophical Arguments against Hierarchy in the Immanent Trinity.” In One God in Three Persons. Edited by Bruce A. Ware and John Starke. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2015.

Naselli and Gons defend Eternal Functional Subordination (EFS), defined as “the Son is eternally and necessarily subordinate to the Father, not in terms of his deity, but in his role in relationship to the Father” (197), against three philosophical arguments brought against it in favor of Eternal Functional Equality (EFE), defined as “the Father and Son are completely equal in all noncontingent ways: all subordination is voluntary, arbitrary, and temporary” (197).

The first EFE argument essentially says that if the Son has the property of being necessarily and eternally submissive to the Father, then the Son is not homoousios with the Father because he has a property that the Father does not have. Naselli and Gons reply that this argument only works by equivocating on the term “essential.” Furthermore, if deployed consistently, the argument would deny the eternal generation of the Son because it would deny that the Son can have the property of being necessarily and eternally generate.

The second EFE argument says that EFS entails that the Father could not have become incarnate, which denies omnipotence to the Father. Naselli and Gons reply that no proponent of EFS assert that “it is not even theoretically possible for the Father or the Spirit to be united to a human nature” (207). Rather, they distinguish between what is “possible” and what is “fitting.” Because it is fitting for the Son, and not the Father and the Spirit, to become incarnate, it is not possible given the wisdom of God and the world he created for the Father or Spirit to become incarnate (possible as used here is not connected with the issue of omnipotence).

The third EFE argument is that if passages about the Father sending the Son point to EFS of the Son to the Father, then the Son is eternally submissive to the Spirit as well because sent by him (Matt. 4:1; Mark 1:12; Luke 4:1). Naselli and Gons reply that these sendings are different. The Spirit sends the incarnate Jesus to the wilderness which is qualitatively different from the Father sending the pre-incarnate Son into the world.

Though this article does not resolve the controversy or demonstrate that EFS is true, it does clearly refute three poor EFE arguments made against EFS.

Swain and Allen on the Obedience of the Eternal Son

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Swain, Scott and Michael Allen. “The Obedience of the Eternal Son,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 15, no. 2 (April 2013): 114-34.

Swain and Allen observe that in the last century numbers of theologians have argued that obedience is part of the Son’s proper work eternally in the external works of the Trinity. This observation includes not only evangelical theologians such as Grudem and Ware but also theologians such as Barth and von Balthasar.

Worryingly for Swain and Allen, “Affirming the obedience of the only-begotten Son has in many cases entailed significant revisions to classical trinitarian metaphysics” (115). They list as examples: “historicizing of the doctrine of God,” “metaphysics of trinitarian kenosis,” “replacing eternal generation with obedience as the Son’s distinguishing personal property,” and “social trinitarianism, which affirms three centers of self-consciousness and willing within the triune God.”

Swain and Allen wish to affirm “the claim that obedience constitutes the proper form of the Son’s divine work in the economy of salvation.” They wish to avoid adjusting “traditional trinitarian metaphysics” (116).

They therefore argue that rather than working from economy back to essence, one should work from essence toward economy: “mode of acting follows mode of being.” With this approach, “the Son’s obedience to the Father in the economy of salvation” is “the economic extension of his eternal generation.” It “constitutes the proper filial mode whereby he executes the Trinity’s undivided work of salvation” (117). The wording here seems significantly precise. The obedience of the Son is something economic, not essential. The work of salvation in which the Son is obedient to the Father is “the Trinity’s undivided work” (that is, there is single will in the Triune God). But the economy works out the way it does because it is grounded in an ontology in which the Father eternally generates the Son.

In the third section of their essay, Swain and Allen seek to ground their theology exegetically in John 1 and 5. Drawing on the exegesis of Thomas Aquinas, they argue that saying the Word is the one through whom the world is created is not an assertion that the Word is the instrument through which the Father created but is instead an assertion that “the Word performs the common trinitarian work of creation in a manner consistent with his distinctive mode of being” (122). This leads to the following thesis: “As the Son’s proper mode of being God consists in the pure relation wherein he receives his being from the Father, so the Son’s proper mode of acting as God consists in the pure relation wherein he receives his actions from the Father” (123-24).

The more significant passage for this argument seems to be John 5:19-30. Swain and Allen see two claims that emerge from this passage: “The first claim is that Jesus does nothing on his own initiative, but only what he sees the Father doing. The second claim is that Jesus, in following his Father’s lead, does everything that his Father does” (124). Swain and Allen assert that the first claim implies that the Son is inferior to the Father and the second claim entails that he is equal with the Father. Not only are “these seemingly contradictory claims” made “within the same context,” but “John 5:19 insists that the former claim is the basis for the latter claim” (124). The theological conclusion drawn: “the obedience of the Son to the Father who sends him constitutes the Son’s opus proprium within the undivided opera Trinitatis ad extra” (126).

In part four of this essay Swain and Allen respond to three questions that their argument has raised. First, does the obedience of the eternal Son imply two wills in the Godhead? Second, does obedience suggest a lack of omnipotence? Third, “does not all this smack too much of a ‘substance ontology'” (131)? In answer to the first question, Swain and Allen assert that “the Son’s obedience to the Father in the work of salvation is not indicative of a second will alongside that of the Father but of the proper mode whereby Jesus shares the Father’s will as the only-begotten Son of the Father” (127). In answer to the second question they assert, “The eternal Son exists receptively as one whose self-existence (autotheos) and almightiness are granted to him by the Father” (128). They key exegetical support for these two answers is found in John 10:17-18. In answer to the third question, they appeal to John 1, which they say “distinguishes the being of the Word…(1:1-2, 18)…from the becoming that characterizes the economy of creation and redemption (1:3, 6, 10, 14, 17…)” (131).

The ultimate conclusion: “the external works of the Trinity are indivisible (opera ad extra trinitatis indivisa sunt), though they are performed by all the persons in their own person-specific, ‘proper’ ways” (133).

Ryken on the Puritans

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Ryken, Leland. Worldly Saints: The Puritans As They Really Were. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986.

The title of this volume doesn’t indicate that the Puritans were worldly in the negative biblical sense. The pairing with “saints” is the tip-off. Ryken’s point is that the Puritans lived in the created world—in the world of work, marriage, family, money, education, and social action—as saints. Thus stereotypes of the Puritans as a dour, cloistered people are incorrect.

In seeking to correct the record Ryken surveys Puritan views on the topics listed above as well as on their views of the Bible, preaching, and worship. Two concluding chapters look at faults to avoid and strengths to learn from.

The book is full of primary source material and suggestions for further reading. It would be a good place to start in learning about the Puritans. The book is not perfect. I wondered at times about its appeal to Milton as a Puritan or if there was perhaps a greater diversity of views among the Puritans in certain areas that were being elided for the sake of summary (for instance, I think the Puritan view of revolution, the Civil War, and the Restoration may have been more varied). But these quibbles aside, this is a book well worth reading.

Review of Kaplan on John Quincy Adams

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Kaplan, Fred. John Quincy Adams: American Visionary. New York: Harper, 2014.

I’ve been interested in reading a biography of John Quincy Adams since reading David McCullough’s renowned biography of John Adams. I selected this particular biography for the unscientific reason that its Kindle edition was on sale. It nonetheless was a satisfying read. Kaplan not only covers the basic political history that is intertwined with Adams’s life, but he also covers Adams’s religious views and his literary interests. For instance, it was interesting to read of a debate John Quincy carried on with his father regarding the Trinity. John Adams favored the unitarian position while his son defended the trinitarian. (This seems to reflect the move toward rationalism by the founding generation and a move back toward orthodoxy in the following generation, due to the influence of the Second Great Awakening, though it should be noted that John Quincy Adams did not entirely embrace orthodox Protestantism.) The political life of John Quincy Adams is fascinating because it spans almost the entire era from the founding to the Civil War. Adams plays an important part in many key national events from negotiating the end of the War of 1812 to opposing Jacksonian populism to opposing slavery. He is involved in these momentous events as ambassador, president, and congressman. He was also the first president to be the son of a president and the only president to later serve in the House of Representatives. His philosophy of public service was to never put himself forward but to never decline if his fellow citizens called on him to serve.

Leithart on Macbeth

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Leithart, Peter. “If It Were Done When ‘Tis Done: Macbeth.” In Brightest Heaven of Invention: A Christian Guide to Six Shakespeare Plays. Moscow, ID: Canon, 1996.

Leithart’s analysis is illuminating and enhanced my enjoyment of the play. Here’s an example:

Whether or not Macbeth will act on his ambition depends on his answer to the question, What does it mean to be a man? Two answers to this question are presented by the play, and Macbeth is forced to choose between them. When Lady Macbeth urges him to kill Duncan, he protests, ‘I dare do all that may become a man; who dares do more is none’ (1.7.46-47). On this view, one cannot be a man without placing limitations on desires and actions. Whoever tries to do more than ‘becomes a man’ becomes less than a man. Lady Macbeth, by contrast, operates on the view that you are not a man unless you act on every single desire. She asks her hesitating husband, ‘wouldst thou have that / Which thou esteem’st the ornament of life, / And live a coward in thine own esteem, / Letting ‘I dare not’ wait upon ‘I would’ (1.7.41-44), and adds, ‘When you durst do it, then you were a man’ (1.7.49). Any effort to control desire, to deny and suppress evil, or to place any limits whatever on action—all these for Lady Macbeth amount to nothing but cowardice.
. . . . . . . . .
His assault on the order of the world turns him into a beast. Having tried to lift himself above his place, he ends up falling into an abyss (see Ezekiel 28:1-10). As a consequence of his ambition to be more than human, he becomes less than human (see Daniel 4:1-37). By the end of the play, Macbeth is being seen, and even sees himself, as a subhuman creature: a baited bear, a hell-hound, a devil. He has dared do more than becomes a man, and at the last he is none. [162-63]

The one drawback is that the book is without footnotes or endnotes. Are all these observations simply Leithart’s or is he drawing on other sources?

Warfield on New England Theology

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Warfield, Benjamin Breckinridge. “Edwards and the New England Theology.” In Works of Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield. Edited by Ethelbert D. Warfield, William Park Armstrong, and Caspar Wistar Hodge. 1932; Reprinted, Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003.

Warfield proceeds along chronological lines, beginning with Edwards’s youth and proceeding to the New England theology which developed after Edwards’s death. Warfield observes that it was in Edwards’s youth and collegiate years that he gave attention to scientific and metaphysical matters. He claims that in this period, independent of Berkeley, Edwards developed a system if idealism. Warfield observes that though Edwards did not continue with these philosophical writings after this period, the philosophical conclusions he reached in this period continued to inform his thought.

When Edwards became a pastor at Northampton, his writing turned to the pastoral. He produced sermons and practical works such as “Narrative of Surprising Conversions” and Religious Affections. Once removed from Northampton to Stockbridge, Edwards produced his major theological works on original sin, the freedom of the will, the chief end of man, the nature of true virtue, and the history of redemption. Though Edwards had long collected in notebooks thoughts on these subjects, this was the period in which he was able to bring these thoughts together into coherent works.

Warfield observes that the New England Theology that followed Edwards was influenced by the Edwards of the Awakening and by his theological method. Their theology, however, developed into something quite opposed to Edwards. Warfield observes that, like Edwards, their method of theology was philosophical and the result of “independent reflection.” But, unlike Edwards, they were not as rooted in historical theology. As a result, they developed a unique theology of which Warfield says, “it is only right frankly to describe as provincial.”

In the article Warfield observed that much of Edwards’s writing remained in manuscript at Yale. Since Warfield wrote those words much of this material has been transcribed and published. As a result, Edwards scholarship has developed. Nonetheless, this article remains a helpful introduction to Edwards and the New England THeology that followed him.

Warfield on Darwin and Evolutionary Science

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Warfield, Benjamin B. “Darwin’s Arguments against Christianity and against Religion.” In Benjamin B. Warfield: Selected Shorter Writings. Volume 2. Edited by John E. Meeter. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1973.

Warfield opens this article by noting that numbers of scientific thinkers had abandoned religion. Here he examines Darwin’s autobiography to understand why. Darwin observes that he rejected Christianity when he could not harmonize Genesis with his theory of Evolution. In addition, Darwin said he could find no irrefutable proof for the veracity of the rest of Scripture. In his discussion of this last point, Warfield observes, “Nothing short of a miracle would then have convinced him, and nothing short of a miracle could have convinced him of a miracle. Surely a man in such a state of mind would be refused as a juror in any case.”

Darwin later rejected theism on the grounds that the argument of design falls to natural selection, the argument of the good order of the world falls in the face of suffering, the argument that most people in the world throughout history have been inwardly convinced of a god is unreliable (Darwin observed he once had such feelings and lost them). Darwin granted that the argument that the universe could not arise by chance had some weight with him. But then he thought, “Can the mind of a man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animals, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions.” Warfield observes, “Thus the last and strongest theistic proof fails, not because of any lack in its stringent validity to the human mind, but because so brute-bred a mind as man’s is no judge of the validity of the proof.”

Warfield concludes that Darwin’s “absorption in a single line of investigation and inference had so atrophied his mind in other directions that he had ceased to be a trustworthy judge of evidence. Whatever may be true in other cases, in this case the defection of a scientific man from religion was distinctly due to an atrophy of mental qualities by which he was unfitted for the estimation of any other kind of evidence than that derived from the scalpel and the laboratory, and no longer could feel the force of the ineradicable convictions which are as ‘much a part of man as his stomach or his heart.'”

Of course, the deep question is whether this was due merely to an atrophy that came about by working in a single direction of whether this is an example of “suppressing the truth” (Rom. 1).

Warfield, B. B. “On the Antiquity and the Unity of the Human Race,” The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield, 9:235-58.

The thesis of this article is that the age of humanity has no theological significance whereas the unity of mankind is highly significant to theology.

As to the former, Warfield argues that science and Scripture are not as much at odds as was often supposed. For one, the evolutionary scientists shortened their estimates of the age of mankind. On the other hand, Warfield argues that the genealogies prior to Abraham were not meant to provide chronological data. That that was not their purpose may be agreed on. That they don’t actually provide this data is another matter. Warfield’s assertion that they do not seemed superficial and not up to his usual work. He doesn’t satisfactorily account for the details of the text, such as the fact that Genesis 5 provides the length of time that a person lived until he fathered the next person in the genealogy.

More enduring is Warfield’s argument for the theological necessity of a unitary human race descended from Adam. The unity of the human race is still granted by evolutionists, but the descent from Adam is denied by may theistic evolutionists, leading them to revise key doctrines. Here Warfield’s insistence on the theological necessity of a unified human race descended from Adam remains relevant and necessary.

One could adapt Warfield’s thesis to the present debates and say that the age of the earth has no theological significance whereas the unity of the mankind is highly significant to theology. This sounds persuasive in the abstract, but when one asks what was happening in the long ages before the creation of Adam and Eve, the answer typically entails death, suffering, and natural evil. As I’ve noted elsewhere:

The problem of death and suffering before the Fall is far more serious than most theologians seem to realize. The conflict between evolution and Scripture is often seen as the chief apologetic challenge of the present time. But the chief philosophical challenge to Christianity is the problem of evil, and attempts to harmonize Scripture with evolutionary theory make defending Christianity against this challenge difficult if not impossible. The problem of evil has become more pointed as scientists learn more about certain animals’ sentience, capacity to experience pain, abilities to remember, and so forth. This has led many to conclude that animal suffering and death is a great evil. On this point the Bible is in agreement with modern science and philosophy. The Bible evidences concern for the wellbeing of animals (Prov. 12:10). The suffering of the non-human world is described as a condition of bondage, groaning, and pain as a result of sin (Rom. 8:20; Gen. 3:17-19). The earth awaits redemption (Rom. 8:23), and included in that redemption is the end of animal suffering and pain (Isa. 11:6-9; 65:25).

Traditionally, Christians have defended against the problem of animal suffering and death by pointing to the Bible’s teaching that it is a result of the Fall (Rom. 5:12; 8:20). In seeking to defend Christianity against those who say it is scientifically ill-informed, Christians who seek to harmonize the Bible and evolution have removed the biblical explanation of the problem of evil in the animal world.

I would therefore argue that both the age of the earth (not in the abstract, but given the theological implications that attend an old earth) and the unity of mankind are highly significant to maintaining orthodox theology.

Related Posts:

Accommodating Evolution and the Problem of Evil

Review of Article on the Problem of Evil and Animal Death

Review of Biblical Authority after Babel by Kevin Vanhoozer

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Vanhoozer, Kevin J. Biblical Authority After Babel: Retrieving the Solas in the Spirit of Mere Protestant Christianity. Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2016.

Kevin Vanhoozer’s Biblical Authority after Babel was written on the five-hundredth anniversary of the Reformation in defense of the Reformation. Vanhoozer takes seriously critiques of the Reformation made popular by Christian Smith and Brad Gregory, namely, that the Reformation led to interpretive chaos (and thus to an increasingly splintered Christianity) and secularism.

Vanhoozer rejects these claims. For instance, he observes that secularization is not a result of the Reformation. It is the result of reading the Bible in an academic, critical way rather than as Scripture. In other words, secularism is directly contrary to the Reformation approach to Scripture. Furthermore, Vanhoozer demonstrates that neo-scholastic Thomism was more amenable to secularism than the theology of the Reformation (this is a point also made by Roman Catholic Ressourcement theologians in the mid-twentieth century; see Rowland, Ratzinger’s Faith [Oxford University Press, 2008], kindle loc., 486-603).

Perhaps more plausible is the claim that Protestants cannot agree on their interpretations of Scripture, which is a problem that leads to fragmentation. However, Vanhoozer argues that “Mere Protestant Christians” actually agree on the fundamentals of the gospel story. This does not make disagreement unimportant, but it does reveal a fundamental unity that lies back of that disagreement.

Nevertheless, Vanhoozer does not leave the matter there. He engages with the issue of epistemology. He rejects an epistemology based on the church’s magisterial authority. He also rejects epistemologies based on the authority of the scholar or the autonomous individual. Instead, he argues for an epistemology based on the testimony of Scripture as self-authenticating through the work of the Spirit. As already noted, Vanhoozer by this is not advocating a raw individualism. Like the Reformers, tradition plays an important role in his theological and exegetical method. Tradition does not exercise magisterial authority, but it does serve the interpreter. The Bible alone is the final authority, but tradition gives important testimony regarding right interpretation.

So how does the preceding impact church polity and unity? Vanhoozer argues that local churches are given authority to make judgments regarding right belief and practice. They have the responsibility to rule on what Scripture teaches in these matters for the sake of “the integrity of the gospel.” (Churches typically exercise this responsibility by adopting confessions of faith and catechisms.) Vanhoozer further argues that these “local churches have an obligation to read in communion with other local churches.” (This can be seen by the way different local churches adopt the same confessions as other churches or adapt the confessions of other churches.)

Vanhoozer grants that there is a tension sometimes between unity and the purity of the gospel. As a result, he rejects ecumenism and sectarianism. He affirms denominations that hold strongly to their beliefs and that also can cooperate with denominations that differ with them.

In the end, I think that Vanhoozer successfully defends the Reformation from recent critiques. I also think his model for church unity and diversity in the present age is correct. However, based on what I know of Vanhoozer’s ecclesial situation, our judgments about implementation differ. I think this demonstrates that models can only take us so far. Spiritual wisdom is always needed to apply the model.