Exegesis and Theology

The Blog of Brian Collins

Government and the Structures of Creation

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What does it mean to say that government is a structure that God built into creation? It means, in part, that not all of God’s creation is physical. God created the physical world: land and seas, moon and stars. But God created more than just the physical world. He created non-physical realties, such as marriage (Gen. 2:18-24). When people try to live contrary to God’s design for marriage or government they societies experience negative consequences just as surely as people who tried to live as though gravity did not exist would experience consequences for trying to live contrary to the way God designed His world to work.

Proverbs speaks of this reality in terms of wisdom being built into the very creation. Proverbs 3:21 says, “The LORD founded the earth by wisdom and established the heavens by understanding” (HCSB). Proverbs 8:22-31 (HCSB) makes the same point:

The Lord made me

at the beginning of His creation,

before His works of long ago.

I was formed before ancient times,

 from the beginning, before the earth began.

I was born when there were no watery depths

and no springs filled with water.

I was delivered

before the mountains and hills were established,

before He made the land, the fields,

or the first soil on earth.

I was there when He established the heavens,

when He laid out the horizon on the surface of the ocean,

when He placed the skies above,

when the fountains of the ocean gushed out,

when He set a limit for the sea

so that the waters would not violate His command,

when He laid out the foundations of the earth.

I was a skilled craftsman beside Him.

I was His delight every day,

always rejoicing before Him.

I was rejoicing in His inhabited world,

delighting in the human race.

 

In the past this passage has often been read as if it spoke of the pre-incarnate Christ. The chief difficulty with this is that Wisdom in Proverbs 8 is created. Because קנה in 8:22 has a disputed semantic range, the versions translate the word variously: “The Lord possessed me” (KJV, NKJV, NASB, ESV); “The Lord created me” (RSV, NRSV); “The Lord made me” (HCSB); “The Lord brought me forth” (NIV). But from the use of חיל, “be brought to birth” (CHALOT), in vv. 24, 25, it seems clear that “created” is the appropriate sense here. (Passages that indicate “create” is within the semantic range of קנה include: Gen. 14:19, 22; Ex. 15:16; Deut. 32:6; Ps. 78:54; 104:24; 139:13. See also NIDOTTE, 3:941; TLOT, 3:1152-53.)

Translating “The Lord made me” (HCSB) is only problematic if Wisdom here refers to the Son or to an attribute of God. But neither is likely here. Garrett correctly notes, “Woman Wisdom of Prov 8 does not personify an attribute of God but personifies an attribute of creation. She is personification of the structure, plan, or rationality that God built into the world. She is created by God and fundamentally an attribute of God’s universe” (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, NAC, 113).

Though most translations locate this “in the beginning” (KJV) or “at the beginning” (HCSB, ESV, NASB) there is no beth prefix in Hebrew, making the NIV’s translation of v. 22 preferable: “The Lord brought me forth as the first of his works.” Garrett notes that “may imply that Wisdom herself is the ‘beginning’ of creation” (108, n. 65), the idea being that “Wisdom is claiming to be the first principle of the world and the pattern by which it was created” (Garrett, 108). Consistent with this, I would prefer the NIV’s translation of verse 23, “I was formed ages ago, at the very beginning, when the world came to be” (cf. HCSB), over the KJV’s “I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, Or ever the earth was” (cf. NASB). (This requires translating עוֹלָם “ages ago” rather than “everlasting” and translating נסך “formed” rather than “set up.” On the former, see NIDOTTE, 3:346. On the later see Longman III, Proverbs, BCOTWP, 205.)

In what follows, Wisdom affirms that she was prior to the ordering of the world and present at the ordering of the world. Wisdom concludes in v. 30 that she was an אָמוֹן beside God during the creation. The translation of אָמוֹן is highly contested, with “skilled craftsman,” “blueprint,” “child,” “foster-father,” binding,” and “faithful” all being suggested (see R B Y. Scott, “Wisdom in Creation: The ’Amôn of Proverbs 8:30.” Vetus Testamentum 10, no. 2 [April 1, 1960]: 213-223). If there is a favored translation by commentators and Bible translations, it is probably along the lines of “skilled craftsman.” If this translation is accepted, however, it should be made clear that in this passage Wisdom is not doing the creating. God is clearly the Creator throughout this passage, and Wisdom is standing beside God. Since Wisdom is beside the God who creates and is not the creator, Van Leeuwen suggests that Wisdom is “personified as the king’s architect-advisor, through whom the king puts all things in their proper order and whose decrees of cosmic justice are the standard for human kings and rulers (v. 15)” (“Proverbs,” NIB, 5:94). Or, as Bryan Smith has noted, a master craftsman could be the personification of a blueprint (personal conversation, 17 May 2011). Gordon Fee also sees the personification in terms of a blueprint: “Prov 8:22-26 asserts in a variety of ways that Wisdom was the first of God’s creation, emphasizing her priority in time, so that her being present with God when he alone created the universe would thus reflect—as it actually does—God’s wise blueprint” (Fee, Pauline Christology, 611). However the personification is understood, Garret once again captures the significance of the passage: “If Wisdom is here an artisan, the message again is that the principles of wisdom are woven into the fabric of the created order.”

I would argue that some of these principles of wisdom woven into the fabric of the created order are principles relating to the institution of government. Indeed, I would argue that the institution of government itself is woven into the fabric of creation. This, I think, is the teaching of 1 Peter 2:13.

Government in Creation, Fall, and Rememption

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In Federalist no. 51 James Madison wrote, “But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature. If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” Madison is right, in part, to note that in a fallen world government must reckon with the reality of fallen human natures. Madison goes on to say, “In forming a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

But is Madison correct to say that “no government would be necessary” if humans were not fallen? I would argue that the biblical answer to that question is, “no.” In Revelation, the eternal state still has government. In the New Jerusalem there remains a throne of God and the Lamb (Rev. 22:3). Kingship continues into eternity, and the reign of the Messiah is not simply the reign of God but is also the reign of man. When Jesus was born he was declared to be both the heir of the Davidic throne and to receive an eternal kingdom (Luke 1:32-33). When Isaiah declared, “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder,” he is speaking of a real government. This is why the prophets look forward to the Messiah’s rule to bring about justice in the earth.

The kingdom the Messiah rules over for eternity is not ruled over by he alone. Under him others rule. Revelation 22:5 says of the saints, “and they will reign forever.” There is also a structure to this rule. Revelation 21:24 speak of the kings of the earth bringing their glory in to the New Jerusalem. Jesus said to the apostles, “In the new world, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matt. 19:28). Government persists for all eternity.

There is good reason for this. Government was part of God’s created order from the beginning. In Genesis 1:26-28 God promised mankind dominion over the world. The promises of a Messianic king are rooted in God’s purpose to restore the dominion of all mankind that was corrupted by the Fall. Government is not a necessary evil. It is a structure that God built into his creation from the beginning.

What is Worship

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True worship  involves reverential human acts of submission and homage before the divine Sovereign in response to his gracious revelation of himself and in accord with his will.

Daniel I. Block, For the Glory of God: Recovering a Biblical Theology of Worship (Baker, 2014), 23.

Gathered worship is offering up to God the united, spiritual responses of which he alone is worthy.

Mark Minnick, 7 September 2014

Top Ten Books Read in 2015

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Block, Daniel I. For the Glory of God: Recovering a Biblical Theology of Worship. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2014.

This is a warm, biblically grounded study of worship that does an excellent job of moving from exegesis and biblical theology to contemporary application. I read the work slowly on Lord’s days, and I found it to be an excellent companion on those days.

Caro. Robert The Years of Lyndon Johnson. 4 volumes. Knopf, 1982, 1991, 2002, 2012.

These books, massive as they are (and still awaiting the concluding volume) were hard to put down. Caro is a superb writer, and I feel better informed after reading them not only about LBJ but also about life in Texas leading up to his time, the workings of the Senate, and much more. It may seem overkill to take a hundred pages to the present the biography LBJ’s rival in the election to the Senate or to tell the story of his mentor once he arrived. But these seeming diversions are often some of the best parts of these books.

Bull, Josiah, ed. Letters of John Newton. 1869; Reprinted, Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth 2007.

I’ve long preferred reading biographies to reading diaries or letters. Biographies have a narrative thread that letters and diaries lack. However, reading John Newton’s letters are different. Newton was a master letter writer, and his letters are full of wise pastoral counsel. These are letters worth reading slowly and meditating on.

Though I’ve not yet finished it, Tony Reinke’s book, Newton on the Christian Life, is one of the best books I began to read in 2015. Reinke has distilled Newton’s wisdom as found throughout his letters and organized it into a work that will challenge you in your walk with God and inspire you to read more Newton.

Edwards, Jonathan. “Dissertation II: The Nature of True Virtue.” In Ethical Writings. Edited by Paul Ramsey. Works of Jonathan Edwards. Volume 8. Edited by John E Smith. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989.

This, as might be expected, was one of the more difficult works that I read this year. I found Edwards’s arguments that there is no true virtue without love toward God compelling. I was not convinced by his argument that greater amounts of love are due to those with greater degrees of being (God, as Being in general, being the most deserving of love). This argument, it seems, could be run in an pantheistic direction. In addition, Scripture does not seem to tie our moral obligation to being. These disagreements aside, this is an enjoyable and beneficial work to think your way through.

Myers, Ken. All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes. Wheaton: Crossway, 2012.

This is one of the most incisive books about culture that I’ve read. Myers asks his readers to move beyond the question of what is permissible to the question of what is good and wise. Watching television is permissible. Watching several shows every night, night after night is neither good nor wise. This is true even apart from the content of the shows. While content is not unimportant, Myers is concerned to sensitize Christians to the sensibilities of pop culture, which tend to be sensibilities at odds with those of Christianity: novelty over tradition, immediacy as opposed to patience, diversion rather than meditation, celebrity rather than community, youth rather than respect for the wisdom of the aged, “authenticity” as opposed to controlling passions and developing virtue. I found myself challenged to think carefully about my cultural activities and the sensibilities they cultivate.

Köstenberger, Andreas J. A Theology of John’s Gospel and Letters. Biblical Theology of the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009.

This is a great introduction to John’s Gospel and Letters. Readers encounter introductory matters, such as authorship, learn about the literary structure of these books, and have their themes unpacked in a winsome combination of depth and brevity.

Principe, Lawrence M. The Scientific Revolution: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Oxford’s “Very Short Introduction” series is generally excellent. The authors are experts in their fields, and most do an admirable job of truly introducing readers to a diverse array of subjects. Principe’s work is one of the best I’ve read in the series so far. Principe not only explains the factors contributing to the Scientific Revolution, but he also treats the people who came before it with respect. He demonstrates that the thinkers prior to the Scientific Revolution were not unintelligent, nor were their theories irrational. They made good sense of the world in the intellectual framework of the time. What is more, their view of the world may still have something to teach those of us who live on the other side of the scientific revolution.

Oliphint, K. Scott. God With Us: Divine Condescension and the Attributes of God. Crossway, 2011.

I really appreciate the way that Oliphint wrestled with thick theological issues in this book while firmly rejecting attempts to trim Bible statements to better fit theological conclusions. Yet he does not reject the legitimacy of theological reasoning but instead works toward a legitimate theological solution. This work strikes me as a model for careful, biblically-rooted systematic theology.

Witmer, Timothy Z. The Shepherd Leader: Achieving Effective Shepherding in Your Church.  Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2010.

If Oliphint shows what biblically-rooted systematic theology looks like, then Witmer shows what biblically and theologically-rooted practical theology looks like. Anyone who serves as a pastor or elder would benefit from this book.

Stanglin, Keith D. and Thomas H. McCall. Jacob Arminius: Theologian of Grace. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.

This is probably the best book on Arminius’s life and thought in print. I believe I have a better understanding of what Arminius did and did not think as a result of reading this work. The authors do an excellent job of explaining his theology in a readable and sympathetic manner without sacrificing scholarly accuracy.

On the Need for a Christian View of Government and Politics

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For many Christians, faith is fundamentally private and consists of their attending church, praying and being honest in their dealings with others. If Christianity touches on politics, it does so only obliquely by making the individual politician more virtuous as a person. This is not to be taken lightly, of course, and we can be grateful if more of our political leaders are upright people. But it does not address politics as politics, and it has no real implications for public policy. We shall at this point leave this approach behind, since I am persuaded that it represents a defective understanding of the faith and its all-encompassing claims.

Koyzis, Political Visions & Illusions: A Survey & Christian Critique of Contemporary Ideologies, Kindle loc 2307.

Christians and Identity Politics

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The Public Discourse has a worthwhile article explaining the similarities between Donald Trump’s campaign and identity politics on the left:

Trump is a champion of identity politics, which in case we should forget, was invented by the left. He advances without apology or qualification the interests and values of his supporters. As a group, they possess the identity of people put-upon by their opponents. It may not be correct to say they are all one ethnic group, although many are indeed white; but it is true that Trump’s “tribe,” regardless of its demography, identifies with him as one of their own because of his unique political style. Like members of the politically correct left, Trump and his supporters see themselves as immune from criticism not because of the strength of their arguments, but because of the distinctive characteristics of “who they are.” They are defined by their grievances. Although their identity politics exists on the opposite end of the political spectrum from the left, they do make a claim to victimhood, the same as “black lives matter” activists do to assert their immunity from criticism.

There’s a warning for Christians in the Trump campaign. For many 2015 felt like the year the United States shifted from being a nation in which a Christian heritage garnered some respect to one in which holding to orthodox Christian ethics is bigoted beyond argument.

In this context Christians may also be tempted to view themselves as victims. They may be tempted to play identity politics to “get our country back.” This is a dangerous path to travel because it puts Christians in a frame  of mind contrary to that Jesus expects of his followers in such situations.

Jesus said (Matt. 5:11-12):

Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

It is hard to play identity politics as the victim and truly rejoice in being slandered for Jesus’s sake. Jesus’s own example forbids this course of action (1 Pet. 2:21-23):

For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.

The way the Christian respond to reviling needs to demonstrate that his real trust is in God, who will render justice in the end, and not in our own verbal or political skills.

None of this means that Christians ought to be politically unengaged or that they fail to make use of the liberties they have under the law. The apostle Paul in Acts appealed to his Roman citizenship when needed. It does mean, however, that Christians engage in politics in a distinctively Christian manner, a manner informed by the two great commandments.

Christians press for laws that conform to God’s law not to take their country back, as if it is theirs and not their non-Christian neighbor’s, but because they love God and that neighbor. First, Christians love God, and they should desire for his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. Second, Christians should love their neighbors, and they know that laws which violate God’s laws will ultimately harm their neighbors.

If Christians engage in the public square with love rather than with the bitterness of a victim claiming rights they will truly stand out as distinct on the American political landscape. And whether they achieve their political goals or not, they will bring glory to God for being like Christ.

On the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Birth

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1. The action of the Holy Spirit points to the sovereign newness of the work that God is accomplishing.

2. The Spirit used Mary’s existing humanity so that Christ has our human nature.

3. The revelation of the virgin conception by the Spirit forbids any adoptionist Christology.

4. The work of the Spirit preserves both the reality of his union with us in genuine human nature and his freedom from the guilt and curse of Adam’s fall (Rom. 5:12-21) because his person is not of Adamic stock.

5. It underlines the principle that the work of the redemption engages every Person of the Trinity.

Sinclair Ferguson, The Holy Spiritt, 41-43.

 

n.b. I jotted these down originally as class reading notes, so the wording may be any variation of quotation, paraphrase, and/or summary.

The Incarnation as Revelation of God

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This is truly the grand mystery of godliness: ‘God manifest in the flesh’ (1 Tim. 3:16), ‘For in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily’ (Col. 2:9), so that He is both God and man in the same person.

Perhaps this mode of exhibiting the divine attributes in humanity may be of unspeakable importance to all intelligent creatures in heaven. It may have given them an opportunity of knowing much more of God than they ever knew before, or could know in any other way. The doctrine of redemption is not only useful to the redeemed, but to all the hierarchy of heaven. No creature can know anything of the nature of God but what He is pleased to reveal; and the method by which He makes Himself known is by His works and dispensations.

Archibald Alexander, Brief Compendium, 55-56 cited in Garretson, ed., A Scribe Well-Trained: Archibald Alexander and the Life of Piety, 69.

Why Our Savior Must be Both God and Man

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Another principal part of our reconciliation with God was, that man, who had lost himself by his disobedience, should, by way of remedy, oppose to it obedience, satisfy the justice of God, and pay the penalty of sin. Therefore, our Lord came forth very man, adopted the person of Adam, and assumed his name, that he might in his stead obey the Father; that he might present our flesh as the price of satisfaction to the just judgment of God, and in the same flesh pay the penalty which we had incurred. Finally, since as God only he could not suffer, and as man only could not overcome death, he united the human nature with the divine, that he might subject the weakness of the one to death as an expiation of sin, and by the power of the other, maintaining a struggle with death, might gain us the victory.

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.12.3.

Why Our Mediator Must Be God and Man – Part 2

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He declined not to take what was peculiar to us, that he might in his turn extend to us what was peculiarly his own, and thus might be in common with us both Son of God and Son of man. Hence that holy brotherhood which he commends with his own lips, when he says, “I ascend to my Father, and your Father, to my God, and your God,” (John 20:17). In this way, we have a sure inheritance in the heavenly kingdom, because the only Son of God, to whom it entirely belonged, has adopted us as his brethren; and if brethren, then partners with him in the inheritance (Rom. 8:17). Moreover, it was especially necessary for this cause also that he who was to be our Redeemer should be truly God and man. It was his to swallow up death: who but Life could do so? It was his to conquer sin: who could do so save Righteousness itself? It was his to put to flight the powers of the air and the world: who could do so but the mighty power superior to both? But who possesses life and righteousness, and the dominion and government of heaven, but God alone? Therefore, God, in his infinite mercy, having determined to redeem us, became himself our Redeemer in the person of his only begotten Son.

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.12.2.