Month: April 2018

The Trinity Debate (2016-2017): A Selected Bibliography

/ Brandon D. Smith / 8 Comments

The-Holy-Trinity-in-Stained-GlassThe 2016-2017 Trinity debate over the eternal submission of the Son was covered thoroughly by this blog, other blogs, Christianity Today, podcasts, a panel at ETS, and most certainly in every theological group text in evangelicalism. In an attempt to try and boil the debate down for those who want to read up, reflect, or reference the debate, I created a bibliography on all of the published material I could find based on a list I’ve been accruing since late 2016.

That bibliography was 42 pages. Forty-two. 42.

Frankly, many of those sources were unhelpful, repetitive, and/or broken links. So I decided to whittle it down to the bare essentials — posts that defined the debate or appeared to be shared extensively — and it became an 11-page bibliography. That’ll have to do.

Download the bibliography here.*

*A reader brought to my attention the monster list over at Books at a Glance. This list has been updated with additions from their list and a few others I originally did not include from my own notes.

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Biblical Reasoning on Twitter

/ Brandon D. Smith / Leave a comment

A quick housekeeping note: though we’ve had a Facebook page for some time, we just created a Twitter account as well. Give us a follow to keep up with our latest posts and be reminded of others!

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Like Father, Like Son? Christoph Barth’s OT Theology

/ Brandon D. Smith / 1 Comment

9780802847836.jpgChristoph Barth (1917-1986), son of the renowned Karl and brother of the relatively well-known Markus, is the lesser-known Barth of the family. A respected scholar in his own right, he spent much of his time teaching in Indonesia and published much less than the father and brother. His most popular and important work is his Old Testament theology God with Us, a work that was originally published in four volumes in Indonesian and later condensed and translated into English.[1]

This evaluation will (1) deal particularly with Karl’s clear influence on Christoph; (2) offer a brief overview of the nine divine acts upon which his Old Testament theology is structured, and (3) include some final thoughts on the work as a whole.

Like Father, Like Son?

From the gate, anyone who has read Karl can see his influence on his youngest son’s treatment of the biblical text. First, Christoph is highly exegetical. Though he does not stray from theological trails (after all, he calls it a “theological introduction”), he mostly hovers around the biblical text and grounds his arguments in exegesis. He is not offering a schematic list of Israelite doctrines nor a critically-developed philosophical or literary treatment; rather, he sees the Old Testament narrative as a theological witness to the God who acts. Similarly, Karl devoted extended writing to commentating on biblical texts, and even in the massive Church Dogmatics, he is often more exegetical than dogmatic, more narratival than propositional.

Second, Christoph introduces his method by keying in on the aforementioned act of divine initiation. Like a good Lutheran with some Barthian flare, he emphasizes God’s unrivaled sovereign freedom to elect and interact with Israel. He also approvingly cites von Rad’s theological task revolving around “a dynamic story instead of a static system of religious ideas” and notes that this was Israel’s own understanding as well as the way the apostles first proclaimed the gospel.[2] Every part of the Old Testament “was consciously written as witness to God’s acts in history.”[3] For Christoph, the Scriptures give testimony to the way in which God has dynamically acted upon and interacted with his people. This is akin to the way in which Karl viewed revelation in general and the biblical narrative in particular.

Whether one agrees fully with Karl or not, the influence on Christoph seen in his view of God’s sovereignty and his attention to the text is commendable. If nothing else, Christoph alleviates himself of the charge that he is only dealing in ideals and opinions rather than biblical data. As with any method, there are deficiencies and flaws. Christoph brings subjectivity to the table, as does any interpreter trying to make sense of the biblical text, but at least he is dealing with texts. When considering a theological or hermeneutical method, it means next to nothing if one is not dealing with Scripture itself. Christoph accepts the challenge, albeit imperfectly, that all biblical and theological scholars must face: make every effort to let the text inform the method.

I will continue in the rest of this review to refer to them by their first names to avoid confusion. (Sorry, Christoph — perks of being Karl’s son.)

The Divine Acts

The bulk of God with Us interacts with the nine divine acts that Christoph views as the “essential subject matter of the OT.”[4] The acts, divided into chapters, are as follows: God created Heaven and Earth; God chose the fathers of Israel; God brought Israel out of Egypt; God led his people through the wilderness; God revealed himself at Sinai; God granted Israel the land of Canaan; God raised up kings in Israel; God chose Jerusalem; God sent his prophets. While admitting that there are doctrinal and legal elements within sections of Scripture like the Pentateuch, he asserts that these elements “are integrated into the structure of the story of Israel’s origins in the mighty acts of God.”[5]

In Chapter 1, Christoph posits that God’s creation of Heaven and Earth is not merely a static event in history, but rather “a salvific fact, an event that evokes thankful joy and confession of faith.”[6] God did not simply create all things and set them on their way; he now preserves and will ultimately make all things new, including mankind. He persuasively notes that questioning God’s creation of potentially fallible humans is only an attempt on man’s part to rid man of individual guilt; God created voluntary partners, not mindless robots. Where Christoph errs is focusing too highly on personal guilt and dismissing original sin. He is correct in asserting that focusing on Adam’s mistake is shameful blame-shifting, but this does not mean that Adam is not culpable, at some level, in man’s depravity. He disappointingly creates a false dichotomy rather than addressing the nuances of this issue. However, he is dead-on in concluding that “[God] will not abandon his work or leave it unfinished.”[7]

Chapters 2 through 4 introduce the reader to God’s initial election of patriarchs and his initial interactions with his chosen nation, Israel. Christoph’s main focus is the Exodus event, a topic “first in importance,” because “[i]t occurs almost everywhere in the OT” and cannot be naturally explained “either by the strength of the Israelites, the weakness or stupidity of the Egyptians, or the configuration of the terrain that might favor Israel rather than Egypt.”[8] Christoph makes the case that for the Israelites, this was paradigmatic of God’s victory over enslavement and his desire for his people’s freedom. He states that the Exodus event was in God’s mind even when he elected the fathers because it demonstrating his promise-keeping of establishing Israel as God’s people “officially and authentically.”[9] To Christoph’s credit, the case can be made that the New Testament offers a congruent typology of the Exodus. This can be seen in places such as John the Baptist’s preaching and preparation for Jesus, Jesus’s birth and Herod’s attempt to kill him, and in Simon’s allusion to Isaiah 52 when Jesus is presented in the Temple.[10] One also thinks of general themes of the gospel’s liberation of man from slavery to sin.

Christoph also hits the nail on the head when he stresses that “[God] did not need ambassadors, or spokesman, or executors of his will, or servants to assist him. All he needed was his arm, his hand, or even his finger.”[11] No doubt, but what of the human instruments he used? He acknowledges but too quickly downplays the significance of God’s calling on his creatures to join what he is doing in reconciling the world. Covenant faithfulness on the part of God’s people is a key motif in the Old Testament. He demands it. Of course it is God who initiates and acts, but he does not act completely divorced from his creatures. He reacts in both favor and disappointment (wrath, even) toward obedience and disobedience. He calls insubordinate men like Jonah to go to Nineveh. His instruments matter. God rescued the Israelites and praise of his name is demanded, but he did so out of concern for his people. God is calculated, but not disconnected; glory-emitting but not megalomaniacal. To be fair, Christoph might not outright deny this point, but the implication makes one wonder how he could fully accept the premise.

Chapters 5 through 9 survey God’s revealing of himself to Israel at Sinai, granting land to his people, and his interactions with and through kings and prophets. Of particular note is Christoph’s attention to God’s foreshadowing and promising of a Messiah. He notes that though the acts of God mentioned throughout the book to this point are “rooted in history … God and his revelation are not imprisoned in past history.”[12] Indeed, “God lives and moves” as do his great acts, and so the liberation from Egypt and the raising up of Israelite kings are pointing forward to something and someone better.[13] In perhaps Christoph’s most shining moment in the entire text, he rightly interacts with the ways in which the prophets foretold of the Savior’s multi-faceted purpose. Here, Christoph offers a useful picture of how the coming Savior would not merely be the ideal king that Israel needed, but would also be the priest, teacher, and prophet that Israel needed. He then, in biblical theologian form, takes New Testament texts and looks back into the Old Testament without aloof proof-texting that divorces the Old Testament from itself. His perceptive understanding that the Old Testament could not fully grasp or encapsulate Jesus is argued thoughtfully, and he convincingly emphasizes that New Testament writers did, however, receive “a key to the understanding of the mystery of Christ’s person and work,” as mentioned by Jesus himself in Luke 24:25-27.[14] Christoph did well to highlight the overtly prophetic Old Testament passages about the coming Messiah without getting bogged down in speculative texts. Not to mention, any argument using the words of Jesus as justification is worth considering at the very least.

Final Thoughts

The major strength of this work is Christoph’s descriptions of God’s interaction with his people – acts that are entrenched in history but not always static to the historical setting. In the progression of revelation, as he notes often, God is seen as both keeping his word and even going beyond the hearer’s expectations of his word. Religious dogma by itself remains lifeless if God himself is not sovereignly bringing it to life through his words and deeds. These acts are too often overlooked as part of the background of the text rather than the primary foreground. God with Us gives a survey of the prevailing exegetical-theological message of the Old Testament rather than another rigid, map-and-biography-driven critical approach to the Old Testament.

The struggle occurs when Christoph becomes too Barthian. The God he describes surely loves his people and gives evidence as such, but appears unnecessarily distant and superseding in terms of carrying out his purposes. One thinks of Karl’s affinity for Rudolf Otto’s “wholly other” God; however, we must balance this with the fact that real people in real situations interacted with and responded to God’s divine activity. Again, one should never deny Scripture’s clear depiction of God as the sovereign architect of all that exists and all that happens within that existence, but he is not a robotic being with no regard to the prayers of his people. Christoph seems to readily emphasize eminence over immanence rather than incorporating and celebrating the tension.

All of this said, God with Us is a fantastic OT theology, even with some of its theological misgivings. It is intensely practical and presents a God-centered view of the Old Testament’s message, the kind of OT theology we could use more of. And as a work written for the church, it’s a beneficial read for just about anyone.

—

[1] Christoph Barth, God with Us: A Theological Introduction to the Old Testament, ed. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991), viii.

[2] Ibid., 5-6.

[3] Ibid., 6.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid., 5.

[6] Ibid., 9.

[7] Ibid., 37.

[8] Ibid., 56.

[9] Ibid., 61.

[10] See this interesting treatment: R. E. Nixon, “The Exodus in the New Testament,” http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/exodus_nixon.pdf (accessed April 22, 2014).

[11] God with Us, 81.

[12] Ibid., 220.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Ibid., 233.

John the Seer vs. Caesar

/ Brandon D. Smith / 3 Comments

Screen-Shot-2017-02-25-at-8.51.28-PM-300x299While compiling notes for my dissertation on the Book of Revelation, I came across this note on Revelation 1:16 in Craig Koester’s Revelation commentary:

The section climaxes by noting that [Jesus] holds seven stars in his right hand (Rev 1:16). This cosmic imagery conveys sovereignty. An analogy appears on a coin from Domitian’s reign that depicts the emperor’s deceased son as young Jupiter, sitting on the globe in a posture of world dominion. The coin’s inscription calls him “divine Caesar, son of the emperor Domitian,” and the imagery shows him extending his hands to seven stars in a display of divinity and power. John has already identified Jesus as the ruler of kings on earth (1:5), and the imagery of the seven stars fits the book’s larger context, which contrasts the reign of Christ with that of imperial Rome. (p. 253)

Koester is referring to the coin in the image (above), used in Rome around AD 88-96 during the reign of the brutal Caesar Domitian. Koester’s insights here give us an interesting look at the background of John the Seer’s writing during hostile Roman persecution. It also helps us think about the later date of Revelation’s writing (the end of the first century) versus a potential earlier dating (some say it might’ve been written closer to AD 65). This is enough to chew on a little bit.

But it offers us more than that. This information helps shed light on the theology of Revelation.

First, it serves as an example that much of Revelation’s imagery (beasts, numbers, etc.) is a direct shot at the Roman empire. Many believe (and I’m largely convinced) that Revelation is written during intense Roman persecution and this letter was first written to encourage the church during that time. However, as a non-preterist, I believe portions of the letter are speaking of future events—i,e., Jesus hasn’t come back yet; the New Jerusalem isn’t here yet; etc. In any event, this note might help us better understand the anti-imperial leanings of John.

Second, it shows us how high John’s Christology was. He’s not merely putting Jesus on par with some exalted or glorified person. Rather, he’s portraying Jesus as divine—specifically pitting Jesus’s true divine sovereignty against the supposed divine sovereignty of the Roman emperorship. Roman caesars liked to pretend to be gods, but John is reminding them and us that there’s only one true God. Jupiter is seated on the world with stars hovering around him? Ha! Jesus created the world and clutches the stars in his hand.

As I argue in my dissertation and elsewhere, John explicitly and purposely ties Jesus into the divine identity of YHWH, and this little note only adds to the case.

20th Century Theology and Classical Christian Theism

/ Matt Emerson / 2 Comments

About eighteen months ago, in the summer of 2016, Wayne Grudem and others were put on trial via blog about their views on the Trinity. Grudem holds to ERAS, or Eternal Relations of Authority and Submission, wherein God the Son eternally, functionally (not ontologically) submits to the Father. This submission in the Godhead, for him and other ERAS proponents, grounds a complementarian view of gender roles. One of the primary accusations leveled at Grudem et al. is that they did not clearly and unequivocally hold to (at least) one aspect of classical Christian theism, the eternal relations of origin – and specifically ,the eternal generation of the Son – opting instead for ERAS to explain the distinctions between the Persons in the Godhead. (Grudem, as well as Bruce Ware, have since publicly affirmed the eternal relations of origin).

While I strongly disagree with  Grudem’s articulation of the doctrine of the Trinity, what puzzled me at the time and still does is why Grudem and Bruce Ware particularly were singled out for questioning and/or revising Christian theism in some way. If you read twentieth century theology, much of it consists precisely of that kind of move, and via a similar theological method as e.g. Grudem’s. For instance, a year before the Trinity debate, Scot McKnight posted Roger Olson’s blogged critique of divine timelessness, presumably in support of the latter’s comments. The quoted portion of Olson’s post begin by questioning “classical theism” in general and its (according to him) over-speculative nature, but the key paragraph begins like this:

And yet…

Nowhere does the biblical story of God, the biblical narrative that identifies God for us, and upon which classical Christian theology claims to be based, say or even hint that God is “outside of time” or “timeless” or that all times are “simultaneously before the eyes of God.”

A year later McKnight was a vocal opponent of ERAS on Twitter and his blog, on the grounds that it departed from the traditional doctrine of the Trinity. (Now, perhaps in that year plus, McKnight came to appreciate the tradition more; I don’t know, that’s certainly possible. In any case I find the Olson post and the ERAS comments interesting in relation to one another.) Another example, this time in classical Christology: Nick Batzig recently posted about William Lane Craig’s attempt to argue that Christ did not possess a human soul but instead only a human body and a divine soul, even referring to his position as “Neo-Apollinarianism.” We could also mention Moltmann’s Trinitarian rupture at the cross, or Pinnock’s open theism, or, relatedly, process theology, or Balthasar’s view of the descent as it relates to (departs from?) inseparable operations, the extra Calvinisticum, and other important pieces of classical Christian theism more broadly and classical Trinitarianism and Christology more particularly.

The point is that Grudem and others are not and never have been the only twentieth century theologians to question or to attempt a revision of aspects of classical Christian theism. Much of twentieth century theology consists of just such questions and attempts. And they do so on the same kinds of methodological grounds. Notice again the Olson quote above. To paraphrase, “I personally cannot find a text in the biblical narrative that speaks of God’s timelessness.” This sounds like the same kind of biblicist argument used by e.g. Grudem, in an appendix of his Systematic Theology, where he says of eternal generation that he cannot find a text in support of the doctrine.

Again, we could multiply examples here of similar methodology in twentieth century theology, wherein a theologian’s own reading of the Bible, perhaps in conjunction with philosophical categories and methods (e.g. Craig on Christology), trumps the traditional understanding of an aspect of the doctrine of God or of Christology. James Dolelzal’s recent work, All That Is In God, does some of that work, but even he limits his analysis to what he calls “Reformed evangelicals,” which for him is mostly a euphemism for Bruce Ware. This doesn’t tell the whole story, just like the Trinity debate didn’t tell the whole story. Classical Christian theism was, to use Dolezal’s paradigm, rejected, revised, or ignored by much of twentieth century theology, not only in Reformed evangelicalism but in mainline Protestantism, other parts of evangelicalism, Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy….you name the tradition and I’ll name you a major theologian who went the same route albeit on a different vehicle. (That includes confessional Reformed traditions).

All this is to say that I think evangelicals in particular could do with a revision of their understanding of tradition in general and of classical Christian theism in particular. It is my belief that many rejections of CCT arise from misunderstanding both the role of tradition within the evangelical commitment to sola Scriptura and of the biblical-theological and historical warrrant for holding CCT. We need to go back to the drawing board in evangelicalism in the way we teach theological method and how we relate our right and good commitment to the Bible’s ultimate authority to the faith once delivered to the saints, i.e. the Christian Tradition. To begin, we need to recognize that classical Christian theism, and the recovery of it and other traditional theological categories today, is not some supra-biblical scheme that we place onto the Bible, but rather is a way of talking about God that arises from the Bible in conjunction with dogmatic and philosophical reflection. Theological retrieval is not repristinizing the past or muting the Bible with theological jargon; instead, it’s a demonstration of the inherently biblical support for dogmatic terminology and categories. In other words, “going back to the drawing board” consists firstly of a shift in how we think about theological method, and particularly what makes a doctrine “biblical.”

Canonical Parameters for Talking about the Cry of Dereliction

/ Matt Emerson / 10 Comments

Last week I posted about some dogmatic parameters for talking about the Cry of Dereliction. In this post I want to add to those parameters some boundaries given to us by the text of Scripture. Jesus’ guttural utterance from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mk. 15:34) ought to be taken in its immediate, surrounding, and, ultimately, canonical contexts. Here I only want to outline some of these; as with the previous post, this one could be expanded into at least an article if not a monograph. And nobody has time for that in a blog post.

  1. Mark’s Gospel – The first contexts for the Cry of Dereliction are its immediate and surrounding contexts in Mark’s Gospel. He and Matthew (27:46) are the only Gospels that include it, and Mark includes no other sayings of Jesus from the cross in his Gospel. Regarding the immediate context, there are a few things to say. First, the Temple veil is torn in two (Mk. 15:38) and the Roman centurion confesses that “truly, this man was the Son of God” (Mk. 15:39) immediately after Jesus’ cry and subsequent death. Second, this cry stands as the culmination of “the hour,” spoken of repeatedly in Mark 13 and fulfilled in the events of Mark 14 (see on this Peter Bolt, The Cross from a Distance). This “hour” is for “the Son of Man,” who will come riding on the clouds in glory” (Mk. 13:24-27).  Third, the cry from the cross is answered preliminarily in his royal, Jewish burial at the hands of Joseph of Arimathea (Mk. 15:42-47) and ultimately by the empty tomb (Mk. 16:1-8). Regarding the surrounding context (i.e. the context of the entire book), Jesus’ reference to Ps. 22:1 stands as the culmination of a long line of references to the Old Testament’s Suffering Servant in Mark’s Gospel. Most of these come from Isaiah, but in both the Psalms and Isaiah the Suffering Servant songs are intended to convey lament over present circumstances in the context of trust in God’s covenant promises, and specifically his promise to bring Israel’s New Exodus through the Suffering Servant. In other words, in Mark, the Cry of Dereliction, a cry of pain, anguish, suffering, and abandonment, is couched within the self-identification of Jesus as the divine and royal Son of Man, trust in God’s covenantal promises, the fulfillment of those promises in the penal substitutionary death of the Messiah, and the vindication of his death as a substitute for sinners in the Temple curtain’s tearing, the centurion’s exclamation, Jesus’ royal burial (rather than a criminal’s burial) at the hands of Joseph of Arimathea, and ultimately the empty tomb.
  2. The Fourfold Gospel Corpus – In addition to Mark’s context, we also need to pay attention to the canonical context of the four Gospels, and specifically to Jesus’ other sayings from the cross. I am here not so concerned about chronological order for the seven sayings as I am about how to read them together. Jesus cries “my God, my God why have you forsaken me?” in the context of also saying, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34), (to the thief) “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise,” (Luke 23:43), “Woman, behold your son. Son, behold your mother” (John 19:26-27), “I thirst,” (John 19:28), “It is finished” (John 19:30), and “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46). Notice a few things about these other sayings. First, the initial and final sayings are prayers to the Father. While Jesus experiences abandonment here, it is not in such a way that he believes that the Father will not hear his prayers. Second, whatever we say about abandonment needs to include not only Jesus’ continued prayers to the Father but also his continued speech to those around the cross. He cares for his mother and friend (John 19:26-27), and he speaks to the soldiers (“I thirst”). Third, and most importantly, these other sayings indicate that Jesus’ actions are intended as a propitiatory, acceptable sacrifice (John 19:28, John 19:30). Therefore at death, in anticipation of the ultimate vindication of the resurrection, Jesus’ righteous life and sacrificially satisfactory death will be vindicated when he enters the intermediate state in the righteous place of the dead, Paradise (Luke 23:46).
  3. Psalm 22 – A third canonical context for the Cry of Dereliction is Psalm 22. While we should affirm that Jesus quotes this in a moment of intense suffering, and therefore has the abandonment mentioned in 22:1 fully in view, the NT authors (and Jesus in his ministry) often quote Scripture metaleptically. That is, when they quote one verse they have the entire context of that one verse in view. Given both Mark’s use of the Suffering Servant motif and the other sayings from the cross, as well as a proper understanding of the lament genre, it is likely that Jesus has the entirety of Psalm 22 in view even though he only quotes v. 1. When we look at Psalm 22, we find that this righteous man who suffers unjustly is ultimately vindicated and that his feeling and experience of abandonment to death take place in the context of the covenant faithfulness of God.
  4. The Old Testament Story – Finally, we need to understand that Jesus’ Cry of Dereliction stands at the apex of the biblical story, which is Israel’s story. Israel is promised exile in the Old Testament. They are told that, on the Day of the Lord, God will send them out of the Promised Land. God departs from the Temple at the beginning of Ezekiel in anticipation of its and Israel’s destruction. In other words, exile is divine abandonment. It is judgment on sin. Israel deserves it because they have not repented and trusted in YHWH. But when we look at the narratives concerning exile, YHWH is not only the God who judges but also the God who saves. As he sends Israel’s enemies to crush them and to remove them from the land, he also remains with them. He abandons Israel in 1 Samuel 5, when the ark is taken by the Philistines. But he also in that story is working on their behalf, going into exile on their behalf and defeating their enemies for them in the midst of that self-imposed exile by knocking over the idol of Dagon. In Ezekiel, as he pronounces judgment on Israel by abandoning the Temple, his presence goes with Israel into exile. Exile is real, but so is the promise of return. And in God, mercy triumphs over judgment (James 2:13). Return triumphs over exile. Resurrection triumphs over death. The judgment that takes place on the cross is real, but it is judgment in a covenant context that anticipates vindication through resurrection.

As I said in the previous post, I wholeheartedly affirm penal substitution. God pours out his wrath toward sinners on Jesus at the cross. Those who repent of their sins and believe Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead (Rom. 10:9) receive life instead of death because Jesus took the curse that we deserve (Gal. 3:13). Jesus became sin so that we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21). In all these ways I affirm penal substitution. But in describing this mystery we need to make sure we do not cross the dogmatic boundaries of Nicaea and Chalcedon or the canonical boundaries of Holy Scripture.