Evangelicals & the Bible

Evangelicals & the Bible

Learning to Read Scripture Like the Church Fathers | by Craig Carter

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Everything in Nature Speaks of God: Understanding Sola Scriptura Aright | by Jordan Steffaniak

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Restoring Eve | by Kendra Dahl

VO L . 31 , NO. 3

May/June 2022 M O D E R N R E FO R M AT I O N

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Contents

I. RETRIEVE

10 ESSAY

| Learning to Read Scripture Like the

Church Fathers | by Craig Carter

Modern Reformation May/June 2022 Vol. 31, No. 3

21 GLOBAL THEOLOGICAL FOR UM

| Between Scylla

and Charybdis: Mapping Theological Education in “New-Normal” Indonesia | by Amos Winarto Oei 26 R EFOR MATION R ESOURC ES

| Does the Augsburg

Confession Teach Anything Outside of Scripture? Defensio Augustanae Confessionis | by Friedrich Balduin; translated by Todd Rester 30 R EFOR MATION OUT TAKES

| Protestantism:

A Maritime History | by Zachary Purvis 32 POEM

| Sestina of the Burning Bush (Moses)

| by Michael Lewis II. CONVERSE

36 ESSAY

| Everything in Nature Speaks of God:

Understanding Sola Scriptura Aright | by Jordan Steffaniak 46 INTERV IEW

| Evangelical Biblicism over the Years

| Blake Adams with Timothy Larsen 51 POEM

| A Baby’s Blessing | by Mackenzie K. Sigmon

54 ESSAY

| Restoring Eve | by Kendra Dahl

III. P E R S UA D E

I V. ENGAGE

68 BOOK R EV IEWS

Augustine and Tradition: Influences, Contexts, Legacies | edited by David G. Hunter and 05 F RO M THE E D ITOR

| by Joshua Schendel 06 L E T TE RS

Jonathan P. Yates | The Abuse of Conscience: A Century of Catholic Moral Theology | by Matthew Levering | The Trinity and the Bible: On Theological Interpretation | by Scott R. Swain 75 POEM

| For Sale by Owner | by Maryann Corbet

76 B AC K PAGE

| Bible | by Michael Horton

Endsheet illustration by Raxenne Maniquiz

Editor-in-Chief Michael S. Horton | Editorial Director Eric Landry | Executive Editor Joshua Schendel | Managing Editor Patricia Anders | Poetry Editor Larry Woiwode | Production Assistant Anna Heitmann | Copy Editor Kate Walker | Proofreader Ann Smith | Creative Direction and Design Metaleap Creative

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Modern Reformation is a publication of Sola Media

FINDING COURAGE IN A CULTURE OF FEAR

With 24-hour news cycles and constant screens, our fear is being used to breed hatred and divide us from one another. In Recovering Our Sanity, author Michael Horton mines the riches of Scripture and theology for the solution.

“Horton shows you how to identify and fight against fear—supplanting the quivering of a limbic system with the adoration of a heart set free.”—RUSSELL MOORE Recovering Our Sanity provides a biblical and historical foundation for developing (and perhaps changing) our thinking about the most polarizing issues of our day.”—NANCY GUTHRIE

RecoveringOurSanity.com

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Christianity has been “a religion of the book.” Writing in the latter part of the second century, Irenaeus claimed:

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From the Editor

M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N

ROM EARLY ON,

We have learned from none others the plan of our salvation, than from those through whom the Gospel has come down to us, which they did at one time proclaim in public, and, at a later period, by the will of God, handed down to us in the Scriptures, to be the ground and pillar of our faith. (Against Heresies, III.I) For, as Augustine would write a couple of centuries later, Among the things that are plainly laid down in Scripture are to be found all matters that concern faith and our manner of life, namely, hope and love. (On Christian Teaching, II.ix.14) Of course, Christianity has always been a religion of “the book” because it is foundationally a religion of the Word: that is, the Word made manifest in the flesh, the Word spoken of by the prophets, and the Word proclaimed by the apostles. Christianity is a religion of “the book” insofar as its book is the testimony of the prophets and apostles to that final Word of God to us: his Son, Jesus Christ. Christianity is a religion of the book, and this is as it should be.

Being a religion of the Bible, however, has brought attendant difficulties in the history of evangelical Christianity. Maintaining the perfection and authority of the Scriptures—as the church has done from its beginning—has meant that the church has often had to deal with human attempts to consign that authority to themselves, stamping their own thoughts,

opinions, lifestyles, and so on, with supposedly biblical warrant. Maintaining the perspicuity of Scripture—as the church has done from its beginning—has in every generation run up against issues of personal and private interpretation. Who indeed has the final say on what the Scriptures teach? Clergy? Scholars? Councils?

Laypersons?

Throughout the history of evangelicalism, these difficulties have variously played themselves out time and again. This is not to name a fault but to describe a fact. Difficulties do not always mean problems but rather challenges that summon us to careful attention—which is exactly what we are doing in this issue of Modern Reformation.

First, in our Retrieve section, Craig Carter asks what we can learn from the church fathers about reading the Bible. Then in our Converse section, Jordan Steffaniak addresses concerns with an approach to the Bible often called “biblicism.” Next, we hear from Timothy Larsen on his recently edited volume on the history of evan­gelicals and the Bible, Every Leaf, Line, and Letter. Finally, in our Persuade section, Kendra Dahl looks at translations of Genesis 3:16 as a case study for addressing issues related to evangelical women and the Bible.

“Forever, O Lord, your word is firmly fixed in the heavens,” the psalmist declares in Psalm 119:89, and then he prays, “Give me understanding according to your word.” So, too, we at MR pray for understanding as we take up these various topics in this issue. We are and must remain creatures of the Word. We are also sinful creatures who must be sanctified by the Word. As you read this issue, pray with us toward that end.

Joshua Schendel Executive Editor

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Re: “What Has Become of American Fundamentalism?”

January/February 2022

a point in George Marsden’s interesting and even enlightening article. When discussing the ways in which evangelicalism has incorporated political beliefs over the years, he points to the recent disagreements concerning mask mandates, stating: “It is hard to think of any principle in biblical ethics that would justify opposing reg­ulations that would help protect one’s neighbors. . . . So white evangelicals, de­spite their gospel teachings rather than because of them, have been one of the groups most likely to oppose community measures” (27– 28). Conservative evangelicals have certainly been inclined to go against the government health measures with regard to COVID-19. Yet the issues he addresses are far bigger. It is a misrepresentation to say that those white evangelicals who choose to oppose such measures are doing so in spite of their gospel teachings. On the contrary, many who oppose those things can and will gladly give scriptural defense for their choices. In just one paragraph, by neglecting to use a more supported version of his point, Marsden weakened the credibility of the essay. Acknowledging the nuances of the issue, or even using a different example altogether, might have been a better and more intel—Claire Owen lectually honest option.

I WOULD LIKE TO TAKE ISSUE WITH

Claire Owen helpfully suggests that in my illustration regarding mask-wearing and vaccinations, I might have added some words like “in my opinion” to acknowledge that Christians have honest differences concerning these issues. I doubt, though, whether those differences often involve disagreements about biblical ethical principles.

I suspect that what most often divides Christians on these issues are differences regarding matters of fact whether these purported health measures actually help protect our neighbors. Take the simplest case: mask wearing. So far as I can tell, overwhelming percentages of doctors and scientists studying worldwide data from over a century concerning masks agree that such measures have proven helpful in dealing with a pandemic such as we now have. If we trust that consensus, then it would seem that Christians, wishing to protect their neighbors and themselves, ought to be on the side of supporting mask wearing as much as is reasonable. Yet I am pretty sure that in America, white evangelicals are among those most likely to question that medical-scientific consensus. My guess is that such questioning arises largely because, in our politically poisoned and polarized culture, they get their opinions on such contested issues largely from partisan news sources where it is common to say that masks are ineffective and just “theater.”

I confess that in my illustration I did not acknowledge that some Christians honestly (even if I think mistakenly) dissent from the medical-scientific consensus.

And that may make it sound as though I am saying that Christians who oppose masking or vaccinations are therefore being unbiblical in an intentional way. Rather, my implication is that, if I am correct in trusting the medical-scientific consensus, then those who reject that consensus are promoting practices that ironically run contrary to their own good biblical principles and intentions to help their neighbors. So, I say that “despite their gospel teachings, rather than because of them,” they oppose measures that would in fact help protect their neighbors. I am grateful to be able to clarify that nuance here.

—George Marsden

M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N

Letters

Re: “Fundamentals for the Evangelical Future” by some of the conclusions of Daniel Treier’s article. He attributes the “rabid anti-Communism and (at best) indifference to racism” to “American pugnaciousness.” He repeats this charge by criticizing a “loss of proportion about Communism exacerbated a lack of perspective about racism” (62). First, conflating Communism with anti-racism is obscene. Yes, Communists have exploited America’s racial divides to undermine our system of governance; but around the world, Communist countries are far more racist than the US. And it is hard to argue that anything but “rabid” opposition is justified for a political/economic system that killed 100 million or more of its own people in the twentieth century. For that matter, I fail to see that fundamentalists are any more “indifferent to racism” than mainstream churches. But he goes on to accuse “unbiblical fundamentalism” for five different sins such as failing to “consider it pure joy” when facing possible trials (63). How is this, or any of the other four sins, unique to fundamentalism? A disappointing end to an otherwise —Greg Scandlen interesting article.

I WAS SADDENED

I respond as a traditionalist evangelical who is well aware of the evils of Communism, having heard firsthand accounts of such oppression while mentoring graduate students from underground churches in Communist countries. If I were trying to curry favor with a progressive agenda, it would hardly be in my interest to write on such a topic or publish in MR. The reason for attempting a response here, though, is to address two misunderstandings that bear very much on the evangelical future.

The essay did not obscenely “conflate” Communism with anti-racism. Instead, it reflects a well-established historical relationship between two issues. Many fundamentalists were indifferent (at best) about civil rights for African Americans, and some (at worst) opposed that

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movement as un-American in the face of Communism, rather than seeing it as a biblically (and patriotically) faithful pursuit of equal justice for all. For a further historical example, one major impetus behind the inauguration of Christian schooling in the South was a desire to avoid racially integrated schools. That is a painful acknowledgment to make, since I have championed classical Christian education and served on the board of such a school for five and a half years. I lament a sinfully mixed legacy here not as an outsider but as an insider.

The essay did not make any comparative claims, and hence it did not say that any of these sins were “unique” to fundamentalism. Yet “judgment begins with the household of God,” and so our focus should rest not on whether we can also blame others but on whether our spiritual house is in order. Time would fail me if I started detailing evidence that fear of persecution is a substantial factor in contemporary evangelical politics.

As the letter manifests, today even modest statements about the church’s legacy vis-à-vis racism routinely strike a nerve.

Numerous Bible-be­lieving peers and students are expressing dismay over the inconsistency between our forebears’ teaching about Scripture’s moral authority and our movement’s selec­tive, distorted application of it.

Until we conservative evangelicals repent, without evasion, regarding our indifference to racism (among other sins), we will continue to disillusion future gener­ ations regarding biblical orthodoxy. By contrast, it does not surprise me that legions overseas are converting to Christ, because the “evangelicals” I encounter from there are so clearly focused on the fullness of the biblical gospel above all else—an ongoing occasion, by God’s mercy, for —Daniel J. Trier my repentance.

We’d like to hear your thoughts about what you’re reading in the magazine, so please write to us at letters@ modernreformation.org. Due to limited space, keep your letter under 400 words (letters may be edited for length and clarity). We look forward to hearing from you!

M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N

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I.

Retrieve Learning from the wisdom of the past

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L E A R N I N G

T O

Read Scripture L I K E

T H E

CHURCH FAT H E R S

by C R A I G C A R T E R

M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N

Retrieve

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N A RECENT TRIP to London, I visited the churches where John Newton, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and Charles Spurgeon once preached, which prompted me to reflect on the state of preaching today.

It seems to me that preaching in evangelical churches is in decline across the English-speaking world. Although there are bright spots here and there, the general trend is downward. In this article, I attempt to diagnose the illness and propose a remedy. I am not interested here in methods of sermon preparation or delivery, but rather on the substance of the sermon. Specifically, I am interested in how we interpret the Bible and how our hermeneutics affects the meaning we draw from it. In my view, it is hermeneutics and not homiletics at the heart of the problem. What I suggest is that modern hermeneutics—both liberal and conservative—is hindering good preaching because it prevents us from seeing and conveying the full meaning of Scripture.

The solution is a return to premodern methods of interpretation, which are vividly displayed in the writings of the church fathers. They read the Bible in a way that enabled them to make plain its true, theological meaning, which is deeper and richer than most of us know. This teaching is the origin of the foundational doctrines of the Trinity and the incarnation as taught in the great ecumenical creeds. If the fathers of the first few centuries had not interpreted the Bible as they did, what we know today as trinitarian and christological orthodoxy would not exist. So, it is problematic that only modern hermeneutics is taught in most seminaries and that future pastors can be trained without reading widely in the writings of the fathers. We can learn how to preach the Bible with power and relevance from the successors to the apostles, but only if we are open to learning from the past. Hopefully, this article will encourage more of us to delve into the writings of the church fathers and discover for ourselves how patristic hermeneutics can help us preach the Bible with relevance and power. ***

The Problem with Contemporary Hermeneutics One reason why topical preaching is so widespread today is that preachers lack confidence in their ability to hold the attention of the congregation by simply expounding the Bible. It is not just congregations but preachers themselves who see the Bible as not relevant enough, and this is because pastors are trained in methods of hermeneutics that prevent the divine author’s voice from being heard clearly in the text. The human elements in the text are stressed so much that God’s voice is pushed into the background, and it is easy to forget that he speaks to us through his word. Human words are never as interesting as the living voice of God.

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“ Once again you have in these [Old Testament stories] the glory of Jesus, because all things are in him and for him.”

–The Epistle of Barnabas (ca. late first century)

May/June 2022

The writings of the church fathers are characterized by a deep sense of mystery and awe when standing before the Scriptures. To cite just one example, Boniface Ramsey notes that Ephrem the Syrian, writing in the fourth century, compares the Scriptures to “a spring that a thirsty person can drink from without ever either exhausting the spring or quenching his thirst.” I find that laypeople have much the same reaction when the Bible is expounded in such a way that we hear the voice of God speaking through the text. Whenever our methods of interpretation obscure the voice of God by reducing the text to merely human words about God, much of our preaching (especially on the Old Testament) becomes moralistic rather than truly evangelical. How can we preach the gospel from the whole Bible? How can we preach Christ from the whole Bible?

Missing from most contemporary evangelical and confessional pulpit ministries is a focus on how the two testaments combine to make one unified book.

Jesus Christ is the center of Scripture, and the divine plan of redemption constitutes a continuous theme running throughout the Bible. We need more preaching on New Testament texts that exposes the Old Testament foundations of their message, and more preaching on the Old Testament that shows how its teaching is developed in the New Testament. This lack, I suggest, is due to the overreliance of most pastors on modern commentaries, which are inadequate precisely because of their reliance on modern hermeneutical theory.

Modern historical critical study of the Bible tends to atomize the Bible into smaller units of meaning, relocating them in a hypothetical reconstruction of the events, personalities, and issues behind the text. This is true not only in liberal higher criticism but also in what is known as the grammatical-historical method, which is promoted by evangelicals who disavow the extreme anti-supernaturalist bias of the historical critics. The problem is that the denial of miracles is not the only effect of philosophical naturalism on hermeneutics. The exclusive focus on the human author’s intent as the key to the meaning of the text—together with the accompanying exclusion of the divine author’s intent—is another result of a naturalist metaphysics applied to interpretation. And even if one tries to soften the blow by insisting that it is just “methodological naturalism” being employed, the hermeneutical damage is still done. This is so because the exclusion of divine authorial intent from the exegetical process forces us to interpret the text in such a way as to obscure or elide altogether the full meaning of the text. It is no wonder that the concept of sensus plenior is placed under such severe suspicion in modern biblical interpretation. And it is no wonder that the christological meaning of the Old Testament is so fiercely debated.

Perhaps the biggest problem with contemporary hermeneutics is its obsession with the single-meaning theory. Both liberal and conservative hermeneutics typically urge us to see a single meaning in each text and to identify that meaning with authorial intent. This does not sound alarming at first precisely because it is so ambiguous. If we were being advised to see the text as the word of God and authorial intention as the intention of the divine author who breathes out the text, then who could object to that? But when we read in a hermeneutics book that we 1

M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N

Retrieve

must seek to identify the authorial intent, nine times out of ten what is meant by “authorial intent” is “human authorial intent.” Ironically, this is true even when we have no idea who the human author was or even what century he lived in—as is the case, for example, with many of the psalms. This is even the case when a text by an earlier human author has been edited or revised by a later human author, which makes the whole idea of human authorial intent confusing indeed. Which human author’s intent is authoritative? The canonical text may well be the latest edition in a textual process that was influenced by several different human authors/editors/communities over centuries. But no matter, modern hermeneutics insists that the fundamental meaning of the text is what the human author(s) or authors/editors meant. Sometimes this ends up meaning what a generic human (that is, not an omniscient one) could have meant. This clearly excludes divine authorial intent, even if that is not the motivation.

Why is modern biblical interpretation so determined to avoid appealing to the intention of the divine author as seen in the canonical context of the text? It seems that modern biblical interpreters, shaped as graduate students by the modern university, feel a greater responsibility to the metaphysical convictions of the late modern secularizing culture than they do to the church’s doctrine of inspiration. This tension is expressed in the fact that a typical biblical scholar has one foot in the modern university, which is under the sway of philosophical naturalism, and the other foot in the church, which holds to the dogmas of the inspiration of Scripture and the two-testament canon. Ever since the so-called Enlightenment, the academy has been trying to wrest the interpretation of Scripture away from the church and claim that only the “dogmatically neutral” scholar can interpret it objectively and scientifically. But to be “dogmatically neutral” really means being a revisionist who denies the metaphysics derived from the central Christian dogmas of creation, Trinity, and Christology and embraces the neo-pagan metaphysics of modernity. Modern metaphysical naturalism and traditional scholastic realism cannot be reconciled or harmonized. They represent two distinct and opposing visions of reality, and one or the other must shape our hermeneutics. One reason why reading premodern commentators is so helpful is because they do not share the metaphysical assumptions of late Western modernity.

S O M E I N A D E Q U AT E S O L U T I O N S

Since the heyday of historical criticism in the late nineteenth century, evangelicals have attempted to find better ways to read the Bible. Obviously, the denial of miracles, the atomization of the text, the loss of a coherent biblical message, and the weakening of biblical authority constituted practical problems for preachers.

The gulf between the academy and the pulpit has steadily widened in the past two hundred years. This quest for a better way to read Scripture helps explain why dispensationalism spread so rapidly in the early twentieth century. It offered a flawed but comprehensive interpretation of the Bible as a unified whole, and thus allowed preachers to treat the Bible as if all the various parts added up to one

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coherent, unified set of theological teachings. Dispensationalism filled the void once occupied by church dogma, what Athanasius would call the “scope” (skopos) of the Bible, or what Irenaeus would have called the “rule of faith.” It was only natural for preachers convinced of biblical inspiration but deprived of the historic rule of faith as the hermeneutical key to interpretation to find this new approach to interpreting Scripture attractive. There was much wrong with dispensationalism, but what it got right was its conviction that the Bible, interpreted rightly, is supposed to make sense as a whole.

Within the Reformed world, there was a concerted attempt in the early twentieth century led by Geerhardus Vos to reform biblical theology as an alternative both to premodern exegesis and dispensationalism. Appointed to Princeton’s first chair in biblical theology in 1894, Vos attempted to reform the discipline of biblical theology that emerged out of the Enlightenment. To understand his effort, we need to go back to 1787 when J. P. Gabler introduced the term “biblical theology” as an alternative to “dogmatic theology,” which he considered to be vitiated by blind adherence to church dogma. Biblical theology, as conceived by Gabler, would use historical-critical methodology to read the Bible in its “historical” context, which for Enlightenment scholars like Gabler meant its “naturalistic, non-supernatural” context. Philosophical naturalism thus replaced the church dogma of the ecumenical creeds and Reformation era confessions as the framework in which the Bible was interpreted. This approach led to a cascade of problems. Predictive prophecy is impossible in naturalistic terms, and so many biblical books must be forgeries written after the fact. Any consistency of teaching by so many different authors in such disparate historical situations is seen as artificially imposed. The predictions of exile in Deuteronomy must have been written after the prophets, the idea that Jesus is the Christ must have been read into the Hebrew Bible by New Testament authors, and God’s metaphysical attributes derive from Greek philosophy and are read into the Bible. In short, the acids of historical criticism dissolved Christian orthodoxy.

In response, Vos proposed the redemptive-historical approach to biblical interpretation as an alternative to the kind of biblical theology driven by historical criticism. Vos and the movement that flowed from him were open to the possibility of miracles and so could do far more justice to the doctrine of biblical inspiration than historical criticism could ever do. The redemptive-historical approach to hermeneutics offered an even more unified understanding of Scripture than dispensationalism and was in accord with the Reformed confessions.

Covenant theology drew on post-Reformation orthodoxy to develop an account of the unity of the Bible that highlighted consistency between the testaments, using the covenant of grace as the central unifying doctrine. For many today, this approach is totally adequate. Yet, despite its many indubitable strengths, tensions continue to lurk just under the surface. Notwithstanding the refusal of philosophical naturalism on the issue of miracles, Vos’s version of biblical theology still tends to reduce the meaning of texts to the single meaning of the human author’s intention.

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Johann Philip Gabler (1753–1826)

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M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N

In Europe, the neo-orthodox movement stemming from Karl Barth produced another version of biblical theology in which tensions were even more evident. Barth’s theological exegesis was light years ahead of the historical-critical exegesis of late nineteenth-century liberal Protestantism—precisely because it took the theology of the biblical text seriously. But, like Barth himself, European biblical theologians such as Oscar Cullmann, Gerhard von Rad, and Walther Eichrodt did not challenge head-on the philosophical naturalism of the historical critics. Instead, they attempted to treat the biblical text theologically while accepting the “assured results of higher criticism” on issues such as dating, authorship, and the unity of biblical books. In his Biblical Theology in Crisis, Brevard S. Childs chronicled the internal tensions of the biblical theology movement.

In an impressive series of publications during the second half of the twentieth century, Childs attempted to square the circle by bringing theological exegesis into his methodology without denying or revising historical criticism. Although judgments as to how successfully he held the two together vary, in Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition, I argue that he did not. His intentions were noble, but the same irreconcilable tensions that characterized the European biblical theology movement continued to haunt his project. His emphasis on the importance of the canon for exegesis was in tension with his acceptance of higher criticism, in which the concept of canon was reduced to mere human tradition.

How can a mere human tradition be the foundation of the meaning of Scripture?

Childs gives us no adequate answer to this question.

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***

What Can the Fathers Offer?

Near the end of his life, however, Childs pointed us to a potential solution to the problem he never solved. In a book on the history of the interpretation of Isaiah, Childs surveyed figures from Justin Martyr to the present, although over half of the book focuses on the patristic period. He clearly shows how patristic interpretation of Isaiah grew out of the New Testament interpretation of Isaiah, which is significant because it establishes continuity between the apostles and their immediate successors, the church fathers. He shows how key texts such as Isaiah 7:14 and chapters 9, 11, and 53 were interpreted messianically by the fathers as they followed apostolic exegesis. If we can agree that the apostles not only provide an inspired and authoritative instance of how to interpret the Hebrew Scriptures, but also an inspired and authoritative example of how to do so, then the fathers become a crucial case study for how we can and should follow the example of the apostles in reading Scripture.

As Childs discusses Irenaeus, Origen, Jerome, John Chrysostom, and Cyril of Alexandria, among others, patterns emerge that show how the fathers read Scripture and the ways in which their approach differed from modern hermeneutics.

Tempting as it is to discuss all the illuminating moves they made in their interpretation of Isaiah, I must restrain myself in the interests of space and urge you 8

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to read this crucial book for yourself. As I read it, I became convinced that Childs has shown us the path ahead by pointing us to the recovery of premodern exegesis as exemplified in the church fathers. They were not only ready to challenge pagan materialism; they also were open to the divine author’s voice in the text.

We cannot hope to overcome the deleterious effects of philosophical naturalism on hermeneutics unless we first recover the genius of premodern exegesis by studying how the fathers read Scripture in imitation of the apostles, and then imitate the apostolic-patristic method as we do our own exegesis. I will outline three key concepts that characterize premodern exegesis and briefly discuss them in how we interpret Isaiah 53. This should provide some idea of what it means to read Scripture like the church fathers.

1 . A PA R T I C I PAT O R Y M E TA P H Y S I C S

The difference between premodern and modern exegesis is that the premoderns had a radically different metaphysical conception of the relationship between God, nature, and human beings. Premodern metaphysics was participatory, meaning that the world was understood to participate in the being of God—not in a panentheistic sense of a continuity of being between God and the world, but in the sense that creation is upheld in existence at every moment by the power of God and that in Christ all things hold together (Col. 1:15–17). Nature is not autonomous but radically dependent on God for its existence and its meaning.

In the Platonic tradition (understood broadly as the mainstream of Western philosophy that includes Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, all the church fathers, and Thomas Aquinas), any individually existing thing is what it is by virtue of its participation in a universal. A human being is human by virtue of participating in the idea of human nature. For Plato, universals (the forms) exist in a nonmaterial realm that is intelligible to the human intellect. But for Augustinians such as Thomas Aquinas, universals (such as human nature) exist as ideas in the mind of God and are the pattern by which the Logos fashioned the world out of nothing (that is, out of no preexisting material). Since creation was made from nothing by the transcendent Creator, its shape, meaning, and persistence in existence over time (its history) all depend on the power of God. Universals give us a way to express this truth philosophically.

In a participatory metaphysics, history cannot be reduced to a merely linear phenomenon, as modernity tries to do. Matthew Levering explains that historical events and persons always participate in the vertical relationship by which the finite being participates in the divine being, as well as moving along the timeline and participating in horizontal relationships. If we deny the existence of the vertical dimension of reality (as modern naturalism does), then we must seek all our explanations for why things are what they are and why they do what they do within the horizontal dimension. This reductionist metaphysics is the source of the naturalism that characterizes modernity, and it shapes the modern historical approach to interpreting Scripture.

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For the church fathers, the words of Scripture participate in the mind of God, who breathed them out, and their meaning is therefore his meaning. This has many implications for hermeneutics. For one, it means that when Hebrews 4:12 says that the word of God is “living and active” and that it discerns “the thought and intents of the heart,” it is not kidding. The Word of God is the Second Person of the Trinity, the eternal Son by whom the world was created (John 1:1–3), and the Word is the One who speaks and is spoken of in the written Scriptures: “All Scripture is breathed out by God” (2 Tim. 3:16). This double meaning of “Word” means that the living, personal God is active in the words of Scripture.

Those words participate in the horizontal dimension of reality as human words written by human authors. But they also participate in the vertical dimension of reality as divine words though which God communicates. It is not a matter of biblical texts being one or the other or partly one and partly the other. All biblical words are both human and divine simultaneously, and this is possible because of participatory metaphysics.

2. LEVELS OF MEANING

Since Scripture is made up of words that are both human and divine, it is only reasonable to speak of both human and divine authorial intent. The human writers had propositions in mind when they freely wrote what they wrote. Because of the classical theistic account of divine providence, we can distinguish between primary and secondary causality. So, the human writer, freely expressing his own thoughts, is also (providentially) writing exactly what God, the divine author, intends. God inspires the text through a combination of providence and miracle, with the result that divine intentions are faithfully expressed in the human writer’s words. Sometimes this happens because God has chosen a particular human being and given him particular characteristics, family background, temperament, intellect, and so on, enabling the writer to express exactly what God wants written. Sometimes, however, God gives the human author information to which he would never have had access except that God gives it through a dream, vision, or other supernatural means. When biblical writers overhear conversations in heaven (for example, as in Isa. 6 or Rev. 4), they are able to write what no human being would ever know apart from supernatural revelation. But the point is that within the context of premodern, classical metaphysics, it does not really matter whether the writer gets the words from what we might think of as a “natural” source (like interviewing an eyewitness) or from a “supernatural” source (like a heavenly vision). In both cases, God is the ultimate source of those words.

This means that when we read Scripture, we need to contemplate the human and the divine author’s intent. Throughout church history, premodern interpreters saw levels of meaning in the text. Patristic and medieval interpreters spoke of two basic senses: the literal and the spiritual. Many also broke the spiritual sense down into the allegorical (faith; what we can believe), the moral (love; what we should do), and the anagogical (hope; what the future holds). The basic idea is 10

“ For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”

–Hebrews 4:12

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that Scripture has a depth of meaning that makes it unique because it is uniquely inspired. A text may contain exactly what Isaiah or Paul intended it to contain, yet it may also contain meaning that goes beyond what he consciously intended.

That meaning is there because of inspiration.

This is one reason why the Bible remains relevant and speaks freshly to every generation, not just to the original readers. To assume, as historical criticism does, that the original audience understood it better than we do centuries later contradicts what the Bible itself teaches. For example, Paul insists that the narratives in the Pentateuch were written for his generation: “Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did” (1 Cor. 10:6). He also says that these books “were written down for our instruction” (1 Cor. 10:10). It is fascinating to observe the rock-solid conviction of the apostles that the Hebrew Scriptures, written centuries before, were all about the events that happened in their generation. Centuries-old messianic promises were being fulfilled and new depths of meaning in the Scriptures were opening before their eyes. The divine author never stops speaking through the text, and some of the text’s meaning becomes clear only after a long time has passed.

3. CHRIST IN ALL OF SCRIPTURE

A participatory metaphysics and the presence of levels of meaning in the text make possible what is perhaps the most outstanding characteristic of the biblical interpretation of the church fathers, which is their conviction that Christ is properly found in all of Scripture. It should not be surprising that Christ is the central theme of the Bible, since Christ is, after all, the God who inspired the Scripture.

Likewise, it should not be surprising that creation directs our praise to God, since it is God’s creation.

Christ is the speaker of Scripture, the subject matter of Scripture, and the interpreter of Scripture, as we can see when we contemplate Luke 24:27: “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” Christ interprets the Scriptures for the disciples not just in his resurrection appearances but also continuously through his Spirit (John 16:13). He tells us that “all” the Scriptures (what we call the Old Testament) speak of him. It is amazing how much debate has occurred in modernity about the christological content of the Old Testament, as if there could be any doubt that Christ is there, waiting to be discerned by faith as the believing reader is guided by the Spirit. Yet how often do we hear scholars speak disparagingly of “finding Christ under every rock” in the Old Testament! Modernity trains us to reduce the meaning of the text to the human author’s intention, and then it insists that we reduce the potential human author’s intention to what can be explained by the horizontal level of events and people in the past that contributed to the human author’s frame of reference. But when we consider the participation of the text in the being of God, who is its ultimate author, we can see that God’s intention constitutes a deeper level of meaning that is there even 11

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if it was misunderstood until the events occurred, making us wonder how it was overlooked by so many for so long. ***

Premodern Versus Modern Exegesis of Isaiah 53 In this final section, we will consider how the issues discussed so far affect the interpretation of Isaiah 53. Due to limited space, I will make only a few comments on how the church fathers approached exegesis, which enables us to see Christ in the Old Testament in a way that modern historical approaches cannot match.

According to Brevard Childs, this text is the “most contested chapter” in the Old Testament. Yet the entire Christian tradition—beginning with the writers of the New Testament and continuing in every century of church history—saw it as a prophecy of the crucifixion, death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. John R. W. Stott points out that the major writers of the New Testament—Paul, John, Peter, Luke, and Matthew—allude to eight of the twelve verses of Isaiah 53. He surmises that it was from this chapter that Jesus learned that the Messiah’s vocation was to die for human sin and then be glorified. One widely used introduction to the Old Testament claims that there are thirty-eight references to Isaiah 53 in the New Testament.

Yet modern historical-critical approaches to the exegesis of Isaiah 53 regularly find no explicit reference to Christ here. Christopher R. North catalogs fifteen different proposals for the identity of the suffering servant from Jewish, early Christian, and modern interpreters, including Moses, Hezekiah, and Deutero-Isaiah, and collectives such as ideal Israel, the righteous remnant of Israel, and the prophets. The consensus of historical-critical treatments of Isaiah 53 is that it cannot possibly be about Jesus Christ because that would require a person from the eighth (or sixth) century before Christ to know about someone centuries later who would do something radically new and barely intelligible in terms of the thought world of the writer. An exclusive focus on human authorial intent, naturalistically conceived, makes the New Testament interpretation of Isaiah 53 virtually impossible.

We can see that the christological meaning of the text depends on there being a deeper layer of meaning within the text put there by the divine author, whose knowledge is not limited like a mere mortal operating within the constraints of history. Yet, if we understand the text to have human authorial intent (the literal sense) plus divine authorial intent (the spiritual or expanded literal sense), then we can see the meaning of the New Testament writers as having been extracted from the text rather than read into it. Surely, this distinction is critical. Whether this is eisegesis or exegesis makes all the difference in the world to the credibility of the New Testament. The question at stake in the debates between Paul and the Jews in the synagogues of the various cities he visited (Acts 17:2) was whether 12

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Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah prophesied in the Scriptures. Was he really prophesied by Isaiah 53, or is Paul just reading Christ into it? No question could be more fundamental to the faith of the church. ***

Conclusion The key to good preaching is good hermeneutics, which requires a participatory metaphysics where created reality is radically dependent on God for its existence and meaning. Interpreting the Bible within the context of both the vertical dimension of creaturely participation in God’s being and the horizontal dimension of creation’s movement through time toward its destiny in Christ allows us to see levels of meaning in the text. Although its literal sense is basic to its meaning, this does not limit it to the natural, horizontal dimension of reality, because God is its primary author. The Bible is inspired and providentially shaped into a two-testament canon, unified in that the old predicts Christ and the new proclaims Christ. When we interpret Scripture in this context, rather than a hypothetically reconstructed historical context, two things happen. First, our preaching is authoritative because it is rooted in God, not in human scholarship or the latest “assured results” of historical criticism. Second, our preaching is powerful because we preach the Bible itself—not in the narrow sense of basing every statement on a direct quotation from it, but in the more profound sense of expressing the unified message of the prophets and apostles as it relates to its center: namely, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Craig A. Carter is research professor at Tyndale University in Toronto and theologian in residence at

Westney Heights Baptist Church in Ajax, Ontario.

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Ephrem as quoted by Boniface Ramsey in Beginning to Read the Church Fathers (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), 25.

For a discussion of what Athanasius means by the skopos of Scripture and partitive exegesis, see John Behr, Formation of Christian Theology Vol. 2; The Nicene Faith Part 1 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Press, 2004), 208–15.

See Duane Litfin’s discussion of the rule of faith in Getting to Know the Church Fathers: An Evangelical Introduction (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2007), 90–91.

See his inaugural address “The Idea of Biblical Theology as a Science and as a Theological Discipline,” in Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation: The Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos, ed. Richard B. Gaffin (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1980), 3–24.

For an English translation of this address, see John SandysWunsch and Laurence Eldredge, “J. P. Gabler and the Distinction between Biblical and Dogmatic Theology: Translation, Commentary and Discussion of His Originality,” Scottish Journal of Theology 33 (1980): 135–58.

Brevard S. Childs, Biblical Theology in Crisis (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1970).

Craig A. Carter, Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition: Recovering the Genius of Premodern Exegesis (Grand Rapids:

Baker Academic, 2018), 19n36, 97–110.

Brevard S. Childs, The Struggle to Understand Isaiah as Christian Scripture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004).

9. Matthew Levering, Participatory Biblical Exegesis: A Theology of Biblical Interpretation (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press), 1–3.

10. For a basic introduction to the fourfold sense of Scripture, see Ramsey, Beginning to Read the Church Fathers, ch. 2.

11. In the next pericope, the Psalms are mentioned along with the Law of Moses and the Prophets (Luke 24:44). To speak of the Psalms was a common way of referring to the third part of the Hebrew canon. To speak of the Law and the Prophets is a shorthand way of speaking of the canon that does not exclude the Writings.

12. Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah: A Commentary. Old Testament Library (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 2001), 410.

13. John R. W. Stott, The Cross of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2986), 31.

14. Andrew E. Hill and John H. Walton, A Survey of the Old Testament, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009), 745.

15. Christopher R. North, The Suffering Servant in Deutero-Isaiah: An Historical and Critical Study, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956), 6–116.

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GLOBAL THEOLOGICAL FORUM

Between Scylla and Charybdis: Mapping Theological Education in “New-Normal” Indonesia

by Amos Winarto Oei

has forced the world to undergo rapid changes. Some changes may be superficial, while others are much deeper, having become the “new normal” and reshaping the context in which theological education is carried out. How should seminaries particularly my institution, Aletheia Theological Seminary be doing their business, then?

In The Odyssey, Homer mentions two sea perils he calls Scylla and Charybdis.

Scylla is a six-headed sea monster who eats men straight off their decks; Charybdis creates whirlpools that suck whole ships down into her mouth. They are placed close enough to each other to pose an inevitable danger to passing seafarers. Every captain needs to choose to either sacrifice a few sailors to Scylla or endanger the whole ship to Charybdis. This myth is an object lesson for discussing two current dangers within theological education. The Scylla of theological education is the danger of intellectualism, and the Charybdis is the danger of sentimentalism. For seminaries to safely navigate and pass these dangers within the ocean of theological education during this pandemic era and beyond, I will argue that they should recognize their nature and task. The nature of the seminary is a church school, and its task is to nurture Christlike servants of the Lord.

THE PANDEMIC ERA

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A Church School Against the Scylla of Intellectualism The standards of accreditation for theological education are like other academic institutions. Higher education in Indonesia tends to underscore research, sometimes without regard for teaching and community service. This is evidenced when there is a lot of competition in obtaining government research grants. Andrew Louth laments that for those who struggle financially, a research grant may become an economic prospect and transform theological values into economic values (“educational businesses”) such as marketable products bound by quality control. This cry implies that while a research grant may turn a theological institution into a business corporation, the sole focus on the intellectual pursuit in theological education still appeals. In this case, to survive economically, a theological education should market its theology intellectually.

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Scene from Greek mythology of Scylla and Charybdis from 1880 wood engraving.

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The danger of this intellectual emphasis is noticeable. Theological education may become a mere intellectual institution, an ivory tower, losing its touch with reality on the ground. It will no longer be a church school. An institution like Aletheia may overlook its purpose to be a school for the church. The intellectual quest may come at the expense of its churchly service and alienate its students from the churchly communities they are supposed to serve. It will slowly become an institution for intellectualism.

This is not to dismiss the academic character of such an institution. It is to say that intellectualism ought to be avoided. Theological training institutions succumb to the monster Scylla when their theological education process manifests itself as a culture of expertise, which exalts the power of know-how (intellect and skill). Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Know-how power corrupts as well. Here are some senses of the power associated with intellect and skill: “Our teacher said,” “My professor said,” “Your pastor said,” “Their minister said.” Hear the assumption of those people about the power embedded in their teacher, professor, pastor, and minister’s expertise. Theological education is no longer biblical when it rests on know-how pursuits. Many of us may know the abuses of intellect and skill powers in the seminary. Intellectually apt and skillful professors are, of course, most appealing! As a result, if one is intellectually apt and skillful, then one can do whatever one wants in the seminary. Scripture and theology will no longer apply because it is now based on experts and their expertise. We need to beware that as a church school, what happens at seminary institutions will transmit into the church.

In 2 Timothy 2:24, Paul does not ask Timothy to be an expert in teaching; instead he only asks him to be able to teach. Expertise is not required; ability is.

Expertise tends to look down on others; ability requires humility in collaboration with others to continue developing. Expertise tends to rely on itself; ability needs to rely on others, even God, to grow. Scripture-based theological education does not seek to cultivate the culture of expertise. It does not, of course, completely dismiss intellect and skills. It only means that those should not become the final standards in doing theological education. Instead of a culture of expertise, we should promote a culture of biblically informed learning.

The Reformation slogan sola scriptura means that the text of Scripture is the ultimate foundation of preaching, teaching, and pastoral care in the church. The “ultimate” here does not mean that Scripture is the only authority, but it means that Scripture is the final authority. All other authorities are to be assessed and questioned against the standard of Scripture, because even tradition and church may stumble. The Scylla of intellectualism poses the danger of switching the foundation of theological education to something other than Scripture.

In theological education, the ability to teach assumes some intellect and skills.

It is imperative to develop that ability. There is nothing wrong, therefore, in learning new knowledge, expanding one’s intellect, and improving one’s skills. The 3

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current emphasis on performance and strategies in theological education—like the numerous procedures in developing curriculum, various techniques in psychological counseling, and several types of organizational management—is not of itself problematic. It only becomes problematic when this emphasis dismisses or excludes its biblical and theological basis. When this happens, such institutions will no longer be distinctively Christian, and they will fail to convey the biblical values held by the church in its rich and long tradition.

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Christlike Servants of the Lord Against the Charybdis of Sentimentalism The other peril that theological institutions ought to carefully map in order to safely pass is the Charybdis of sentimentalism. This peril manifests itself in the culture of charisma. This culture is best represented by the term “influencer.” Influencers like social media celebrities have become a crucial factor for branding in social media marketing campaigns. A recent study even shows that people tend to consider social media celebrities as more trustworthy than traditional celebrities. These days, people can win trust by being popular and having a good deal of followers without even being physically present. This is where the Charybdis problem becomes apparent in theological education. It is the problem of conflating charisma with character; that is, good influence equals good character.

The problem becomes more complicated in the arena of leadership. If the proper indicator of leadership is, as John Maxwell argues, “influence—nothing more, nothing less,” then the more influence a leader exerts, the more people will think at first glance that this leader has a good character. This is also the reason many leaders first focus on developing their charismatic skills—such as relationships, communication, and rhetoric—instead of their character. Without charisma, one cannot effectively influence others, and as such will never be competent to lead others. Listen, for example, to this leader’s speech: 5

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Today, after two thousand years, with the deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before—the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian, I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice. And as a man, I have the duty to see to it that human society does not suffer the same catastrophic collapse as did the civilization of the ancient world some two thousand years ago.

Take these words at face value. Do they motivate us to engage in societal betterment? Many would feel the same. There are thousands of people who, upon hearing these words, would applaud and approve and even shout amen. Those words, however, were spoken by Adolph Hitler. He sounds as if his words are 8

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driven by Scripture and Christian faith. Listeners, no doubt, would have assumed that a faithful and good-natured person stood before them. But Hitler’s words masked the deception behind them.

To safely avoid the trap of sentimentalism, we must pursue theological education as equipping servants of the Lord. Those engaged in full-time church ministry are also called verbum Dei minister, the “minister of the word of God.” The source of this phrase might be traced back to the Second Helvetic Confessions, authored by the Swiss Reformer Heinrich Bullinger in 1562, who formulated a kind of motto: praedicatio verbi divini est verbum divinum (“The preaching of the word of God is the word of God”). The business of theological education is about equipping servants, not church influencers, who administer God’s word to the church. Paul’s exhortations to Timothy in our text are to “the Lord’s servant,” and his list is about character formation: “must not be quarrelsome,” “kind,” “patient,” and “gentle.” A Lord’s servant demonstrates such depth of character not to exert some influence to have effective leadership. The depth of character is required so that God, by using this kind of servant, may lead others to “a knowledge of truth” or repentance. The power and glory are fully God’s. Servants have no right to claim any of it. Servants, unlike influencers, are not in the business of making followers to show the proof of their leadership. Their business is to serve others by teaching them to follow Jesus and not to follow them. Similarly, Eugene Peterson argues that the fundamental task of ministry is to “keep the community attentive to God.” It is Jesus, God Incarnate, that servants and the community they serve must follow and be particularly attentive.

Theological institutions should not ignore this task in their theological education. Instead of the culture of charisma, they should promote a culture of character. To be more specific, it is the culture of Christlike character. Otherwise, they will sink into the Charybdis of sentimentalism. They will surrender their duty to serve others in a Christlike manner and become a power to master over others. If this happens, then theological education will be in the business of making charismatic leaders instead of equipping Christlike servants of the Lord.

Within the culture of charisma, the specific danger of emotional abuse always runs high. Emotional abuse also fittingly describes the Charybdis of sentimentalism. This may happen in two ways: economic and experience abuse. Rich leaders may abuse their economic power to exert their leadership, and experienced leaders may abuse their experience power to exert their leadership. Theological education will be conducive to these abuses when it relies on economic resources and seniority in doing its task. Instead of serving its students, such institutions may emotionally abuse them when they manage the resources in humiliating and controlling ways, leaving students feeling small and insignificant; or when they treat students unjustly and justify it by appealing to hierarchies or seniorities.

Theological institutions should be grateful that even during the pandemic, the Lord kept providing us with human and nonhuman resources. We should, therefore, keep promoting the culture of Christlike character and avoid being sucked into the Charybdis whirlpool of sentimentalism.

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All Hands on Deck!

Apart from on ongoing study of God’s word written and lived in a Christlike manner, theological institutions have no true compass to map and navigate the ocean of theological education. The Scylla of intellectualism and the Charybdis of sentimentalism are always there, in and out of season, to take hold of those who have lost their bearings. Hold close to Scripture and cultivate the culture of biblically informed learning to steer away from the Scylla of intellectualism and the culture of expertise. Let us live out the task of serving the Lord and nurture the culture of Christlike character in equipping fellow servants of the Lord, to avoid being sucked in by the Charybdis of sentimentalism and the culture of charisma.

In short, in mapping theological education in the “new normal,” I urge theological institutions to strive for a biblically learned and Christlike servanthood institution. In this way, seminaries can stay true to their path as a church school and nurture fellow servants of the Lord.

Theological education will thrive, even in the hardest storm of life. The power to thrive, however, is not found in our expertise and charisma. Paul says that we can speak with an angel’s tongue, understand theological mysteries, and give everything to those in need, and yet not look like our Lord in character (1 Cor. 13:1–3). Brilliant intellect and attractive sentiment are not fruit born of the Spirit in our lives (see Gal. 5:22–23). Let us not become a fake or be fooled by one, but instead strive to become biblically learned and Christlike servants of the Lord.

This article was adapted from a convocation address delivered to Aletheia Theological Seminary in 2021.

Dr. Amos Winarto Oei (PhD, Calvin Theological Seminary) is the dean of Students at Aletheia Theolog-

ical Seminary in Lawang, East Java, Indonesia, and the author of The Perilous Sayings: Interpreting Christ’s Call to Obedience in the Sermon on the Mount.

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Higher education, according to the Indonesian Government Law, consists of three duties (Tri Dharma): education (teaching), research, and community service. Undang-Undang Republik Indonesia no. 12, tahun 2012, tentang Pendidikan Tinggi pasal 1 ayat 9.

Andrew Louth, “Theology, Contemplation and the University,” Studies in Christian Ethics 17, no. 1 (April 2004): 76 (69–79).

Arnold Huijgen, “Alone Together: Sola Scriptura and the Other Solas of the Reformation,” Studies in Reformed Theology 32 (2018): 85 (79–104).

To further study the unity of theory and practice in theological study, see Richard Muller, The Study of Theology: From Biblical Interpretation to Contemporary Formulation (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1991).

Marijke De Veirman, Veroline Cauberghe, and Liselot Hudders, “Marketing through Instagram Influencers: The Impact of Number of Followers and Product Divergence on Brand Attitude,” https://doi.org/10.1080/02650487.20 17.1348035 36, no. 5 (2017): 798–828.

S. Venus Jin, Aziz Muqaddam, and Ehri Ryu, “Instafamous and Social Media Influencer Marketing,” Marketing Intelligence

Camp; Planning 37, no. 5 (July 19, 2019): 567–79.

John Maxwell, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You, 10th anniversary ed.

(Nashville: Nelson, 2007), 30. To be fair to Maxwell, he includes character as one of the many factors for leaders to exert their influence. Still, even though it is mentioned first, it is only one among many other factors.

8. Adolf Hitler, April 12, 1922 speech, in “Adolf Hitler Collection of Speeches 1922–1945: Hitler, Adolf : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive,” accessed August 8, 2021, https://archive.org/stream/ AdolfHitlerCollectionOfSpeeches19221945/Adolf%20 Hitler%20-%20Collection%20of%20Speeches%2019221945_djvu.txt.

9. Christoph Markschies, “Reformation ist die normative Zentrierung auf Jesus Christus: Was wollen wir fünfhundert Jahre später feiern?” in Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland (EKD), Perspektiven 2017 : Ein Lesebuch : Luther 2017, 500 Jahre Reformation (Frankfurt: Hansisches Druck- und Verlagshaus, 2013): 59–63.

10. Eugene Peterson, Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 2.

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R E F O R M AT I O N R E S O U R C E S

Does the Augsburg Confession Teach Anything Outside of Scripture? Defensio Augustanae Confessionis (Chapter IX)

by Friedrich Balduin; translated by Todd Rester

In 1613, the Hungarian Catholic Cardinal Peter Pázmány, S.J. (1570–1637) published Hodegus Igazságra-Vezérló Kalauz. In Book 4 of this work, Pázmany devoted six chapters to a refutation of the Lutheran Augsburg Confession. In 1623, Lutheran theologian Friedrich Balduin published a direct response to Pázmany's work, titled Defensio Augustanae Confessionis (Wittenburg: Paul Helwigius, 1623). Balduin's Defensio was originally a series of Latin disputations publicly delivered in Wittenberg that Balduin authored and presided over with a student respondent.

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the Esauite approaches the Scriptures, which must be first of all. For if before this judge our confession cannot stand, then we freely confess action has to be taken regarding it. For it is the only thing by whose judgment the professors of any religion must stand or fall. “It is necessary for those who are subject, who are imbued with the Scriptures,” says Basil in his On Christian Ethics, rule 72, chapter 1, “to prove those things which are asserted by professors, both to receive those things that are consonant with the Scriptures, and to reject what is foreign to them, and to vehemently oppose those who persevere in strange teachings of this sort.” But our adversary shows his true character, which is to say, “You speak in the manner of allies and your cause has the Scriptures in your mouth, yet there is hatred of them in your heart.” Now the shortest path forward would have been to show in individual articles where the Confession states something contrary to the Holy Scriptures, but it breaks apart under its own force, so he frankly admits “that he does not want to overturn those controversies that could produce genuine disputation.” But that was what was especially necessary to do; for to pluck out one or the other locus and twist it at will is characteristic of sophists, not of candid disputers. Without a doubt, if he would have examined it without hypocrisy, he will confess the very thing the papists at the Augsburg Assembly frankly confessed: that the confession offered by the Protestants cannot be refuted from holy Scripture. I certainly have been convicted in my conscience that of all the articles that our confession sets forth, there is not one that can be solidly refuted from the holy Scriptures; and the Jesuits themselves in the Colloquy of Regensburg [1601] said that there is not even one heresy that can be sufficiently refuted from only Scripture. Therefore, because they hold our doctrine as heretical, it follows that the Esauites would strive in vain to 60. NOW AT LAST,

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refute it from holy Scripture alone. Therefore, this entire disputation of our Pázmány is useless. But for the sake of fulfilling his desire, he brings to bear certain things wherein, he contends, the Confession teaches on one hand [doctrines] outside of Scripture and on the other contrary to it, which we will [now] examine.

61. He says “outside of the Scriptures” because the confession teaches: (1) that we respectfully receive the Mass with all its accustomed ceremonies; (2) the apostles transferred the sanctification of the Sabbath to the Lord’s Day; (3) keeping the third commandment inviolate consists in this, that it obligates for the celebration of a feast, but what pertains to the sanctification of the Sabbath is the only variation that could occur; (4) the term for “essence” and “person” are present in the Godhead. For all these things, he says, are not read anywhere in Holy Scripture.

I respond first generally: (1) it is rightly noted that all these things that the Esauite says here about the Mass, the sanctification of the Lord’s Day, about the transfer of the Sabbath, the essence and persons in the Godhead, the Papists also believe, which if our confession is outside Scripture or it would urge what is nowhere read in Scripture, it is manifest that the Papists teach and believe many things that are outside of Scripture, and yet some of them, among whom was the apostate Johann Pistorius, dared to debate with us from only Holy Scripture.

(2) When we say that our doctrine contains nothing outside of the Scriptures, we do not understand this as including all the rites of the Church, which were always within the liberty of the Church, such as the celebration of the first day of the week, nor those terms whereby it is customary for the Church to explain the articles of the faith, such as the word essence and person, nor the τὸ ρητὸν or exact letter of [every] article of faith, but the dogmas themselves, which are necessary to believe under pain of salvation, are contained either with respect to the exact letter or plan in the Holy Scriptures. So Paul protests before Agrippa that he says nothing outside of what the prophets said would occur (Acts 26:22, cf. 13:38), and still he says about Jesus who had been raised from the dead, that through him the remission of sins will be proclaimed, and that all who believe in him will be justified, which, according to the letter, is not found in any of the prophets. So he employs phrases such as, that he was under the law, under sin, dying for sin, living in the flesh; he says the Lord of glory was crucified, the Son of God born of a woman, and so forth, which phrases are not extant in any of the prophets. He teaches about the rite of the Holy Supper in 1 Corinthians 11, about the use of doubtful things, about the eating of food sacrificed to idols [esu idolochytarum] and similar things that nevertheless are not mentioned in any of the prophets. And yet he said most truly that he did not teach anything outside of what had been written in the prophets, because the dogmas of faith that were handed down by him, had also been set forth either expressly or implicitly from the prophets.

62. Next, I am specifically responding to each of the Esauite’s objections: (1) that we should accept the pontifical Mass, which is imagined as a propitiato4

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Saxon chancellor Christian Beyer proclaims the Augsburg Confession in the presence of Emperor Charles V in 1530.

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ry sacrifice for the sins of the living and the dead. The Confession never taught this. But we have taught above (see chapter III) in what sense this is rightly said: that the Mass is retained among us and celebrated with the highest reverence.

We especially understand this as regarding the entire holy liturgy, with constant preaching of the word, prayers, holy sermons, and the use of the sacraments. But the Mass or holy liturgy is truly apostolic, recognized from the practice of the apostolic Church, and hence it is not in the least outside of Scripture.

(2) The sanctification of the seventh day was transferred by the apostles to the Lord’s Day is certainly not read in Scripture in express words. Nevertheless, μίασαββάτων, the first of the Sabbaths was also a it is gathered from this, because μίασαββάτων solemn feast in the Church of the apostles, so Paul commanded collections to be made on that day in the Corinthian church, since then people were more frequently gathering for holy things. Moreover, the first of the Sabbaths is the day closest following the Sabbath or seventh day, for which reason the day of resurrection is μίασαββάτων, the first of the Sabbath, or the first day of the week next folcalled μίασαββάτων lowing the Sabbath (for on that very day of the Sabbath, the women rested according to the law), which today is named the Lord’s Day from Revelation 1:10. Jerome also wants the first day of the Sabbaths, on which Paul wants the collections to be established, named the Lord’s Day. In Acts, also the first of the Sabbaths, it is read that the disciples came together for Paul’s preaching (Acts 20:7). What all those things teach well enough is that the change of the Sabbath into the Lord’s Day was an apostolic institution. Even if nothing especially stands out in Scripture, yet that means nothing, for what pertains to the rites of the Church about which individual points Scripture precisely defined nothing. However, the discussion here is not about rites but about the articles of faith and the same fundamentals.

(3) This is the same rationale about the third objection. For he treats of a certain ceremonial matter, not about an article of faith. So it would mean nothing, even if there is plainly nothing of this matter in Scripture. But in keeping the third commandment intact, although the Sabbath or the seventh day is no longer sanctified today, hence it is fitting that Paul expressly writes, “Let no one judge you in feast days, new moons, or sabbaths, which are shadows of things to come” (Col. 2:16). And just as Paul also takes up other things than ceremonial ones from the moral kind, such as from this—that in the law those who serve the altar have their food from the altar—he gathers the general rule that those who serve the Gospel must also live from the Gospel. And from the law that you should not muzzle the ox that treads out the grain, he takes a moral kind: that the worker is worthy of his wage. So also from the command to hallow the sabbath, we can gather a genus of not hallowing a certain day of the week. For the express mention of the Sabbath pertains to the ceremonial law that has been abrogated, which Paul teaches in Colossians 2:16; therefore, you see neither now do we teach anything outside of Scripture.

(4) Finally, it is not necessary that the terms for “essence” and “person” are extant in Scripture, provided that the things themselves (res ipsa) are present in Scripture, which the Esauites will not deny, unless they want to be Arians, since, 7

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as Nazianzus says, certain things are present in Scripture, even if they are not said. And (as Thomas grants me on this point), 9

If it is necessary that it may be asserted about God according to the term that holy Scripture teaches about God, it would follow that someone could not say anything about God in another language, unless in those which the Scripture of the Old and New Testament was first delivered. But the necessity to dispute with heretics forced finding new terms to signify the ancient faith. Innovation must not be shunned here, provided they are not profane as long as they do not depart from the sense of the Scriptures.

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Thus far Thomas. Therefore, not even simply with respect to these terms, we do not teach something outside of Scripture, because the things themselves understood by these words have been expressed evidently enough in Scripture, which no one would deny but an Arian. Moreover, because our confession mentioned the decree of the Nicene Council regarding the unity of the divine essence and the three persons, it did not happen as if (as our Esauite alleges) this article is unscriptural, but we will prove it from the authority of the Nicene Council. For the Apology for the confession holds this: “We have always taught, defended, and thought this article has the certain and firm testimonies in the holy Scriptures, which cannot be overthrown.” But he calls out this decree of the Nicene Council so that he would show that we do not reject all the decrees of the Nicene Council, as the Papists allege; but that what they themselves teach according to the authority of the Scriptures, we freely admit and acknowledge with free hearts the labors of the holy fathers against the heretics.

Todd Rester (PhD, Calvin Theological Seminary) is associate professor of church history at Westminster

Theological Seminary. He is the director for the Junius Institute for Digital Reformation Research and also works with the Dutch Reformed Translation Society.

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For Balduin’s entire response to Pázmány’s work, see Balduinus, Phosphorus Veri Catholocismi (Wittenberg: Johannes Gormannus, 1626). Balduin’s Defensio (1623) is found verbatim in its entirety in Phosphorus (1626), 403–576. On the significance of Pázmány, see R. Johnston, H. Louthan, and T. Ó hAnnracháin, “Catholic Reformers: Stanislas Hosius, Melchior Khlesl, and Peter Pázmány,” in A Companion to the Reformation in Central Europe, ed. H. Louthan and G. Murdock (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 210–22. On the commissioning of a Latin translation of Pázmány’s Hodegus so Wittenberg might refute it, see László Barta, “Adatok a Kalauzra Adott Wittenbergi Válasz Készíteséhez,” in Pázmány Péter és kora, ed.

E. Hargittay (Piliscsaba, 2001), 268–73; cited in Johston, Louthan, and Ó hAnnracháin, 215n42.

Esauitae is a pun on Iesuitae, the Jesuits; e.g., Lucas Osiander (1534–1604) terms the Jesuits Jebusitae vel Esauitae in his Epitomes Historiae Ecclesiasticae Centuriae XVI Pars Altera (Tübingen: Georg Gruppenbach, 1603), fol. (:)2v.

Basil, Moralia in PG 31:846–48; idem, On Christian Ethics, trans. Jacob van Sickle (New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2014).

Cf. Pázmány, Hodegus (1613), 346–48.

Cf. Pázmány, Hodegus (1613), 346.

Marginalia: Joh. Pistor. in suo Hodego. Germanico; Hodegetor; i.e., a guide or pathfinder, in Greek ὁδηγητήρ ὁδηγητήρ, in German, Wegweiser; see Johann Pistorius Jr. (1546–1608), Wegweiser vor alle verführte Christen (Münster Raesfeldt, 1599). Son of a renowned Lutheran pastor, trained in law and medicine at Wittenberg, Pistorius became an influential political, theological, and spiritual advisor to several German nobles as a Protestant and as a Roman Catholic. By 1584, he had converted from Lutheranism to Calvinism; by 1588, to Roman Catholicism. He was an active theological polemicist writing against Lutherans and Calvinists after 1588, eliciting manifold responses. See Cardinal Walter Kasper, ed., Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder-Verlag, 1999), 8:319ff.

7. Balduin, Defensio, fols. C2r–D1v.

8. Jerome, Contra Vigilantium in PL 23:339–52; idem, Against Vigilantius, NPNF2 6:417–23.

9. Gregory Nazianzus, Oration 31.21 (Fifth Theological Oration) in NPNF2 7:324.

10. Thomas Aquinas, ST, Ia q. 9, art. 8.

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R E F O R M AT I O N O U T TA K E S

Protestantism: A Maritime History

by Zachary Purvis

THE BEST STORIES come from boats. Tales of threatening gale winds and thousand-pound tunas are never blasé. Yet old fishermen are not on their oath when they reminisce about the weather they fought or the fish they caught in their youth. The annals of early modern Protestantism are also filled with stories—both striking and true—of boats and fish and seafarers. Maritime matters were everywhere in the world, because water made possible the movement of goods, ideas, and people—not least refugees. In what sense, then, can watercraft offer a key to the religious culture of the time?

Permit some examples. John Knox is remembered as a leader of the Reformation in Scotland and a founding father of Presbyterianism. Before he preached at St. Giles in Edinburgh, and before his exiles in England, Geneva, and Frankfurt, he survived nineteen months between 1547 and 1549 as a forsare or galley slave, pulling an oar on the French ship Notre Dame as it sailed from the North Sea to Nantes in Brittany to the Loire River and back. When he retold the story, he highlighted the experience as formative for his fellow Scots prisoners in learning to keep the faith amid hardships, mental and physical. When Catholic shipmen sang the Salve Regina, the hymn to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Scots donned, rather than removed, their caps; then they pulled their caps over their ears to block the sound. When the ship’s officer brought on deck a painted image of the Virgin for each member of crew to kiss, an unnamed Scot—almost certainly Knox himself—refused, whereupon the officer thrust it into his face. In Knox’s words, the man “took the idol, and advisedly looking about, he cast it into the river and said, ‘Let our Lady now save herself: she is light enough; let her learn to swim.’”

In 1497, Pope Alexander VI’s son Giovanni Borgia went missing. When the distraught father ordered the dragging of the Tiber River, Renaissance poet Jacopo Sannazaro quipped that, at last, the pope had become a “fisher of men.”

From the 1530s to the 1550s, Philip Melanchthon received multiple invitations to England. He accepted none of them. True, he remained committed to Wittenberg and the Saxon elector did not want to see him go. But Melanchthon had also resolved to avoid the sea. When he was a boy, his father asked a celebrated astronomer at the court of the Elector Palatine to read Philip’s horoscope, which announced that he would be shipwrecked. The Reformer was not a stoic, but he was interested in the stars, so he kept his distance from the English Channel for good measure.

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In 1589, Dr. Paul Luther, the third son of Martin Luther and Katharina von Bora, traveled on a passenger ship on the Elbe River—a boat of promise. Onboard, he struck up a conversation with Johannes Letzner, a Lutheran pastor historian who had devoted his life to collecting remnants of the German past. The topic came naturally: Martin Luther’s literary remains. Paul told Letzner that a few years earlier, he found the original manuscript of Luther’s commentary on one of the Pauline Epistles. He read it, realized its worth, and had it specially bound— his most valuable possession next to his Bible. When Paul Luther died, his sons sold many of their grandfather’s books and papers to Joachim Friedrich, margrave of Brandenburg. Some of the material was subsequently housed, and therefore preserved, in the Electoral Library in Berlin, including Luther’s commentary on Romans—possibly the very manuscript discussed on the Elbe.

The Edict of Nantes of 1598 brought peace to France after years of religious civil wars. Under the terms, the Reformed could worship in certain French cities, but no closer than five leagues from Paris. So, many French Huguenots traveled on the Seine River to attend church. On one such expedition, Isaac Casaubon, the great classical philologist, and his family were forced to make use of a leaky rowboat because all other boats were full. Halfway to their church, they were accidentally rammed by a barge pulled by two horses. Their skiff took on water and began to sink. Casaubon’s sons and sister scrambled into the barge, while he and his wife nearly drowned. When he finally made it to church—in time for the second service—he realized he had lost his favorite psalter in the water. He had given it to his wife as a wedding present and used it regularly for twenty-two years. Looking at a man seated in front of him, he recalled, “I peeked at his book so that I could join those singing the psalm. By chance they were singing the later part of Psalm 86. ‘Pulling my life from the depths, from the lowest tomb of the dead.’ I thought immediately of what Saint Ambrose says: ‘This is the peculiarity of the Book of Psalms, that everyone can use its words as if they were peculiarly and individually his own.’” Maritime vignettes offer another perspective to Reformation life, with un­dertows of meaning.

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Zachary Purvis (DPhil, University of Oxford) is lecturer of church history at Edinburgh Theological

Seminary. He is the author of Theology and the University in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).

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John Knox, John Knox’s History of the Reformation in Scotland, ed. W. C. Dickinson (Edinburgh: Nelson, 1949), 1:182; Jane Dawson, John Knox (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015), 54–58.

Knox, History, 1:108.

Jacopo Sannazaro, Opera omnia latine scripta (Venice, 1535), fol. 42r.

Charlotte Methuen, “The English Reformation in Wittenberg: Luther and Melanchthon’s Engagement with Religious Change in England 1521–1560,” Reformation & Renaissance Review 20 (2018): 209–34; B. L. Beer, “Philip Melanchthon and the Cambridge Professorship,” Notes & Queries 232 (1987): 185.

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Philip Melanchthon to Johannes Mathesius, July 30, 1557, in Melanchthons Briefwechsel. Kritische und kommentierte Gesamtausgabe. Regesten, ed. Heinz Scheible, vol. 8 (Frommann-Holzboog: Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1995), no. 8288.

Martin Luther, D. Martin Luther’s Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, vol. 56 (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1936), 13ff.; Johannes Ficker, ed., Luthers Vorlesung über den Römerbrief 1515/1516 (Leipzig: Theodor Weicher, 1908), 1:vii–xvi.

Isaac Casaubon, Ephemerides, ed. John Russell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1850), 2:618–21.

Dutch Ships in a Calm Sea by Willem van de Velde (1665)

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POEM

Sestina of the Burning Bush (Moses)

by Michael Lewis

The sun is high, the land brilliant and beautiful this morning as I tend the flock, the whole camp behind me, the land before, the burning heat upon me. The sheep are grazing, and awful thoughts consume me; thoughts of the glory I left behind, of the majesty of the city I grew up in. The majestic Pharaoh looms large in my mind: his beauty, his power, his knowledge, his glory.

And now my thoughts turn to another, the whole event drowning me, and the awful reality of his death, and my soul burns in agony. The pain is short as a light burns my eyes; the light is distant, but majestic, and though the flame wavers, an awful feeling rises from within. The beauty of the light draws me forward, and I am wholly enchanted by its purity, by its glory.

Thoughts of my past filter away in the glory of the bush, a fire within but not burning and not consumed. This must be holy ground. A voice from within the bush, majestic and great, calls my name, “Moses,” and the beauty overwhelms me. “Moses,” the voice, awful

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and tender, calls me forward, to the awe-filled presence of the flame. “This is my glory, this is what you have longed for, my beauty.”

I press onward, toward the flame, the burning bush that speaks my name, and the majesty which I yearn for. “Moses, this is holy ground, take off your sandals; for I am holy.”

My bare feet are against the awful heat from the flame of the bush of the majesty of the Lord. I look behind me, to the glory surrounding me, all from the burning bush, resplendent in all God’s beauty.

“Moses, I am holy,” the glory speaks, and the awful presence of the burning bush is replaced with majesty, and His beauty.

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II.

Converse Discussing from perspectives of the present

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Everything I N

N AT U R E

Speaks of God: Understanding SOLA SCRIPTURA Aright

by J O R D A N S T E F FA N I A K

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A

VIRTUE OF EVANGELICALISM is its love and passion for the Bible. While it’s difficult to pin down what exactly evangelical means, cherishing the Bible almost always comes to mind. But it’s not just evangelicals who should love the Bible. Christians—especially Reformed Christians—ought to love the Bible too. We ought to love it given its character, its origin, its content, and its goal. Indeed, as Calvin urged, we cannot know or attain God unless we are “aided and assisted by his Sacred Word.”

As with all human loves, however, love of the Bible may become disordered.

Such a disordered love of the Bible sometimes leads to distortion of Christian orthodoxy and orthopraxy. One disordered variation is called biblicism. While the term may sound pious by its etymology (it nearly spells Bible!), it is in fact corrosive. In what follows, therefore, I intend to clarify the nature and danger of biblicism, while arguing in favor of a thicker and more classically Protestant understanding of Holy Scripture and the task of theology. While biblicism can corrode every area of theology from moral theology to anthropology, I intend to focus exclusively on the doctrine of God because of its prime position in theology and because of the growing number of biblicist treatments of the doctrine.

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What’s So Bad about Biblicism?

DEFINING BIBLICISM

The charge of distorting faithful orthodox doctrine and orthopraxis is a serious one deserving of careful argumentation. Such argumentation must begin with clear definitions. So, what is this biblicism that is so sinister? Although there are several ways biblicism could be defined, I will cover two of the more common variants. I begin first with the following definition: Biblicism: Scripture is authoritative for all concepts of God (and any other theological locus such as morality, anthropology, etc.). Therefore, theological commitments must emerge from Scripture alone and be consistent with Scripture. Intuition, creed, confession, tradition, or any other source is incompatible with the supremacy of the Scriptures.

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For most Protestants, this likely sounds good, right, and true. In fact, this sort of thinking is common. For example, consider Jeffrey Johnson’s recent popular level critique of Thomas Aquinas. He criticizes Thomas because his “doctrine of God is not rooted in revelation alone.” The key operative word 4

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here is alone. Nothing—not intuition, not creed, not confession, not tradition, not anything—can have input for theological construction to be faithful to the supremacy of the Scriptures. It is not just that theological commitments must be consistent with Scripture, but that they must emerge from Scripture alone.

If theological commitments come from or are influenced by anyone or anything besides Scripture—whether it be Plato, Aristotle, Thomas, or C. S. Lewis—they are to be rejected.

Oftentimes, this version of biblicism is defended by reference to the sufficiency of Scripture. It is assumed that for Scripture to be sufficient, no other epistemic resources should be brought to bear on the topic. But while it may seem virtuous to afford such a role for Scripture, I argue that it is practically impossible, contrary to the Scriptures themselves, often corrosive to faithful doctrine, and even contrary to the classic Protestant doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture. I believe there is a better way for reverencing the Scriptures.

G E T T I N G C L E A R O N N AT U R A L T H E O L O GY

Before elucidating the various problems with biblicism as defined, it is helpful to clarify what biblicism is rejecting as a means of knowledge. The definition of biblicism above provides several examples: intuition, creed, confession, and tradition. These are broadly part of “natural theology” whereas “supernatural theology” is strictly identical to the Scriptures themselves and extremely disciplined descriptive theological tasks. I take it that biblicism attempts to create a conflict between these “natural” means and the “supernatural” means of Scripture. While many who hear the term “natural theology” often associate it exclusively with the proofs for God’s existence and attempts to justify theism apart from divine revelation, I think this is an insufficient understanding. A better approach is to follow Herman Bavinck’s distinction that natural theology is that which is “through” the natural order, whereas supernatural theology is “from beyond” the natural order. Both are equally revelations of God. The difference is in the manner of revelation. Therefore, natural theology, as I take it, is the knowledge of God the Creator through his creation, whether that is human cognitive capacities like intuition or the socially mediated summary of sound doctrine in tradition. Natural theology is not to be understood as a means to obtaining the salvific revelation of God as Redeemer independent from supernatural theology.

Now, I can clarify the specific means of natural theology. First, intuition is broadly construed as a person having a mental state in which a proposition seems to be true. This can be defined more stringently in terms of either beliefs, dispositions to believe, or sui generis states (e.g., states such as “seemings” where P seems to be true to S). But no matter how one defines the inner workings of intuition, some intuitions are stronger than others. For example: 5

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Intuition 1: Torturing an innocent person is wrong Intuition 2: Spanking a child is wrong Intuition 3: Rooting for the St. Louis Cardinals is wrong Depending on the person, each of these intuitions varies in strength. Some, like intuition 1, are nearly universal, whereas some, like intuition 3, are rare and appear arbitrary.

Second, tradition is what Scott Swain and Michael Allen call “the temporally extended, socially mediated activity of renewed reason.” It is the church’s “abiding in and with apostolic teaching through time.” It is neither static nor infallible in this Protestant construal. Tradition is properly considered natural theology, given that it is not an infallible supernatural provision from God. Third, creed and confession are those codified summaries of orthodox and right doctrine. Examples of creeds are the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed. Examples of confessions are the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) and the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith. The creeds are broader and more universally accepted, whereas confessions typically serve as denominational boundaries.

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GENERAL PROBLEMS WITH BIBLICISM

Biblicism has several serious ailments. First, such a hard version of biblicism as defined here is impossible. It is unfeasible to derive any theological concept from Scripture without a secondary means apart from Scripture. Theology cannot be done within this biblicist framework. Even the basic reading of the text and forming an idea of it is itself external to Scripture. Therefore, no one can consistently adhere to biblicism, because biblicism itself is a theological concept derived rationally from Scripture and is thus unacceptable as a theory by the grounds of its own premise. Moreover, such a vision of theology is inconsistent with Scripture’s own vision. As Herman Bavinck says, “God has not called us to literally repeat but to reflect on what he has antecedently thought and laid out in revelation.”

Therefore, contemplative reasoning is an essential part of theology if we desire to do anything more than the literal repetition of the Scriptures into which biblicism would lock us.

Second, Scripture itself validates means external to Scripture as divine sources of revelation. Psalm 19:1 exclaims that “the heavens declare the glory of God” and Romans 1:20 claims that God’s “invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.” Therefore, as Steven Duby suggests, “In light of Romans 1, it is not just reason but faith itself . . . that compels us to affirm the reality of a natural knowledge of God.” It is not as if natural knowledge of God is obtained by following a pathway that Scripture rejects. Scripture speaks of humanity knowing God in creation itself. We can know God as Creator, as Basil suggests, “through what he has made.” Calvin 9

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“ God has not called us to literally repeat but to reflect on what he has antecedently thought and laid out in revelation.”

–Herman Bavinck (1854–1921)

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echoes these sentiments, saying, “This skillful ordering of the universe is for us a sort of mirror in which we can contemplate God, who is otherwise invisible.”

Therefore, biblicism violates its own maxim by not allowing these scriptural texts to speak in their fullness.

Third, biblicism has led to numerous theological constructions that have either departed from classical orthodoxy or significantly modified it. For example, Scott Oliphint previously attempted to promote God having “accidental” or “contingent” attributes that are mutable in God. Bruce Ware similarly argued that God has relational mutability. Such doctrinal constructions are in conflict with the church confession of God through the ages.

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A MORE NUANCED BIBLICISM

But biblicism is not restricted to those who argue that Scripture must be the sole source of our theology. There is another, more nuanced route to a biblicist framework. Consider the following revised definition: Temporal Biblicism: Scripture is authoritative for all concepts of God (and any other theological locus such as morality, anthropology, etc.). Therefore, theological commitments must emerge from Scripture first and be consistent with Scripture. Intuition, creed, confession, tradition, or any other source is incompatible with the supremacy of the Scriptures if they are understood temporally prior to Scripture. “ But those who say . . . that he is mutable or alterable the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes.”

–Council of Nicaea (325)

In this definition, rather than Scripture needing to be the sole resource for theology, it must be the first resource for theology. Take Bruce Ware as a representative example. He argues that “God is not to be understood first in his metaphysical perfections, for such notions of God are supplied by philosophy and not divine revelation.” Ware argues for a strict binary between scriptural knowledge and every other mode of knowing, saying that God should not be understood first by concepts from nature before supernature.

The key problem noted by Ware is that mediums of knowledge besides Scripture hold primacy over Scripture because of a distorted epistemic ordering. For Ware, if someone knowingly or unknowingly understands God through nature before Scripture, then in their methodology they reject the authority of the Bible. So, Ware does not deny the validity of natural theology. Scripture need not be the sole source of theology. But he argues that natural theology has a required location in the process of knowing that should not usurp supernatural theology.

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Despite the pious sounding concerns about epistemic ordering or “good dogmatic order” from those like Ware, such versions of biblicism fail to convince for

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several reasons. First, the Christian tradition largely disagrees. While many seek to follow such good dogmatic order, there is no consensus or necessity in this ordering. Good dogmatic order does not require Holy Scripture to exercise epistemic primacy in every respect. While the Christian tradition affirms the Spirit’s epistemic work as the ontological principle of knowledge (the Spirit himself ) and the infallible external cognitive principle of knowledge (Scripture), it also affirms that the Spirit functions as the internal cognitive principle, causing knowledge to be received, contemplated, and confessed via various sources. Such an understanding of the epistemic ordering is decidedly not temporally relevant. The internal cognitive principle can often pedagogically precede the external cognitive principle. And this is not understood as a problem. Scripture remains logically prior. Nor does such an understanding suggest that the external and internal principles cannot function independently.

Second, the temporal order of theology is not as cut and dried as some suggest. For example, take the classical Christian project of faith seeking understanding. This is a dogmatic project, assuming the truth of beliefs such as classical theism. From these foundations, further theological contemplation is practiced.

Such dogmatic reasoning assumes that Christians begin with faith and then use their sanctified reason to further seek out divine truth. This means that there is no temporal point at which dogmatic theology should ever issue apart from faith.

Faith is the garden in which both supernatural and natural theology flourish.

Rather than pitting supernatural and natural theology against each other, good dogmatic order is properly related to faith and understanding. So, there is such a thing as “good dogmatic order,” but it relates to faith. Moreover, no Christian practice of theologizing can ever truly be independent of supernatural theology.

Its theologizing always issues from exegesis at some point in the process—indeed it always initially issues from Scripture first, given Scripture’s role as the sole sufficient guide for all knowledge of God necessary for salvation.

Third, it is not wrong for natural theology to function independently of supernatural theology at times in seeking to know God the Creator. Most who intentionally conceive of God independently of Scripture do not intend to conceive of God in contradiction to Scripture; they intend to develop their thoughts independently of it for specific reasons (though never ignorant of it). So long as the conclusions are consistent with Scripture, there is no problem. Surely, none deny that supernatural theology is clearer than natural theology and objectively authoritative. Therefore, independent conceptions of God are never completely ignorant of nor independent from Scripture. There remains an interdependence, even if it is not explicitly notated. There is a larger pattern of authority within which Scripture networks, although it is the supreme authority. Though supernatural theology always stands to “sanctify” natural theology, correcting it where it errs and building it up where it is deficient, natural theology can provide legitimate content independently of and prior to Holy Scripture. Natural theology, by means of the Spirit’s self-manifestation, constitutes “true and proper effects of his pedagogical grace.”

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An Alternative Vision for Biblical Supremacy RETRIEVING THE RIGHT DOCTRINE OF SOL A SCRIPTURA

There is another reason biblicism falters: biblicism is not what the Protestant Reformers had in mind when they vigorously defended sola scriptura. While duly noting that biblicism genuinely seeks to follow sola scriptura, it must be admitted that it is, in the strong words of Allen and Swain, a “bastard child nursed at the breast of modern rationalism and individualism.” In contrast, the Reformers’ doctrine of sola scriptura never intended a wholesale rejection of the vast array of Spirit-given natural tools for the church to know God. It never imagined Scripture as alone in the cognitive process. Its purpose was to ensure that Scripture continued to critique and reform every natural object of knowing. Therefore, for the Reformers, sola scriptura was never intended to reject the deliveries and gifts of nature. Scripture and nature are not, as Bavinck strikingly puts it, “two independent powers engaging in a life-and-death struggle with each other.” Supernatural revelation, rather than destroying natural revelation, “perfects it” and makes it clearer, as Francis Turretin put it. The confession that natural theology has a role does not deny the norming authority of supernatural theology.

Given this summary, I suggest the following definition for sola scriptura in contrast to biblicism: 25

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Sola Scriptura: Scripture is authoritative for all concepts of God. Therefore, theological commitments must be consistent with Scripture. Intuition, creed, confession, tradition, and any other source is complementary to the magisterial rule of the Scriptures. They function as derivatively authoritative ministerial guides to right interpretation.

Notice that the sole requirement for theological commitments is consistency with Scripture. Epistemic ordering (the first source) and epistemic primacy (the sole source) are absent. Sola scriptura is not about the Bible as the sole source or the first source, but about the Bible as the supreme source. Scripture is the organic principle from which the entire Christian faith—including, theology, preaching, confession, liturgy, and worship—arises and is nurtured. Scripture remains the sole foundation and norm, though it is not the only epistemic means.

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T H E S U F F I C I E N CY O F S C R I P T U R E

As noted initially, there is a tendency among many biblicists to claim support for their anemic view of Scripture from the doctrine of its sufficiency. But I argue that this is a misunderstanding of the sufficiency of Scripture. Consider 2LCF 1.1 wherein the doctrine is spelled out:

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The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience, although the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men inexcusable; yet they are not sufficient to give that knowledge of God and His will which is necessary unto salvation.

There are several important aspects to note. First, Scripture’s sufficiency is about salvation. It is not about every detail of the Christian faith. It is definitely not about non-scriptural areas, such as molecular biology. Sufficiency has a limited scope. Second, Scripture’s sufficiency does not invalidate the “light of nature” as a legitimate means of knowing God. Sola scriptura is about the Bible being the supreme authority, not the only authority. The Bible’s sufficiency is not selfsufficient in the sense of being independent of God’s ordained means such as pastors, tradition, the Holy Spirit, and so on. We need other aids, even as simple as basic rational capacities to hear, read, and understand.

Third, when it comes to the doctrine of God, there is much about God not revealed explicitly in Scripture. To think that God has exhaustively revealed himself in Scripture seems to contradict his infinity. This is the point behind 2LCF 1.7 and the perspicuity of Scripture. Affirming that Scripture is sufficient is not the same as claiming that it is exhaustive.

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The Differences Clarified It is important to summarize the differences between biblicism and the classical vision of sola scriptura. Both biblicism and sola scriptura affirm the centrality of the Scriptures for knowledge of God, and they would both heartily affirm statements like this one from Kevin Vanhoozer: “Scripture is the divinely appointed means by which God generates and governs the church’s understanding of who he is and what he has done in the Son and Spirit for us and our salvation.” So, the key difference between them is not the authority of Scripture, but the outworking of this authority for external sources. For biblicism, the Bible is either completely alone or must have temporal primacy. Biblicism gives no room for natural theology to serve a role in knowing God. Scripture is either the only or first authority rather than the highest authority. Therefore, for one version of biblicism, knowledge of the divine ends up being exorcised from all secondary sources. It confesses a faith divorced from nature. It often repudiates any form of traditional metaphysical thinking, and it functions as an extreme form of fideism that historically has led to rationalism. Speaking or thinking of anything else—such as intuition, creed, confession, or tradition—in any positive fashion is “to tread on confessional eggshells.” For temporal biblicism, the knowledge of God ends up being inadvertently hijacked by our own presuppositions and biases. It then becomes relatively easy to cast doubt on other interpretations because they did not follow the same methodological order.

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“ Nay, but let every good and true Christian understand that wherever truth may be found, it belongs to his Master.”

–Augustine of Hippo (354–430)

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Whereas biblicism removes either the role or authority of natural knowledge, classic sola scriptura recognizes the norming authority of Scripture, while making room for doctrine derived from Scripture alongside various natural manners of revelation. The Bible is not an independent authority. It functions as the supreme authority within a larger pattern of authority. So, classic sola scriptura views the Spirit’s epistemic work beyond the ontological principle of knowledge (the Spirit himself ) and the external cognitive principle of knowledge (Scripture). The Spirit also functions as the internal cognitive principle, causing knowledge to be received, contemplated, and confessed via various sources. In scriptural language, this is an extrapolation of commands such as 2 Timothy 2:7 to “think over” what Scripture says. It is a difficult and joyous wrestling with the text of Scripture by means of the light of nature through the divinely given gift of reason.

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Conclusion Herman Bavinck said that “to the devout everything in nature speaks of God.” In a phrase, this is the Reformed vision of Holy Scripture and the task of theol-

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1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

Thomas S. Kidd, Who Is an Evangelical? The History of a Movement in Crisis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), 4–5.

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2006), I.VI.4.

Jordan L. Steffaniak, “The God of All Creation: A Critique of Evangelical Biblicism and Recovery of Perfect Being Theology,” Journal of Reformed Theology 14, no. 4 (December 1, 2020): 361, https://doi. org/10.1163/15697312-bja10008.

Jeffrey D. Johnson, The Failure of Natural Theology: A Critical Appraisal of the Philosophical Theology of Thomas Aquinas (Conway, AR: Free Grace Press, 2021), 48.

Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, ed. John Bolt, trans.

John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 1:307; Thomas H. McCall, An Invitation to Analytic Christian Theology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015), 41; Franciscus Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, trans. David C. Noe (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2014), 160.

Steven J. Duby, God in Himself: Scripture, Metaphysics, and the Task of Christian Theology (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2019), 71.

Joel Pust, “Intuition,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (Summer 2019), https:// plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2019/entries/intuition/.

Michael Allen and Scott R. Swain, Reformed Catholicity: The Promise of Retrieval for Theology and Biblical Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2015), 36, 34.

Christian Smith, The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2012), 3.

10. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 1:618.

11. Duby, God in Himself, 68.

12. Basil, Against Eunomius, trans. Mark DelCogliano and Andrew Radde-Gallwitz (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011), 1.14.

13. Calvin, Institutes, I.5.1. Now, it is important to note that Calvin has a generally negative view of natural revelation, saying that despite its “very great clarity, such is our stupidity that we grow increasingly dull toward so manifest testimonies.” Therefore, natural revelation is a somewhat vexed topic for Calvin. Regardless, avoiding the exegetical dispute, I take Calvin’s positive understanding of natural revelation at face value: God reveals himself in nature. Natural revelation is unprofitable for the nonbeliever because it only renders him unexcused. But for the Christian, it can be of great profit.

14. K. Scott Oliphint, God with Us: Divine Condescension and the Attributes of God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), 82–88.

15. Bruce A. Ware, God’s Greater Glory: The Exalted God of Scripture and the Christian Faith (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2004), 140–55.

16. Bruce A. Ware, “An Evangelical Reexamination of the Doctrine of the Immutability of God” (PhD diss., Fuller Theological Seminary, 1984), 238.

17. Ware, “An Evangelical Reexamination, ” 238.

18. Allen and Swain, Reformed Catholicity, 31–32; Kevin J. Vanhoozer, “May We Go beyond What Is Written after All? The Pattern of Theological Authority and the Problem 9.

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ogy. It is not limited to Scripture alone, though Scripture is the sole infallible and authoritative norm for all theology. Malnourished evangelical doctrines of Scripture that rely on biblicist frameworks cut themselves off from the rich and bountiful harvest of resources that God created and provides. In forfeiting these, evangelicals have also often forfeited orthodox doctrines. But there is a better way. This way is modeled by the Reformers and their thicker understanding of Scripture and its relationship to God’s supreme creative authority.

Unlike biblicism, this way has the conceptual resources needed to make sense of God and his world.

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Jordan Steffaniak (ThM, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary) is cofounder of the London

Lyceum and editor of the annual Theologia Viatorum: Journal of the London Lyceum. He is a research fellow for the Center for Faith and Culture at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and a PhD student in philosophy at the University of Birmingham, studying the intersection of conciliar Christology and anthropology.

of Doctrinal Development,” in The Enduring Authority of the Christian Scriptures, ed. D. A. Carson (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), 763.

19. Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 2:151.

20. Augustine, The Trinity, trans. Edmund Hill (Hyde Park, NY: New City, 2015), I.1.1, 1; V.1, 1; Augustine, On Christian Teaching, trans. R. P. H. Green, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), I.14; Gregory of Nazianzus, On God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius, trans. Frederick Williams and Lionel R. Wickham (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002), 28.28.

21. Peter Van Inwagen, Metaphysics, 4th ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2015), 9. For example, Van Inwagen explains why he leaves out revelation in this work: “The reason is simple enough: by appealing to physical cosmology, I do not restrict my audience in any significant way, and if I were to appeal to what I believed to be divine revelation, I should no doubt restrict my audience to those who agreed with me about the content of divine revelation—and I do not wish so to restrict my audience.”

22. Vanhoozer, “May We Go beyond What Is Written after All?,” 764.

23. John Webster, The Domain of the Word: Scripture and Theological Reason (New York: Bloomsbury, 2012), 129.

24. Allen and Swain, Reformed Catholicity, 45.

25. Allen and Swain, Reformed Catholicity, 85.

Carl R. Trueman, “Reckoning with the Past in an AntiHistorical Age,” Themelios 27, no. 3 (August 2002): 35; Rhyne R. Putman, “Baptists, Sola Scriptura, and the Place of the Christian Tradition,” in Baptists and the Christian Tradition: Toward an Evangelical Baptist Catholicity, ed. Matthew Y. Emerson, Christopher W. Morgan, and R. Lucas Stamps (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2020), 39–43.

27. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 1:616.

28. Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, ed. James T. Dennison, trans. George Musgrave Giger (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1994), 1:30–31.

29. Petrus van Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, ed. Joel R. Beeke, trans. Todd M. Rester (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2018), 1:127.

30. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 1:493.

31. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 1:488.

32. Kevin J. Vanhoozer, “The Sufficiency of Scripture: A Critical and Constructive Account,” Journal of Psychology and Theology 49, no. 3 (September 2021): 2, https://doi. org/10.1177/0091647121995836.

33. Vanhoozer, “May We Go beyond What Is Written after All?,” 761.

34. Alister E. McGrath, Darwinism and the Divine: Evolutionary Thought and Natural Theology (West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 18.

35. Allen and Swain, Reformed Catholicity, 31–32; Vanhoozer, “May We Go beyond What Is Written after All?,” 763.

36. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 1:308.

37. My thanks go to Lucas Sabatier, Brandon Carmichael, and Tim Stanyon for feedback on an early draft of this work.

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I N T E RV I EW

Evangelical Biblicism over the Years Blake Adams with Timothy Larsen

In 2020, InterVarsity Academic Press published an anthology on the history of evangelical biblicism titled Every Leaf, Line, and Letter: Evangelicals and the Bible from the 1730s to the Present.

For this issue, Blake Adams interviewed Dr. Timothy Larsen, the editor of Every Leaf, Line, and Letter. Larsen is McManis Professor of Christian Thought at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. Much of his published scholarship concerns the global history of evangelicalism since its appearance in eighteenth-century England, and his expertise provides a historical bedrock for discussing biblicism today. Blake Adams is an associate at the Church of the Resurrection in Wheaton, Illinois, and a copyeditor at Wipf & Stock Publishers.

What is “biblicism” in historical evangelicalism?

At its root, “biblicism” is about the Protestant conviction of sola scriptura: that the Bible alone is the final authority for Christian faith and practice. For evangelicals, sola scriptura does not have implications just for theology; it is also about worship. The right kind of worship service for the congregation is one in which Scripture is read and there is a sermon that expounds Scripture. It’s also about individual spirituality. What it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ is to have a discipline of regular Bible reading as an individual. Historically, evangelicals tended to emphasize family devotions, which included Bible reading. Often, you would have one member read aloud a portion of Scripture every evening to the rest of the family. This was a way of emphasizing the importance of Scripture at that level. The individual level, the family level, and the congregational level are all involved in a historic evangelical definition of biblicism. So, historical evangelical biblicism is both doctrine and practice.

In David Bebbington’s famous “quadrilateral,” biblicism was meant to emphasize that evangelicals are orthodox Christians. So, they believe what Christians have believed historically, which I think is right. There are other people who use biblicism in entirely different ways. Sometimes, they use it to mean a simplistic appeal to texts as a way to solve an argument. There’s a “proof-texting” connotation for some uses of the term. Bebbington’s use of “biblicism” does not mean that; he means a value that orients the Christian life.

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You hit here on a common association between “biblicism” and “literalism,” or more negatively, a “simplistic reading of Scripture.” How would you parse those?

Biblicism does entail, I think, or at least heavily overlap, with an assumption that the very words of Scripture are the word of God. There are different ways and technical phrases that people hold to or dispute about what that means theologically, but I want to put it as encompassing pretty much the whole movement: the very words of Scripture are the word of God; and you have to attend to those words and submit to what God is saying to you.

Every word of Scripture matters, and the words themselves matter. It is a mistake to think you can extract from Scripture some kind of moral, lesson, principle, or truth and then dispense with the words because you think you’ve found their meaning. Obviously, not every word of Scripture is meant to be taken literally (meaning that there is nothing metaphorical, poetic, etc., also operative in the text). All of Scripture is meant to communicate truth to us, but we have to take Scripture on its own terms and understand the truth it is communicating, rather than impose on it questions it isn’t trying to answer or extract truths it’s not giving us. “The very words of Scripture are the words of God” is my preferred way of putting it.

It is not an option in historic evangelicalism to say, “Well, the Bible says that, but I don’t agree,” or “It’s wrong,” or “That’s offensive, so we should discard it.”

The evangelical way is to say, “This is God speaking; therefore, it is my duty to hear what God is saying, and what God says is addressed to me as well as to the original audience.”

Your contribution to Every Leaf, Line, and Letter introduces readers to the life and teachings of Rev. Vernon Storr, an obscure figure today but in the early twentieth century something like a representative for liberal evangelicalism.

In your study, you helpfully leverage Bebbington’s quadrilateral to show that Storr met all four points except, notably, biblicism. A pundit would say this makes Storr only three-fourths an evangelical. Yet your article seems to suggest that biblicism tends to be the point of division within evangelicalism; that is, biblicism is what really distinguishes one evangelical from another. Would you say this is true, historically? Is it true today?

That’s a fascinating and astute question. If we take Scripture seriously, as the way you solve or advance an argument, and if sola scriptura means that if authorities conflict then the final authority that trumps the others is Scripture, in the end, every argument is going to be a biblical argument. When evangelicals disagree on anything, they need to have a disagreement that is framed by Scripture if they are being faithful to their tradition. If you want to advance an argument for or against anything—to speak randomly: infant baptism, pacifism, or submission to the government, or whatever you’re concerned about—the way evangelicals argue means that if you argue long enough, you will get to Scripture eventually, because Scripture is the final authority. I think your observation is right. In some ways,

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Every Leaf, Line, and Letter edited

by Timothy Larsen

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biblicism creates the grammar or rules of an argument so that every evangelical argument, if it is true to itself, becomes a biblical argument.

Is that something more characteristic of evangelicals than other Christians?

As you put it, biblicism in evangelicalism is diffused in congregational, family, and individual devotion. Is there a sort of artificiality that comes with this that forces an argument to be biblical when it doesn’t need to be?

The theological claim is correct that says Scripture is the final authority for faith and practice. But you’re certainly right that evangelicals tend to want to expand Scripture to be the final authority on anything. You often cannot get Scripture to answer questions it isn’t trying to answer. If your question is “Which chemistry experiment is better?” the answer is not going to come from Scripture because Scripture is not trying to answer that. But if the question is about faith and practice—the right ordering of Christian life—then Scripture is the final authority.

What would you say is the greatest misconception about biblicism among evangelicals today?

I think one confusion that a lot of evangelicals have is with the very phrase sola scriptura. Some evangelicals think Scripture is the only authority Christians have. Theologically, that is not true. Theologically, it means that if there is a dispute between authorities, Scripture alone gets the final word. But there are lots of other authorities God has given: church leaders, the tradition, the prompting of the Holy Spirit in our conscience, and so on. There are lots of other legitimate authorities that govern the Christian life and that have their role in guiding and safeguarding the people of God. It’s a wrong view of biblicism to obliterate those other authorities. But it is a right view to say that when it comes to a conflict, for example, if Scripture says one thing but your bishop says another—or if Scripture says this but you sense a prompting of the Holy Spirit that says otherwise—then sola scriptura means you follow Scripture.

How have evangelical attitudes toward the Bible changed in your lifetime?

What has really changed is practice. Not the attitude, officially; maybe, it is an unwitting change in attitude. But evangelicals have increasingly allowed a less and less biblically literate culture to be a part of congregational life and discipleship.

The obvious part of this is how the spiritual formation of children and teens happens, which deals with big cultural forces. I sympathize, and I understand what the pressures are, but we’ve moved as a whole culture from a culture in which you tell children and youths to do things because they are good for them, to one where you try to cater to what they want and desire. This has led, for example, into a greater emphasis on the importance of having fun; whereas in the past, the building up of scriptural knowledge was central to what it meant for children and youths to meet in a Christian context. That has eroded significantly over my lifetime.

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What’s an old practice you’d like to bring back or a new practice you’d like to implement to correct this erosion?

I think for all—not just children and youths, but for the whole congregation—either you encounter the whole of Scripture or you don’t, and that difference is huge. If you have a policy, even if it’s implicit, that you won’t let people encounter anything too confusing or unsettling, the half-life of that policy becomes shorter and shorter. More and more texts become things that now look confusing because you haven’t explained other texts, so you shrink down the canon enormously. It reaches the point where you might offer little more than a few biblical parables about being nice to other people—something people can still comprehend. You have ensured that most of Scripture remains bewildering.

Scripture can be bewildering, but what the church has always done in response to that has been to patiently train people to become familiar with the world of Scripture and understand what’s happening. If that’s not your first instinct, the category of what you must avoid gets vaster and vaster. There has to be some way for all the congregation to hear all the Scriptures. Practically, this begins at the level of preaching. Texts should regularly come from the Old Testament as well as the New and should be chosen from across all of the literary genres in Scripture.

When did the Bible become no longer part of our culture?

That’s an important question. The change is still happening by gradations as one generation gets older and another dies off. I think the beginning was in the 1960s with the “new process,” when children began to be allowed to decide what they wanted to do, rather than parents deciding what’s good for them. It’s not that parents decided that they didn’t want their children to know the Bible; they just decided not to argue with them when they tried to wake them up early enough to go to Sunday school. Point is, it’s not about a conscious new view of the Bible. It’s about the inability to inculcate things that are good for you that take some discipline and fortitude.

When President George W. Bush was inaugurated, he alluded to “the Jericho Road,” Jesus’ setting for the parable of the Good Samaritan, a major commentator on a leading news network said openly he had no idea what Bush meant. The parable of the Good Samaritan is not obscure!

That said, the young Christians I meet today are just as zealous, passionate, and sincere in their faith as any Christians I’ve met in my lifetime. They are deeply desirous of finding a way to make their lives count for Christ, and they are willing to do that as sacrificially as anyone has in history. So, I do not see any kind of declension in faithfulness to Christ and the desire to serve him at a cost.

What happens throughout church history is that by emphasizing one thing, you let go of another. One generation will emphasize holiness (which, between you and me, might be due for a comeback), but that can metastasize into judgmentalism and legalism. The rising generation then notices that this emphasis on holiness creates a barrier that makes us less capable of rescuing those who are fallen or lost. It shortens the supply of grace and openness that converts messy

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lives into the faith. But that reaction can veer into cheap grace. So some of the ways in which biblicism became less emphasized were for good things that were being emphasized; namely, that Christianity is a living relationship with a living God. A lot of spiritual formation focused on an intimate relationship with God. With this, there was some reaction against the spiritual formation practices of the past that emphasized rote memorization, for example. But I do think that we’re due for a renaissance of biblical literacy, and that it will start in the church.

What is distinctive about American evangelical biblicism as opposed to biblicism elsewhere?

It overlaps with a deeply American idea of individualism and self-­sufficiency.

We are a vast continent. There are significant chunks of American history when people were unable to attend church because the population density wasn’t great enough to have one. That’s partly why camp revival meetings emerged: you needed the equivalent of a country fair for church life, because people were too dispersed to meet as a congregation. That was a necessity. But it became a value that people assigned for themselves: “My spiritual life is between me and God.” The idea of sola scriptura has at times degenerated in American thought to “me and my Bible alone against any other structure, including the body of Christ, the church.”

I think other evangelicals across the world have a stronger sense of the Christian life as a corporate life: of us together, as the people of God, hearing Scripture and obeying it; and since I am but a small part of the body and not the whole, I cannot even faithfully discern what the Scriptures mean if I don’t hear and interact with the other parts of the body, all of whom bring things I would not see, feel, or prioritize by myself.

What is one thing you would like evangelical readers to take away from this book?

A sense of the inexhaustibility of Scripture because Scripture is the living and active word of God. When I was maybe seventeen years old, I read Augustine’s Confessions for the first time. Augustine talked about his love of the Psalms, and it was so powerful to me. It was like, “Oh, this living thing that I’ve touched, you’ve touched. I recognize that life in you. You’re a fourth-century African, but we both have felt the power of the living word of God, and I recognize that in you.”

As a historian, I’ve learned to read someone in a different time or place or denomination. Although I might be bewildered by some of it, all of a sudden, they’ll start talking about Romans or Genesis and I realize: “The living Word of God has connected with you.” If we come to Scripture with a desire to hear from God, his grace will meet us there.

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POEM

A Baby’s Blessing

by Mackenzie K. Sigmon

Little chest red and naked Rising with powerful breath.

Eyes seeing forever on.

The world is birthed anew.

Ears once deaf in pink sleep.

Your dreams in warm silence are done. Welcome this fresh world of music. Your life, newborn boy, has begun.

Your world was flesh and light.

The stethoscope was your first cold. But one day, with those allseeing eyes, I’ll take you out to see snow.

History stretches behind you.

You stand with your back to the past. Looking forward to the future.

Stand tall, boy. Steadfast.

Already your mind is working.

You see but do not yet know.

I’ll read you books and teach you, too. I’ll learn with you as you grow.

Against my chest, find your rest with your heartbeat over mine. I will be a knight for you.

Baby boy. Life anew.

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Persuade Thinking theologically about all things

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Restoring EVE

by K E N D R A D A H L

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OME OF MY earliest impressions of Eve were shaped by C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. In the world of Narnia, to be a “daughter of Eve” is simply to be human—not centaur or dwarf, fawn or talking animal. But to descend from Eve is also to have a royal destiny, to be a heroine who will rescue Narnia from the reign of the White Witch, from the chilled reality of always winter, never Christmas. I claimed the mantle “Daughter of Eve,” as I pictured myself enthroned with Queen Lucy the Valiant.

But a conflicting image also emerged. I learned to picture Eve like I was taught on the Sunday school flannel board: She stands before a wily snake, leaves strategically covering her nakedness and naivety. In my childish mind, Eve is more like Snow White than “the mother of all living,” and the snake takes the form of the beady-eyed witch, cloaked in black, her devilish smile hidden behind the glowing red apple she holds before the princess. The animated Snow White is my least favorite Disney princess. I observe neither courage nor passion; she has no adventure of her own, nor any real wit or depth. I wonder if Eve, like Snow White, is also flighty and easily deceived. Is this my feminine heritage?

These sketches morph and twist through the years. Eve is used in countless lessons to warn me of my propensities as a woman—to be deceived, to usurp, to covet, to fall (and lead) into temptation. We know little of Eve’s virtues, so I am mostly warned of her vices. We excavate her story for truth related to what it means to be a woman, and mostly, it doesn’t look good. My womanhood is dripping with power I must learn to suppress, lest I take the human race down with me.

Many women have walked this meandering path through womanhood’s biblical roots, navigating interpretations based more on the influence of art, literature, and the shifting tides of history and culture than the text itself. Stretching back centuries, biblical exegesis gets buried under layers of cultural bias, and we too are guilty of reading our experiences into the text, pointing to what we observe in our own time and place, and turning to Scripture to support our preconceived ideas. Mostly, we don’t do this vindictively—we hold sincerely to our biblical convictions. But it’s complicated. How do we identify and shed years of influence? How do we know what’s true when so many plausible possibilities have been offered? And what about when a proposed interpretation could deconstruct what we’ve always believed or threaten doctrines we consider foundational—our strongholds in the culture war, perhaps, or against the slippery slope of liberalism? These questions don’t have easy answers, but they are worth revisiting nonetheless. Eve and her descendants have been trapped in an identity crisis for far too long.

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At the Heart of the Debate: Genesis 3:16 To the woman he said, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children.

Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” (NIV) In evangelicalism, Genesis 3:16 rests at the center of debates regarding the role of women in the church, home, and society, and interpretations are often shaped by preconceived ideas about the nature of men and women and their roles.

Of particular significance for the debates is the interpretation offered by Susan Foh. In the midst of second-wave feminism in 1975, Foh defined the woman’s “desire” in Genesis 3:16 as “a desire to possess or control [her husband] . . . to contend with him for leadership in their relationship.” In her study of the Hebrew word translated desire (teshuqah)—which is found only in Genesis 3:16, 4:7, and Song of Songs 7:10—Foh uses etymology to build a semantic range for this rare word, arguing that cognate evidence supports desire having an adversarial nuance.

She corroborates this proposal by drawing out the parallels between Genesis 3:16 and 4:7. In Hebrew, these verses are exactly parallel, except for changes in person and gender. As a result, Foh considers Genesis 4:7 the interpretive key to Genesis 3:16, despite the preference by other commentators throughout history to associate Genesis 3:16 with Song of Songs 7:10 since they both address male-female relationships. She argues that the meaning in Genesis 4:7 is straightforward: “Sin’s desire is to enslave Cain—to possess or control him, but the Lord commands, urges Cain to overpower sin, to master it.” According to Foh, this clarifies what is unclear in Genesis 3:16. Like sin, the woman desires to possess or control her husband. This has implications for the interpretation of the husband’s rule as well. Foh holds that the husband’s rule is positive, a necessary corrective to the woman’s attempt to usurp her husband’s authority. As Cain needs to master the sin seeking to destroy him, so the man “must rule over [the woman], if he can.”

Her interpretation presented a solution to many conservative evangelicals searching for a way to respond to the feminist movement of the time. Feminism had infiltrated the church, causing many to question time-honored interpretations of passages involving manhood and womanhood, gender roles, and their implications within the church, home, and society.

The impact of her interpretation has been far-reaching for evangelicals. Foh offered insight into the feminist movement, even arguing it made biblical sense.

She isolated the cause—a woman’s inherent desire to usurp authority—and others applied her work, stressing submission for women and “biblical womanhood.” Over forty years later, Foh’s view has become the standard interpretation 1

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Detail from The Fall of Man and The Lamentation by Hugo van der Goes (1470/1475) (Bridgeman Images)

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of Genesis 3:16 by evangelical scholars. It has even made its way into the ESV translation: What once read, “Your desire shall be for your husband,” now reads, “Your desire shall be contrary to your husband.”

The fact that this argument is both polemical and biblical is what makes it complicated. Foh—and the complementarian pastors and theologians who have followed in her footsteps—have moved from reactivity to genuine conviction.

She has persuaded many by her arguments, so much so that the arguments no longer need to be made. Primed by our cultural moment to believe they’re true, we read our revised Bible translation and don’t give it a second thought.

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Why You Should Revisit Genesis 3:16 Though it would be easy to point to harmful applications of this take on Genesis 3:16, the fact is that implications are not the measure of truthfulness. But when exegesis is rooted in polemics, and its application leads to values and actions that contradict other portions of Scripture, perhaps it’s worth revisiting the text and asking ourselves honest questions about why we believe what we believe.

In the remainder of this essay, I would like to revisit Genesis 3:16 and see if it might be reimagined in a way that is more faithful to the text and more charitable of one another, and then consider what we, both men and women, can learn from both the process of reexamination and the implications for the church as we reclaim for women the mantle “Daughters of Eve.” ***

What’s in a Word?

Foh’s suggestion for the nature of the woman’s desire is one among many. Though not exhaustive, the table on the next page contains some of the prominent historical views for the meaning of teshuqah.

How are we to evaluate these possibilities? Some see the desire as positive, and some negative. Each view has its proponents throughout history, its explanations for the relationship of desire to the other aspects of the verse, and its arguments from the surrounding context (and personal experience).

Recent studies on the cognates of teshuqah and its appearance in the Dead Sea Scrolls have cast considerable doubt on Foh’s etymological argument for an adversarial nuance. Further, even the reading of Genesis 4:7, which appears to be quite clear in our English Bible translations, is actually rather difficult in Hebrew, in part due to its structure. Desire has a third-person masculine pronominal suffix, but its presumed antecedent, sin, is feminine. Scholars have explained this by seeing sin pictured as a (masculine) wild beast waiting to devour its prey. This is what is reflected in most English translations. The Septuagint (LXX), however, places Abel as the antecedent of desire, with Cain’s right of primogeniture in view. In other words, if Cain does what is right, the proper birth order will 10

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TRADITIONAL VIEWS OF THE WOMAN’S DESIRE (TESHUQAH) IN GENESIS 3:16

1. General Desire (the nature of which is defined by context)

“Yet your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” (NASB)

2. Sexual Desire

Yet your [sexual desire] will be for your husband, [and/but] he will rule over you.

3. Distorted Desire

Your [longing or dependence] will be for your husband, [and/but] he will rule over you.

4. Subordinate Desire or Obedience

Your desire will be [subordinate to] your husband, and he will rule over you

5. Adversarial Desire

“Your desire will be [contrary to] your husband, but he will rule over you.” (ESV 2016)

6. Returning/Turning

“And your [turning] shall be to your husband, and he shall rule over you.” (LXX translation)

be restored. Whatever one’s reading of Genesis 4:7, it is not as clear as Foh and others have claimed it to be.

Though Foh’s argument is rooted in etymology and in the verse’s parallels to Genesis 4:7, we simply can’t be sure about the nature of the woman’s desire based on these factors alone. The adversarial nuance is not embedded into teshuqah but must come from the context.

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The Context of Covenant Genesis is not just the foundation of “male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27); it’s the foundation of the Bible, the starting point for the story of God’s redemption of all things in Christ. Before we get to Genesis 3, we must consider Genesis 1–2; and before we consider gender roles, we must consider covenant.

Covenant is “the very fabric of Scripture . . . God’s chosen framework for the Bible.” This is not a framework imposed on Scripture, but one that arises from it; as Michael Horton explains, “It is not simply the concept of the covenant, but the concrete existence of God’s covenantal dealings in our history that provides the context within which we recognize the unity of Scripture amid its remarkable variety.”

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The Bible uses covenants to help us understand God’s dealings with his people, and this provides a framework for understanding redemptive history. The first few chapters in Genesis are instrumental in illuminating these concepts: At creation, God commits himself to his creation to sustain them and be God to them. So also, being created in the image of God by necessity obligates Adam to God. . . . God’s creation generates a relationship with implicit obligations.

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God’s covenant with Adam at creation has obedience at its center. This is known as the covenant of works, “wherein life was promised to Adam; and in him to his posterity, upon condition of perfect and personal obedience” (WCF 7.2). True to covenantal form, alongside the promised life awaiting Adam, there is also a threatened curse for disobedience (Gen. 2:17). Note that though this covenant is with Adam, it has in mind “his posterity.” “As covenantal or federal head,” writes S. M. Baugh, “Adam acted on behalf of his whole race in the covenant of works.”

Egalitarian scholarship rightly emphasizes man and woman’s equality at creation, seen in the initial account of creation in Genesis 1:26–28. Both the man and woman are created in God’s image (Gen. 1:26), blessed with the cultural mandate (Gen. 1:28), and given the earth for provision and stewardship (Gen. 1:29–30).

However, though ontological equality and vocational partnership are undoubtedly celebrated in this text, headship is also embedded in the narrative.

In the second creation account, Adam is both the recipient of a royal commission to protect and keep the garden (Gen. 2:15) and entrusted with the command not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 2:16–17). Eve is given to him as his ezer kenegdo—his partner in the task (Gen. 2:18). This account establishes Adam’s headship, setting the stage for what will happen in the Fall.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil provides a testing ground for Adam, the Lord’s covenant servant. In this test, Adam stands as representative of the whole human race, and therein lies the main point of the text: in emphasizing Adam’s obedience, it sets the stage for redemptive history in presenting Adam as a type of Christ and in establishing the concept of the one for the many. Thus, as Jerome T. Walsh argues, a hierarchy is established in Genesis 2–3, with a chiastic center in Adam’s failure: “and he ate” (Gen. 3:6). The text demonstrates that this is the moment of ultimate devastation, because when Adam fell, we all fell with him (Rom. 5:12).

As we turn more specifically to the context surrounding Genesis 3:16, this is what the text compels us to keep in mind: The context is covenant; the emphasis is obedience; the scope is corporate.

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Removing Gendered Assumptions If the primary purpose of the first few chapters of Genesis is to lay the foundation of covenant, then this has some initial, big-picture implications for debates about

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gender. Those who want to argue that headship finds its foundation in the Fall fail to address the creational foundation of headship, and they fail to connect the role of headship with redemption. Headship is not primarily about gender but about covenant. But for those of us who hold to an enduring principle of male headship in the church and home, there are implications for how the lesser offices of elder, husband, and father are shaped by Christ, our federal head. We have much to learn from the New Testament writers, who fostered a corporate identity, and who spoke of headship emphasizing love, humility, sacrifice, responsibility, and partnership (see, for example, Eph. 6:22–33; Phil. 4:3; 1 Pet. 5:1–3; Heb. 13:17).

More specifically, as we look at the narrative of the Fall (beginning in Gen. 3:1), this covenantal understanding helps us see what is happening in the text—a covenantal test of obedience—and what is not. Though we see in the Fall narrative that Satan is bent on upending God’s created order, this same motivation cannot be applied to Eve. The text indicates that by listening to the voice of the serpent, she has bought into the lie that she can be like God. The text does not indicate, however, that she refused to obey the voice of her husband (“who was with her,” 3:6), nor does it indicate a domineering pressure to coerce her husband into disobedience (“she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate,” 3:6). If the account of the Fall demonstrated Eve as a usurper of male authority, then it may justify Foh’s adversarial understanding of the woman’s desire; but any discussions about Eve’s motivations must be imported into the text, since neither here nor elsewhere in Scripture is the Fall characterized as Eve usurping Adam’s authority. In brief, the narrative does not characterize Eve as exalting herself above Adam, but rather “[exalting] herself above her Creator.”

That doesn’t mean the text has nothing to say about the relational dynamics between Adam and Eve. Sin does fracture the couple’s love and unity, evidenced by their shame and separation over their newly realized nakedness (Gen 3:7). Meredith Kline calls the Fall the first divorce. Adam’s words illustrate the conflict that will now characterize fallen relationships: “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate” (Gen. 3:12). But is the emphasis here their marriage, their different sexes, or their new, sin-tainted posture toward each other? Paul describes life prior to faith in Christ in terms of this relational dysfunction: “For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another” (Titus 3:3). These sinful attitudes and behaviors do not discriminate on the basis of sex. Further, if Genesis 3 intended to show that the woman possessed an inherent desire to usurp, then 20

Adam and Eve Driven out of Eden

by Gustave Doré (1865)

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surely the rest of the biblical witness would attest to that. However, while there are examples of women who do usurp authority that is not rightfully theirs, there are also examples of men who do so. The narratives throughout the rest of Genesis and the Old Testament do not demonstrate a battle of the sexes, but rather a battle between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, often expressed through the conflict of brothers.

Human beings were created to live in harmony with God and with one another, but sin disrupts these relationships. This is undoubtedly evidenced in the text, in the rest of Scripture, and in our own experiences. When we witness Adam and Eve hiding from God and pointing fingers at each other, we are meant to be grieved. How far they have fallen!

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The Context of Curse?

After the climatic note, “and he ate,” Genesis 3:16 shows us what sin costs: it builds tension in the narrative, leading into what has traditionally been labeled “the curse.” For Foh and others, if the woman’s desire in Genesis 3:16 is construed as positive or compulsive, then it doesn’t make sense as a punishment.

But perhaps we have too quickly labeled this section “the curse,” and so missed an important aspect of what’s happening at this point in the garden.

The curse section begins with a confrontation. The man and woman hear God’s approach and they hide (3:8). The reader knows that God has said, “In the day that you eat of [the tree of knowing good and evil] you shall surely die” (2:17).

Adam and Eve are waiting with bated breath, knowing they have disobeyed God’s command, and with disobedience come covenant curses. God does indeed move on to judgment, but it’s not what we expect.

The Lord addresses each character in turn. Though his order has been corrupted, God reinstates it as he addresses each party, ending with Adam, the one ultimately held accountable. There are varying explanations for the structure of this curse narrative (vv. 14–19), but they all generally affirm the exclusive context of judgment, seeing the section as a list of punishments imposed by God as a result of the man and woman’s sin. These are summarized as follows: the serpent will crawl on his belly and eat dust (v. 14); there will be an enduring battle between the woman and the serpent (v. 15); women will experience pain in bearing children (v. 16ab); there will be trouble in marriage (v. 16cd); work will be difficult (v. 18-19a); and now there will be death (v. 19b). This death is seen as the fulfillment of God’s promised judgment in 2:17—most explain that God was speaking of immediate spiritual death in 2:17, with the new inevitability of physical death also resulting from sin. In surveying this long list of punishments, we can feel the heaviness of judgment, and as an etiology, it certainly serves to explain the difficult conditions of life in a fallen world. It’s understandable that Foh and others would conclude that whatever comes from these pronouncements must match the ugliness of sin that has entered the world.

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But viewing the curse narrative only through the lens of judgment overlooks some key features of the text. First, only the serpent is cursed directly (“cursed are you” in v. 14; emphasis added). His is a curse to ultimate and eternal destruction, for him (Satan) and his seed. The woman and the man are impacted by the pronouncements of their sections, but never again does “cursed are you” appear in these verses. This differentiates God’s treatment of the serpent from his treatment of Adam and Eve. Though the effects of their sin are devastating, they are temporal. Though they should be relegated to the status of the serpent’s seed as covenant-breakers, instead they are placed in opposition to the serpent and kept as a royal line bearing the promise of restoration. God addresses his covenant-breakers with the promise of a new covenant: the covenant of grace.

The proto-gospel of Genesis 3:15 promises a deliverer who will crush the serpent’s head. What’s more, that deliverer will come through the seed of the woman. This is astounding grace.

Second, the proper punishment would have been immediate death, both physical and spiritual. God warned Adam of such when he gave his prohibition, and there is no reason to think delayed death is what was intended (2:17). Rather, God graciously chose not to enforce the terms of his covenant. Joshua Van Ee writes, 25

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It is best to say that God does not bring about the threatened judgment on the man and the woman. . . . The narrative is an example of God refraining from bringing the promised judgment as seen elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible.

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Instead of death, we see the continuation of life. There will be pain in childbearing, but the woman will continue to bring forth children. There will be thorns and thistles, but the ground will continue to bear fruit. Despite the continued rebellion of the human race, God will continue to sustain life until the appointed time, so that he can accomplish his plan of redemption. This, again, is astounding grace.

Third, Adam responds to the curse narrative with faith. Kline writes, “Adam in effect declared his confessional ‘Amen’ to the Genesis 3:15 promise of restoration from death to life through the woman’s seed. This he did by naming the woman ‘Life’ (Eve).” Kline specifies Genesis 3:15 as the expression of God’s grace through the proclamation of the gospel to which Adam and Eve respond in faith, but this declaration comes after the rest of the curse narrative. It’s certainly a response to 3:15, but what precludes it from being a response to the whole experience of God’s mercy—the delay of death, the hope of continued life and provision, and his promise of a deliverer? Each of these components of life after the Fall are an act of God’s grace, to which Adam responds, “Amen!”

Thus, while judgment does occur for sin, this section is characterized as much (if not more so) by grace. Rather than listing punishments, a more effective structure of verses 14–19 might be to view each section as containing both curse and continuity.

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Curse or Continuity?

So where do the woman’s desire and the husband’s rule fit? Are they curse or continuity? I suggest the following four reasons that the woman’s desire and the husband’s rule should be considered among the “continuity” theme of the curse narrative: First, the structure of each section supports it. The curse affecting both the man and the woman are marked by pain (vv. 16–17). What follows the pain is what continues—producing children (v. 16) and food (v. 17). What follows next demonstrates how this will continue: through the continued creation ordinances of marriage (v. 16; see Gen 2:24) and work (v. 19; see Gen 2:15).

Second, the husband’s rule does not necessarily mean a harsh rule. The word for rule, mashal, is used for both benevolent and oppressive rule throughout Scripture, with its particular nuance determined by the context. There is no reason this phrase cannot be the continuation of Adam’s headship in marriage as God originally designed it. Third, this act of God’s grace and mercy is the only way to explain the gap between Genesis 3:12 (“The woman whom you gave to be with me”) and Genesis 4:1 (“Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain”). Apart from God’s act of restoring the man and woman to each other, what would keep them from remaining alienated?

Finally, the rest of Genesis (and the Scriptures) supports it. The remainder of the book of Genesis fleshes out themes contained within the curse narrative.

As early as 4:1, we see that marriage has in fact continued and brought about new life. Eve gives birth to warring seeds (brothers), which will continue to battle each other throughout Scripture. There is much difficulty in childbearing, including struggles with infertility (see Gen. 16:1, for example) and even death after difficult labor (Gen. 35:16–19). The curse of the ground is also evidenced by famine (see Gen. 12:10; 26:1; 41). Further, God’s covenant terms relate specifically to these themes, which then stretch throughout the rest of Scripture. God’s promise to Abraham includes countless offspring, through whom the promised seed would come, and an abundant land filled with blessing.

The blessings and curses of the Mosaic covenant are later expressed in these terms. The original purposes God gives to the man and woman (to “work the garden and keep it,” and to “be fruitful and multiply”) are both frustrated as a result of sin, allowed to continue by God’s gracious act, and then become components of God’s promises to his people (now he will make them fruitful and multiply them, and he will give them a fruitful land as an inheritance). Notably absent are usurping wives and domineering husbands. Though Scripture describes both marital conflict and sinful characters, these are not caricatures of gendered propensities but rather illustrations of the reality of sin’s impact on human relationships. The alleged adversarial desire of Genesis 3:16 does not mark a motif that will continue to play out.

If we take all of this into account—the meaning of desire and rule, the context of covenant, restoration, and mercy—then there is reason to argue that the 30

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woman’s desire in Genesis 3:16 is for marriage. By an act of God’s gracious continuity, God restores the creation ordinance of marriage after the Fall, sustaining what sociologists point to as a critical stabilizing institution of society. Though marriage is not immune from attack and distortion, the fact that believers and unbelievers alike can continue to marry and exist in healthy relationships despite our fallenness is explicable only by God’s common grace. ***

Restoring Eve My hope in reexamining this passage is not to impose different culturally informed biases onto the text, but rather to bring us back to the biblical context, to see the role of these Genesis chapters in not only shaping our views of men and women but also in shaping our understanding of God’s covenant dealings with his people and his plan for the redemption of his fallen image-bearers. Certainly, the creation account speaks to God’s creation of male and female, a reality that’s under attack in our time and place. But in an attempt to counteract the secular cultural views on sex and gender, have we unwittingly read into Scripture views of the same that aren’t there?

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

Susan T. Foh, “What Is the Woman’s Desire?,” The Westminster Theological Journal 37, no. 3 (1975): 381, 383.

Foh, “Desire,” 378.

See, for example, A. A. Macintosh, “The Meaning of Hebrew ‫הקושת‬ ‫הקושת‬,” Journal of Semitic Studies 61, no. 2 (Autumn 2016): 366.

Foh, “Desire,” 380–81.

Many complementarian theologians depart from Foh on this point. The Danvers statement, for example, sees the distortion of both man’s and woman’s roles as the result of the Fall.

Further, much of the work done to combat Foh’s adversarial desire interpretation lands on the other extreme, suggesting that the woman’s desire is positive while the husband’s rule is now harsh and abusive.

Foh, “Desire,” 376. Foh herself points to this reexamination as the impetus for her work. She writes, “The current issue of feminism in the church has provoked the reexamination of the scriptural passages that deal with the relationship of the man and the woman.”

See John Piper and Wayne Grudem, eds., Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2006).

Janson C. Condren, “Toward a Purge of the Battle of the Sexes and ‘Return’ for the Original Meaning of Genesis 3:16b,” JETS 60, no. 2 (2017): 227–45, collects a list of scholars and pastors who espouse Foh’s view.

Upon announcing this change, the publisher announced that the ESV was closed to further changes (https:// web.archive.org /web/20160820002244/http://

www.esv.org/about/pt-changes/), a move that was later reversed (https://www.crossway.org/articles/ crossway-statement-on-the-esv-bible-text/).

10. For a fuller explanation and analysis of each of these traditional views, etymology, and Foh’s interpretation of Genesis 3:16, see my unpublished paper “The Woman’s Desire as Gracious Continuity: An Analysis of Susan Foh’s Interpretation of Genesis 3:16 and an Alternate Proposal,” April 2021, https:// www.academia.edu/s/2cb27b2d4f ?source=link.

11. See my paper for a collection and summary of this scholarship.

12. R. P. Gordon, “‘Couch’ or ‘Crouch’? Genesis 4:7 and the Temptation of Cain,” in J. K. Aitken, K. J. Dell, and B. A. Mastin, eds., On Stone and Scroll: Essays in Honour of Graham Ivor Davies (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011), 195–209. Referenced in Macintosh, “The Meaning of Hebrew ‫הקושת‬ ‫הקושת‬,” 372.

13. Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Holy Bible (Kansas City, MO: Beacon Hill Press, 1967), 59.

14. Foh, “Desire,” 383, does state why she sees sin’s desire in view versus Abel’s in “Desire,” 380n21, but her claim that “the interpretation of 4:7b is clearer” fails to account for the historical difficulties in interpretation.

15. Michael Brown and Zach Keele, Sacred Bond (Grandville: Reformed Fellowship, 2012), 11.

16. Michael Horton, Introducing Covenant Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2009), 13.

17. Brown and Keele, Sacred Bond, 43.

18. S. M. Baugh, “Covenant Theology Illustrated: Romans 5 on the Federal Headship of Adam and Christ,” Modern Reformation 9, no. 4 (July/August 2000), 18 (emphasis original).

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I’m persuaded that the creation account establishes male headship that carries through to the church and home today, a principle that has been largely discarded outside of complementarian circles and practiced poorly within them.

But if Genesis 3:16 rests in a narrative that highlights God’s grace and mercy, rather than establishing gender-based suspicion of one another, then perhaps our conversations about men and women could shift away from concerns about power and control to love, service, partnership, and responsibility. Perhaps we could lay down our arms in the battle of the sexes and tell the truth about our sinful inclinations without having to assign them to a particular sex. Just as God restored Eve to her rightful place at Adam’s side, allowing for life and redemption to continue, perhaps we could restore the daughters of Eve within the church, recognizing them not as threats, but as partners in the gospel.

Kendra Dahl (MA, Westminster Seminary California) is director of content for Core Christianity and

White Horse Inn.

Jerome T. Walsh, “Genesis 2:4b–3:24: A Synchronic Approach,” JBL 96, no. 2 (1977), 161–77.

20. Irvin A. Busenitz, “Woman’s Desire for Man: Genesis 3:16 Reconsidered,” Grace Theological Journal 7, no. 2 (1986): 208.

21. Meredith Kline, Kingdom Prologue (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2006), 130.

22. Someone may argue that Paul’s instructions to husbands and wives aim at gendered propensities. However, as Busenitz observes (208), NT commands to submit to authority are directed not only to wives but also to children, citizens, members of the church, younger men, etc. These commands are related to propensities inherent to a particular role. Because of sin’s impact, the one in authority needs to be reminded to be loving and gentle; the one under authority needs to be reminded to humbly submit.

23. Consider the “evil queens” of Israel’s history, Jezebel and Athalia. Consider also Jeroboam’s rebellion, leading to the northern tribe’s separation from Judah.

24. Consider Cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau.

Joseph and his brothers are a further expression of relational conflict, though not representing opposing seeds. Likewise, though generally secondary to the theme of warring seeds, we also see woman-to-woman conflict, as in Sarah toward Hagar and Rachel and Leah. This is not to suggest that there is not abuse and oppressive rule evidenced in the narrative (consider Dinah and Tamar, for example). But we must question if the text aims to present gendered tendencies or the reality of a sin-tainted world, where conflict, exploitation, abuse, and rebellion abound, regardless of gender.

19.

This is in stark contrast to God’s response to Cain in Gen. 4:11, where he again says, “cursed are you,” identifying Cain as the seed of the serpent.

26. Kline, Kingdom Prologue, 136.

27. Joshua Van Ee, “Death and the Garden: An Examination of Original Immortality, Vegetarianism, and Animal Peace in the Hebrew Bible and Mesopotamia” (PhD diss., University of California, San Diego, 2013), 170. He gives the following as examples: “the interpretation of Micah’s prophecy (3:12) in Jer 26:18-19, God’s statement in Ezek 33:14-15, and Jonah’s complaint in Jonah 4:2.”

28. Kline, Kingdom Prologue, 149.

29. God’s provision of clothing for Adam and Eve is further evidence of the graciousness and restoration characterizing this section (2:21).

30. Man’s returning to dust is another aspect of the curse narrative with which I have not dealt in detail here. Though it has always been taken as the promised punishment of death, there is a gracious element to it as well. God will not allow man to continue in his sinful state perpetually. Whether or not resurrection is in view in Gen. 3:19 requires further study, but passages such as Isa. 26:19, Job 19:25–26, and Paul’s discussion of resurrection in 1 Cor. 15:35–49 may shed helpful light. Death is referred to as the last enemy to be defeated (1 Cor. 15:26), and Revelation ironically speaks of the first resurrection when it means the death of the believer. Thus, though death is the result of sin, it is also the entrance into new life—the ultimate restoration to which God is pointing in his pronouncement of the effects of sin in Gen. 3:14–19.

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Vol. 31, No. 3

IV.

Engage Understanding our time and place

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Book Reviews

Augustine and Tradition: Influences, Contexts, Legacies edited by David G. Hunter and Jonathan P. Yates EERDMANS | 2021 | 501 PAGES (HARDCOVER) | $80.00

THE FREQUENCY WITH WHICH companion volumes

like this come out from various presses demonstrates the enduring legacy of the Doctor of Grace.

In the present rendition of a companion to Augustine, focused on the context and legacy of Augustine, David Hunter and Jonathan Yates have assembled an eclectic group of patristic scholars, moving beyond some of the typical names in Augustinian studies. Written in honor of Patout Burns, this edited volume covers some wellestablished questions in Augustine, but several essays do a tremendous service by forging new paths of investigation.

Joseph Trigg’s contribution on Origen’s influence on Augustine provides a helpful look at the interrelationship between these two pillars of early Christianity and their indebtedness to the platonic tradition. Many have critiqued Augustine’s “Platonism,” but few have seen fit to look for platonic overlaps and show his similarity to the Greek East in terms of plundering Plato in service to Christ. Similarly, Mark DelCogliano reexamines some of the evidence on what Augustine knew of the Cappadocians to find, like Trigg, that Augustine should not be read as a world apart from the philosophical world of the Greek East.

Even just the simple point that Augustine knew

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and translated a sermon from Basil of Caesarea can hopefully put to rest the repeated claims that Augustine could not read Greek. Taking the question of Plato head on, John Peter Kenney rightly brushes aside the position that Augustine was overly reliant on Plato at the expense of Scripture: “To read Augustine, then, requires following him through that transformation from discursive philosophy into scriptural contemplation” (128).

Indeed, it is the Word made flesh who changed Augustine’s perspective on divinity and philosophy, as Scripture re­vealed to him that God came to teach humility.

Moving on to the two essays that will most shape my own reading of Augustine, John Cavi­ dini and Michael Cameron deftly expound on Augustine’s ability to read Scripture in concert with church universal. Cameron, who knows Augustine’s reading of Scripture as well as any scholar, tackles the twin question of authorial intention and interpretative diversity to highlight how Augustine might aid contemporary Christians in their study of Scripture. He writes, “A strong community gathered around the text hears a call, not to generate biblical position papers that only reveal correct answers from the back of the holy Book, so to speak, but to give counsel and training in how to read with love” (23). For Augustine, multiple voices and interpretations are not to be understood as a problem, but as part of the graced community.

Cavadini’s study on the influence of Ambrose on Augustine should have a lasting impact on Augustinian studies. The enchanting beauty of the Deus Creator Omnium not only helped Augustine grieve the loss of his mother as noted in the Confessions, but its impact can be felt through to the very end of his life in the Pelagian controversy. After a careful study of Ambrose’s impact on Augustine throughout his life, Cavidini concludes with the Pelagian controversy.

What Cavadini begs us to consider is that the Pelagian controversy should not be divorced from the larger corpus. Augustine does not fundamen-

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tally change his theological or philosophical writing out of old-age bitterness. Rather, a clear thread runs through Augustine’s conversion, hastened by careful meditations and the poetry of Ambrose, to his final writings on the nature of God’s providence and its fulfillment in salvation. No doubt the writing style is different, but despite the perennial attempts to pick the Augustine we like and disregard the Augustine we hate, Cavadini gives us reason to be sympathetic to the whole oeuvre of Augustine from conversion to death.

To conclude, scholars of Augustine will find much to engage with in this volume. I have not mentioned many of the helpful perspectives on the larger North African context from Alden Bass, Geoffrey Dunn, and William Tabbernee. The title suggests more engagement could have been done on the legacy of Augustine in the Protestant and Modern contexts, but the Brian Matz piece on the Middle Ages at least gives some justification for putting “legacy” in the subtitle. Matz’s article nods toward later debates on predestination and readings of Romans through an Augustinian lens, but it also calls into question why the legacy portion ends with some rather obscure ninth-century debates. Surely no edited volume can encompass all of the great African bishop, but it does raise the question of why the editors felt the need to designate this volume as encompassing Augustinian tradition. Although I end with a slight critique, this should in no way detract from the quality and insight of so many of the essays that will profit any scholar of Augustine or the patristic era.

Charles G. Kim Jr. is assistant professor of theology and classi-

cal languages at Saint Louis University.

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The Abuse of Conscience: A Century of Catholic Moral Theology

by Matthew Levering EERDMANS | 2021 | 368 PAGES (HARDCOVER) | $45.00

this book examines Roman Catholic moral theology in the twentieth century and beyond, with a special focus on conscience. (“Moral theology” is roughly equivalent to “ethics,” although the former sometimes indicates a broader range of subjects.) Readers of Modern Reformation, surely most of whom aren’t Roman Catholic, may wonder why they should take notice of such a book, or even a review of it.

I suggest two basic reasons. First, this book provides great insight into the moral crisis of contemporary Roman Catholicism, an issue of broad public interest. Just in the few weeks prior to my writing this, the mainstream press has addressed the intrigue of Pope Francis meeting with President Biden, an unapologetic supporter of abortion rights and the LBGTQ+ agenda, assuring him that he’s a “good Catholic.” The press has also publicized moves by the German bishops to defy church teaching by blessing homosexual unions, among other things. Second, this book serves as a warning to confessional Protestants about how traditional Christian moral ideas can get derailed by the spirit of the times and it should stimulate our own thinking about how to maintain and enrich our own moral-theological traditions.

Matthew Levering, a prolific Roman Catholic theologian, offers primarily a work of historical interpretation, that is, an explanation of the course of Roman Catholic moral theology in the twentieth century. But by his own admission he writes not as a neutral observer but as a critic of the predominant lines of this history. To accomplish his goals, Levering explains the views of twenty-six theologians. Most of the book is simply a description of what they wrote. It must be said that reading these descriptions—one after AS THE TITLE INDICATES,

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another—can be a bit tedious at times. Levering does pause here and there to offer big-picture perspectives, and these interludes are consistently sharp and incisive. But his readers do have to work through some slow-moving material. Nevertheless, it is worth pressing on, for the latter parts of the book offer payoffs for readers who persevere.

The first chapter describes the work of several scholars on what Scripture teaches about conscience, thereby providing a foundation and benchmark for the remaining chapters. According to Levering, these scholars show that conscience is a biblical theme that illuminates aspects of the Christian moral life but is far from being central to New Testament ethics. Faith, hope, love, the cross of Christ, and the grace of the Spirit are far more prominent themes.

The second chapter turns to Roman Catholic moral theology per se. It considers some of the many moral manuals produced prior to the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s. PostVatican II theologians have ruthlessly criticized these manuals for their narrow legalism. Levering says that the manuals are better than these critiques suggest, for they provide many good insights and see much more to the Christian life than just law and obligation. Nevertheless, Levering agrees that they were deficient. He surveys several of them and describes how they perceived a tension between liberty and law. That is, they sought to determine what God’s law demands and what it leaves for Christians’ liberty. This is the context in which the manuals ascribed a central role to conscience. For them, conscience is the rational human act that applies God’s law to particular moral circumstances. Despite the manuals’ many insights, Levering concludes that their focus on conscience navigating the tension between God’s law and human liberty was too narrow and thus distorted their understanding of the Christian moral life.

In chapter 3, Levering discusses the work of several twentieth-century Thomists. By “Thomists,” he means theologians who seek to follow and

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develop the thought of Thomas Aquinas. According to Levering, these Thomists acknowledged an important role for conscience but didn’t make it central to the moral life. Instead, they integrated the place of conscience into Christian theology and the Christian life as a whole. In doing so, they argued that conscience only functions properly alongside the Christians virtues and they carefully distinguished the roles of conscience and prudence. Levering suggests that these theologians primed Roman Catholic moral theology to advance in helpful ways beyond the manuals.

But this promise of advance went unfulfilled.

Chapter four argues that mainstream Roman Catholic moral theology after Vatican II, although very critical of the manuals, made conscience even more central. But these moral theologians no longer viewed conscience as the application of God’s law to human moral decisions. Instead, they understood conscience as the means by which all people exercise their freedom, make their own moral decisions, and express authenticity, based upon their subjective experience and discernment of what God wills them to do. In case of conflict, such decisions of conscience overrule the teaching of the church and allegedly universal ethical rules.

Levering leaves no doubt that he views such developments as tragically misguided. These post-Vatican II theologians detached conscience from God’s law, rejected the stability and purposefulness of human nature, and were overly optimistic about the results of placing conscience in charge of the moral life of fallen human beings.

Levering thus calls for the repair of Roman Catholic moral theology through recovering biblical and Thomistic insights and reintegrating conscience into the broader, virtuous Christian life.

I judge that Levering has succeeded in both his primary and secondary purposes. With respect to the primary, his descriptions of the twenty-six theologians are thoroughly documented and clearly explained. The story of twentieth-­century Roman Catholic moral theology, as he tells it, fits together coherently. As one who completed a PhD

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in ethics at a Roman Catholic university and has observed Roman Catholic moral theology rather closely for over two decades, I can say that Levering’s account of where things stand and how they got there rings true. Levering is also largely successful in fulfilling his secondary purpose: to critique where mainstream Roman Catholic moral theology has gone and to point in a better direction. On the one hand, mainstream Roman Catholic moral theology is indeed a mess. On many issues, it elevates subjective human feelings over traditional Christian morality, rejects aspects of biblical teaching as hopelessly outdated and oppressive, and glorifies anti-traditional judgments of conscience as marks of moral and spiritual maturity. Levering’s call for a chastened view of conscience, in which conscience stands under the authority of God’s law and serves the whole range of Christian virtues, is also generally persuasive.

Of course, I and most readers of this review are outsiders to this intra-Roman Catholic dispute, and confessional Protestants will inevitably differ in some respects from Levering’s ideal vision for moral theology. Nevertheless, confessional Protestants do well to pay attention. For a long time, it seemed implausible that Roman Catholicism, with its penitential system and overbearing hierarchy, could fall into moral revisionism. But that has happened among large swaths of Rome’s theologians, clerics, and laity, for whom contemporary cultural trends hold greater sway than traditional Christian morality. That in itself serves as a warning. But it’s also worth reflecting on the fact that doubling down on law and obligation as the center of Christian ethics wasn’t the safeguard that the Roman Catholic manuals thought it was. Many works on “ethics” in the conservative Protestant world in recent decades focus on the requirements of God’s law and how Christians should resolve controversial culture-war issues. Understanding God’s law is certainly crucial for Christian ethics and working through culture-war issues also has its place, but a rich conception of the Christian moral life requires considerably more than this.

For example, issues of virtue, character, and wisdom are pervasive in the Scriptures, as a casual read through Proverbs, the Sermon on the Mount, or Paul’s moral exhortations can easily illustrate.

In recent years, some scholars have been rediscovering the important place of virtue in the moral writings of classical Protestant theologians. In my judgment, the reintegration of virtue with divine law should be one of the great goals of confessional Protestant ethics in the years to come. Classical Protestantism also has a rich legacy of works on Christian piety and spirituality. These have never been completely forgotten, but they often seem to have little place in works of “ethics” devoted to a handful of controversial cultural issues. The reintegration of law and a deep, Christ-centered spirituality is another great task for confessional Protestant moral theologians to pursue. Levering writes primarily for fellow Roman Catholics, but his concern has analogous application for confessional Protestants: guarding against moral liberalism through emphasis on God’s objective law is very important, but a biblical, satisfying, and historically-rooted ethics also needs to be grounded in a full-orbed theology of salvation, church, human nature, and eschatological destiny.

David VanDrunen (PhD, Loyola University Chicago) is Rob-

ert B. Strimple Professor of Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics at Westminster Seminary California in Escondido.

The Trinity and the Bible: On Theological Interpretation

by Scott R. Swain LEXHAM | 2021 | 144 PAGES (HARDCOVER) | $19.99

SCOTT SWAIN HAS ESTABLISHED himself as one of today’s leading voices on the doctrine of the Trinity

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and on the practice of reading Scripture to grasp its theological and spiritual substance. In The Trinity and the Bible: On Theological Interpretation, Swain has gathered together several of his essays on these two subjects, providing an opportunity for readers to benefit more easily from his various contributions.

After opening with a prayer to the Trinity, the first chapter announces that “the primary focus of these essays is exegesis: the act of loving attention we give to the historical and literary shape of scriptural texts in order to discern the singular identity and activity of the Triune God who presents himself therein” (1). For Swain, “the recovery of the Trinity as the subject matter of exegetical attention is downstream from an earlier recovery of the Trinity as the subject matter of dogmatic attention” (1).

The second chapter, “The Bible and the Trinity in Recent Thought: Review, Analysis, and Constructive Proposal,” begins by noting that while we learn from the Bible about the Trinity, the Triune God himself in fact precedes the Bible’s existence. While the Bible is the “cognitive principle” of trinitarian theology, the Trinity is the “ontological principle” of the Bible (9). In other words, in the order of being, the Triune God determines what the Bible is and helps us to understand what it is meant to do in God’s economy. Swain goes on to discuss how the Trinity is present in the Bible, emphasizing that, instead of the Trinity being an undeveloped theme in Scripture, “what we have in the Bible is well-formed Trinitarian discourse” (15–16). In Swain’s account, this trinitarian discourse includes three patterns of “divine naming”: a “monotheistic” pattern establishing that there is but one true God; a “relational” pattern distinguishing the Father, Son, and Spirit by their mutual relations within God’s being; and a “metaphysical” pattern indicating that the divine persons “transcend the categories of creaturely being and creaturely naming” (18–26).

Chapter 3 deals with B. B. Warfield’s account of the Trinity, highlighting some of Warfield’s

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deficiencies on this topic and offering some constructive points for contemporary trinitarian theology. Though Warfield is in a number of ways duly regarded as a stalwart of American Reformed theology, he failed to give the divine persons’ relations of origin or eternal processions their rightful place in the doctrine of the Trinity. Warfield was concerned that such historic concepts in trinitarian thought might imply an inferiority on the part of God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. In Swain’s response, he notes that the eternal begetting of the Son is actually what accounts for his equality with the Father and that Scripture is replete with texts that point to the Son’s eternal origin from the Father (e.g., John 5:26; Col. 1:15; Heb. 1:3).

Chapter 4 moves in a more immediately constructive direction and discusses the trinitarian Christology of Mark 12:35–37. The beginning of this chapter reflects on the task of theological commentary on the Bible. According to Swain, “Reading is . . . a living conversation between an eloquent Lord and his attentive servants, a conversation in which the reader is summoned to hear what the Spirit says to the churches (Rev. 2:7)” (62). The reflection on the nature of theological interpretation gives way to an analysis of Jesus’ use of Psalm 110 in Mark 12. Swain considers the logic of Jesus’ teaching in Mark 12 and makes a case that Mark is envisioning a divine sonship of Jesus that accounts for Jesus being accused of blasphemy later in Mark when he identifies himself as the Son of God (see Mark 14:61–62).

In chapter 5, Swain turns to Galatians 4:4–7 to discuss God’s trinitarian agency. He focuses on the missions of the Son and Spirit to argue that the agency of the Son and the Spirit is that of God himself. Swain makes the point that “certain actions and effects are exclusive to and indicative of certain agents” (91). In the case of the Son and Spirit, their actions and effects indicate that they share the one nature and power of God. The distinction between “God, his Son, and the Spirit in God’s Son-making activity is not a distinction between God and intermediary agents. It is rather a

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distinction within God’s own immediate, natural agency” (93).

Chapter 6 deals with the presentation of God’s triune name in Revelation 4–5. Swain begins with some notes on the task of trinitarian theology and stresses that “scriptural Trinitarianism” is not “unformed” or “inchoate” but rather “the primary discourse of Trinitarian theology.”

“Ecclesiastical trinitarianism,” then, is “the secondary discourse of Trinitarian theology.” The purpose of confessional material on the Trinity is “not to refine or develop what would otherwise be unrefined and undeveloped” but “to promote the church’s greater fluency in reading Scripture’s primary Trinitarian discourse” (98). Swain then examines the ways in which God is named and described in Revelation 4–5. In the “monarchical monotheism” of Revelation, the three divine persons are named as “the one who sits on the throne,” “the Lamb who stands in the midst of the throne,” and “the Spirit who is before the throne” (106–15). Within this pattern of trinitarian description, “the three persons of the Trinity share one throne” (116). Thus, “the distinction between the first, second, and third persons of the Trinity in enacting the unfolding kingdom of God is not a distinction between three agencies. It is rather a distinction within one divine agency” (117).

Finally, chapter 7 concludes the book with seven “axioms” on the Trinity, the Bible, and theological interpretation: (1) “Certain material and social conditions are vital to, but not ultimately sufficient for, theological interpretation of Scripture”; (2) “The Trinity’s knowledge of the Trinity is the ontological foundation of our knowledge of the Trinity”; (3) “The Trinity reveals the Trinity by the Trinity; this is the epistemological foundation of our knowledge of the Trinity”; (4) “The Trinity reveals the Trinity by the Trinity in an economy that is first mediate, in the state of pilgrims, then immediate, in the state of the blessed”; (5) “The mediate revelation of the Trinity by the Trinity in the state of grace presupposes and illumines vestiges of the Trinity

in the state of nature”; (6) “The mediate revelation of the Trinity by the Trinity in the state of grace comes in the twofold embassy of prophetic and apostolic revelation in Holy Scripture”; and (7) “The immediate revelation of the Trinity by the Trinity in the state of glory is the supreme good and final end of theological interpretation of Scripture” (122). The rest of the chapter unpacks the meaning of these axioms for the fruitful practice of trinitarian exegesis.

There are a number of reasons why this collection of essays will be profitable for the church, three of which I will underscore here. First, Swain nicely sets out the fact that the Triune God himself precedes Scripture and frames how we understand the being and purposes of Scripture. It is certainly the case that we read Scripture in order to obtain knowledge of the Trinity, but in reading about the Trinity, we come to realize that the Trinity comes first in the order of being, which invites us to refine how we think about the practice of reading the Bible.

Second, Swain drives home the point several times that the Bible is already a trinitarian book. It is not made such by the interpretive tendencies of the reader or pressed into a trinitarian mold only by those who already wish to read with the grain of the Nicene Creed. As Swain puts it, the Bible itself actually offers us the “primary discourse” on the Trinity, inviting us into the mystery of God not least by offering a remarkably rich network of names by which the divine persons are revealed.

Finally, Swain’s work on the Trinity and biblical interpretation exemplifies the blend of dogmatic facility and textual rigor needed for robust work in Christian doctrine and exegesis. This book illustrates well that historical trinitarianism is native to the pages of Scripture and that careful analysis of biblical texts is possible and necessary for those working in the field of systematic theology.

Steven J. Duby (PhD, University of St. Andrews) is associate

professor of theology at Phoenix Seminary.

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POEM

For Sale by Owner

by Maryann Corbet

The home inspection’s litanied its woes: Old water damage. Evidence of mice.

A long half-century of weather-blows against its body.

Though she’s pared her price, they hesitate—rumpled young man in jeans; woman large in the belly, pacing, wincing; toddlers cheeky as Hummel figurines tugging with sunburned arms.

So unconvincing, this hanging back. What’s written on their faces is ache, aimed at her flowers, her picket fence, her rooms. Aimed at a future that erases her past, nudging her toward irrelevance (she thinks, and wonders if she’s being a fool).

He steps forward. A chill blows through the vestibule.

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Bible

by Michael Horton

DO YOU REMEMBER “SWORD DRILLS”?

Growing up Baptist was not all bad. In those days at least, that was where you went if you really wanted to know the Bible. I learned the “Romans Road,” which led me to the doctrines of grace, in spite of my youth pastor who didn’t think I should keep reading Romans. My point is: There was a lot of Bible in the evangelical churches in the 1960s and the 1970s.

That has changed. Today, there are few churches where people are methodically taught to hide God’s word in their hearts. I’m Reformed now and in a good church where catechism is taken seriously—and yes, that includes lots of Bible.

Generally speaking, however, there isn’t much of that going around. Instead, we have stuff on dating and relationships, cultivating spiritual disciplines that sometimes (though not always) degenerate into a do-it-yourself piety, and evangelism (sharing the gospel we increasingly don’t know with others who know it even less).

In a recent Tabletalk article, Robert Godfrey says that the greatest need of the church today is to listen to God’s word. Really, to listen. Bible.

Lots of it.

Over the years, I’ve noticed among seminary students a declining knowledge of the English Bible, even among folks who were raised in our churches. I see it in my own family. The smartphone is more pervasive, invasive, and comprehensive in the lives of young people today than an open Bible (even online). We care more about what people think on our Facebook, Instagram,

TikTok, or other social media platforms than about how God defines us in his unfolding story from Genesis to Revelation. That’s just a fact.

Here’s the thing, though: God created you and me. We are not our own by right of that free decision God made way back when. Then we are doubly not our own when Christ suffered and died for us on the cross and rose again for our justification.

God is not a supporting actor in our life movie: we are players in his unfolding drama that’s all about his glorification of himself through his Son’s incarnation, perfect life, death, resurrection, ascension, and return in glory.

I don’t know a better story than that. Do you?

Michael Horton is editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation

and the J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California in Escondido.

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