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    The real apocalypse - 28 September 2011

    A few more (very sketchy) notes from Douglas Knight’s The Eschatological Economy:

    Don’t look for the seed - 27 September 2011

    Douglas Knight (The Eschatological Economy, chapter 3) appears to regard as problematic Barth’s view “that the people of Israel are no longer led by the Spirit of God.” “Barth,” he says, “has reestablished the centrality of the election of the people of Israel” (a good thing, Knight thinks), “while also seeming to suggest that Israel is replaced by the Christian community” (an idea Knight apparently rejects).

    I’m not quite sure whether Knight really thinks that the people of Israel today are still “led by the Spirit of God.” If he doesn’t, then apologies in advance. But if he does, I am sure that I disagree.

    I agree that what is sometimes called “supercessionism” is wrong. Knight is right that it “[subjects] Israel to an inappropriate logic, one in which an unredeemed community is replaced by a redeemed community” (italics added). Yet to suggest that Israel per se – Israel outside of Christ – simply continues as a Redeemed community is no less objectionable. Neither “replacement” nor “continuity” accurately captures the relationship between Old Covenant Israel and the New Covenant church. Fortunately, these are not the only alternatives.

    There is a third way: Israel is not replaced, but transformed, renewed, redefined. “It is we who are the circumcision,” Paul declares, “We who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus.” Almost everything Knight says about Israel in chapter 3 is spot on, provided we read “Israel” as “Israel transformed, renewed and redefined around her King, the Lord Jesus, the Messiah.” Israel was a rock that has become a mountain; a seed that has become a tree. It’s the “same” rock, the “same seed”; but it is now changed; it is a rock and a seed no longer. Look for the seed, look for the rock, and you will search in vain. Israel has become in Christ what she was always destined to be.

    High status - 27 September 2011

    “The creature [precisely by virtue of its status as God’s creature] is in a relationship with God; creatureliness therefore represents a high status, not a low one.” (Douglas H. Knight, The Eschatological Economy, p. 62)

    He is everything to you - 30 March 2011

    Some one-liners from Augustine:

    “All things can be said of God, but nothing can be said worthily of him.”

    “On earth, a fountain is one thing, light another. When you are thirsty, you look for a fountain, and to get to the fountain you look for light … But he is both a fountain and a light: to the thirsty he is a fountain, to the blind a light … God is all these things to you: if you are hungry, he is bread to you; if you are thirsty, he is water to you; if you live in darkness, he is light to you.”

    (Quoted in Bavinck, RD, II:101-102.)

    Law and gospel - 13 January 2011

    A controversy has been brewing in recent years within some American Reformed circles over what has become known as “the Law/Gospel distinction.” This controversy reflects a great deal of confusion about some fairly elementary theological ideas, bolstered in some cases by an unhelpful and unjustifiable insistence on particular readings of confessional doctrinal formulations in the face of biblical teaching that points clearly in the opposite direction.

    As ever, John Frame is on hand to breathe a little sanity into the situation with this short article, written back in 2002, which should prove a useful guide to the perplexed. Here’s an extract from the conclusion:

    The sharp distinction between law and gospel is becoming popular in Reformed, as well as Lutheran circles. It is the view of Westminster Seminary California, Modern Reformation magazine, and the White Horse Inn radio broadcast. The leaders of these organizations are very insistent that theirs is the only biblical view of the matter. One has recently claimed that people who hold a different view repudiate the Reformation and even deny the gospel itself. On that view, we must use the term gospel only in what the Formula [of Concord] calls the “proper” sense, not in the biblical sense. I believe that we should stand with the Scriptures against this tradition. (Italics added.)

    Exegetical courage – like Calvin - 11 January 2011

    In a time when many evangelicals are strangely suspicious or even sceptical about the value of the sacraments, it’s encouraging to find someone displaying a little more continuity with our Reformed heritage. It’s particularly encouraging when it comes from someone who really knows his Greek – David Allan Black, Professor of New Testament and Greek at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, in his outstanding Greek textbook It’s Still Greek to Me.

    Black’s argument needs to be followed closely, but it repays careful attention.

    Black points out that “because a preposition tends to be repeated before each noun in a series of nouns joined by kai [and], sometimes the non-use of a second or third preposition in New Testament Greek may be significant, indicating that the writer regarded the terms in one list as belonging together” (p. 87).

    As an example, Black cites the phrase ex hudatos kai pneumatos (by water and Spirit) in John 3:5. Normally, says Black, NT Greek would repeat the preposition before each noun in such a list, giving us ex hudatos kai ex pneumatos (by water and by Spirit). The omission of the second ex (by) is therefore significant, implying that “‘water and Spirit’ together form a single means of regeneration” (p. 87).

    Yikes – water alongside the Spirit as a single means of regeneration? And this from a professor at a Baptist theological seminary! That takes exegetical courage in a climate when many evangelicals would fear accusations of being on the road to Rome.

    Of course, if questions were ever raised about Professor Black’s theological orthodoxy, he would find ample support from John Calvin. Of course the water of baptism doesn’t displace the work of the Spirit in the work of regeneration. Calvin hotly denies that “water contains in itself the power to cleanse, regenerate, and renew” and that it “is the cause of salvation” (Institutes, IV.xv.2). “The sacraments,” Calvin says, “profit not a whit without the power of the Holy Spirit” (Institutes, IV.xiv.9). However, “God uses means and instuments which he himself sees to be expedient,” and “truly executes whatever he promises and represents in signs” (Institutes, IV.xiv.12, 17). Baptism “is given for the arousing, nourishing, and confirming of our faith,” and in it God “does not feed our eyes with a mere appearance only, but leads us to the present reality and effectively performs what it symbolizes” (Institutes, IV.xv.14)

    Don’t diss the Greeks - 28 November 2010

    It’s fashionable in some circles to decry the supposedly negative influence of so-called “Greek philosophy” on some aspects of Christian thought. Greek philosophy, it is claimed, has bequeathed to the Christian church a whole host of evils including a dualistic separation of soul and body (coupled with an undervaluing of the physical at the expense of the spiritual), “Aristotelian” logic, an obsession with atemporal questions at the expense of history, a misunderstanding of divine transcendance, and a whole pile more besides.

    Sometimes this criticism is coupled with the claim that these ideas are absent from so-called “Hebraic” thought. The cry goes up: we need to abandon the accretions of Greek philosophy and return to the thoroughly embodied, historically-grounded world of the Hebrews. (That faint rumble you just heard was James Barr turning – or perhaps spinning – in his grave.)

    Now doubtless some of these notions are mistaken, and perhaps many of them can find parallels in Greek philosophy. And the last thing I want to do is discourage us from seeking philosophical insight in the (Hebrew) Old Testament. But let’s pause before we abandon everything the church suposedly owes to Greek philosophy. If we turn to the Bible, we might just find that some of them come in useful.

    To take just one example, the Bible teaches that we have been buried with Christ, raised to new life with him and seated with him in the heavenly places (Romans 6:1-12; Eph 2:6; Col 2:12). Yet at the same time a moment’s glance reveals a very non-resurrected physical body. What are we supposed to do with this apparent contradiction? Enter, if you please, the battered and bruised (and Greek – boo, hiss) distinction between the spirit and the body. The Bible teaches that we are raised with Christ spiritually, through faith; while at the same time we still await the bodily resurrection (Romans 8:12; 1 Corinthians 15). To be sure, “spiritually” here might not mean everything that Plato and his ilk would have us believe, but some kind of distinction between spirit and body is nonetheless necessary in order to make sense of the New Testament, which, after all, was written in Greek.

    Calvin’s seven sacraments - 25 November 2010

    According to Calvin, Institutes, IV.xiv.18, the term “sacrament” may take a wider sense alongside its “ordinary” meaning (cf. section 20), embracing “generally all those signs which God has ever enjoined upon men to render them more certain and confident of the truth of his promises.” Thus the tree of life, the rainbow, Abraham’s smoking fire-pot, Gideon’s fleece and the shadow of Hezekiah’s sundial are all sacraments in the sense that God has marked them with his word. Indeed, God could very easily have “imprinted such reminders” upon the sun, stars, earth and stones, in which case they also “would be sacraments for us.”

    I wonder if Calvin deliberately used five specific examples in this section, which when added to the two dominical sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, bring the total to seven. After all, there were other people in 16th-century Europe who really did have seven sacraments. Subversive fulfilment? A subtle dig at the Medieval Catholic church? Who knows.

    God is like an artist - 16 November 2010

    A couple of days ago, I tweeted this: “God ‘needs’ the creation like a Grand Master ‘needs’ his masterpiece. Discuss.” A good friend of mine decided to take me at my word and responded with the obvious question, namely “Huh?”

    Actually, he put it better than that. More along the lines of, “Can a Grand Master be a Grand Master without the masterpiece? I’d suggest that he can’t. Can God be God without creation?”

    In other words, isn’t God disanalogous to a great artist like a Grand Master at precisely this point – God would still be God if he hadn’t created the world, whereas a great artist is contingent upon his work to gain his status as a great artist. Creatures are contingent; God is not.

    The question is a good one. To figure our way through the complexities, we need to make a few distinctions. For the answer, as Garry Williams once memorably put it, is always found in a distinction.

    There’s certainly a sense in which the objection stands. God doesn’t “need” the creation in the sense he gains anything from it that he cannot provide for himself. Most certainly, the creation is not a “thing” independent from God upon which God depends for his status as God-the-Creator. Considered in himself, in eternity, without regard for the creation, God is still God.

    On the other hand, if we make the appropriate distinctions, we can identify two senses in which God does “need” the creation, both of which are analogous to the great artist’s need for his (or her) masterpiece.

    First, given the kind of God that he is, God was compelled by his very nature to create precisely this world. This follows a line of thought found in Jonathan Edwards, The End for Which God Created the World. God does nothing by external constraint; he is driven always and only by who and what he is in himself. This means in turn that everything he does is necessary, in the sense that (given who God is) it could not have been otherwise. So (in this restricted and well-defined sense) he “needed” to create the world in order to be the kind of God that he is. If he hadn’t created this world, he would have had to be some other kind of God (which is impossible).

    Great artists are a bit like this. At least, that’s what they all tell me. There’s something about them as artists that means they “need” to create beautiful works of art; otherwise they’d have to be someone different, which (though not impossible) is hard to contemplate.

    Second, God delights in this world in the same kind of way that a great artist delights in his masterpiece. There is nothing in the great masterpiece that arises independently of the artist, just as there is nothing in the world that exists independently of God. And yet the artist still admires it, and in the same way God “admires” (needs?) his creation.

    In both cases (the artist admiring his painting, and God admiring the world), what they are admiring is strictly speaking not their-work-in-itself, but themselves-in-their-work. This is important. The painting doesn’t give anything to the artist that was not first found in the artist himself. The creation does not give anything to God that wasn’t first present in himself.

    Enter Herman Bavinck, from whom I got the original illustration, and who here provides us with a glorious paragraph in which every word repays careful, thoughtful contemplation:

    So there is also a delight in God that is infinitely superior to need or force, or poverty or riches, which embodies his artistic ideas in creation and finds intense pleasure in it. Indeed, what is the case of man is merely a weak analogy is present in God in absolute originality. A creature, like the creation of an artist, has no independence apart from, and in opposition to, God. God, therefore, never seeks out a creature as if that creature were able to give him something he lacks or could take from him something he possesses. He does not seek the creature (as an end in itself), but through the creature he seeks himself. He is and always remains his own end. His striving is always – also in and through his creatures – total self-enjoyment, perfect bliss. The world, accordingly, did not arise from a need in God, from his poverty or lack of bliss, for what he seeks in the creature is not that creature but himself. (Reformed Dogmatics, 2:435; HT: KN for digging out the reference all those months ago)

    That’ll do for now. If you want more, you should probably consider enrolling on this.

    Not just visible or invisible - 15 November 2010

    John Calvin notes in his Institutes that “Scripture speaks of the church in two ways,” and proceeds to articulate the familiar distinction between the visible church and the invisible church. The invisible church, says Calvin, “includes not only the saints presently living on earth, but all the elect from the beginning of the world.” The visible church, on the other hand, “designates the whole multitude of men spread over the earth who profess to worship one God and Christ” (Institutes, IV.i.7).

    This kind of distinction goes back to Augustine, and is standard fare among the Reformed. The Westminster Confession of Faith, for example, describes the invisible church as “the whole number of the elect,” all of whom will be saved on the Last Day, while the visible church “consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion, and of their children,” some of whom are tragically destined to fall away (WCF, XXV.1, 2).

    The distinction between the visible and invisible church is very helpful. It gives us “language to express the presence of both believers and unbelievers in the church” (John Frame, Salvation Belongs to the Lord, p. 236). It creates a theological category to make sense of those whom Jesus likens to seed falling on rocky ground and seed sown among thorns. Moreover, it encapsulates in simple and intuitive terms the important truth that the identity of God’s elect is unknown – invisible – to us.

    However, helpful though this distinction is, it is worth drawing attention to some of its shortcomings. I must emphasize that what follows should not be understood as a criticism of the distinction between the visible and invisible church as such. I believe the distinction is important and useful, and should be retained. However, there are three reasons why it is insufficient on its own to do justice to all the biblical data.

    First, though the visible/invisible distinction is very valuable if applied from the perspective of the Last Day, it can create confusion if applied to the present situation. For example, consider someone who is elect but not yet converted, or perhaps not even born. According to the above definitions, such a person is already a member of the invisible church. On the Last Day it will make perfect sense to say this, but at the present time this is rather strange, because they are not yet a member of the visible church at all. It would be helpful to have another distinction that took into account the progress of history, and allowed us to say that such a person, though elect, is not a member of the church in any sense until they repent and believe in Jesus.

    Second, the visible/invisible distinction can create the confused notion that there are two different churches (visible and invisible) in existence at the same time.  From here it is a short step (though not one taken by Calvin or the Westminster divines) to say that these two churches are either loosely connected or completely disconnected. This is unbiblical. For though – as Calvin says – the Bible “speaks of the church in two ways” (Institutes, IV.i.7), it never suggests for a moment that these are two separate churches, much less that they can be played off against each other.

    Third, and related to the previous problem, the visible/invisible distinction can also sometimes lead to a disparagement of the visible church. Once the visible church and the invisible church have been disconnected in some way, it is tempting to ignore the former and focus entirely on the latter. “After all,” someone might say, “only those in the invisible church will finally be saved. Membership in the visible church doesn’t guarantee anything about our eternal destiny, so surely the visible church is not so important.”

    Our Reformed forefathers would be horrified by this thought. The Westminster Confession declares unequivocally that outside the visible church “there is no ordinary possibility of salvation” (WCF XXV.2). Calvin, speaking of “the visible church,” declares that “there is no other way to enter life unless this mother conceive us in her womb,” for “away from her bosom one cannot hope for any forgiveness of sins or any salvation” (Institutes, IV.i.4). It is at best debatable whether contemporary evangelicalism has maintained this high view of the visible church.

    Of course there are exceptions to the general rule expressed by Calvin and the Westminster divines. But the fact that the thief on the cross never attended a church service should does not make church unnecessary for the rest of us, for his situation was far from ordinary. And just because some believers are imprisoned for their faith and therefore unable to attend church does not prove that you and I can do without it. The Bible teaches that under normal circumstances membership of the invisible church should be reflected in commitment to a particular visible congregation, “not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some” (Hebrews 10:25).

    All three of these problems can be addressed by introducing a second distinction between what might be called the historical church (the church as it exists now) and the eschatological church (the church as it will exist on the last day). The “membership list” of the historical church is growing as people turn to Christ, while tragically some names are also being removed as people who formerly professed faith turn away and leave the church. On the Last Day, what had previously been called the historical church will have become the eschatological church.

    The historical/eschatological distinction enables us to describe unambiguously those who are elect but not yet born or converted: they will one day become members of the historical church (and subsequently of the eschatological church), but they are not yet members of the church at all. It avoids the suggestion that there are two churches existing at the same time – there is one church with different labels at different points in history. And it therefore makes it much less likely that we will disparage the local, visible church, for the historical church has a glorious future – it is in the process of becoming the eschatological people of God.

    This might form a helpful supplement to the questions in the next session of the Guided Reading Course, which may be found here.

    It DOESN’T matter - 5 October 2010

    I was in email conversation with a friend recently about the danger of evangelical Christians making a big deal about things that really aren’t important enough to divide over. A couple of things I said may, I think, have wider relevance. Here they are:

    I think you’re right – there’s always a danger of lack of proportion in our thinking. That is to say, while all evangelicals share a certain set of common convictions, there are variations between (for example) baptists and paedobaptists, postmillennialists and amillenialists, and so on. We hold these varied views because though they are not themselves the gospel, they are (we believe) true, biblical implications of the gospel. (All truth is unified, remember, and the gospel stands at the heart of everything and has implications in everything from sheep farming to nuclear physics.) It’s therefore a good thing to hold these convictions, since we’re not at liberty to believe something while abandoning its logical or scriptural entailments.

    However, you’re right that if these distinctives start to become more significant in our thinking than the gospel around which evangelicals are united, then something has gone wrong. A due sense of proportion means that though we might disagree with the evangelical church up the road on infant baptism, we’re not going to fall out over it. The gospel unifies us in the way that truly counts – as members of The Church, the Body of Christ.

    Put bitterness to death - 23 September 2010

    Westminster AssemblyOne of the most striking things that emerges from Robert Letham’s The Wesminster Assembly is the gracious and careful manner in which the theological debates were conducted among the Westminster divines. Sure, there were significant issues at stake, and occasionally the discussion got heated. But these guys were not only gracious; they were really concerned to understand each other, and they displayed a degree of theological sophistication and precision that puts today’s church to shame.

    There was even (gasp!) the occasional retraction.

    How ironic that discussions of the Westminster Standards in the contemporary Reformed world are so often marked by hasty jumping to conclusions, lazy partisanship, bitterness and rancour.

    Thank God for these men who thought so carefully about their faith.

    Get more here on 2 October 2010.

    The Faith of Our Fathers

    Policing the boundaries - 22 September 2010

    Ian Hamilton’s The Erosion of Calvinist Orthodoxy addresses a tricky subject – namely the role of subordinate doctrinal standards in defining and maintaining the orthodoxy of a denomination.

    On the one hand, none of us want creeds and confessions to replace Scripture as the ultimate authority. Consequently,

    Any church which believes in semper reformanda will ever be ready to redefine and reshape its confessional formulae in harmony with the new insights the Holy Spirit may be pleased to give the church. (p. 10)

    Yet, on the other hand, “the cry, Semper reformanda, has too often been an excuse for ignoring the collected wisdom of the church over many centuries” (p. 10). Moreover, experience teaches that when denominations have in the past required only “system subscription” or “good faith subscription” to their doctrinal standards, rather than “strict subscription,” the result has almost always been theological decline (p. 8).

    How, then, can these twin concerns for the absolute authority of Scripture and the doctrinal purity of the church be maintained?

    I’m not sure, but I’m inclined to make three suggestions:

    (1) Perhaps a middle way could be sought between strict subscription and good faith subscription, whereby Ministers and Elders are required to declare specific exceptions to the doctrinal standards of their denominations, and subscribe strictly to those that remain. In this way, the specific theological positions and – very importantly – the reasons for them, could be discussed, and exceptions to (some) subordinate standards could be permitted, without opening the door to a flood of ill-defined and serious deviations on matters of central importance. I have a feeling that some denominations already operate in this way.

    (2) The further a denomination moves towards requiring strict subscription from its officers, the more important it will be for that denomination to recognise that those standards do not define the boundaries of Christ’s church. I, for one, would have extremely grave reservations about ordaining a man as a Minister if he denied the doctrine of unconditional election. But I would want to insist equally strongly that my Arminian friend in the church down the road is a brother in Christ.

    (3) One possible corollary of (2) is that, ironically, the more tightly we define our confessional standards, and the more strictly we require subscription to them, the less significant they become in relation to the identity of the members of Christ’s church. This fact ought to be reflected in the way we conduct ourselves in discussions about matters of theological disagreement.

    These are just ideas, of course. I’m looking forward to running them past Ian Hamilton personally on 2 October. Why not come along and join us?

    The Faith of Our Fathers

    Two kinds of election - 21 June 2010

    The word “election” is customarily used by Reformed evangelicals to refer to God’s eternal and irrevocable decree of salvation. God has “elected,” or chosen, certain people for salvation, and these people will certainly be saved. This is, of course, a perfectly biblical way of speaking.

    However, “election” does not always have this meaning. The Bible forces us to recognise that there is more than one kind of election, and indeed a failure to recognise this will open the door to the unravelling of Reformed soteriology. Calvin highlights this distinction in his discussion of the preservation of the saints in his Institutes, III.xxiv.9.

    Calvin first points out that in John 6:70 Jesus says that he has “chosen” all twelve of the disciples, including Judas, whom he immediately describes as “a devil”. Here the term “election” refers to Judas’s “apostolic office.” In this sense, election is revocable.

    By contrast, Jesus is clearly speaking of a different kind of election in John 13:18, where he uses the term to distinguish Judas from the other eleven disciples. In this case, Calvin says, Jesus “banishes [Judas] from the number of the elect: ‘I am not speaking of all of you; I know whom I have chosen’” (Calvin, Institutes, III.xxiv.9).

    The distinction between these two kinds of election is critically important in Calvin’s mind: “If anyone confuses the word ‘election’ in the two passages, he will miserably entangle himself; if he notes their difference, nothing is plainer” (Calvin, Institutes, III.xxiv.9). It’s easy to see why: only by maintaining this difference can the Reformed doctrine of the preservation of the saints be upheld.

    Unsurprising - 12 March 2010

    Tom Weinandy’s Does God Change? is wonderful. Truly wonderful. Yet I was surprised by one comment on Ignatius of Antioch’s defence of the full humanity and deity of Christ against the Docetists. Weinandy finds it “surprising that at such an early date one finds the full divinity and full humanity predicated of the one person of Christ almost in Chalcedonian rigor” (Weinandy, Change, p. xxiii).

    Really? Why should this be surprising? Doesn’t the Bible itself teach clearly the full deity and full humanity of Christ? Granted that there is in Ignatius “a lack of [the] theological argumentation” (p. xxiii) one finds in later treatments, why should we be surprised to find an early Christian affirming bluntly what the Bible says plainly?

    Helping Jehovah’s Witnesses - 14 October 2009

    There are a fair number of Jehovah’s Witnesses in North London. It’s often quite hard to talk to them about the teaching of the Bible, since they generally seem to respond with ‘standard answers’ when facing biblical challenges to their doctrinal positions.

    There are few things more tragic than seeing someone trapped by institutionalised spiritual blindness.

    The problem is compounded by the fact that JWs have their own Bible translation, the New World Translation, which translates away many of the clearest biblical proofs for key biblical doctrines denied by JW theology, such as the deity of Christ.

    However, we’ve got to begin somewhere, and the deity of Christ is a sensible place to open a conversation. Here, with thanks to Louis Berkhof (Systematic Theology, pp. 94-95), are some useful places to turn. The underlined references are (I think) likely to be most effective at helping a JW to see the inadequacy of the teaching they’ve received from their organisation.

    Jesus is explicitly described as divine

    John 1:1; John 20:28; Romans 9:5; Philippians 2:6; Titus 2:13; 1 John 5:20

    Jesus is given divine names

    Isaiah 9:6; Isaiah 40:3, cf. Matthew 3:3; Jeremiah 23:5-6; Joel 2:32, cf. Acts 2:21

    Divine attributes are ascribed to Jesus

    Eternal existence

    Isaiah 9:6; John 1:1-2

    Omniscience

    John 2:24-25; John 21:17; Revelation 2:23

    Omnipotence

    Isaiah 9:6; Philippians 3:21

    Immutability

    Hebrews 1:10-12; Hebrews 13:8

    Every attribute belonging to the Father

    Colossians 2:9

    Jesus does divine works

    Creation

    John 1:3, 10; Colossians 1:16; Hebrews 1:2, 10

    Providence

    Luke 10:22; John 3:35; John 17:2; Ephesians 1:22; Colossians 1:17; Hebrews 1:3

    Forgiveness of sins

    Matthew 9:2-7; Mark 2:7-10

    Resurrection and judgment

    Matthew 25:31-32; John 5:19-29; Acts 10:42; Acts 17:31; Philippians 3:21; 2 Timothy 4:1

    The final renewal of all things

    Hebrews 1:10-12; Philippians 3:21; Revelation 21:5

    Jesus receives divine honours

    John 5:22-23; John 14:1; Hebrews 1:6; Matthew 28:19

    Practical preterism (2) - 3 August 2009

    We’ve already looked at three passages in 1 Thessalonians to try to figure out whether or not the context supports a preterist reading. Next on the list is a longer passage, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18.

    13 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. 14 For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. 15 For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.

    Several considerations suggest that Paul is talking here about the final judgment, not AD 70.

    So far, so good. But there’s a fly in the ointment. Paul seems to anticipate that he and his hearers will still be alive at ‘the coming of the Lord’ (4:15) about which he has been speaking. ‘We who are alive’, he says twice (4:15, 17); not ‘those who are alive’. How can the text be about the general resurrection if Paul expected to still be alive when the great day came?

    Some have attempted to solve this puzzle by suggesting that Paul was mistaken about the time of Jesus final coming. Others (e.g. C. H. Dodd) have argued that Paul changed his mind about the timing of the last day: near the beginning of his ministry (when he wrote 1 Thessalonians) he expected Jesus to return very soon, but later he had decided that the final judgment would be delayed.

    I’m not sure how these solutions can be reconciled with an evangelical doctrine of Scripture. It’s one thing to say that Paul’s understanding of the gospel developed during his life – after all, he started out as a gospel denying, church-persecuting Pharisee. But it is quite another to claim that Paul expressed his early misunderstandings in his biblical writings, for this effectively undermines the truthfulness of the Bible.

    A much better solution is found by looking closer at the Greek text. It turns out that the phrase ‘we who are alive’ doesn’t necessarily imply that Paul expected the parousia to occur before his death. Following I. H. Marshall and C. E. B. Cranfield, Paul Woodbridge[1] has pointed out that the ‘we’ may be hypothetical (i.e. ‘if we are alive’), or indeed it may ’signify nothing more that a general designation’ (i.e. ‘we, insofar as this will, as events turn out, apply to us’). Paul’s ‘we who are alive’ does not, in itself, indicate that Paul expected the day of resurrection to come before his death.

    Taking all this together, it seems overwhelmingly likely that 1 Thess 4:13-18, like 2:19-20; 3:11-13 and 5:23-24, refers not to AD 70 but to the general resurrection.

    [1] Paul Woodbridge, ‘Did Paul Change His Mind? An Examination of Some Aspects of Pauline Eschatology,’ Themelios 28.3 (2008), p. 10. Online www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/article_paul_woodbridge.html

    Practical preterism (1) - 25 July 2009

    In a previous post, we looked at preterism in general terms – what it is, what it isn’t, and so on. In this and a few later posts, we’ll be thinking about how this works out in practice. In particular, we’ll be looking at 1 Thessalonians as a case study to work out what kinds of exegetical factors might incline us towards or against a preterist reading of a given passage.

    We’ll begin with 1 Th 2:19-20; 3:11-13 and 5:23-24.

    19 For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not you? 20 For you are our glory and joy. (1 Th 2:19-20)

    11 Now may our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way to you, 12 and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you, 13 so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints. (1 Th 3:11-13)

    23 Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it. (1 Th 5:23-24)

    It’s tempting, when reading these texts, simply to assume that the ‘coming’ (parousia) spoken of is the final coming of Jesus at the last judgment. After all, we all believe in the second coming. Well, it’s true that Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead on the last day, but to assume that ‘coming’ means this here comes dangerously close to begging the question about their referent. After all, the purpose of the present discussion is precisely to work out whether or not the text might actually be referring to Jesus’ ‘coming’ in judgment on apostate Israel in AD 70. It’s at least possible for parousia to be used in this latter sense, as in Matthew 24:3, 27 (so R. T. France, Matthew). So what does it mean here?

    1 Th 2:19 says that the Thessalonians will be the ‘crown [stephanos] of boasting’ for Paul and his companions at Jesus’ coming. The term stephanos appears in only three other places in Paul’s letters – 1 Cor 9:25; Phil 4:1; 2 Tim 4:8. Phil 4:1 is especially relevant, because here Paul refers to his believing readers as his stephanos, just as in 1 Th 2:19. The context plainly has to do with the bodily resurrection, when Christ ‘will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body’ (Phil 3:21).

    2 Tim 4:8 points in the same direction, for here Paul is contemplating his own death: ‘I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race’ (2 Tim 4:7). This being the case, clearly the next event in world history with particular significance for him would be the day of resurrection, not the destruction of the Jewish Temple. Again, the stephanos is the reward received at the final judgment.

    Similarly, 1 Cor 9:25 speaks of an ‘imperishable’ staphanos, which must surely be understood as a picture of the everlasting blessings of the resurrection age.

    Thus 1 Th 2:19 seems to refer to the final coming of Christ at the last judgment.

    The use of the same word for ‘coming’ (parousia) in both 1 Th 3:11-13 and 5:23-24 might make us think that these texts also refer to the day of resurrection. But we shouldn’t be too hasty, for the same word can mean different things in different contexts. As it happens, though, the context in each of these two texts does in fact support a final judgment referent.

    The two passages are remarkably similar. Both are prayers for the sanctification of the Thessalonians, and as prayers go they are pretty ambitious. Paul prays not just that they would ‘increase and abound in love’, but that they would be ‘blameless … at the coming of our Lord Jesus’ (3:13; 5:23). More than this, he appears confident that God ‘will surely do it’ (5:24). This can only refer to the final judgment on the day of resurrection, for only then (and not before) will God’s people be ‘blameless in holiness’ before him.

    Thus a preterist reading of 1 Th 2:19-20; 3:11-13 and 5:23-24 would be mistaken. These texts refer to Jesus’ ‘coming’ to judge the living and the dead at the general resurrection.

    What is preterism? - 25 July 2009

    Following this post on the subject of preterism, perhaps a few more comments on the subject might be worthwhile. In this post we’ll take a step back and clarify in a bit more detail what preterism is. In some later posts we’ll take a step forward and see what it looks like in practice.

    ‘Preterism’, in the most general sense, refers to the view that a given future-oriented biblical text refers to an event that now lies in the past. All orthodox Christians are therefore preterists on some texts but not on others. We’re all preterists on Mark 10:45 (Christ came ‘to give his life as a ransom for many’, and the ransom has now been paid) but not 1 Corinthians 15:52 (the dead ‘will be raised imperishable’, but they haven’t been yet). However, although this is what preterist / preterism means in the most general sense, it’s not how the term is normally used.

    Preterism most commonly refers to the view that a given future-oriented biblical text, which might be (and often is) thought to refer to the general resurrection / final judgment, in fact refers to the events surrounding the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in AD 70. The texts most often debated include Mark 13, Matthew 24, 2 Thessalonians 2 and the book of Revelation, but many others could be (and often are) thrown into the discussion, such as 1 Corinthians 7:26 (what is ‘the present distress’?), the book of Hebrews (what is ‘the world to come’ in 2:5, for example?) and a whole pile more besides. The term is normally used to describe a interpretation of these texts that relates them to AD 70, rather than the final judgment.

    Preterism must be carefully distinguished from hyper-preterism (sometimes called ‘full preterism’ or ‘consistent preterism’), which wrongly claims that all such texts were fulfilled in AD 70. Hyper-preterism is heretical, not least because it denies such credal essentials as the future bodily return of Christ and the future general bodily resurrection.

    Clearly, it is both possible (indeed, necessary) to be a preterist on some texts but not others. You could be a preterist on Revelation, but not Hebrews or 1 Corinthians 15; on Mark 13:1-31, but not 1 Corinthians 7:26, and so on. The question, ‘Are you a preterist?’ should therefore always be met with the reply, ‘On which text(s)?’

    Moreover, the only way to answer the more specific question ‘Are you a preterist on text x’ is by careful exegesis of the text concerned. Taking a preterist reading of one text might incline us towards a similar reading of others – especially if they use similar imagery in similar ways, such as in Matthew 24 and Mark 13 – but it wouldn’t necessarily do so. Moreover, just knowing that it could be about AD 70 doesn’t by itself get us very far; it merely draws our attention to one possible interpretative option that we might otherwise overlook. Nonetheless, this is a step in the right direction, for it’s striking how many solid evangelical commentaries either dismiss preterist readings with a brief wave of the hand, or even don’t mention the possibility at all. Sadly, this often leaves them in a bit of a tangle. An awareness of preterism would often clear up the mess.

    Theocentric sin - 21 July 2009

    Ps 51:4 occasionally raises an eyebrow, because it seems odd that after the Bathsheba incident David should say to God, ‘against you, you only, have I sinned’. Yet this isn’t the only time in the Bible that God is identified as the one against whom person-to-person sin is ultimately directed.

    When Potiphar’s wife keeps pestering Joseph to sleep with her, he replies at length about the privilege he enjoys at the hand of his Egyptian master. The obvious implication being that it would be an outrage to repay Potiphar’s kindness with such treachery (Gen 39:8-9). Yet at the climax of Joseph’s reply, his words echo David’s concern not to sin against the Lord: ‘how then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?’

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