E-Book, Englisch, 640 Seiten
Hamilton Jr. God's Glory in Salvation through Judgment
1. Auflage 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4335-2135-5
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection
A Biblical Theology
E-Book, Englisch, 640 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-4335-2135-5
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection
James M. Hamilton Jr. (PhD, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is professor of biblical theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and preaching pastor at Kenwood Baptist Church.
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Chapter 1
CAN THE CENTER HOLD?
1. Introduction
William Butler Yeats captured the spirit of Our Time in the opening lines of his poem “The Second Coming”:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold . . .
The image of a world spinning out of control, a world no longer heeding the call of its Master because truth is only “true for you,” matches the default settings of our intuitive templates. Biblical scholars and theologians are no exception1
Describing theologians since the 1960s, David Wells writes:
They, too, began not with divine revelation but with human experience, not with God’s interpretation of life but with the interpretation that in our self-asserted freedom we have devised for ourselves. They rejected the idea that there is any center to the meaning that they sought, any normativity to any one proposal2
Academic practitioners of biblical theology have not transcended the spirit of the age. Walter Brueggemann has written that “in every period of the discipline, the questions, methods, and possibilities in which study is cast arise from the sociointellectual climate in which the work must be done”3 While I would never assert that everyone who thinks biblical theology has no center has either capitulated to or consciously embraced the spirit of the age, the “sociointellectual climate” corresponds to the view that biblical theology has no center4 We are all affected by the temperature of the times. We need not look far to see that the center has not held, and things have fallen apart. As Brueggemann writes, “The new situation in Old Testament theology is reflective of a major breakpoint in Western culture. . . . The breakpoint concerns modes of knowledge that have too innocently yielded certitude5 ”
The purpose of this book, quixotic as it may seem, is to seek to do for biblical theology what Kevin Vanhoozer has done for hermeneutics6and David Wells has done for evangelical theology7 The goal is not a return to an imaginary golden age but to help people know God. The quest to know God is clarified by diagnosis of the problem (Wells), the vindication of interpretation (Vanhoozer), and, hopefully, a clear presentation of the main point of God’s revelation of himself, that is, a clear presentation of the center of biblical theology. I hasten to embrace the humility articulated by Schlatter and recently restated by Schreiner: there is more than one way to pursue biblical theology, and there can be no final, definitive treatment of the subject. Though I am pursuing center, I celebrate the fact that “each of the various approaches and perspectives can cast a different light upon the NT, and in that sense having a number of different approaches is helpful8 ”I hope that even those who are not convinced that I am right about the center for which I argue will nevertheless profit from the perspective articulated here.
Vanhoozer describes his goal as “reinvigorating author-oriented interpretation through a creative retrieval of Reformed theology and speech-act philosophy.” The urgency of his task grows out of the recognition that “the fate of hermeneutics and humanity alike stand or fall together9 ” Similarly, Wells writes, “It is not theology alone in which I am interested but theology that is driven by a passion for truth; and it is not evangelicalism alone in which I am interested but evangelicalism as the contemporary vehicle for articulating a historical Protestant orthodoxy10 ” These academic sallies are necessary because, in the words of Machen, “what is today a matter of academic speculation begins tomorrow to move armies and pull down empires11 ” The ramifications ideas have in the wider culture reflect their impact on the church, and as Justin Taylor has noted, “As goes the academy, so goes the church12 ” For Wells, in the providence of God, the upheavals in society “that could portend a very troubled future and perhaps the disintegration of Western civilization” also point to “a moment when, in God’s mercy and providence, the Church could be deeply transformed for good13 ”
The transformation the church needs is the kind that results from beholding the glory of God in the face of Christ (2 Cor. 3:18–4:6). This glory of God is a saving and judging glory—an aroma of life to those being saved and death to those perishing (2 Cor. 2:15–16), and this saving and judging glory is at the center of biblical theology. If there is to be a renewal,14 it will be a renewal that grows out of the blazing center that is the glory of God in the face of Christ. This saving and judging glory, I contend, is the center of biblical theology.
Seeking to exposit the center of biblical theology is necessary because many today question whether the Bible tells a coherent story. There are many who do not embrace the idea of a center for biblical theology and yet maintain that the Bible is coherent,15 but if the Bible tells a coherent story, it is valid to explore what that story’s main point is. That leads us to ask whether the Bible shows us what God’s ultimate purpose is. Understanding God’s ultimate purpose, even with our limited human capacities, gives us insight into the meaning of all things. We know why things exist because we know the one “for whom and through whom are all things” (Heb. 2:10). This knowledge will organize our relationships and priorities, and it is desperately needed in Our Time. Wells writes,
Whatever else one may say about modernization, one of its principal effects has been to break apart the unity of human understanding and disperse the multitude of interests and undertakings away from the center, in relation to which they have gathered their meaning, pushing them to the edges, where they have no easy relation to one another at all16
Evangelicals have lost the “theological center,” and this theological center is the Bible’s center. With no center, of course things fall apart. The problem, however, is not that the gravitational center of the Bible’s theology cannot hold. The problem is more along the lines of what Yeats described as the falcon not hearing the Falconer. That is to say, if we will listen carefully to the Bible, it will proclaim to us the glory of God. If we do not hear this, the problem is with us, not the Bible. As Schreiner has pointed out, “We could easily fail to see the supremacy of God and the centrality of Christ in the NT precisely because these themes are part of the warp and woof of the NT. Sometimes we fail to see what is most obvious, what is right before our eyes17 ” God means to reveal himself in an astonishing display of his mercy and justice, with the justice highlighting the mercy18 Before we can pursue the demonstration of this thesis, however, we must consider several preliminary questions.
2. Do Things Fall Apart? (Is There a Unity in the Bible’s Diversity?)
There is much discussion today about the real diversity that exists within the overarching unity of the Bible19 In some circles there is also a widespread suspicion that there might be not one orthodoxy or a single theology of the Old and New Testaments but orthodox and theolog20 Walter Brueggemann asserts that there is “no going back to a singular coherent faith articulation in the text (much as canonical approaches might insist on it)21 ” We cannot go back, but I believe that if we do as Francis Watson proposes and radicalize “the modern theological and exegetical concern to identify ever more precisely those characteristics that are peculiar to the biblical texts,”22 we will find ourselves face to face with, as Brueggemann puts it, “a singular coherent faith articulation in the text.” At its center, I contend, will be the glory of God in salvation through judgment.
Denny Burk makes the point that scientific study “makes empirically testable predictions” and that theories “can only be tested by attempts to falsify” them23 In this book, I am putting forth the theory that the glory of God in salvation through judgment is the center of biblical theology. This theory will be tested against the “grammar” of the biblical evidence, with special attention given to any evidence in the Bible that might falsify it (and see chap. 8, where I discuss objections to the thesis). The remainder of this book will seek to show that this is “a theory that adequately explains a grammatical phenomenon [in this case, the teaching of the whole Bible!] without being falsified by the relevant body of empirical data24 ”
One obstacle facing those committed to the unity of the Bible is a certain disdain some biblical scholars have for systematic theology. A strong desire to avoid the charge that one’s prior theological conclusions control one’s exegesis, coupled with a vague sense that “belief has a distorting effect on historical inquiry,”25 leads many to prefer to “let the tensions stand,” indefinitely postponing legitimate and necessary theological synthesis.
As the spiral of meaning widens into incoherence for some, we can focus our gaze by beginning with the purpose of biblical theology. Having considered the purpose of biblical theology, we will take up the question of how to define the center of biblical theology and then ask how we identify the center of biblical theology.
