Quotable: Das on attempts to understand second temple judaism

The essayists [in Justification and Variegated Nomism, vol. 1: The Complexities of Second Temple Judaism ed by DA Carson et al] offer a more nuanced view of the literature in question but do not return to the pre-Sanders caricature of Judaism as a religion of crass works righteousness and gross legalism. The essayists generally recognize the importance of election, covenant, sacrifice, and repentance in the Jewish systems of thought they discuss, even while reexamining the extent and role of God's grace. Greater and more sustained attention in the volume to the matter of strict and perfect obedience in Judaism would have been helpful since it is the denial of perfect obedience to the Law in Judaism that forms the basis for the new perspective reading of Paul. Further, the authors of the volume do not always recognize the significance of the tension they themselves highlight in Judaism (and Paul) between salvation by God's grace and a judgment according to works. Occasionally, when an essayist finds works and obedience extolled as necessary in Jewish literature, the essayist assumes a degree of works righteousness in spite of the presence of God's grace and mercy (e.g., Craig Evans's essay). The interplay between grace and demand is complex in both Judaism and Paul and need not equate to earning a place in the world to come entirely by one's own efforts. The apostle specifically qualifies the divine origin of human works in relation to salvation (Phil 2:12-13). Are not Jewish authors in his day capable of similar reasoning? Also, some of the essayists deem efforts to "stay in" the Jewish community, such as Law observance, instances of works righteousness. If so, should Christian acts of piety and avoidance of sin, all of which help maintain status within their community of faith, be analogously labelled as works righteousness? Greater sophistication in the analyses of these matters would have been helpful.

(p.11fn22, Paul and the Jews, A Andrew Das)

I also read recently (I can't remember where) that Sanders and his followers made the mistake of reading in grace whenever they read of election in the literature. However election need not be of grace as it has sometimes been seen as on the basis of God's foreknowledge of obedience (including in second temple Judaism).

You have to be so careful in reading.

Quotable: Calvin on Justification

faith without works justifies, although this needs prudence and a sound interpretation; for this proposition, that faith without works justifies is true and yet false, according to the different senses which it bears. The proposition, that faith without works justifies by itself, is false, because faith without works is void. But if the clause "without works" is joined with the word “justifies,” the proposition will be true, since faith cannot justify when it is without works, because it is dead, and a mere fiction. He who is born of God is just, as John says. (1Jo 5:18.) Thus faith can be no more separated from works than the sun from his heat yet faith justifies without works, because works form no reason for our justification; but faith alone reconciles us to God, and causes him to love us, not in ourselves, but in his only begotten Son.

(Commentary on Ezekiel 18:14-17)

Had he only said, that Christ by justifying us becomes ours by an essential union, and that he is our head not only in so far as he is man, but that as the essence of the divine nature is diffused into us, he might indulge his dreams with less harm, and, perhaps, it were less necessary to contest the matter with him; but since this principle is like a cuttle-fish, which, by the ejection of dark and inky blood, conceals its many tails,—But as the principle which he adopts is like a cuttlefish, which, casting out its blood, which is black as ink, troubles the water all around, to hide a great multitude of tails. if we would not knowingly and willingly allow ourselves to be robbed of that righteousness which alone gives us full assurance of our salvation, we must strenuously resist. For, in the whole of this discussion, the noun righteousness and the verb to justify, are extended by Osiander to two parts; to be justified being not only to be reconciled to God by a free pardon, but also to be made just; and righteousness being not a free imputation, but the holiness and integrity which the divine essence dwelling in us inspires. And he vehemently asserts (see sec. 8) that Christ is himself our righteousness, not in so far as he, by expiating sins, appeased the Father, but because he is the eternal God and life. To prove the first point—viz. that God justifies not only by pardoning but by regenerating, he asks, whether he leaves those whom he justifies as they were by nature, making no change upon their vices? The answer is very easy: as Christ cannot be divided into parts, so the two things, justification and sanctification, which we perceive to be united together in him, are inseparable. Whomsoever, therefore, God receives into his favor, he presents with the Spirit of adoption, whose agency forms them anew into his image. But if the brightness of the sun cannot be separated from its heat, are we therefore to say, that the earth is warmed by light and illumined by heat? Nothing can be more apposite to the matter in hand than this simile. The sun by its heat quickens and fertilizes the earth; by its rays enlightens and illumines it. Here is a mutual and undivided connection, and yet reason itself prohibits us from transferring the peculiar properties of the one to the other. In the confusion of a twofold grace, which Osiander obtrudes upon us, there is a similar absurdity. Because those whom God freely regards as righteous, he in fact renews to the cultivation of righteousness, Osiander confounds that free acceptance with this gift of regeneration, and contends that they are one and the same. But Scriptures while combining both, classes them separately, that it may the better display the manifold grace of God. Nor is Paul’s statement superfluous, that Christ is made unto us "righteousness and sanctification," (1 Cor. 1:30). And whenever he argues from the salvation procured for us, from the paternal love of God and the grace of Christ, that we are called to purity and holiness, he plainly intimates, that to be justified is something else than to be made new creatures. Osiander on coming to Scripture corrupts every passage which he quotes. Thus when Paul says, "to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness," he expounds justifying as making just. With the same rashness he perverts the whole of the fourth chapter to the Romans. He hesitates not to give a similar gloss to the passage which I lately quoted, “Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth.” Here it is plain that guilt and acquittal simply are considered, and that the Apostle’s meaning depends on the antithesis. Therefore his futility is detected both in his argument and his quotations for support from Scripture. He is not a whit sounder in discussing the term righteousness, when it is said, that faith was imputed to Abraham for righteousness after he had embraced Christ (who is the righteousness of Gad and God himself) and was distinguished by excellent virtues. Hence it appears that two things which are perfect are viciously converted by him into one which is corrupt. For the righteousness which is there mentioned pertains not to the whole course of life; or rather, the Spirit testifies, that though Abraham greatly excelled in virtue, and by long perseverance in it had made so much progress, the only way in which he pleased God was by receiving the grace which was offered by the promise, in faith. From this it follows, that, as Paul justly maintains, there is no room for works in justification.

(Institutes 3.11.6)

Quotable: Oscar Cullmann on the Christian hope

The Emperor Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher who belongs with Socrates to the noblest figures of antiquity, also perceived the contrast. As is well known, he had the deepest contempt for Christianity. One might think that the death of the Christian martyrs would have inspired respect in this great Stoic who regarded death with equanimity. But it was just the martyrs’ death with which he was least sympathetic. The alacrity ['cheerful readiness, promptness, or willingness'] with which the Christians met their death displeased him. The Stoic departed this life dispassionately; the Christian martyr on the other hand died with spirited passion for the cause of Christ, because he knew that by doing so he stood within a powerful redemptive process. The first Christian martyr, Stephen, shows us (Acts 7:55) how very differently death is bested by him who dies in Christ than by the ancient philosopher: he sees, it is said, 'the heavens open and Christ standing at the right hand of God !' He sees Christ, the Conqueror of Death. With this faith that the death he must undergo is already conquered by Him who has Himself endured it, Stephen lets himself be stoned.

(Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead, p.59-60)

A truly brilliant lecture. Well worth the 60min it would take to read (and it's online here).

Quotable: Peter Dray on lukewarm faith

I think often our answer to feeling lukewarm as Christians is to somehow try and whip ourselves up into a frenzy. I remember chatting to a friend a few months ago who felt lukewarm who was trying to take just this course of action. Jesus commands something very different to the church in Laodicea - not 'make yourself passionate', but repent. (source)

Quotable: CH Dodd on 'ethical religion'

CH Dodd argues that the gospels, the epistles, and the Pentatuach all combine 'ethics' and 'religion' in the same way:

first the proclamation, then the beginning of instruction in morals, first kerygma [preaching], then didache [teaching], seems to have been thoroughly characteristic of the Christian mission.

[...]

This way of approach to ethics was sharply distinguished from that of contemporary Greek moralists, who from the time of Aristotle had set our to provide a self-contained and self-justifying system of ethics. For Christianity, ethics are not self-contained or self-justifying; they arise out of a response to the Gospel.

(p. 10, Gospel and Law)

Quotable: Moo on overhhistoricizing

Douglas Moo in his commentary on Romans states that:

We moderns must beware the tendency to overhistoricize: to focus so much on specific local and personal situations that we miss the larger theological and philosophical concerns of the biblical authors. That Paul was dealing in Romans with immediate concerns in the early church we do not doubt. But, especially in Romans, these issues are ultimately those of the church - and the world - of all ages: the continuity of God's plan of salvation, the sin and need of human beings, God's provision for our sin problem in Christ, the means to a life of holiness, and security in the face of suffering and death. Augustine, Luther, Calvin and Wesley, whatever their failings as exegetes, saw this; and perhaps they understood more clearly than many of their latter-day critics.

(p.22, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. New International Commentary on the New Testament (NICNT). Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996)

This ties in (unintentionally) with the comments in my previous post.

Quotable: Leithart on 1 John 4:8

[John] doesn't say, "The one who doesn't know love doesn't know God." He says, "The one who doesn't love doesn't know God." The test of knowing God is not "knowing love" but "loving." It's an active, pragmatic test, a test that has to do with practice.

(source)

Is bibliolatry a valid criticism?

Bibliolatry is not a criticism often taken very seriously by Evangelicals. Partly this is because it can be difficult to understand how to distinguish it from a high view of scripture. I think this quote demonstrates what it looks like in practice:

Many who reacted in anger to the Bishop of Durham's remarks about the empty tomb in 1985 were not, I believe, interested in what he had to say about the resurrection as such, but much more with the fact that he was contradicting statements made in the New Testament. That, rather than any doctrinal question, was what worried them. The fact that it was the resurrection about which historical questions were being raised was really a side-issue, for from such a perspective the resurrection is really no more important than any other event recorded in Scripture; it is the factual accuracy of Scripture as such that matters. It is at this point that one begins to see why some people would describe fundamentalism as a heresy – that is, a kind of single-issue fanaticism which destroys the structure of the Christian faith.

(p. 40, John Barton, People of the Book? The authority of the bible in Christianity, London: SPCK)

It's a damning indictment (I think). But are we acting any different in current debates?

Let's start at the very beginning...

...A very good place to start

It's a famous quote, but worth repeating:

‘Indeed, the simple truth is that the resurrection cannot be accommodated in any way of understanding the world except one of which it is the starting point’

( p.11, Lesslie Newbigin, Truth to Tell: the Gospel as Public Truth, London, SPCK, 1991)

Thanks to Chris Wright to reminding me of it.

Quotable: Brent Sandy on the language of prophecy

prophecy speaks to the heart as much as the head. If we think that by objectifying and exegeting every aspect of prophecy we can grasp the intent, we will have ignored one of the most important features of prophecy. The variety of expressions of future rewards allow us to preexperience a small part of what being in God's presence will be like....

As is evident from Revelation 2-3, prophetic language communicates with bright lights and a full range of colors. Its subject is photogenic, and images of the subject appear on a large screen with an infinite number of pixels. To read prophecy correctly means to stand in awe of the aesthetics of prophetic artistry and to catch a vision of what heaven will be like.

(p.31, D. Brent Sandy, 2002, Plowshares & Pruning Hooks: Rethinking the Language of Biblical Prophecy and Apocalyptic. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity.

Quotable: Leithart on post-exilic holiness and critical scholarship

Peter J. Leithart has been doing some reading and shares it with the blogosphere...

Hannah Harrington gave a very fine presentation on the holiness and purity terminology in Ezra and Nehemiah. She showed that these post-exilic texts display an expansion of holy space to encompass the whole city as well as an expansion of the duties of Levites, a closing of the gap between Levites and priests. These two changes are perfectly consistent, displaying a general trend of "up-grading" the holiness of Israel after the exile. The people of Israel become the new sanctum, which can be contaminated and against which sacrilege might be committed.

[...read more]

After a little further thought he then posts the following:

One of the most annoying things about critical biblical scholarship is the way that every discussion has to contribute to questions of composition, authorship, historical setting, etc. Harrington gives a very intriguing paper on holiness in Ezra-Nehemiah, but the whole thing is part of a "larger" argument about the common authorship of the two books.

Without a church to serve with edifying theological interpretation, scholars serve the pseudo-church of biblical scholarship.

Quotable: Longenecker on Galatians

In view of [the] profile of the agitators [judizers], it is tempting to think that Paul's letter to the Galatian Christians deals primarily with the issue of 'the law', not least since this seems to be the issue that has overwhelmed the Galatian communities. Such an impression, however, requires some qualification. While the Galatian Christians; regard for the law provoked Paul to write much on the subject, his deliberations on nomistic observance are framed within the context of prior convictions about the nature of Christian personal and corporate life. In particular, he surveys the Christian life in relation to two dimensions: a temporal and a qualitative dimension. With reference to the qualitative dimension, Paul demonstrates the Christian life to be intrinsically marked our by Christ-likenesss; in this context, his case relies on a portrait of self-giving as the essential component of Christian lifestyle.

Of these two dimensions, it is arguably the qualitative dimension, which focuses on cruciform lifestyle, that forms the backbone of the theological body of the letter. If that claim is over-stated it is only slightly so. Paul's strategy in Galatians is most effective when he exploits the full scope of the qualitative dimension. Although he employs various arguments concerning the law in Galatians, Paul's finest deliberations on the subject are informed by a belief that cruciform existence is intrinsic to Christian identity and is the most intimate form of relationship with God. Paul's instructions about the law follow in the wake of this pre-determined vision of Christian moral identity.

(pp. 65-66, Bruce Longenecker, ‘Galatians’, in J.D.G. Dunn (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to St Paul, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)

While I don't think Longenecker is spot on, he has an important point. After all Paul's argument (I think) hinges on vv. 3:1-9:

O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith— just as Abraham "believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness"?

Faith is central in this passage, but so is the Spirit, and so by implication so is a transformed, cruciform, life.

Quotable: The active and passive recipients of promise

I don't think I have read a quote which better sums up both the strength and weakness of Reformed theology so well. Following Simeon's test again - you could not find theology more exhalting to the Saviour, and humbling to the sinner; but the door for the sinner to ignore the promotion of holiness has been left ajar.

It is said, "the promise is made to the Seed," yet the promise is made to us, and yet again the covenant is made with Abraham: How can all these stand together? […] The promises that are made to us, though they be of the same covenant, nevertheless differ in this respect: the active part is committed to the Messiah, to the Seed himself, but the passive part consists of the promises made to us […] The meaning is that they are derivative promises. The primary and original promises were made to Jesus Christ.

(Preston, The New Covenant [ed. 1639], cited in p. 250, "The Doctrine of the Covenant in Reformed Theology", in Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation: The Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos, ed. Richard B. Gaffin Jr.)

PS. I'd never heard of Preston but this is who he is.

Quotable: Leithart on justification

These are just a couple of quotes I wanted to note down from "'Judge Me, O God': Biblical Perspectives on Justification" by Peter Leithart. Both magnify the scale of God's saving (justifying) work, while reminding us that while it may have already been done, it is still not-yet.

It is true that God "reckons" or "considers" us righteous prior to His taking action on our behalf, and that "reckoning" is an act of sheer grace for the sake of Jesus. But that secret decision is not justification, any more than the decree to save the elect is the salvation of the elect. A judge may conclude that the accused is innocent, but his private conclusion does not constitute a legal decision. A legal decision must be promulgated as a decision of the court, and in many passages of Scripture, God’s public declaration of righteousness occurs when He "gives to the righteous according to His righteousness." God’s forensic declaration does not ring through the heavens while leaving earth in silence; rather, god’s declaration "He is righteous" affects the righteous in real time and real history. […]

Decades ago, Leon Morris wrote in his little book on The Biblical Doctrine of Judgment (1960) about the difference between modern and Hebraic conceptions of judgment. For moderns, to pass judgment means to weigh evidence and declare a sentence. Once the sentence has been passed, the judge’s job is finished, and someone other that the judge ensures that the sentence is carried out and that justice is actually done. In Scripture, however, judgment includes establishing justice as well as deciding what is just.

(pp. 212-213, Peter J. Leithart, "'Judge Me, O God': Biblical Perspectives on Justification" in The Federal Vision, ed. Steve Wilkins and Duane Garner)

The gospel really is a lot better news than bare 'forgiveness of sins'. I remember a John Piper sermon where he said: "forgiveness of sins... who cares right... I mean really?" (hopefully not too misquoted there).

In all of this, it is crucial to remember continually that justification, however defined, is by faith. And in part that means that our justification/vindication is not completely and fully revealed before the Last Judgment. We are justified in the present, but in another sense we await final public vindication. Many believers have been faithful to death, and their bones now lie in forgotten graves or scattered on the earth. God our Father, for His own infinitely wise reasons, did not intervene to rescue and justify them. But they are not forgotten, and someday they will rise to public vindication, while their enemies and accusers are silenced in darkness. Vindication may not be now; it may not be soon; but it will come. Or God is not God.

(pp. 231-232, ibid)

A sobering vision but a better hope than Rupert Brooke's which came to mind as I read it.

Quotable: Vos on the covenants

Quotes I wanted to record from the essay "The Doctrine of the Covenant in Reformed Theology" by Geerhardus Vos. I think they all pass Simeon's test too.

God does not exist because of man, but man because of God. This is what is written at the entrance of the temple of Reformed theology.

(pp. 242, "The Doctrine of the Covenant in Reformed Theology", in Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation: The Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos, ed. Richard B. Gaffin Jr.)

[according to Lutheran theology] Precisely because mankind’s destination had already been reached before the fall in Adam, Christ can do nothing but restore what was lost in Adam. And since the destination already realized was fully compatible with mutability and the possibility of falling, the sinner who has been brought back to his destination by Christ must necessarily have to remain at this level. Lutheran theology is, therefore, wholly consistent when it teaches an apostasy of the saints. It does not at all object to uniting the state of justification and sonship with the possibility of such apostasy. […]

What we inherit in the second Adam is not restricted to what we lost in the first Adam: it is much rather the full realization of what the first Adam would have achieved for us had he remained unfallen and been confirmed in his state. Someone placed in that state can never again fall from it. As truly as Christ is a perfect Saviour, so truly must be bestow on us the perseverance of the saints.

(pp. 242-243, ibid)

I'd never heard these two doctrines connected before.

The obtaining of eternal life thus comes to lie in God, as a work that is Hs alone, in which His glory shines and of which nothing, without detracting from that glory, can be attributed to the creature. On this point the entire Reformation, both Lutheran and Calvinist, took exception to Rome, which failed to appreciate this fundamental truth. Yet the reasons which had driven both sides to this protest were different. With Luther it was the thirst for peace and stability for a restless conscience which could find no tranquillity in Rome’s salvation by works. As long as the sinner himself has to do something for his acquittal, his work remains unstable. Thus the sola fide became the shibboleth of the German Reformation, justification, its principle doctrine. One will agree that, despite all the purity with which this doctrine develops and in which, in developed form, it is given anew to the church, the highest point is still not reach, namely, that point from which the Scripture itself views the matter when, in the words of Paul, it sees the heart of Abraham’s faith in his “giving God the glory” (Rom 4:20). Even in its doctrine of justification Lutheranism did not catch hold of this idea in its fullness. Not a purely theological, but a partly anthropological motif ran through it. It was different with the Reformed. They, too, felt the same necessity to leave the waves of Rome’s salvation by works and once again stand on solid ground. But beside and behind this necessity there lay a deeper longing: a thirst for the glory of God that did not primarily meditate on its own peace. When the Reformed takes the obtaining of salvation completely out of man’s hands, he does this so that the glory which God gets from it might be uncurtailed. What is important for him is the realization that God glorifies Himself in the salvation of sinners, whereas the Lutheran is satisfied when it merely becomes evident that man brings nothing of his own instability into the picture. For the Reformed the center of gravity does not lie in justification as such, but in the principle by which the latter is to be judged and which the Scripture everywhere applies when it teaches us to regard the work of salvation in its totality as being exclusively a work of God.

(pp. 246-247, ibid)

According to the Lutheran, the Holy Spirit first generates faith in the sinner who temporarily still remains outside of union with Christ; then justification follows faith and only then, in turn, does the mystical union with the Mediator take place. Everything depends on this justification, which is losable, so that the believer only gets to see a little of the glory of grace and lives for the day, so to speak. The covenantal outlook is the reverse. One is first united to Christ, the Mediator of the covenant, by a mystical union, which finds its conscious recognition in faith. By this union with Christ all that is in Christ is simultaneously given. Faith embraces all this too; it not only grasps the instantaneous justification, but lays hold of Christ as Prophet, Priest and King, as his rich and full Messiah. The deepest reason for this difference in view is none other than the fact that the reception of the full glory of the work of God’s grace in the consciousness of faith is the most important thing to the Reformed believer.

(pp. 256-257, ibid)

Not sure about that last sentence though.