For one thing there is the charismatic emphasis: something older evangelicals would have had no truck with.  Then there is the lack of discernment, the stress upon experience, the vulgarity of some YRR leaders, and the cult of personality and its horrid attendant, the publishing prostitute.  Then there is the seeming underhand Calvinizing going on in the SBC (I would find Arminianizing just as objectionable).

The problem has once again been highlighted with Reformed scholar Michael Sudduth’s defection to, of all things, Hare Krishna!  And still more telling of the state of much evangelicalism today is the kerfuffle surrounding the resignation of Pastor James MacDonald from The Gospel Coalition.

I regard myself as several removes away from MacDonald and his ministry, and I believe older evangelicals would too.  If you want a little insight into why I say that, you ought to read Dan Phillips’ thoughts on MacDonald’s resignation.  Dan has his own opinions and he does not necessarily agree with everything I’ve just said.  But I really like this piece.

Dan Phillips: Even Better Than The Race Card {tm}

In presenting these objections to the reinterpretation of OT passages by favored interpretations of the NT I am not throwing down the gauntlet to anyone.  If someone wishes to respond to these objections I would be fascinated to read what they have to say.  But no one is under pressure to agree with me.  However, I hope these forty reasons will be given thoughtful consideration by anybody who comes across them.

I believe, of course, that the NT does throw much light upon the OT text.  But it never imposes itself upon the OT in such a way as to essentially treat it as a sort of ‘palimpsest’ over which an improved NT message must be inscribed.     

By way of illustration, there are huge ramifications in making a dubious allusion in John 7:38 to Zechariah 14:8 a basis for a doctrine of the expansion of the spiritual temple over the face of the earth.  Such a questionable doctrine essentially evaporates huge amounts of OT material from, e.g.,  Numbers 25; Psalm 106; Isaiah 2; 33; 49; Jeremiah 30-33; Ezekiel 34; 36-37; 40-48; Amos 9; Micah 4-5; Zephaniah 3; Zechariah 2; 6; 8; 12-14; and Malachi 3, as well as all those other passages which intersect with them.  The cost is too high as well as quite unnecessary.

Here are twenty more reasons for not insisting the NT reinterprets the OT:

21. It devalues the OT as its own witness to God and His Plans.  For example, if the promises given to ethnic Israel of land, throne, temple, etc. are somehow “fulfilled” in Jesus and the Church what was the point of speaking about them so pointedly?  Cramming everything into Christ not only destroys the clarity and unity of Scripture in the ways already mentioned, it reduces the biblical covenants down to the debated promise of Genesis 3:15.  The [true] expansion seen in the covenants (with all their categorical statements) is deflated into a single soundbite of “the Promised Seed-Redeemer has now come and all is fulfilled in Him.”  This casts aspersions on God as a communicator and as a covenant-Maker, since there was absolutely no need for God to say many of the things He said in the OT, let alone bind himself by oaths to fulfill them (a la Jer. 31 & 33).

22. It forces one to adopt a “promise – fulfillment” scheme between the Testaments, ignoring the fact that the OT possesses no such promise scheme, but rather a more relational “covenant – blessing” scheme.

23. It effectively shoves aside the hermeneutical import of the inspired intertextual usage of an earlier OT text by later OT writers (e.g. earlier covenants cited in Psa. 89:33-37; 105:6-12; 106:30-31: 132:11-12; Jer. 33:17-18, 20-22, 25-26; Ezek. 37:14, 21-26).  God is always taken at face value (e.g. 2 Ki. 1:3-4, 16-17; 5:10, 14; Dan. 9:2, 13).  This sets up an expectation that covenant commitments will find “fulfillment” in expected ways, certainly not in completely unforeseeable ones.

24. It forces clear descriptive language into an unnecessary semantic mold (e.g. Ezek. 40-48; Zech. 14).  A classic example being Ezekiel’s Temple in Ezek. 40ff.  According to this view it is not a physical temple even though a physical temple is clearly described.

25. It impels a simplistic and overly dependent reliance on the confused and confusing genre labeled “apocalyptic” – a genre about which there is no scholarly definitional consensus.

26. It would make the specific wording of the covenant oaths, which God took for man’s benefit, misleading and hence unreliable as a witness to God’s intentions.  This sets a poor precedent for people making covenants and not sticking to what they actually promise to do (e.g. Jer. 34:18; cf. 33:15ff. and 35:13-16).  This encourages theological nominalism, wherein God’s oath can be altered just because He says it can.

27. Since interpreters in the OT (Psa. 105:6-12); NT (Acts 1:6); and the intertestamental period (e.g. Tobit 14:4-7) took the covenant promises at face value (i.e. to correspond precisely to the people and things they explicitly refer to), this would mean God’s testimony to Himself and His works in those promises, which God knew would be interpreted that way, was calculated to deceive the saints.  Hence, a “pious transformation” of OT covenant terms through certain interpretations of NT texts backfires.

28. The character of any being, be it man or angel, but especially God, is bound to the words agreed to in a covenant (cf. Jer. 33:14, 24-26; 34:18).  This being so, it would mean that God could not make such covenants and then not perform them in a way totally foreign to the plain wording of the oaths He took; at least not without it testifying against His own holy veracious character.  Hence, not even God could “expand” His promises in such a fashion that would lead literally thousands of saints to be misled by His oaths.

29. A God who would “expand” His promises in such an unanticipated way could never be trusted not to “transform” His promises to us in the Gospel.  Thus, there might be a difference between the Gospel message as we preach it (relying on the face value language of the NT) and God’s real intentions when He eventually “fulfills” the promises in the Gospel.  Since it is thought that He did so in the past, it is conceivable that He might do so again in the future.  Perhaps the promises to the Church will be “fulfilled” in totally unexpected ways with a people other than the Church?

30. Exegetically it would entail taking passages in both Testaments literally and non-literally at the same time (e.g. Isa. 9:6-7; 49:6; Mic. 5:2; Zech. 9:9; Lk. 1:31-33; Rev. 7).

31. Exegetically it would also impose structural discontinuities into prophetic books (e.g. God’s glory departs a literal temple by the east gate in Ezekiel 10, but apparently returns to a spiritual temple through a spiritual east gate in Ezekiel 43!).

32. In addition, it makes the Creator of language the greatest rambler in all literature.  Why did God not just tell the prophet, “When the Messiah comes He will be the Temple and all those in Him will be called the Temple”?  That would have saved thousands of misleading words at the end of Ezekiel.

33. It ignores the life-setting of the disciples’ question in Acts 1:6 in the context of their already having had forty days teaching about the very thing they asked about (the kingdom – see Acts 1:3). This reflects badly on the clarity of Risen Lord’s teaching about the kingdom.  But the tenacity with which these disciples still clung to literal fulfillments would also prove the validity of #’s 23, 26, 27, 28 & 32 above.

34. This resistance to the clear expectation of the disciples also ignores the question of the disciples, which was about the timing of the restoration of the kingdom to Israel, not its nature.

35. It turns the admonition to “keep” the words of the prophecy in Revelation 1:3 into an absurdity, for how many people can “keep” what they are uncertain is being “revealed”?

36. It makes the unwarranted assumption that there can only be one people of God.  Since the OT speaks of Israel and the nations (e.g. Zech. 14:16f.); Paul speaks of Israel and the Church (e.g. Rom. 11:25, 28; Gal. 6:16; 1 Cor. 10:32; cf. Acts 26:7), and the Book of Revelation speaks of Israel separated from the nations (Rev. 7), and those in New Jerusalem distinguished from “the kings of the earth” (Rev. 21:9-22:5), it seems precarious to place every saved person from all ages into the Church.

37. In reality what happens is the theological presuppositions of the interpreter which are read into the NT text and then back into the OT.  There is a corresponding breakdown between what the biblical text says and what they are assumed to mean.  Thus, it is the interpretation of the reader and not the wording of the biblical text which is often the authority for what the Bible is allowed to teach.

38. This view also results in pitting NT authors against themselves.  E.g. if “spiritual resurrection” is read into Jn. 5:25 on the rather flimsy basis of an allusion to Dan. 12:1-2, that interpretation can then be foisted on Rev. 20:4-6 to make John refer to a spiritual resurrection in that place too.  Again, if Jesus is said to refer to His physical body as “this temple” in Jn.2:19 then he is not allowed to refer to a physical temple building in Rev. 11:1-2.  This looks like what might be called “textual preferencing.”

39. This view, which teaches a God who prevaricates in the promises and covenants He makes, also tempts its adherents to adopt equivocation themselves when they are asked to expound OT covenantal language in its original context.  It often tempts them to avoid specific OT passages whose particulars are hard to interpret in light of their supposed fulfillment in the NT.  It also makes one over sensitive to words like “literal” and “replacement,” even though these words are used freely when not discussing matters germane to this subject.

40. Finally, there is no critical awareness of many of the problems enumerated above because that awareness is provided by the OT texts and the specific wording of those texts, which, of course, are not allowed a voice on par with what the NT text is assumed to mean.  Only verses which preserve the desired theological picture are allowed to mean what they say.  Hence a vicious circle is created of the NT reinterpreting the Old.  This is a hermeneutical circle which ought not to be presupposed.

1. Neither Testament instructs us to reinterpret the OT by the NT.  Hence, we venture into uncertain waters when we allow this.

2. It would mean no one could correctly interpret the OT until they had the NT.  In many cases this deficit would last for a good three centuries after the first coming of Jesus Christ.

3. It forces the NT into saying things it never explicitly says (e.g. that the Church is “the New Israel” or the seventh day Sabbath is now the first day “Christian Sabbath.”)

4. It forces the OT into saying things it really does not mean (e.g. Ezekiel 43:1-7, 10-12).

5. It would require the Lord Jesus to have used a brand new set of hermeneutical rules in, e.g., Lk. 24:44; rules not accessible until the arrival of the entire NT.  These would have to include rules for each “genre”, which would not have been apparent to anyone interpreting the OT on its own terms.

6. If the OT cannot be interpreted without the NT then what it says on its own account cannot be trusted, as it could well be a “type” to be reinterpreted by the NT.

7. Thus, it would mean the seeming clear predictions about the Coming One in the OT could not be relied upon to present anything but a typological/symbolic picture which would need deciphering by the NT.  The most clearly expressed promises of God in the OT (e.g. Jer. 33:15-26; Ezek. 40-48; Zech. 14:16-21) would be vulnerable to being eventually turned into types and shadows.

8. It would excuse anyone (e.g. the scribes in Jn. 5:35f.) for not accepting Jesus’ claims based on OT prophecies – since those prophecies required the NT to reinterpret them.

9. Any rejection of this, with a corresponding assertion that the OT prophecies about Christ did mean what they said, would create the strange hermeneutical paradox of finding clear, plain-sense testimony to Christ in the OT while claiming the OT cannot be interpreted without the NT.

10. The divining of these OT types and shadows is no easy task, especially as the NT does not provide any specific help on the matter.

11. Thus, this approach pulls a typological shroud over the OT, denying its Author the credit of meaning what He says and saying what He means (e.g. what does one make of the specificity of Jer. 33:14-26 or Zeph. 3?).

12. If the Author of the OT does not mean what He appears to say, but is in reality speaking in types and shadows which He will apparently reveal later, what assurance is there that He is not still speaking in types and shadows in the NT?  Especially is this problem intensified because many places in the NT are said to be types and shadows still (e.g. the Temple in 2 Thess. 2 and Rev. 11).

13. It imposes a “unity” on the Bible which is symbolic and metaphorical only.  Hence taking the Bible in a normal, plain-sense (the sense scholars advocating this view take for granted their readers will adopt with them, which we would identify as “literal”) would destroy any unity between the Testaments.

14. However, a high degree of unity can be achieved by linking together the OT and NT literature in a plain-sense, even though every question the interpreter may have will not be answered.  Hence, this position that the NT must reinterpret the OT ignores or rejects the fact that, taken literally (in the sense defined above) the OT makes good sense.

15. Saying the types and shadows in the OT (which supposedly include the land given to Israel, the throne in Jerusalem, the temple of Ezekiel, etc.), are given their proper concrete meanings by the NT implies neither the believer nor the unbeliever can comprehend God’s promises solely from the OT.

16. Thus, no unbeliever could be accused of unbelief so long as they only possessed the OT, since the apparatus for belief (the NT) was not within their grasp.

17. This all makes mincemeat of any claim for the perspicuity of Scripture.  At the very least it makes this an attribute possessed only by the NT.

18. Thus, the OT is deprived of its own hermeneutical integrity.  This would render warnings such as that found in Proverbs 30:5-6 pointless.

19. A corollary to this is that the authority of the OT to speak in its own voice is undermined.

20. In consequence of the above the status of the OT as “Word of God” would be logically inferior to the status of the NT.  The result is that the NT (which refers to the OT as the “Word of God”) is more inspired than the OT, producing the unwelcome outcome of two levels of inspiration.

Hi Paul, I am back in town and will try to answer your questions as asked in the comments on the fourth post.  However, I shall have to point out several presuppositions in your argument, some of which may perhaps be hidden from you.  I’m glad Tony has saved me the time of explaining Matthew’s use of Jeremiah.  Btw, this is the standard interpretation across the board, dispensational or not.  I would only add the fact that NT writers employ the word “fulfillment” in a few different ways; sometimes they point to an application as here (thus cf. 1 Cor. 10:6 “example”).  Sometimes a partial fulfillment, as when Christ read from Isa. 61 but stopped short of the whole quotation.  Sometimes, of course, the fulfillment is a direct confirmation of a prediction, as when the scribes knew Christ would be born in Bethlehem from Micah 5:2.  There is more to say on “fulfillment”, but I hope I’ve made my point sufficiently.

Your first question asks: “1. What distinction do you make between replacement theology as a hermeneutic and progressive revelation?”

Your phrasing of the questions helps my answer.  Notice “replacement theology” comes to a passage with certain theological baggage: there is only one people of God; the Church, and the Church perforce must be the “New Israel.”  But “progressive revelation” is much as you’ve defined it.  It is God who reveals, and He does so gradually.  But He never circumvents a prior revelation with a later one, which, as you acknowledge, would make His earlier revelation disingenuous (i.e. a prevarication), and so would throw suspicion on any later revelations.

CT forces progressive revelation into its premeditated mold.  Everything must conform to the covenant of grace in particular.  Hence, all those saved by grace are under that covenant (which is found nowhere in Scripture), resulting in one people of God, whether that is what the Bible actually says or not.  Thus, the Bible must be made to “teach” this via the expedient of a forced typology, which the plain-sense must yield to if it threatens the theological mold.  I teach my students never to build any doctrine on a type!  Types may illustrate an already formulated doctrine, but they can never establish it!  I hope you follow.

Progressive revelation makes no sense to me if ones hermeneutics have to change in order to keep up with it.  How does revelation progress if it flits from the plain-sense to some typological sense with such unnerving abandon?   Dispensationalists operate from the assumption that progressive revelation is tied to the dictum that God means what He says to whom He says it.  My brand of Biblical Theology, which I call Biblical Covenantalism, relies on progressive revelation which grows out of hermeneutical continuity.  that being so, once God has covenanted the “Holy Land” to Israel He cannot give it to the Church.  They are two distinct entities (e.g. Israel exists as a geo-political ethnic nation long before the Church was even formed after the resurrection of Christ).

Your second question was: “2. In what sense do you believe that Gentile-Christians are sons of Abraham?”

The first thing to say is that they are not sons of Abraham (better Abraham’s seed – Gal. 3:29) in the physical sense.  Paul says we are sons through like faith (e.g. Gal. 3:7-9; Rom. 4:16).  This being true, I could write in the second post:

Galatians 3:6-9

Now Abraham is introduced, together with the quotation of Genesis 15:6 to prove that justification is by faith alone (3:6).  And just as Abraham’s faith was declared sufficient for justification, so we too must exercise faith in God’s Word to us [in the Gospel] (3:7).  The next verse quotes from the promise of blessing to all nations through Abraham by faith (3:8).  This connects salvation to the Abrahamic covenant (cf. Rom.4).  The verse says the Scripture foresaw this salvation of the Gentiles.  Paul shows this by simply bringing Gen.15:6 and Gen. 12:3 together.  Righteousness is what man most needs, and that is what God imputed to Abraham in Gen. 15:6 upon his faith.  The Gentile nations will be blessed – which starts with imputed righteousness – by their faith-connection with Abraham via the covenant (Gen. 12:3; Gal. 3:9).  Thus, there is a corporate identity via a provision (Gen. 12:3) of the Abrahamic covenant (hereafter AC).

Please note that Paul in Galatians is not teaching about the covenant promises to Israel (viz. land, king, priesthood, preeminence), but has as his subject the purity of the Gospel of justification by grace through faith which was in danger of being subverted.  If we keep that in mind we shall not be tempted to drift into the sort of symbolic implication which Gunn, uniquely as far as I know, has pursued.  Instead, we shall see that Paul links our “sonship” here to two things: following in the faith of Abraham, and being included in certain (not all) promises pertaining to the Gentiles in the Abrahamic covenant.  The inheritance of verse 18 is not the land, but the blessings within Genesis 12:3 (Gal. 3:8).  We must pay attention to the parts of the AC which Paul is dealing with and not jump to conclusions which the text does not spell out.  Remember, I cited F. F. Bruce, who is not a dispensationalist, to the effect that the land promises are not in view in Galatians 3.

But our specific concern here is with Paul’s use of “Seed” in verse 16.  How can he be so punctiliar when he knows the word is a collective noun (and uses it as such in v. 29)?  I went on to write:

But there is no clear provision in the AC itself to provide the salvation needed for our entering into its blessings upon Gentiles.  This would mean the AC (and also the Davidic and Priestly covenants too), would require supplementing with a specific salvific promise to bring about their fulfillments.   That “supplement” is, as we are told elsewhere and to be brought out next time, the New covenant (NC) in Christ.

Let me remind you of something I said in the second post:

“Option 3. Paul understood that “seed” could not be legitimately confined to a singular noun referring to Messiah, since the word is a collective noun and is used as such many times in the OT, and, indeed, by Paul himself (Gal. 3:29).  In which case the singular and the corporate must be closely related; the corporate fulfillment being predicated on the coming Messiah.

Only this view preserves the integrity of the OT contexts, not to mention the specificity of God’s covenant promises to Israel.  Promises which Paul elsewhere says are inviolable (Rom. 11:25-28).  Only on this view can we avoid the treacherous waters of hermeneutical and philosophical ambiguity upon which the first two views implicitly rely.  This third way would be our position.  To demonstrate it one must try to show that there is no need for an OT passage to be considered a “shadow” or “type” of a NT reality, but rather that the witness of both Testaments can be hermeneutically aligned to allow all the relevant verses to speak in their own words.”

All the covenant promises, whether to Israel or the Gentiles, run through the New covenant and hence through Christ.  This does not mean everyone is in the Church.  Christ is the One through whom God’s covenant promises, differentiated according to whom they were given and what was promised, come to final fulfillment.  In my first post I wrote, with tongue-in-cheek:

“Of course, we know that Gunn sees a deeper meaning to the “land.”  He sees Heaven!  And Heaven is for the Church.  And the Church is “Abraham’s seed.”  Therefore, the Church gets all the blessings entailed in the covenant with Abraham, including the (wink) “land.”  So the reasoning goes.” 

But this makes God talk out of both sides of His mouth.  Revelation becomes, not progressive, but mercurial and unpredictable.

Then, in the third post I said:

“This is what provides Paul with the means whereby he can take up OT passages that plainly refer to a plurality of persons and also the promised land, and route them all through the single Seed in Galatians 3:16.  In so doing he does not have to leave behind the plural meaning of “seed” (i.e. “descendents”).  But he also does not have to forge OT Israel into a “New Israel” which is the NT Church.  Furthermore, he has no need to set aside or transform the promised land either.  The original referents remain intact.  God’s covenants are at least as fixed and immutable as any covenant of men (Gal. 3:15, 17).”

My fourth post included this line: “because the Church is a participant in the AC via the promises in Genesis 12:3 and 22:18 it does so just because of its participation in the New covenant in Christ.”

Genesis 12:3, which is cited by the Apostle, refers not to the land but to blessing on the “nations” other than the physical descendents of Abraham through Isaac (and Jacob).

Finally then, the Church is not minimized and neither is Israel.  In Galatians 3 Paul is dealing with the former, in which “there is neither Jew nor Greek” (Gal. 3:28).  But it is a mistake to think that because that is true, that the church gets that which was promised to Israel by an everlasting covenant in the OT – the land (thus Psa. 105:6-11).

I hope this clears away the confusion. 

In disagreeing with Gunn I am not saying that he is not justified in attending to the places in Genesis where the apostle appears to be getting his language about “and to your seed” from: that is, from Genesis 12 through 22.  The problem comes in when he extrapolates from the false notion that Paul is quoting from only two places in the Septuagint and claims the land promise of these “seed” passages must be transferred to the Church and turned magically into promises of heaven.  When Christians insist that this must be done they are going beyond the teaching of the NT, not to say the apostle Paul elsewhere (e.g. Romans 11).  They are also claiming the OT cannot be properly understood without the New – a claim which sounds pious enough, until it is analyzed in light of its logical outcome (more on this soon).

My response (which, remember, was just a part response) is that in order for the Abrahamic covenant to be tied to the Church (especially its Gentile contingent), that covenant must be connected to the New covenant in Christ.  If that is true then Paul is thinking along these lines when he cites the four words “and to your seed” from Genesis.  He most probably does not have an exact reference in mind, as he did with his earlier quotation of Genesis 15:6, but rather has in view the repeated use of the phrase through the Abrahamic narrative (if I had to make a guess which passage Paul may have been citing I would go for Gen. 22:18).

If one accepts this thesis then the corporate dimension of the AC, which Paul needs to complete his argument in Galatians 3:29, remains intact, but is channeled through the “Mediator of the New covenant” – the one “Seed” of Galatians 3:16.  Thus, because the Church is a participant in the AC via the promises in Genesis 12:3 and 22:18 it does so just because of its participation in the New covenant in Christ.

I realize that this view has not been widely accepted by many dispensationalists, but that is because they have gotten bogged down in Jeremiah 31:31 and have not recognized that the prophet is speaking there about the [future] participation of the Remnant Israelites in the eschaton.  why would Jeremiah mention the Church?  No, if we are going to see whether the Church has any stake in the New covenant we must study the NT teaching about that issue.  Surely 1 Corinthians 11 settles it?  The Church also participates in the New covenant through Christ and therefore, can draw upon those promises in the AC which pertain to it.  As for Israel, they shall enter into their promises; promises which include the land promised to Abraham and his [plural] seed (Psa. 105:6-11).

I think this is all I want to say about this interesting subject right now.  The actual reasoning in the exposition of Galatians 3:1-16 is given in Part Two.  Lord willing, when I write my longer series of posts on “Teleology and Eschatology” I shall revisit this question.

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

The School

The small school I am privileged to run, Veritas School of Theology (not to be confused with Veritas Theological Seminary, which was named after ours btw), enters 2012 with some promising students and a robust outlook.  When the Lord providentially guided me to start this work I knew I didn’t want it to be just like all the other seminaries out there.  I have no real beef with them, other than I think many of them are too big and pander to “the mammon of unrighteousness.”  We are not trendy.  We are a Bible school.  I couldn’t care less about evangelical superstars and about following the herd.  I just want to teach the Bible and its theology to people who care more for Truth for Truth’s sake than they do for “getting on in the world.”

As I look at the evangelical landscape today I see what to me is a disturbing movement away from the plain-sense of Scripture toward excessive typological and allegorical understandings of texts.  There is a pretense at thorough exegesis, when in fact what is happening is that types and other adumbrations are being searched for without regard for context or normal rules of communication.  It seems to me that the only writer who consistently does not mean what He says is the Holy Spirit!  Meanwhile most who call themselves Dispensationalists are happy to keep their thoughts in yesteryear and let this trend continue without any intelligent counter.  While a few are doing some notable work (a shining example being Michael Vlach), for the most part those who take the Bible “literally” have yielded the field.  VST seeks to learn from those with whom we disagree while developing a plain-sense alternative understanding of the Bible and it’s theology.

As most of our students have quickly experienced, we are no degree mill.  The courses require thought and commitment.  A student can express disagreement with a professor and still make an ‘A’ – albeit they have to properly represent and then argue against what they were taught.  Feedback remains very positive, and we are gratified that the instruction is making a difference in lives.  My prayer is that the Lord will allow us to expand our ministry and reach more people with it, both here and abroad.

May God help us to do that better in 2012.

The Blog

“Dr Reluctant” is a moniker given to me by a friend as I was starting blogging about four years ago.  I have tried to write about things which will help my students as well as topics which I find interesting.  I deliberately confine my writing to a few subjects like Apologetics, Systematic and Biblical Theology, Hermeneutics, and Book Reviews.  This is my blog and I keep to the advice I was given before I wrote my first post, namely, “write what you want to write, that’s all.”  I try not to plow the same furrow too much, although I do have two or three series I want to get through which might make it seem a bit “samey” at times.  These series are “The Parameters of Meaning” and a kind of subsidiary set on “Some Problems I Have With Covenant Theology.”  Then there will be another series laying out in more detail the “C1 to C5 Categories” I employ to test theological propositions against the Scriptures they claim to use.  I can’t think of a nifty anagram for my approach, but perhaps I’ll get some inspiration before I start to write those posts?

Another series I intend to write (DV) is entitled “Teleology and Eschatology,” and is a description of my approach to Biblical Theology and the storyline of the Bible as set out in my courses at Veritas.  I hope to begin posting on that soon, although I am reading Greg Beale’s new tome and may have to delay until I’m much further into that work.  I also hope to give the blog a fresh look before very long.

Books

The mention of Beale brings me nicely on to the subject of books.  There are always more books to read than time to read them, and that goes also for books which should be read (there are many which shouldn’t because they waste ones time).

Here is a list of the books I most want to complete as things stand today.  Those with an (r) after them are scheduled for review:

G. K. Beale, A New Testament Biblical Theology (r)

Douglas Groothuis, Christian Apologetics (r?)

Rodney Stark, Discovering God and more

Anthony Thiselton, Hermeneutics: An Introduction

Dan Phillips, The World-Tilting Gospel (r)

David T. Lamb, God Behaving Badly (r)

David Dockery & Roger Duke (eds), John A. Broadus (r)

Darrell Bock & Robert Webb (eds), Key Events in the Life of the Historical Jesus (r?)

Michael Horton, The Christian Faith (r?)

Larry Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ

N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God

Darrell Bock & Buist Fanning (eds), Interpreting the New Testament (r?)

Richard C. Gamble, The Whole Counsel of God (1)

Of course, I shall read more than this.  I shall continue reading through Barth, and I will try to reread Sailhamer’s The Meaning of the Pentateuch, as well as stopping off as usual to delve into Van Til and others.  I really need to get back to my Puritans too!  But we’ll see how it goes.

Whatever happens, I hope I grow in my understanding of God’s Word and in my walk with His Spirit.

Amen

No, I’m just going to write something about books and things.

Fiction

I start with fiction.  I don’t read a lot of it.  But over the past three years or so I have found in it a nice diversion.  Beginning early in 2011 I started reading John Buchan.  Buchan was a very popular Scottish writer in the first part of the 20th Century, but by the last third of it was looked upon as a representative of old hat “stiff upper lip” British-ness.  He is best known as the author of The 39 Steps;  a cracking cloak and dagger which careers all over England and Scotland as its main protagonist, Richard Hannay, seeks to disembroil himself from a false murder charge.  The book has spawned several movies, the best being Hitchcock’s 1935 classic starring Robert Donat.  None of the movies sticks faithfully to the book.  If you haven’t read it I recommend you do.

After the first Hannay adventure I was hooked and have enjoyed following Hannay’s exploits in Greenmantle and Mr Standfast, both high caliber yarns set during the Great War.  I’m going to read The Three Hostages as soon as I can.

I have also been reading Margery Allingham’s “Albert Campion” mysteries.  These are set in the England in the late 20′s to early 50′s and are uniformly good.  Campion first appears as a side character in The Crime at Black Dudley where he basically takes over the book.  He is a fascinating amateur sleuth, clearly from the upper crust, although Allingham only drops hints about his real identity throughout her books.  I haven’t been careful enough to read the novels in order, though I did next pick up the first Campion mystery proper, the excellent Mystery Mile.  Since then I have thoroughly enjoyed Sweet Danger, Police at the Funeral, and Tiger in the Smoke.  What makes Campion interesting is the way the author makes him out to be deliberately somewhat idiotic.  It’s as if he hides himself behind his large horn-rimmed specs.  He is acquainted with much that is evil, even being recognized as an expert in many matters by Scotland Yard, yet he comes across as a bit of a fool.  Great stuff.  The old BBC series with Peter Davison does a good job of transferring the character to the screen.

Christian Books

Most of my reading time is spent either with the Bible or with more academic books.  Albeit I have managed to peruse one or two lightweights like David Platt’s Radical, which I may summon the courage to review here soon (that’s right, I’m not that impressed).  Beyond that I have been impressed by P. T. O’Brien’s new Pillar Commentary on Hebrews, and have been using Robert Gundry’s Commentary on the New Testament with real profit.  Douglas McGready’s work on the preexistence of Christ called He Came Down From Heaven has been very worthwhile, as has Craig Keener’s study The Historical Jesus of the Gospels and N. T. Wright’s New Testament and the People of God.  I was hoping to be on the third installment of Wright opus by now but got diverted onto other things.  I am eager to explore his fully worked out views on Paul’s theology when that book finally arrives sometime in 2012.  I know I shall have many disagreements, but I want to see what he has to say all the same.

Back with Jesus studies I have been very much helped by Paul R. Eddy & Greg Boyd’s The Jesus Legend, although I have not yet finished it.  On the more apologetic front A. Kostenberger & M. Kruger’s The Heresy of Orthodoxy is the best argued defense against the lucrative hypothesizing of Bart Ehrmann I have seen.  Erhmann is just warmed over Bauer, but people have forgotten about Bauer so it all appears new.  Not so good an apologetics book in my opinion is God is Great, God is Good edited by W. L. Craig & Chad Meister.  Evidential/Classical apologetics seems to give away as much as it takes.  It is a fairly short step to Nancey Pearcey’s good but rather gloomy Saving Leonardo.

Turning to theology I must confess to having not completed many books.  Fred Sanders’ The Deep Things of God makes the case that Christians intuitively adopt a Trinitarian outlook even though they might not be able to articulate it.  Kenneth Keathley’s Salvation and Sovereignty presents a well thought out Molinist approach to the issue which deserves attention.  I shall be using it alongside of Bruce Ware’s God’s Greater Good in future in my course “The Doctrine of God (2) – Creation & Providence” at Veritas.  Among the unfinished volumes are Roland McCune’s Systematic Theology (1), and Greg Nichols’ Covenant Theology, the second of which, though well written, has been painful to read on account of the author’s seeming unawareness of his own assumptions.

Karl Barth has loomed in the background all year.  I am midway through Volume 4.1 of his Church Dogmatics.  I enjoy the challenge of Barth, and he really helps me to think through my own presuppositions.  The man can play on one string for longer than any person I know.  But some of what he plays is downright brilliant, whether one can completely sign off on it or not.  Of one thing I am convinced.  Barth was more God-fearing than many of his modern devotees.

Finally, in Biblical Studies I am looking forward to finishing Larry Helyer’s The Witness of Jesus, Paul and John.  Like all Helyer’s books, this one will teach you even when you find yourself parting company with him here and there.  Helyer deserves more attention than he gets.

Vying for my time in the New Year is G. K. Beale’s new tome A New Testament Biblical Theology.  A kind student bought it for me for Christmas and I am already a hundred pages through it.  I may try a series of blog posts through the book but I haven’t decided that yet.  Beale is brilliant and I shall learn a great deal from him, but so far he has built too much conjecture into his argument for the storyline of the OT.  Last but not least, John H. Sailhamer’s The Meaning of the Pentateuch, with all its editorial peccadilloes, has made an indelible impact on me.  I still can’t understand how covenant theologians could hail this book in such glowing terms as they have.  It contains one of the most sustained arguments against covenant theology I know of!

That’s it.  Better late than never!  It remains for me to thank everyone who has bothered to read my blog.  May God bless you and yours.  Even so, come Lord Jesus in 2012!

Your brother,

Paul H.

Fred Butler has written a nice post on his reading which is worth a read.

As we have seen, the dispensational position also stresses that the spiritual seed of Abraham as defined in Galatians 3 have no claim to the national land promise of the Abrahamic covenant. Paul’s teaching on the Christian and the Abrahamic covenant will not allow such a conclusion. Paul argues in Galatians 3 that God intentionally used seed as a collective noun that has both a singular and plural reference so that the singular reference could refer to Christ and the plural reference could refer to those who are in Christ. Paul’s point is that the Abrahamic promises were made to Abraham and to his seed (verse 16), that the seed of Abraham is Christ (verse 16) and all who are in Christ (verse 29), and that therefore the promise given to Abraham belongs to all who are in Christ (verse 29). In his argumentation, Paul specifically quotes from the Old Testament the phrase “and to thy seed,” the “thy” referring to Abraham (Galatians 3:16; see also Romans 4:13). The Greek phrase in Galatians 3:16 translated “and to thy seed” could have come from only two passages in the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek: Genesis 13:15-17 and Genesis 17:8.¹⁰ And in both of these Old Testament passages, that which is promised to Abraham’s seed is the land promise.¹¹ Beyond this, every time in the book of Genesis where the phrase “to your seed” is used in the context of a divine promise to give something to somebody, the reference is to the Abrahamic land promise.¹² When Paul was talking about the Old Testament promise that belongs to the Christian, he was referring specifically to the land promise, the one promise that dispensationalists argue that Paul could not have been referring to.

I am sure that Gunn’s assertion about the Septuagint is unsustainable.  But what about his main assertion – that the land promise in the Abrahamic covenant “belongs to the Christian”?

My answer is that  Gunn is again wrong, but he is wrong not because, as per his point about the use of the Septuagint, his opinion cannot be substantiated, but because he has not conceived of the fulfillments of the covenants in the same way Paul conceived of them.  In Gunn’s theology, the OT must be interpreted by the NT, and when that is done, the OT promises are seen as shadows and types of the eventual realities to which they point.  What needs to happen is for there to be a hermeneutical change to accommodate this shadow-promise/fulfillment pattern.  The New Testament is thought to provide it, especially the theology of Christ and the Church.  The question of whether anyone but an inspired Apostle knew about this and what this does to the reliability of God’s promises for non-apostolic persons before they read Paul is sidestepped.  We are living, are we not? in the light of the realities!

But I do not think this is Paul’s view at all.  Neither do I think it at all wise to suppose that the NT reinterprets the Old in this way.  As adverted in Part Two of this article, we should take into consideration the fact that the biblical covenants such as the Abrahamic, Priestly and Davidic, do not contain the means for their own eschatological culmination in salvation, but instead depend upon the New covenant that was to be brought about by and in Jesus Christ.  This is what provides Paul with the means whereby he can take up OT passages that plainly refer to a plurality of persons and also the promised land, and route them all through the single Seed in Galatians 3:16.  In so doing he does not have to leave behind the plural meaning of “seed” (i.e. “descendents”).  But he also does not have to forge OT Israel into a “New Israel” which is the NT Church.  Furthermore, he has no need to set aside or transform the promised land either.  The original referents remain intact.  God’s covenants are at least as fixed and immutable as any covenant of men (Gal. 3:15, 17).

My time is ebbing and I must conclude here for today.  Lord willing, I shall finish this subject off next time.

Part One here

Grover Gunn is sure that Paul is quoting Genesis 13:15-17 and 17:8, 10 from the Septuagint to make his argument in Galatians 3:16.  There is no evidence that Paul is quoting the LXX.  As for which particular passages he is citing, one cannot be that exact.  I. Howard Marshall (New Testament Theology, 226) thinks Paul is citing Gen. 22:18 in Galatians 3:16.  Daniel P. Fuller thinks it’s Gen. 17:7 (The Unity of the Bible, 335-336).  I tend to think he has the Abrahamic narrative itself in mind.

But Paul is well aware of the ambiguity residing in the word “seed.”  So how can he relate it to Christ in Gal. 3:16 and yet preserve the collective meaning he knows is clearly there in the original contexts he is citing?  As Gal. 3:29 makes clear, Paul has not lost sight of the collective meaning of the word, but as was alluded to last time, and as I shall try to explain, the corporate is included by Paul in the One – Jesus Christ.  To Paul’s mind, fulfillment was always understood to require Christ the Fulfiller.  Once this is acknowledged one must choose between several hermeneutical options:

Option 1. Paul was employing some kind of semi-apocalyptic interpretation through which he could summon any OT passage to take on a new meaning in his argument.

This is the position of Richard B. Hays in e.g., The Conversion of the Imagination: Paul as Interpreter of Israel’s Scripture.  Since it posits a change of meaning under the influence of Paul’s supposed hermeneutic, it has not caught on with many conservative evangelicals.

Option 2. Though he never said it, Paul intended us to infer that the Genesis texts he referred to (whichever ones they were) had intended meanings beyond those found on the surface of the passages in their original setting.  Paul was only now declaring to us what God meant by those OT promises.

This would be Gunn’s position, along with all those who believe the NT is necessary to rightly interpret the Old.  A clear implication of this position is that there is hermeneutical, or at least linguistic discontinuity between the two Testaments.  The meaning of a particular term or phrase in the original context without recourse to the NT would procure a different sense than it would once the NT was consulted.  Another outcome of this approach would be to separate the original author’s intended meaning from that of the Holy Spirit.  While this possibility should not be ignored, the burden of proof for such a claim is on those who make it, whether they are aware of it or have to be made aware of it by others.

Option 3. Paul understood that “seed” could not be legitimately confined to a singular noun referring to Messiah, since the word is a collective noun and is used as such many times in the OT, and, indeed, by Paul himself (Gal. 3:29).  In which case the singular and the corporate must be closely related; the corporate fulfillment being predicated on the coming Messiah.

Only this view preserves the integrity of the OT contexts, not to mention the specificity of God’s covenant promises to Israel.  Promises which Paul elsewhere says are inviolable (Rom. 11:25-28).  Only on this view can we avoid the treacherous waters of hermeneutical and philosophical ambiguity upon which the first two views implicitly rely.  This third way would be our position.  To demonstrate it one must try to show that there is no need for an OT passage to be considered a “shadow” or “type” of a NT reality, but rather that the witness of both Testaments can be hermeneutically aligned to allow all the relevant verses to speak in their own words.

Paul’s Argument in Galatians 3:1-16

If we take a look at Galatians 3 we will find Paul reasoning about the role of faith in God’s saving economy.  We will not find him saying anything about God’s covenants with the people of Israel and the land grant God promised them.  Of course, Gunn realizes this.  His contention is that because the Apostle speaks of OT texts which not refer to Christ as the “Seed” (e.g. Gen 17:7), but also contain promises about the “land,” it only stands to reason that the word “Seed” in Genesis (and the rest of the OT?) is not in fact a reference to the nation of Israel (“descendents”), but only ever to Christ; and the “land” likewise is not Canaan (or the portion described in Gen. 15), but Heaven (some would say the whole land surface of Earth).  What the Apostle has done, so the thinking goes, is to offer an inspired interpretation of terminology only dimly understood before Paul wrote Galatians circa 50 A.D. (see Option 2 above). 

I want to show how one can understand Paul’s pedantic insistence on a single seed and yet not have to employ a tough verse to infer an altering of the original land grant to the corporate seed – Israel.  But first we shall examine Paul’s argument in Galatians 3.

Galatians 3:1-5

Paul is distressed that the churches in Galatia have been taken in by those who are emphasizing a justification and sanctification through law-works.  He therefore contrasts faith from the works of the law which certain Judaizers were insisting on.  The Holy Spirit, he reminds them, was received by faith [in Paul's Gospel] and not at all by works (3:2).  And since the Spirit was received by faith it is unreasonable to think that one should not continue to walk in faith (3:3), especially since the Spirit is seen to work in response to faith (3:5).

Galatians 3:6-9

Now Abraham is introduced, together with the quotation of Genesis 15:6 to prove that justification is by faith alone (3:6).  And just as Abraham’s faith was declared sufficient for justification, so we too must exercise faith in God’s Word to us [in the Gospel] (3:7).  The next verse quotes from the promise of blessing to all nations through Abraham by faith (3:8).  This connects salvation to the Abrahamic covenant (cf. Rom.4).  The verse says the Scripture foresaw this salvation of the Gentiles.  Paul shows this by simply bringing Gen.15:6 and Gen. 12:3 together.  Righteousness is what man most needs, and that is what God imputed to Abraham in Gen. 15:6 upon his faith.  The Gentile nations will be blessed – which starts with imputed righteousness – by their faith-connection with Abraham via the covenant (Gen. 12:3; Gal. 3:9).  Thus, there is a corporate identity via a provision (Gen. 12:3) of the Abrahamic covenant (hereafter AC).

But there is no clear provision in the AC itself to provide the salvation needed for our entering into its blessings upon Gentiles.  This would mean the AC (and also the Davidic and Priestly covenants too), would require supplementing with a specific salvific promise to bring about their fulfillments.   That “supplement” is, as we are told elsewhere and to be brought out next time, the New covenant (NC) in Christ.

Galatians 3:13-16

I pass over verses 10-12 as they demonstrate the demanding requirements of the law as over against faith.  Christ is now introduced as the One who redeems us “from the curse of the law” (3:13) and connects us to Abraham and the reception of the Spirit “through faith” (3:14).

Verse 15 speaks to a mere covenant between men as binding and not open to annulment or the addition of a codicil changing the terms (i.e. “adds to it”).  There is no need here to enter into the ins-and-outs of ancient law, especially as the term employed by Paul was not used in Greco-Roman society (see F. F. Bruce).  The illustration of a man’s covenant is being used to show the incontrovertability of such covenants; something to be revisited in verse 17 (cf. Rom. 11:28-29) where the AC is the subject.

Now, in verse 16 the Apostle writes:

Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He
does not say, “And to seeds,” as of many, but as of one, “And to
your Seed,” who is Christ.

In order to connect Abraham and the AC to the promised salvation through faith Paul fastens on the Messianic implications of the “seed-promise” to Abraham in Genesis 12-22.  He is well aware of what he is doing.  The word “seed” in Hebrew and Greek, as in English, is a collective noun.  As we have already shown in part one, the collective sense is right there in the Genesis record.  So what is Paul doing?  How can he be so insistent on the singular meaning here?  We must straight away recall that he does not dispense with the collective sense, which he needs to ground his argument (see 3:29).

What he is doing here is including the collective within the singular (Christ).  It is through Christ that the promises – all the promises – of the AC will find their fulfillment and consummation.  Believers from Abraham to the end of the age are connected to the AC through the Seed, Jesus Christ, and this connection, I believe, is forged through the New covenant!

Though the New covenant is not explicitly mentioned in Galatians 3, I believe it is securely in Paul’s mind.  We Gentiles enter into the promised blessing of Genesis 12:3 through the New covenant in Christ (cf. 1 Cor. 11:25-26).  The Abrahamic, Priestly, and Davidic covenants all depend on the Mediation of Christ in the New covenant (cf. Heb.12:24).  Despite the rather embarrassing vacillation of many Dispensationalists over the NC, the words of institution of the Lord’s Supper prove that Christ has made the New covenant with the Church.  Whatismore, that is the only way the Church accesses the AC!  Every covenant blessing runs through Jesus Christ and the New covenant in Him.

The question of the relation of the New covenant with Israel’s promises in the covenants will be dealt with next time, as will further issues raised by Gunn’s article.