FF Bruce’s Eschatology

As I was doing my all-too-infrequent clearing up of my email messages I inadvertently removed a question I was asked about FF Bruce’s position on eschatology.  I place an answer of sorts here in the hope that Prof. Fred Hall’s eyes might fall on it.

As far as I can make out Prof. Bruce’s position was in line with the B. W. Newton stream of Plymouth Brethren interpretation.  That is to say, he was a historic premillennialist in the vein of C. H. Spurgeon (Baptist) and J. C. Ryle (Anglican).  I say this because I remember reading his Commentary on 1 & 2 Thessalonians in the WBC Series and coming away with that opinion.  I don’t actually own that book, but my opinion is bolstered for the following reasons:

1. Bruce writes the Forward to the English translation of Erich Sauer’s The Dawn of World Redemption.  The Forward is very commendatory even though Sauer adopted what could be called a modified dispensational approach.

2.  In some of his commentaries Bruce seems to hold out for a “renovation” of this earth after the appearance of the final (and personal) Antichrist.  On the latter, see especially his remarks in Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free, 233.  On a future hope for the planet, see his Romans (Tyndale series), 174  where he refers to a “worldwide regeneration” after all Israel has been “reincorporated…among the people of God.”  (Ibid. 205).

3. It is easy enough to prove that Bruce believed that Israel (i.e. the ‘Remnant’) will be saved by believing the Gospel and so brought into the fold of the Church (See above).  In his Romans, 208 he maintains that there will be no restoration of an “earthly Davidic kingdom.”  I take him to mean that even though there will be a future millennium of some sort, this will not have OT characteristics but “Churchly” ones.

4.  Finally, in his commentary on the Greek text of Galatians Bruce allows that the kai of 6:16 ought to translated “and” thus drawing a distinction between “all them who walk according to this rule” and “the Israel of God,” but he then refers “the Israel of God” to the “all Israel” of Rom. 11:26 (275).

My interpretation is hardly incontrovertible, but when one considers his Brethren affiliation and his endorsement of Sauer I think it bears up quite well.

I should say that Bruce wrote the entry on the Apocalypse in the old one volume International Bible Commentary.  Perhaps this would help put the matter to rest.  But as I do not have access to a copy, that will have to be the work of another.

Great Post on Nominal Christianity

Over on Triablogue there was posted this excellent article on the spiritual depth (or lack thereof) of many professors in our churches.  It is well worth the short time it takes to read it.

Review of “The Apologetics Study Bible”

The Apologetics Study Bible, Ted Cabal, General Editor, Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishing, Hbk, 2007.

At the risk of showing my age, I can remember a time when considering which Study Bible to purchase was an easy affair. One had only a few to choose from: Scofield, Thompson, Nave, and a few more. Well, those days are well and truly gone. What is one to make of the current situation? Options fill out the pages of Bible catalogs. Within the long lists of contemporary Study Bibles there are good and not so good choices. I’ve even come across ones with metal covers (who dreams up these things?) But in our consumer-culture there’s always room for one more, right? How, then does the new Apologetics Study Bible rate?

It would be helpful in a review of a work like this to first provide a general overview of what one will encounter in The Apologetics Study Bible (hereafter TASB).

First, the translation is the Holman Christian Standard Bible, a fairly formal correspondence version done by the Southern Baptists, usually accurate and quite vivid (especially in the Prophets). The study notes and book introductions are provided by recognized Bible scholars, many of whom were contributors to the New American Commentary series. This feature of TASB does not appear to be geared towards the subject of apologetics, but the material is good, reflecting a wise decision to expound the text itself instead of affixing clipped apologetic digressions to a biblical passage.

Science and Theological Method: Some Thoughts

Scientism, the belief that science provides the epistemological framework upon which reality can be known, enjoyed its heyday in the first part of the Twentieth Century,[1] until roughly the early 1960’s when it started to come under increasing scrutiny. During that time it was widely believed within academia that “science was the answer.” The very word “scientist” was enough to make people expect “the facts.” Science in this atmosphere did not need to give theology a second thought. Science, indeed, especially since Darwin, had gleefully pushed theology and religion off the intellectual map. Together with some creative rewriting of history (e.g. the Galileo affair[2]; the Scopes trial) the scientist (a name coined only in 1834[3]), had become mankind’s savior.

 

Certainly, scientism has not gone away. It is still promoted in numerous textbooks and TV specials as the voice of calm reason. It still has its superstars: the late Carl Sagan, who famously began his book (and TV series) Cosmos with the words, “The cosmos is all that is, or was, or ever shall be.”[4] The late Stephen Jay Gould, whose NOMA attempted forever to separate the realm of facts (occupied, of course, by science), and the realm of private spiritual metaphor (occupied by theology and religion).[5] And, of course, Richard Dawkins, author of The Blind Watchmaker and The God Delusion, who calls religion “a virus of the mind,”[6] and the source of such one-liners as, “Nothing in the mind exists except as neural activity.”[7] Their creed is summed up accurately by Phillip Johnson:

 

Science may not be able to answer all questions, at least for the time being, but some of the most visionary scientists already speak of a “theory of everything,” or “final theory,” which will in principle explain all of nature and hence all of reality. Because (in this view) science is by far the most reliable source of knowledge, whatever is in principle closed to scientific investigation is effectively unreal.[8]

Review of New Dictionary of Christian Apologetics

New Dictionary of Christian Apologetics, edited by W. C. Campbell-Jack & Gavin McGrath, consulting editor, C. Stephen Evans, Downers Grove, Ill: IVP, 2006, cloth, $45.00.

When in 1999 Norman Geisler published his Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics he provided the Christian community with a useful, if slanted reference book on the defense of the Faith. Like the Catholic Handbook by Kreeft and Tacelli, it reflected a heavily Thomistic approach. Now we have this offering from the UK, produced by IVP and including articles by many contributors.

The choice of articles is on the whole excellent. It appears that a lot of thought has gone into the selection. We find fine articles on such pertinent topics as “Advertising,” “Authority,” “Critical Realism,” “Foundationalism,” “Globalization,” and “Islam.” Included also are many cameos of important thinkers (e.g. Augustine, Barth, Dooyeweerd, Henry, Lewis, Wittgenstein) that support the formal entries.

The dictionary is divided into two parts; the first fifty pages being given over to six essays on the history, role and relevance of the discipline. I confess to being quite disappointed with this part of the work, since on the whole the essays suffer from a lack of depth and balance, with Evans’s article, “Approaches to Christian Apologetics” being a prime example of the latter. But perhaps this would have been remedied if more space had been set aside for them.

Faith and Reason in Christian Perspective - Pt. 1

It appears to me that one of the first things a faithful theologian needs to do is to straighten out the confusion about brought about by the world’s separation of faith and reason. This relationship is so vital to a biblically fastened worldview that to neglect it will involve the believer in a host of conflicting beliefs and practices. For it is just here that the negligent Christian theologue will be attacked.[1] To the average man in the street, “faith” is that “I really hope so” attitude that many people employ when their circumstances get tough. It is that blind trust that things will turn out all right in the end. Faith thus defined is the opposite of reason. “Reason” deals with the cold hard facts, so it goes, and is what we have to use in the “real world” – in business, in science, in education.

 

One Christian writer has put the matter in the form of a question: “Is it rational for us to believe in God? Is it rational for us to place our confidence in Him and his revelation to man? Can a person believe in God without performing a sacrifice of his intellect? ”[2]

 

According to many people, faith and reason are polar opposites. Faith deals with hopes and aspirations and dreams and ‘religious stuff’, while reason concerns itself with the facts of day to day experience, the world in which we live and do science learn about what is and what is not so. As the late Harvard paleontologist, Stephen Jay Gould stated it, in what has become a mantra among secular scientists, “religion tells us how to go to heaven; science tells us how the heavens go.” To put it in less deceptive terms, “religion deals with gods and heaven and pixies and UFO’s; while science (which knows these things are non-existent) concerns itself with what is so.” Gould even thought up a nice anagram for his concept: NOMA, or “non over-lapping magisteriums”.[3] Secular science gets all the facts; faith gets all the pink elephants. Or as one astute critic observed,

 

The power to define “factual reality” is the power to govern the mind, and thus to confine “religion” within a naturalistic box. For example, a supposed command of God can hardly provide a basis for morality unless God really exists. The commands of an imaginary deity are merely human commands dressed up as divine law…[N]aturalistic metaphysics relegates both morality and God to the realm outside of scientific knowledge, where only subjective belief is to be found.[4]

 

It is because of misconceptions such as these that the matter deserves more attention than it gets. We must begin by defining our terms. Gould and his followers are so impressed by their formulation of the issue because they have defined faith away while reconstituting reason so that it mirrors their own opinion of themselves and what they think they are doing. The first thing that any person should do, therefore, is to know what he means when employing specific terminology.

I will define reason along with theologian-philosopher John Frame as, “the human ability or capacity for forming judgments and inferences.”[5] This is employing the word in a descriptive sense. Frame goes on to narrow the definition down to a normative sense “to denote correct judgments and inferences.”[6] The important thing to notice about Frame’s definition is that it houses no built-in biases against supernaturalism. While being itself a perfectly good description it does not contain anything in it with which the secularist can control the debate.

“Anti-Intellectualism” and Fundamentalism: A Friendly Rejoinder

Recently I posted a review of the book Promise Unfulfilled by Dr. Rolland McCune. I suppose one would call it a mixed review since although I applauded the book’s intentions and appreciated some of the chapters, I recounted a few misgivings as well. You may read what I wrote here.

In one of my criticisms of the book I made this remark:

“…the most glaring fact about this chapter is McCune’s reliance upon the very people whom he criticizes in his book! The names of Nash, Marsden, Brown, McGrath, Demarest, Davis, and Schaeffer (who is identified as neo-evangelical later on) are appealed to for the substantiation of the writer’s data and critique. And while a writer may legitimately quote an author with which he disagrees, it should be recognized that no fundamentalist is called upon in this chapter - an indication at least that the charge of anti-intellectualism against American fundamentalism does contain enough adhesive power to call any critic of neo-evangelicalism to a little self-examination once in a while.”

When I wrote this section I knew that if I used the term “anti-intellectualism” I might upset one or two people. That was not my intention. But I decided that the word belonged in my paragraph because it was an apt description of what I was concerned about in that part of my critique.

A Christian brother, Frank Sansone, who writes the blog A Thinking Man’s Thoughts kindly contacted me to let me know that he had taken issue with this part of my review. Frank raises two questions in his article that I would like to address in this post. My reasons for doing this are; a). Frank puts his finger on an important issue, and b). because I think that notwithstanding he has unwittingly misconstrued what I was trying to say in my review.

Letter from a Christian Citizen - A Review

As many of you are well aware, the past year or so has been a period of rejuvenation for atheism. Four big selling books, by Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett and Harris have made a splash, and, I think, caught some evangelicals napping. Not so Douglas Wilson, who among other things is Head of a Christian college that focuses on “the lost tools of learning,” and the editor of the respected Credenda/Agenda magazine. His new book, Letter from a Christian Citizen responds to the similarly titled atheist tirade of Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation.

Wilson’s book, like all his work, is interesting, fun to read, and incisive. He is one of the very best writers out there today, and Letter from a Christian Citizen is one of the year’s most worthwhile books. It begins with a valuable “Foreword” from Gary DeMar about the pretensions of “new” atheism and the latest assault it has launched upon truly free-thinking people (meaning anyone who may want to disagree with it).

When Wilson enters the fray he does so cordially, thanking Harris for “setting your thoughts down so plainly.” (3). He explains that the acerbic attacks Harris has received from some Christians is not a sign of a general ill-will among believers (4-5), but then skillfully uses Harris’s characterizations of these church-goers to cut through the atheist’s unreasoned assumptions. “I am genuinely curious as what you can possibly offer as a basis for these judgments” he quips (6). After all, if the atheist version of the world corresponds with reality, what is Harris doing making moral judgments of other biochemically-driven systems? The ethics of the thing isn’t even on the table! As Wilson points out, “In order to demolish something intellectually, you have to have a standard for thought and reason” (8), and this standard extends (if one is to have any hope of a coherent worldview) into the realm of morality also (9, 40, 99). Hectoring believers with epithets and speaking patronizingly at them when one is standing on the equivalent of epistemological Balsawood is stock-in-trade for atheism. But when anyone dares ask for the fulcrum upon which the high-sounding appeals to “science” and “reason” turn all one hears is the crickets chirping outside.

Promise Not Quite Fulfilled: A Brief Review Article

Recently I was in the bookstore of a small but outstanding Christian college in Florida when I came across the book Promise Unfulfilled: The Failed Strategy of Modern Evangelicalism by Dr Rolland McCune, longtime Professor of Systematic Theology at Detroit Baptist Seminary. The title caught my eye right away, so I bought it and read it as soon as I could. It does not take an advanced student in American evangelical history to know that modern evangelicalism is awry in most respects, so I was keenly interested to see what McCune makes of it all.

Let me start off this review by registering how much I appreciate the author’s attempt to both inform believers of the state of evangelicalism and to remind them about how the movement got in the tar it is in. Any author who helps us not to repeat our mistakes by telling us the sober truth about ourselves is to be warmly thanked and appreciated.

Justifying One’s Assertions

Below is a short response to a rather vitriolic missive from a person who evidently did not appreciate my Thoughts on the Dawkins/Lennox debate.

Dear Kam,

 

I’m not sure how much of this reply you will get around to reading. Your response does not exactly fill me with assurance that you read the whole of my original article. In that post I already pre-empted most of what you wrote, minus the vitriol. However, I shall treat your remarks as if I had not written anything previously and shall try to deal with your note.

 

Allow me first to say that I was not born with a Bible in my hand. I was brought up and educated in England where I do not ever recall hearing any explanation of the world apart from evolution and the Big Bang. I have a college education and I assure you that I have heard the other side of the story over and over again. I am either “just stupid” as you seem to think, or I am duped, or I am actually in the right. I’ll let you decide that. Only please make sure your decision is made on the basis of having thought through what you read.