Category: Theology

Classic Arm Chair Theology at its best (or should that read worst?)

Group Read through G.K. Beale’s “A New Testament Biblical Theology”

~ Bob Hayton

This year, I will be reading through G.K. Beale’s A New Testament Biblical Theology with some friends. I want to extend an invitation to all of you to join us as we read through this important book this year.

The book is more than 1,000 pages long so it will take us some time to get through it. We are going to try to read 2 chapters a week starting February 5th.

The reading group is set up at Goodreads.com. You can join the group there (a free account with Goodreads.com is required). You should also be able to follow the conversation at our Facebook page for the group too. And I’m sure I’ll be blogging periodically about the book as well here at FundamentallyReformed.com.

If you still need to pick up a copy of this book, you can do so at your local Christian bookstore or at the following online retailers.

Mining the Archives: The Rising of The Sun of Righteousness

~ Bob Hayton


From time to time, I’ll be mining the archives around here. I’m digging up my blog’s best posts from the past. I’m hoping these reruns will still serve my readers.

Today’s post was originally published February 20, 2006.

 

The Sun of Righteousness shall rise with healing in [His] wings...Mal. 4:1-2a For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the LORD of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings.

Is. 60:19-20 The sun shall be no more your light by day,nor for brightness shall the moon give you light; but the LORD will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory. Your sun shall no more go down, nor your moon withdraw itself;for the LORD will be your everlasting light, and your days of mourning shall be ended.

Matt. 17:2 And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light.

Rev. 1:16 In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength.

Ps. 84:11a For the LORD God is a sun…

Rev. 22:5 And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.

Acts 26:13 At midday, O king, I saw on the way a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, that shone around me and those who journeyed with me.

...the Lord God will be their light...As I drove home from work early Sunday morning, I encountered a fiercely bright sunrise. It reminded me of the glory of Christ, who is the Sun of Righteousness. The Sun is the brightest and most awesome light that we encounter in God’s physical creation. Since Jesus is compared to the sun, we are to see Him when we see and are arrested by the sheer glory of the physical sun. This is a means of us comprehending how much more amazing and brilliant is Christ’s glory, He who is brighter than the noon-day sun (as Paul experienced on the road to Damascus).

Thinking about how the sun and Christ (the S-O-N) compare has made me ponder some thoughts a close frined shared with me recently. When giving me A History of the Work of Redemption by Jonathan Edwards recently, he had opportunity to share some thoughts about the book. The book traces God’s work of redemption from the Fall to the Ascension and beyond. Edwards does a spectacular job dealing with OT types and highlighting the gospel/Christ-centeredness of all of Scripture. He has excellent thoughts on the advance of the gospel after the writing of the NT up to his present time, as well. His thoughts are rooted in Scripture and the work is well worth puchasing and reading, as it magnifies God for His great and glorious work of redemption.

A few thoughts Dave (my friend) shared have stuck with me. First, he mentioned that the natural creation was created to show the glories of God’s spiritual work. When encountering Scriptural teachings on types or comparisons, I typically just assumed that God was borrowing from the natural realm, so to speak, to highlight truth about His spiritual works. But the work of redemption was planned “before the foundation of the world”! So, when God created the world, the very way in which He did it was not arbitrary but planned. He knew that He would expressly compare the creation of life in dead hearts to the creation of physical light (2 Cor. 4:6). The physical process of human birth was designed with the new birth in view. I think one of the ways the heavens and physical creation declare the glory of God is that they provide illustrations of His work of redemption. When God is compared with light–the very quality of physical light is meant to teach us about God’s character (albeit it cannot teach us perfectly or completely, as it is only a picture of Someone who defies description). The family unit, with father-child and husband-wife relationships, were designed and established to reveal aspects of our relationship with God as His beloved children, and our relationship with Christ as His church-bride. This thought can be expanded and more examples found for sure.

The other thought Dave left me, concerned a specific allegory Jonathan Edwards used over and over again in his book. In looking through the book recently I encountered it in at least 8 different places. Here is the picture:

Behold, the day is coming...for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings...The OT reflects the light of the glory of Christ and the gospel much like the moon reflects the light of the sun. At first the OT only has brief glimmers here and there of Messianic prophecies and gospel teachings. But the moonlight of OT revelation grows and grows until it reaches its zenith in the period of David and Solomon. David is the greatest personal type of Christ, Edwards argues (pg. 104). The Psalms written at this time, display the glories of Christ in unparalleled fashion in the OT. The building of the Temple and the reign of peace experienced in Solomon’s reign represent the greatest epoch of Israel’s history.

But then the moon begins to wane throught the less glamorous reigns of Solomon’s heirs and the exile and post-exilic periods of Israel’s history. Edwards explains, “As the moon, from the time of her full, is approaching nearer and nearer to her conjunction with the sun, so her light is still more and more decreasing, until at length, when the conjunction comes, it is wholly swallowed up in the light of the sun….If the Jewish church, when Christ came, had been in the same external glory that it was in, in the reign of Solomon, men would have had their eyes so dazzled with it that they would not have been likely joyfully to exchange such great external glory for only the spiritual glory of the poor despised Jesus.” (pg. 129, 131-132)

The incarnation of Christ and His ministry are represented by the dawning of the sun. Edwards argues that after redemption has been purchased on the cross and specifically upon the resurrection of Christ, the sun actually rises over the horizon. “Thus the Sun of Righteousness, after it is risen from under the earth, begins to shine forth clearly, and not only by a dim reflection as it did before. Christ, before his death, revealed many things more clearly than ever they had been revealed in the Old Testament; but the great mysteries of Christ’s redemption, and reconciliation by his death, and justification by his righteousness, were not so plainly revealed before Christ’s resurrection….Thus we see how the light of the gospel…is now come to the light of perfect day, and the brightness of the sun shining forth in unveiled glory.” (pg. 282)

...His face was like the sun shining in full strength...We are thus now living in the age of daytime. The sun is rising in the sky slowly and steadily. The glorious noon-day shining of the sun in unparalleled glory will be the consummation of the eternal kingdom of Christ (which we experience already, but not yet in its fullness)!

That allegory by Jonathan Edwards in a succinct and vastly helpful way sums up the history of redemption (and revelation for that matter). It should help us see the glory of the Sun of Righteousness. And it should make us realize anew the incredible grace we have to be living on this side of the cross. May the light of Christ shine ever brighter and may we be ever entranced and pleased with His light alone!

Pictures above from top to bottom were accessed from these 5 sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

John Piper on Calvinism and Logic

~ Bob Hayton ~ 1 Comment

John Piper recently addressed how Calvinism and logic relate. His article specifically addresses how he appreciates G.K. Chesterton’s writing in spite of some significant theological differences. One of those is an appreciation of Calvinism. See the excerpts below, but then go on and read the whole article at Desiring God Blog.

What About Logic?

It is a great irony to me that Calvinists are stereotyped as logic-driven. For forty years my experience has been the opposite. The Calvinists I have known (English Puritans, Edwards, Newton, Spurgeon, Packer, Sproul) are not logic driven, but Bible-driven. It’s the challengers who bring their logic to the Bible and nullify text after text. Branches are lopped off by “logic,” not exegesis.

Who are the great enjoyers of paradox today? Who are the pastors and theologians who grab both horns of every biblical dilemma and swear to the God-Man: I will never let go of either.

Not the Calvinism-critics that I meet. They read of divine love, and say that predestination cannot be. They read of human choice and say the divine rule of all our steps cannot be. They read of human resistance, and say that irresistible grace cannot be. Who is logic-driven?

For forty years Calvinism has been, for me, a vision of life that embraces mystery more than any vision I know. It is not logic-driven. It is driven by a vision of the ineffable, galactic vastness of God’s Word.

Let’s be clear: It does not embrace contradiction. Chesterton and I both agree that true logic is the law of “Elfland.” “If the Ugly Sisters are older than Cinderella, it is (in an iron and awful sense) necessary that Cinderella is younger than the Ugly Sisters.” Neither God nor his word is self-contradictory. But paradoxes? Yes.

We happy Calvinists don’t claim to get the heavens into our heads. We try to get our heads into the heavens. We don’t claim comprehensive answers to revealed paradoxes. We believe. We try to understand. And we break out into song and poetry again and again.

From Dilemma to Unicorn

We don’t adjust the brain-baffling categories of Scripture to fit human reason. We take it as one of our jobs to create categories in human minds that never existed in those minds before “” a job only God can do “” though he makes us agents. For example, we labor to create categories of thought like these:

God rules the world of bliss and suffering and sin, right down to the roll of the dice, and the fall of a bird, and the driving of the nail into the hand of his Son; yet, even though he wills that such sin and suffering be, he does not sin, but is perfectly holy.

God governs all the steps of all people, both good and bad, at all times and in all places; yet such that all are accountable before him and will bear the just consequences of his wrath if they do not believe in Christ.

All people are dead in their trespasses and sins, and are not morally able to come to Christ because of their rebellion; yet, they are responsible to come, and will be justly punished if they don’t.

Jesus Christ is one person with two natures, divine and human, such that he upheld the world by the word of his power while living in his mother’s womb.

Sin, though committed by a finite person and in the confines of finite time is nevertheless deserving of an infinitely long punishment because it is a sin against an infinitely worthy God.

The death of the one God-Man, Jesus Christ, so displayed and glorified the righteousness of God that God is not unrighteous to declare righteous ungodly people who simply believe in Christ.

These are some of the intertwining, paradoxical branches in the tree of Calvinism. They do not grow in the soil of fallen human logic. They grow in the Bible-saturated soil of “Elfland.” Those who live there believe that a Dilemma with two horns is probably metamorphosing into a Unicorn.

“The End of the Law: Mosaic Covenant in Pauline Theology” by Jason C. Meyer

~ Bob Hayton ~ 7 Comments

Book Details:
  • Author: Jason C. Meyer
  • Category: Theology
  • Publisher: Broadman & Holman Academic (2009)
  • Format: Hardcover
  • Page Count: 352
  • ISBN#: 9780805448429
  • List Price: $19.99
  • Rating: Highly Recommended

Review:
The nature of how the Mosaic Law relates to the Gospel and the new covenant is a perennially problematic question. Luther and Calvin wrestled over this, and we continue to wrestle over this down to today. Jason C. Meyer picks up his pen to try and tackle this problem in his book The End of the Law: Mosaic Covenant in Pauline Theology, as part of the New American Commentary Studies in Bible and Theology from Broadman and Holman.

With such an enormous topic, it is doubtful that Meyer will please everyone. And while I found much that was excellent in his book, there were moments where I thought he didn’t handle something well enough and times where I wished he would have dealt with a topic that he passed over. But I can’t fault Meyer for not tackling head-on, an important question. He does an able job dealing with this question and his book was truly a joy to read.

Meyer’s book presents the problem of how the Mosaic covenant is handled in Paul and then focuses on the old/new antithesis in Paul as the solution to this problem. He studies Paul’s epistles to see how Paul himself presents the old vs. the new, and particularly how he talks of the covenant. From this a few key passages are identified and discussed in detail: 2 Corinthians 3-4, Galatians 3-4, and Romans 9-11. Then after dealing with Paul’s theology of the old and new, Meyer goes to the Old Testament himself to see if he can harmonize Paul with the Old Testament’s own description of the Mosaic covenant, in its own terms.

Meyer’s conclusions are that Paul sees a difference between the Old covenant and New Covenant in eschatological terms. The old was ineffectual and is proven so by the presence of the new covenant in the here and now. With the dawn of the new age, the old covenant is seen for how ineffectual it was. The new covenant has the power to create lasting change through the presence of the Spirit in far greater measure than in the old.

Along the way, Meyer offers a masterful analysis of the texts he covers and models a careful, yet thoroughly evangelical approach to Scripture, which focuses on the authorial intent and canonical form of the text. My primary issue with his exegesis is in his making too much of Romans 11 and failing to deal adequately with the fact that in the new covenant we still have those who are visible members but not actual partakers of the covenant. I also wish he would deal more explicitly with the question of Israel and the Church: does the old/new antithesis in Paul imply that the church should be seen as the new and fuller expression of believing Israel? I suspect Meyer would say yes, but he doesn’t come right out and address this.

The book makes for a fascinating read, and will be appreciated by lay students as well as pastors and scholars. Knowledge of exegesis and theology will help in being able to appreciate the book more, however. Meyer writes with clarity and has a knack for boiling down complex issues and explaining what other more technical writers are saying. He interacts with the voluminous literature on the topic well, and maintains a thoroughly evangelical approach throughout. This is a refreshing read and I highly recommend it.

Author Info:
Jason C. Meyer is associate professor of New Testament at Bethlehem College and Seminary in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Previously he was assistant professor of religion (New Testament and Greek) at Louisiana College in Pineville, Louisiana. He holds degrees from Oklahoma Wesleyan University (B.S.) and The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (M. Div., Ph. D.).

Where to Buy:
  • Christianbook.com
  • Amazon
  • Broadman & Holman

Related Media:
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Disclaimer:
This book was provided by Broadman and Holman Publishing Group for review. I was under no obligation to offer a favorable review.

CSNTM and St. Catherine’s Monastery

~ Bob Hayton

I just posted this at my other site, KJVOnlyDebate.com, and thought my readers here would also be interested in it:

John Chitty, known in the blogosphere as Captain Headknowledge, recently had the opportunity to attend a symposium on the St. Catherine’s monastery library and the significance of the Sinai manuscripts, held at the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM).

Chitty has shared the text of Father Justin’s lecture: “St. Catherine’s Monastery: An Ark in the Wilderness”. I encourage you to take a look as the lecture covers the well known and the not so well known about St. Catherine’s Monastery. I’m not sure I had heard that they made some new manuscript discoveries there as late as 1975.

Here is an excerpt from the lecture notes, but I encourage you to go read the whole thing:

The monastery has never been destroyed or abandoned in all its centuries of existence. The climate at Sinai is surprisingly dry and stable, the humidity averaging from twenty to thirty percent. All of this, and the diligent care of the monks, account for the preservation of many manuscripts. The Sinai library is today a remarkable treasure for the antiquity and the significance of its volumes.

The library contains 3304 manuscripts, written in eleven languages. These are predominantly Greek, Arabic, Syriac, Georgian, and Slavonic. The manuscripts range in content from copies of the Scriptures, services, and music manuscripts, to sermons, writings of the Fathers, lives of the Saints, and books of inherited spiritual wisdom. The library also includes medical treatises, historical chronicles, and texts in classical Greek, which is the pinnacle of the Greek language.

A few of the manuscripts are splendid works of art, with gilded letters and brilliant illuminations, created in Constantinople in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, when the City was at its height as the centre of culture and devotion. But no less significant are the humble manuscripts written at Sinai, often on reused parchment, bound between rough boards, the pages stained from long use, a witness to the deprivations and austerity of Sinai, to the generations of monks who have maintained the life of devotion and the cycle of daily services at this holy place.

But perhaps we would come to a greater appreciation of the Sinai library if I could describe four manuscripts in particular, all of which have been recently studied by scholars.

…

Saint Catherine’s Monastery is a treasury filled with things new and old. Scholars still have much to learn from its library, its numerous icons, vestments, ecclesiastical vessels, its architecture. In all of this, it is a veritable ark in the wilderness.

See also a few related posts from John Chitty on the Sinai manuscripts: