Thompson The Doctrine of Scripture

An Introduction
1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-1-4335-7398-9
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 208 Seiten

Reihe: Short Studies in Systematic Theology

A Clear and Concise Exploration of the Christian Doctrine of Scripture The Bible is the written word of the living God. He speaks through this word, working in and through human agents as he reveals himself to his people. His word is trustworthy, yet many Christians struggle to articulate why they believe that to be true. Centered in the words of Scripture and especially the teaching of Jesus himself, this volume unpacks the doctrine of Scripture as taught by the church through the ages, helping to strengthen readers' confidence in God's word. Despite the challenges that are often leveled against the Bible, Thompson clearly articulates what Jesus taught about the Scriptures, how God speaks to his people through the written word, the crucial work of the Holy Spirit to apply the word, and the vital attributes of Scripture-its clarity, truthfulness, sufficiency, and efficacy. Readers will find encouragement to walk according to the word and to delight in the God who speaks. - Concise and Accessible: Intended for use by church members and leaders as well as those in academic contexts - Christ-Centered: Rooted in Jesus's own words about the Old Testament and his commissioning of the apostles who would go on to write the New Testament - Addresses Common Questions: Answers challenges about the Bible's clarity, truthfulness, sufficiency, and efficacy

 Mark D. Thompson (DPhil, University of Oxford) is the principal of Moore Theological College in Sydney, Australia, where he has been teaching Christian doctrine for thirty years. He is the chair of the Sydney Diocesan Doctrine Commission and a member of the GAFCON Theological Resource Group. He is the author of A Clear and Present Word. Mark is married to Kathryn, and they have four daughters.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Thompson, Mark D.

Leseproben

1

Jesus and Scripture

The Christian Starting Point for Understanding Revelation and the Bible

The centerpiece of God’s revelation of himself is Jesus Christ. The God who created all things and sustains all things has always intended that his own person, character, will, and purposes would be made known most clearly and most fully in and through his Son.

Of course, God was under no compulsion to make himself known. The eternal fellowship of Father, Son, and Spirit is perfectly self-sufficient and needs no one. His is the only truly independent life. He has “life in himself,” as Jesus put it (John 5:26). Yet it is thoroughly consistent with his character as self-giving and self-communicating in that eternal fellowship of being that he should choose to make himself known to his creatures. In Kevin Vanhoozer’s words, “God is never more himself than when he is going out of himself in love—communicating for the sake of communion.”1 What is more, it is entirely fitting that the Father should relate to us primarily by his Son. As the apostle Paul confessed to the Colossians: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him” (Col. 1:15–16). The uniqueness of the Son’s relation to creation in the eternal purposes of God explains why he is the person who became incarnate (and not the Father or the Spirit), but it also explains why he is the appropriate avenue for God’s full and final revelation of himself. The apostle John would make the same point in different words:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. . . .

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. . . . No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known. (John 1:1–3, 14, 18)

From the beginning, God intended the Son to be at the very heart of his dealings with creation. As God the Son incarnate, Jesus Christ is the one mediator between God and man (1 Tim. 2:5). That is not to say that God did not or could not relate to the creation prior to the coming of Jesus. Yet, with a note of finality and alluding to a long period of preparation and anticipation, the author of Hebrews wrote, “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” (1:1–2). From the time that final word was “spoken,” there is no going back, as if the Son had not come and he did not embody the fullness of God’s revelation and purpose. He is the way we know God and how God relates to all things. Theology is possible because of him. Through him we are enabled to see all that has come before him in the light of its proper destination, and all things that have come after him in the light of his life, work, and future.

The Son’s unique relation to the creation is the reason why it is fitting for him to be the one who makes God known. Yet the Son’s unique relation to the Father is the reason why he can effectively make the Father known to creatures.2 John made this point with his reference to “the only God, who is at the Father’s side,” who “has made him known” (John 1:18). Jesus himself would insist that “no one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6) and then would validate that claim by pointing again to the absolutely unique relation he has to the Father—“I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (John 14:9–11). In Paul’s idiom, this becomes “in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Col. 2:9); in that of the writer to the Hebrews, “he is . . . the exact imprint of his nature” (1:3). Perhaps the critical piece of testimony, though—once again from Jesus’s lips, but this time recorded by Matthew—is this: “All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (11:27).

It is highly significant, and deeply moving, that these words should be followed immediately by Jesus’s invitation “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28). Coming to Jesus is coming to the Father. Those who refused to come to Jesus, he made plain, did so because they did not know his Father (John 7:28). Among the many monumental consequences of that truth is that Jesus’s attitude toward men and women, the world, and even the Scriptures is the attitude commended to us by God. Once again we can see why Jesus—who he is, what he did, and what he said—rightly stands at the center of our doctrine of Scripture.

So what was Jesus’s attitude toward the Scriptures? The Gospels provide us with ample testimony to how Jesus viewed and used the Old Testament, as well as how he treated the words of his commissioned spokesmen, the apostles.

The Final Appeal in Matters of Faith and Faithful Living

Jesus began his public ministry after his baptism by John the Baptist and his testing in the wilderness. It is noteworthy that at both points, at the baptism and as he headed into the wilderness, the Holy Spirit was active, and the principal question raised by the narrative was the identity of Jesus as the Son of God (Matt. 3:16–17; 4:1, 3, 6). In this way our attention is drawn to the significance of these events. The identification of Jesus as the beloved Son and the one who came to do the will of his Father is something in which Father, Son, and Spirit are inseparably united. Jesus is declared to be the Son of God by the Father himself and is attested as such by the anointing and leading work of the Spirit.

The testing in the wilderness is one of the first great demonstrations of Jesus’s attitude toward the Old Testament Scriptures. It mirrors the testing of Israel in the wilderness following the exodus and, even more importantly, the testing of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. Will Jesus trust that God’s word is a good word? Will he be attentive enough to that word to resist a manipulation and distortion of it in the interests of another agenda? This testing takes place in the wake of the voice from heaven declaring, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17). So it is unsurprising that the challenge from the tempter begins, “If you are the Son of God . . .” (Matt. 4:3). It is the same tactic the tempter used in the garden: casting doubt upon the words God has spoken, which involves casting doubt upon the motive of God in speaking those words, and finally proposing an alternative word and an alternative course of action. Will Jesus trust the word he heard when he rose out of the Jordan? Where will he turn when that word is under assault?

Adam, Eve, and the Israelites in the wilderness all failed the test of trusting the word God had given them. They succumbed to doubt about the goodness of God’s word and placed their trust in another word. Yet at each point, Jesus responded to the tempter’s suggestions and his misuse of Scripture with an appeal to the written word: “It is written . . . ,” he countered all three times. It is obvious that as far as Jesus was concerned, the written words he quoted settled the question at hand. He turned to the Old Testament Scriptures to establish that God’s words nourish the life of faith, that testing God is inimical to that faith, and that God himself is the only true object of faith and worship. Put simply, the words of Scripture reveal what is really true. They determine the faithful response of one who knows the Father.

Such an appeal to the words written in Scripture was a regular pattern in Jesus’s ministry. Scripture settled the matter of John the Baptist’s identity (Matt. 11:10). Scripture unmasked what was happening at the temple, where the merchants and money changers had created “a den of robbers” (Matt. 21:13). Scripture foretold the behavior of the disciples on the night Jesus was betrayed (Matt. 26:24, 31). When Jesus was challenged about the behavior of his own disciples, he appealed to what was written about David and his men in Scripture (Matt. 12:3). In the midst of debate with the Pharisees about the grounds for divorce, Jesus pointed them to God’s intention from the beginning, quoting the words of Genesis 2: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (v. 24).

On one occasion, when an expert in the Jewish law came to test Jesus by asking, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” (Luke 10:25), Jesus’s...