Category: Biblical Theology

The 2011 Gospel Coalition National Conference: See You There!

~ Bob Hayton ~ 5 Comments

Over the years, I’ve blogged about quite a few conferences, from the sidelines. I eagerly downloaded the audio after the fact and helped spread the word about conferences such as Together for the Gospel Conference, The Gospel Coalition and others. This time, I get to go!

If you’ll be at The Gospel Coalition conference next week, I want to know. I’d love to arrange to meet you in person. The theme of this year’s conference is right up my alley: Preaching Christ in the Old Testament. Already, TGC is compiling a stellar listing of top-notch resources on this issue. You can learn more at their Preaching Christ in the Old Testament page.

I’ll try to bring some “live blog” updates if I have time. But I plan to be soaking up the ministry of the word at the conference. I’m also thrilled to be going with my fellow biblioblogger Shaun Tabatt, and we’ll both be attending the Band of Bloggers event Tuesday night.

Use the Contact page here, or message me on Twitter or Facebook to get in touch. Hope to see you there!

On another note, I’ll be meeting Phil Johnson in person the Sunday before TGC here at my church in St. Paul, Beacon of Hope. I’ve been following Phil’s blogging ministry off and on since his solo Pyromaniac days. He was a big help to me early on when I first started blogging about my journey out of extreme fundamentalism. Phil is in town for the Psalm 119 conference and will speak at our church in the services and for a special Q & A, dinner event following. If you live in the Twin Cities, contact me for more info.

The Old Testament: All about Christ, or Not?

~ Bob Hayton ~ 21 Comments

Fascinating debate recently about how to read the OT. The first two statements below are from Professor Mark Snoeberger of Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary.

First:

But since I’ve spent almost all my study time in the OT during the last two months, it’s almost as though I’ve left the Gospel Carnival behind. Kind of like going for a drive in the country, but better. It’s been very refreshing, but the funny thing is that, despite the fact that I have been spending considerably more time than normal in my Bible for the past two months, I’ve read virtually nothing about Christ, the Cross, or the Gospel.

Now some of you are probably shaking your heads right now and saying, “This guy doesn’t know how to read his Bible–it’s ALL about Christ if you know how to successfully navigate between the lines!” And I’m not blind to the redemptive thread that winds through the Bible. But the thing is, when I stop reading between the lines and just start reading the lines, Christ and the Gospel do not emerge as major OT themes. In fact, they’re not themes at all.

and then in the first comment under this post:

Revelation concerning the common or civic sphere, on the other hand, begins with the dominion mandate, takes peculiar shape with the Noahic Covenant and the second table of the Law, and dominates the theocratic period.

Dispensationalism, I think, can be demonstrated to be a variation of this latter model (some would say a perversion) that offers multiple adminstrations–not just two. The various purposes of God are inter-connected, but what is key is that they are not limited to redemptive concerns. What binds them together is not so much the Gospel as it is the manifold glory of God. It’s BIGGER than the Gospel.

Let’s take one example: the OT sacrificial system. There are diverse understandings within dispensationalism on the OT sacrifices, but one that I have felt comfortable embracing is John Whitcomb’s theocratic understanding of the sacrifices, viz., that the sacrifices were only incidentally connected with being redemptively right with God; instead they were concerned with being theocratically right with the (K)ing and with the covenant community. That these sacrifices became a pattern for the redemptive arrangement in the death of Christ is not accidental, of course. And God certainly arranged history so that there is a continuity of form. However, it seems to me that rather than seeing the OT sacrifices as anticipating Christ, it is better to say that God modeled Christ’s sacrifice retrospectively after the theocratic system.

If this is the case, then the the Mosaic system has its own meaning, known plainly by the OT saint, without reference to Christ. It was not intrinsically anticipatory.

Over and against this, Brian McCrorie in the comments here shared my basic view on this matter:

Ben I don’t think I fundamentally disagree with you. However, I would only add that we should not only interpret the OT on it’s own terms, but also interpret it canonically (ie, the Bible as one book)

If we simply isolate the OT from the NT, and interpret it “on it’s own terms”, and not canonically, would we ever come to the conclusion that Jonah could be a picture of Christ? Furthermore, I don’t need an OT text to explicitly tell me the rock in the wilderness was Christ when Paul tells me as much in 1 Cor.

If we isolate the testaments we may not even (like some comments above) see how Adam prefigured Christ. But it blows my mind that someone who has the NT would even question the correlation of the first Adam to the second, or King David to his greater Son whom he calls “Lord”.

The bigger question in all of this I think is how or if we can do what the NT writers do. For instance, we don’t have explicitly or implicity (that I know of)in the NT that Joseph was a type of Christ. But the correlations are almost as clear as day. I agree with James that Keller’s references to Esther and others are much more of a stretch. However, that doesn’t make his hermeneutic “special”, he’s just trying to follow the pattern of intertextual canonical interpretation. How confidently we do that today without divine inspiration is the sticking point (at least for me).

Lastly, I wanted to comment on something Keith said:
“How could God, ‘retrospectively’ do anything when he decreed it all outside of time?”

Marriage from the perspective of Eph 5 is a perfect example of this. We know now, this side of the cross and through later revelation, that marriage was instituted to be a picture of Christ and the church. In other words, the cross and the church preexisted (in the purpose of God, not strictly in time) the marriage of man and woman. Why then would we be surprised to find the events and words of the OT orchestrated and inspired to point to Christ? We’re not necessarilty reading Christ and the NT back into the OT. It’s almost as if we’re going back before the OT, now with the knowledge of God’s ultimate plan climaxing in Christ. We have now what angels and prophets once only dreamed of seeing. Please don’t make me go back to that day.

and then:

Here [is an] illustration supporting canonical reading (or reading the NT back into the OT):

Black box: Imagine a FAA flight inspection team reviewing data and clues from the site of a plane crash. All their information is leading them down a path of understanding the cause of the crash. But when they find the black box they have the pilot’s definitive word on how and why the plane went down. Wouldn’t they then go back and look at all the collected data and see how all along it pointed to that particular failure. But without the black box it wasn’t clear. The recording didn’t change the data (NT revelation doesn’t alter the OT), but shed new light on its proper and full interpretation. Furthermore, without the box, the collected data could never have been fully understood. Why would any inspector then go back and disregard the recording, or separate it from the data, and try to interpret the two separately? Instead, he would interpret the (less clear) clues with the definitive recording….

By isolating the OT and having a hermeneutic based on original authorial intent instead of a wider canonical interpretation based on divine Authorial intent, we are severely limiting our understanding of the text. We can better locate, appreciate, and interpret the signs and symbols pointing to Christ in the OT only as we see them through the lens of the NT. Lastly, we must be very careful to isolate the OT from the NT because, in my opinion, the function of OT revelation (as well as parables, for example) is not simply to reveal, but also to conceal. We weren’t meant to get all the information on God’s redemptive plan from the OT. Throughout the OT God gives us clues which only later can be identified for what they were. My guess is that originally God intentionally concealed the whole story (like any good writer) from all people, but particularly from rulers and authorities, and ultimately Satan himself. How else can we explain Satan killing the King of the Jews only to realize the salvation of the world and his own defeat?

I encourage you to read the comments where Brian made these statements above. There is an in-depth discussion of this question and all participants are quite irenic and charitable. Makes for great reading. The comments at Snoeberger’s blog will just puzzle you more than anything. If that is the result of dispensationalist thinking, I say beware.

Makes me excited that I’ll be going to the Gospel Coalition Conference this year where the theme is preaching Christ from the Old Testament. Maybe that’s why the Conservative Evangelicals have such an appeal to young fundamentalists, they get what the message of the Bible is all about.

John Sailhamer’s Messianic Interpretation of the Song of Solomon

~ Bob Hayton ~ 8 Comments

I came across the NIV Compact Bible Commentary and was delighted to find that John Sailhamer was its author. I’ve so enjoyed his The Meaning of the Pentateuch, that I picked up his commentary on the Pentateuch. I’m going to have to pick up this compact Bible commentary of his as well.

I was able to read the section on the Song of Solomon and was fascinated by Sailhamer’s insights, which I plan to share here. The following quotes are from his treatment of the book on pages 359-361 in the NIV Compact Bible Commentary (Zondervan, 1994), emphasis added.

Sailhamer begins by briefly recounting the traditional figurative interpretations of the book and the quite literal modern interpretations.

Although it is, on the face of it, just that–an ode to human love–one must ask whether it was originally intended to be read as such by its first audience. There are some indications within the book itself that suggest it was not…. There is no question that the book is a poetic drama of a lover’s longing for his beloved and of her willing complicity. To suggest, however, that this drama of two lovers is, in fact, the intent of the book is to confuse the poetic imagery with the purpose of the poem.

He is careful to say that this does not “justify the wholesale allegorizations of the poem that have characterized much of its history.” He admits the picture of the relationship of God/Christ with Israel/the Church, is a wonderful picture, but avers “there are no clues within the book itself to support such a reading. In the last analysis, one’s interpretation should come from within the book itself, and preferably from the clues given by the author himself.”

Sailhamer goes on to uncover several clues which do confirm that there is more to the Song than may meet the natural eye, however. He first points out from the overall structure of the book, that “the ‘reflections of love’ of the lover and the beloved do not progress and build in intensity in the course of the poem itself.” This is no average love story. He also argues that “though the poetic imagery comes close at times to suggesting the lover and his beloved have in fact come together and joined themselves in that union that they so longingly describe, the structure of the book itself suggests that has not yet happened.” Rather, the “lovers’ quest is an ideal, a longed-for desire that lies beyond their own grasp.”

Setting aside these preliminary observations for the moment, we come to Sailhamer’s focus on the “larger structural movement given to the poem by the author.” The repeated refrain throughout the book reads, “Do not arouse or awaken love until she [NIV, it] so desires” (2:7b; 3:5b; 8:4b). The meaning of this refrain comes from its connection to 8:5b where the author links it with the last statements made by the beloved (the woman): “Under the apple tree I roused you; there your mother conceived you, there she who was in labor gave you birth.” In this connection, Sailhamer sees an allusion to two other key biblical texts: the prologue of Proverbs (chapters 1-9), and the account of the Fall in Genesis 3.

If an illusion [sic] is intended to these passages, it suggests that “the beloved” in the Song of Solomon is intended to be understood as a personification of “wisdom” and Solomon, or “the lover,” is intended as a picture of the “promised seed” of Ge 3:15, i.e., the Messiah.

He goes on:

What appears to have happened in the composition of the Song of Songs is that the author has seen in this love-song the possibility of a portrait of Israel’s long-awaited messianic king. Solomon, the son of David (cf. 2Sa 7:16), whose quest for wisdom characterizes the central core of the book of Proverbs, speaks in the prologue of that book of binding wisdom to himself and on his heart (Pr 3:3; 7:1-3) in the same way that in this book [Song of Solomon] the beloved says, “Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm” (8:6). Moreover, in Proverbs Solomon says, “Say to wisdom, ‘You are my sister'” (Pr 7:4), just as here the beloved says, “If only you were to me like a brother” (8:1). An extended comparison of these two books suggests that these are not mere coincidental similarities of words and phrases, but rather a deliberate “inter-textuality,” or allusion of one text to another. Such verbal links and allusions between the personified Dame Wisdom in the book of Proverbs and the young beloved in the Song of Songs invite our attempts to see a larger purpose behind this love song. I have suggested that such a purpose is to be found in the growing messianic hope found in these sections [i.e. the Wisdom Literature] of the OT.

Thus far then, Sailhamer has shown “the Song of Songs is intended as a portrait of the promised Messiah’s love for divine wisdom.” He goes on:

The Messiah is here pictured by Solomon, and “wisdom” is personified by the young and beautiful beloved. Throughout the poem the notion of love is idealized by the fact that its obtainment lies in the future. The quest for wisdom was aroused “under the apple tree” (8:4a), probably an allusion to the time of the Garden of Eden when the first woman “saw that the fruit of the tree was…desirable for gaining wisdom [and] she took some and ate it” (Ge 3:6). The obtainment of wisdom, however, will come only when one like Solomon comes to claim his beloved.

Sailhamer also sees the reference to “there your mother conceived you, there she who was in labor gave you birth” (8:5b) as suggesting that the author of the Song of Solomon “also understood both the promised ‘seed’ in Ge 3:15 and the reference to Eve as ‘the mother of all living’ (Ge 3:20) messianically.”

The result of these inter-textual links, “if… intended by the author of this book” then,

…would place this song on a quite different level than that of an ode to human love. It would, in fact, give credence to the traditional attempts to see more in this poem than meets the eye. It would also provide some guidelines along which the symbolism of the book is to be read.

One final argument supports Sailhamer’s conclusions:

Finally, such a reading of the book would also provide needed insight into the underlying justification for the book’s inclusion into the OT. There is general recognition today that the time of the formation of the OT canon coincided with a significant surge in the hope of the imminent return of the messianic king. This book was included in the canon, one might say, because it was intended as a picture of the Messiah.

I am not one to discount seeing the Divine Author’s hand behind the human book as intentionally foreshadowing future covenant realities. I would see no problem in taking Sailhamer’s lead and affirming that this authorial intent was expanded in the wisdom of God, to allow the book as we have it in our Bible to suggest analogies between Christ and the Church. Think of the many songs that have been written culling from the poetic imagery of this Song of Songs.

Still, I had never seen Sailhamer’s reasoning for seeing a human authorial intent behind the Song of Solomon including an explicit Messianic connection. I’d be interested to know, if any of my readers knows whether Sailhamer has written more explicitly of this connection. The section on the Song is only a few pages long in the NIV Compact Bible Commentary. Along these lines, I’d also love to know what you think of this. Does this ring true to you? Or do you think Sailhamer is off base?

You can pick up a copy of this little book at Amazon.com or direct from Zondervan.

“Reclaiming the Old Testament for Christian Preaching” edited by Kent, Kissling & Turner

~ Bob Hayton ~ 7 Comments

Over the last few decades, a revival of interest in the Old Testament seems to have come over the evangelical church. Numerous resources for preaching the Old Testament and for understanding the various genres we find in the first two thirds of our Bibles have been produced. The tide is turning, and more and more we hear of careful preaching through the Old Testament again.

We still have a long way to go, however. Most conservative pulpits major on the New Testament. After all, the relevance of NT books to the Christian living today is much more apparent. Popular expositors have even given us commentary after commentary on the New Testament, to the almost complete exclusion of the Old Testament. Theology-heavy sermons from the doctrinal portions of the New Testament can serve to keep people out of touch with the reality of the story of Scripture. And ironically, in an age where everybody’s story has value, the grand overarching storyline of the Bible is silenced by the Church’s neglect of the first 39 books of her Bible.

Many of the resources being published that are seeking to revive a focus on the Old Testament are locked away in scholarly tomes or couched in some liberal theological garb, effectively kept away from the average pastor’s and Bible teacher’s reach. A new book by InterVarsity Press aims to bring scholarly resources into an accessible and highly useful format. Reclaiming the Old Testament for Christian Preaching, edited by Grenville J.R. Kent, Paul J. Kissling and Laurence A. Turner, actually manages to live up to its title’s bold claim. In an accessible and user-friendly format, the book brings together contributions from a wide array of OT scholars.

After a brief introduction, the book moves on to cover OT narrative plot, OT narrative characters, the Law, Lament, Praise Poetry, Wisdom literature, the Song of Solomon, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Apocalyptic literature, and the Minor Prophets. It also has a chapter on preaching from difficult texts and another on preaching Christ from the Old Testament. The chapters aren’t too long or overly detailed; instead, they are delightfully readable. They are structured in such a way as to clearly convey the primary difficulties and recommended approaches for the particular genre surveyed. Almost all the chapters include helpful footnotes and recommendations for further study. And each concludes with an example sermon which puts the theory into practice.

As I read through this book, I kept earmarking page after page where helpful insights were shared about the various parts of the Old Testament. The sections covering narrative plot and characters were especially helpful and full of examples. Laurence Turner stressed placing each narrative in context to its larger narrative, and on sticking to the flow of the author as much as possible when developing a sermon. Paul Kissling discussed a unique strategy of comparing the speech of the characters over and against the narrator’s account, as a way of finding the main point of a given story. Christopher J.H. Wright’s chapter on preaching the Law was also superb. He stressed the connection Law has with grace as seen in the historical setting given in the Pentateuch. He also unpacked the lesser-known missiological aspects of the Law: namely, Israel living out God’s Law as a testimony to the nations, and the application this has to the Church today.

Federico Villanueva’s chapter on Lament was particularly insightful as he writes from the standpoint of a non-Westerner (he ministers in Manila). Tremper Longman’s chapter on wisdom literature, particularly his discussion of Ecclesiastes and Job, was also very helpful in finding ways to grasp the main point of these books and how best to apply it to today’s Christians. Similarly, Grenville Kent’s discussion on the Song of Solomon was also very helpful. Even though he steers clear of a direct allegorical interpretation, he finds value in analogy and metaphor. His discussion of where God makes an appearance in the Song, and why, is worth quoting here:

So if Yahweh had appeared directly in the Song, the culture may well have misunderstood him as condoning fertility religion or even as just another fertility god. The Song clearly separates worship and sex. it is ‘a non-mythological, non-cultic, non-idolatrous, outright, open celebration of God-given sexual love’. (pg. 130, quote from John G. Snaith The Song of Songs (Eerdmans, 1993), pg. 5.)

The chapter on Isaiah, by H.G.M. Williamson did a great job stressing the literary unity of Isaiah. He traced the theme of righteousness and justice showing how such wide themes inform the specific context of any given passage in the book. Daniel Block challenges us to preach Ezekiel, and offers several helpful charts and analyses of the book and its central message. Alison Lo gave a wonderful, yet brief treatment of the Minor Prophets. She excelled at relating the context and themes of those books to today’s world and its problems. She also discussed the interrelation of the books as a wider whole (the “book of the twelve”), and provided a fascinating outline of Zephaniah.

Gordon Wenham’s discussion of various “difficult texts” in the Old Testament was in the whole, masterful. Some may disagree with his stance on Gen. 1 — explaining the wider context of the ideas about the world of the time (and thus not getting into a discussion of whether the six days are literal 24 hour days), but his comments on the imprecatory psalms, the “eye for an eye” law, apparent divine-sanctioned genocides, and OT slavery are both helpful and wise. R.W.L. Moberly’s chapter on preaching Christ from the Old Testament cites a lot of material that applies to this concern. He stresses that the wider context of the Old Testament includes the canonical grouping of the books and their use by the Church. He sees a second narrative (the NT) interpreting the original narrative in a sense similar to a detective story where at the end, all the initial elements of the plot make perfect sense. He also allows for imagination to impact interpretation and helpfully walks through some examples in how to think through this in a practical manner.

The chapters in the book are not all of equal value. The praise poetry, and apocalyptic literature sections were not as helpful to me. Some of the contributors may not be as immediately accessible as others. But the beauty of this book is how it offers a manual for the preacher who is choosing an OT text to preach. This book won’t be the only resource consulted, but it offers a sensible approach and several helpful points for encountering just about any text in the Old Testament. Throughout, it stresses a literary and canonical approach that focuses on the Old Testament we have, not imagined historical reconstructions. This ensures the book’s usefulness by people of a variety of particular persuasions within evangelicalism.

I trust tools such as Reclaiming the Old Testament for Christian Preaching, will encourage many pastors to pick an OT book for their next sermon series. This book will prove useful for any Bible student, and I highly recommend it. May the beauty of the Old Testament captivate the hearts and minds of more teachers and preachers, and be preached with power to the congregations that God has entrusted to their care.

Disclaimer: This book was provided by Inter-Varsity Press for review. I was under no obligation to offer a favorable review.

Pick up a copy of this book at Amazon.com or through IVP direct.

“Galatians (Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament)” by Thomas R. Schreiner

~ Bob Hayton ~ 4 Comments

Bible commentaries abound today. Scores of commentaries confront the would-be expositor of any book of the Bible, and almost nobody blinks at a new series of commentaries anymore. It goes without saying that the relative value of a given commentary is all over the map, and here perhaps more than anywhere else, a discerning eye is called for.

You guessed it, I’m getting ready for the “but you have to check out this new commentary series” line. But I really mean it. The new Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (ZECNT) series will live up to any amount of hype one can dig up. I’ve reviewed several commentaries, I own bits and pieces of a score of commentary sets, and have examined others besides, yet this series promises to be a true must-have, when it comes to exegetical commentaries.

Like many other students of Scripture, I’ve been schooled in Greek, but that was some time ago. I also aim to fix an opinion on any passage I plan to teach. But with the amount of scholarly material one must evaluate, the task can be a bit daunting. Opening a commentary for answers can lead to far more questions than originally conceived. And some commentators stand out for their pious, know-it-all approach to informing us of their thoughts on the subject.

In sharp contrast, Thomas Schreiner in his ZECNT commentary on Galatians, excels at making the task of studying and making judgments easy. He provides all the relevant arguments on a given question, both the pros and cons. He defends positions that he ultimately rejects, all in the effort of explaining what is at stake and how to best see the big picture in a given exegetical question.

The clarity and candor on display in Schreiner’s work is complemented by the brilliant (can I use that term of a commentary?) ordering of material conceived by the ZECNT editors. After allowing for an in-depth introduction to set the stage for the book, each unit of the text is addressed in such a way as to best help the teacher or preacher work through the material of the Text and see connections to the overall outline of the book, catching the flow of the larger argument. Greek is used throughout but never in an over the top way. Almost universally, the Greek follows the English, and the effect is to draw one into the Greek arguments more easily, encouraging and promoting the revival of long-forgotten Greek exegetical skills.

Each section begins with a literary context of the unit and a tie in to the over-arching outline of the book. Then the main idea is summarized in a few sentences. The English translation of the text is next given in a special graphical layout which highlights the relationship between the various clauses and phrases which make up the text. Following this, the structure of the textual unit is discussed and a more detailed exegetical outline is provided for the text just before a detailed explanation of the text (with footnotes) is offered. Finally, a pastoral application section concludes the discussion on the passage at hand. Theology is thus applied to life in a masterful way, which will help guide the teacher and pastor to make appropriate and relevant applications from the exegetical study he undertakes.

At the end of the commentary the major themes of the book are discussed, giving an overview, or summary of all that Galatians has covered. This section is a miniature biblical theology in a sense, and will be of great value to those seeking a bigger picture view of the book, before they dive into the separate pieces.

Now on top of all the positive things I’ve mentioned up to this point, Zondervan is to be commended for choosing a competent and careful scholar to pick up his pen for the Galatians commentary. Thomas Schreiner has written books on the question of Paul’s use of the Law, and on the more practical side of how the OT Law relates to Christians. He also is one who’s publicly disputed the New Pauline Perspective, standing for a conservative, Reformed view of justification by faith and imputation. The expertise and faithfulness Schreiner has shown over the years makes him eminently qualified to write this book. And furthermore, his attitude and style in writing remains irenic, open and fair-minded, even when he stands forcefully against a contemporary exegetical trend.

The problem passages are many in Galatians, and Schreiner succeeds in navigating them well. I’m particularly impressed by how the book maintains a pastoral perspective throughout. I shouldn’t be surprised, however, since Schreiner himself is a preaching pastor even as he fills the roles of professor of NT and associate dean of Scripture and interpretation for Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. A fine combination of learning and grace exude from the man himself and this book.

I can’t recommend the work more highly, and I’m now interested in checking out other titles of this exceedingly useful commentary series. If the Galatians volume is truly representative of the larger series, then the Zondervan Exegetical Commentary of the New Testament series is truly a must-have resource for the exegetically minded pastor and teacher.

Pick up a copy of this book at Amazon.com, Westminster Bookstore or directly from Zondervan.

Disclaimer: This book was provided by Zondervan for review. The reviewer was under no obligation to offer a favorable review.