Hardening pharaoh’s heart

From Greg Beale's Redemptive Reversals and the Ironic Overturning of Human Wisdom:

A Preincarnate Hitler

The pharaoh of ancient Egypt is one of the best examples of ironic judgment, since in great arrogance he hotly pursued afflicted Israel but was "caught in the plots which [he had] devised" (Ps. 10:2). Pharaoh's first mistake was to claim to be God. He gave to himself such titles as "savior of Egypt," "Lord of the living," "Universal god," and the sovereign "god of heaven and earth." As such he was also held to be the divine judge after death.⁴ This is, no doubt, why Pharaoh responds to Moses's message that begins, "Thus says the Lord" (Ex. 5:1), with an equally authoritative, "Thus says Pharaoh" (Ex. 5:10). But, indeed, such a divine claim was farthest from the truth since, ironically, Scripture identifies the pharaoh of the exodus with Satan, "the dragon" (Isa. 51:9; cf. Ps. 74:13–14 and Rev. 12:3–4, 7–9), and the "sea monster" (Ps. 89:10; cf. also Ps. 87:4; Isa. 30:7; Ezek. 32:2). Pharaoh's obstinate claim to deity, even in spite of the plagues that came upon him in Exodus 7–13, was the reason for his judgment.

Pharaoh's mistaken belief in his divine sovereignty must have led him to issue the edict that the firstborn males of Israel were to be killed by the Hebrew midwives (Ex. 1:16), and when this failed, he ordered the firstborn to be drowned in a river (Ex. 1:22). Not only did Pharaoh's attempts to overcome Israel fail, but his edicts declaring the killing of the firstborn were providentially reversed so that they fell on him in judgment. Not only did God kill the firstborn of every Egyptian family (Ex. 12:29), but he also drowned Pharaoh's army in the Red Sea (Ex. 15:1–12). His sins came back on his own head, since he was punished ironically by the very things he perpetrated against Israel.

No Truth and No Consequences

Before we leave this discussion of Pharaoh, it is further enlightening to understand his role as the purported savior of those who died and faced imminent judgment. The Egyptians believed that after death, people had to go through a trial in the Hall of Judgment to determine whether they were guilty of earthly sin. If found innocent, a person inherited eternal bliss, but if found guilty, he or she suffered judgment. There were two parts to this judgment process. (1) The deceased person arrived at one end of the Hall of Judgment and was presented with a long list of sins characteristic of human life, which he or she categorically denied. (2) While the denial of sin was taking place, the deceased's heart was being weighed on the "scales of judgment" at the other end of the hall in order to see if its testimony supported the person's denial. The Egyptians believed that all people are sinful and that the heart would tell the truth if it were separated from the bad influence of the body, so when the heart confessed the deceased's sins, it would become "heavy" with sin, and the disequilibrium of the scales would indicate guilt and judgment. Therefore, the heart's confession of sin would demonstrate that the deceased's denial was a lie, with the result of impending judgment.

Since the Egyptians believed in the universal sinfulness of humanity, it seems that no Egyptian had a chance for salvation. This was a tremendous theological dilemma. However, the Egyptians also believed that the heart could be stopped from naturally confessing sin so that salvation could still be possible. This was thought to be accomplished by placing a stone scarab beetle, shaped in the form of a heart, either in the mummified clothes encasing the deceased or tied to the chest. The scarab beetle was a symbol of the sun god, of whom Pharaoh was viewed as the incarnation, and they thought it had magical powers to suppress the heart's tendency to confess sin so that salvation could be secured. Thus it was actually the magical power of the divine Pharaoh that imposed this silence upon the heart and was responsible for the individual's salvation.

There were various magical spells written on the stone scarab heart to bring about the silence of the human heart. The magical power of the sun god (and Pharaoh) was believed to transfer the stillness of the stone heart to the deceased so that the heart's movements to confess sin would be transformed into the stonelike stillness of silence. This suppression of the heart's confession apparently came to be seen as a kind of "hardening of the heart."⁵

Could this immoral Egyptian concept of salvation through "hardening of the heart" be the background against which to understand the Lord's hardening of Pharaoh's heart? Moses repeatedly commanded Pharaoh to let the people go, but God repeatedly hardened Pharaoh's heart so that he would not release Israel. But perhaps this was not the only purpose of the hardening of Pharaoh's heart. Whereas the pharaoh's magical hardening caused a nonconfession of sin and an apparent sinless heart, resulting in salvation, the Lord's hardening of Pharaoh's heart appears to have led to his own heart confessing sin (cf. Ex. 9:27, 34; 10:16–17) and acknowledging his sinfully heavy condition, resulting in judgment (cf. Ex. 14:4, 17–28). Whereas Pharaoh's hardening the hearts of others falsely suppressed sin, the Lord's hardening of Pharaoh's heart rightly revealed the monarch's sin.

The Lord's hardening of Pharaoh's heart may have been intended, in part, to show that the Egyptian way of salvation is a sham and was really the very opposite—a way of damnation. In fact, is it not interesting that the dead Pharaoh was the only Egyptian who did not have to go through the judgment process, but now, more than any other Egyptian in the exodus narrative, he is the focus of God's hardening judgment? It is probably no coincidence that one of the Hebrew words used for the Lord's hardening of Pharaoh means "to make heavy." Ironically, the pharaoh who claimed to remove the sinful heaviness of others' hearts could not remove his own. The pharaoh himself had now "been weighed on the scales and found deficient" (Dan. 5:27) and awaited impending judgment at the Red Sea. Pharaoh's heart became literally like the stone heart that symbolized his power and ironically caused him to be hard and insensitive to God's commands, which led to his destruction. Because of his stone heart, he sank like a stone in the Red Sea.

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⁴ For a background of Pharaoh's divine names and functions consult I. Engnell, Studies in Divine Kingship in the Ancient Near East (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1967); S. Morenz, Egyptian Religion (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1960); E. L. R. Meyerowitz, The Divine Kingship in Ghana and Ancient Egypt (London: Faber & Faber, 1960); H. Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948).

⁵ For an argument supporting this contention see A. Hermann, “Das Steinhartes Herz,” in Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 4 (Münster: Aschendorff’sche, 1961), 102–5. I have also argued this in my "The Exodus Hardening Motif of Yahweh as a Polemic," ThM Thesis, Dallas Theological Seminary (1976), 48–52.

Was The Fourth Gospel Written By A John Other Than The Son Of Zebedee?

Steve Hays recently pointed me to a post by Michael Bird regarding the authorship of the fourth gospel. In that post, Bird refers to a White Horse Inn radio program that features interviews with several scholars commenting on the gospel's authorship (Craig Blomberg, G.K. Beale, Justin Holcomb, Richard Bauckham, D.A. Carson, Andreas Kostenberger, and Lydia McGrew). The page Bird links doesn't seem to contain the relevant audio, but Patrick Chan found it here. I looked for the program through the White Horse Inn search engine, and it appears that the program originally aired in December of 2019. Apparently, you can't listen to the program at the White Horse Inn site, but you can listen at the site Patrick found. Contrary to what Bird reported, the host who favored something like Richard Bauckham's view of the gospel's authorship was Shane Rosenthal, not Michael Horton.

Some good points are made during the program, but some of the best arguments for authorship by the son of Zebedee aren't mentioned. Here's an article I wrote in 2017 in response to the second edition of Bauckham's book, Jesus And The Eyewitnesses (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2017). In that article, I discuss a lot of New Testament and patristic evidence not addressed by the White Horse Inn program.

I should add that Dean Furlong recently published a book that's relevant, based on his doctoral thesis, The Identity Of John The Evangelist (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2020). His book doesn't say much about the New Testament, but is instead focused on the extrabiblical evidence. He argues that the John of Papias and other early sources was somebody other than the son of Zebedee. I disagree with him, for reasons like the ones referred to in my response to Bauckham linked above. But he makes a better case than Bauckham does, and I agree with some of the other points Furlong makes (the strength of the evidence for the martyrdom of John the son of Zebedee, the fact that Papias attributed the fourth gospel's authorship to his John the Elder, etc.). He provides a large amount of information on Johannine issues, and you don't have to agree with him about everything to find his book useful in a lot of contexts. It's a good resource to have, no matter what position you take on the identity of the author of the fourth gospel, who Papias' elder was, when Revelation was written, and the other issues involved.

The Story Retold

https://www.wtsbooks.com/products/the-story-retold-a-biblical-theological-introduction-to-the-new-testament-9780830852666?variant=31538037456958

Overturning human wisdom

https://www.amazon.com/Redemptive-Reversals-Ironic-Overturning-Wisdom/dp/1433563282

Why is the number of the beast 666?

Greg Beale responds.

G.K. Beale Lectures on iTunes

I’ve been listening to Dr. Greg Beale’s New Testament Biblical Theology lecture series on iTunes, which seems to be the lecture series upon which his New Testament Biblical Theology: The Unfolding of the Old Testament In the New was based. (It seems to me that the lectures occurred prior to the release of the book, but it’s the same subject matter).

It’s a strongly exegetical treatment, and he emphasizes the “inaugurated” components of the Old Testament’s “last days” all throughout the New Testament. Beale stresses that Christ has a “back story” that extends all through the entire sweep of the Old Testament back to Adam, what he calls “the Old Testament background”.

The book may be found here: G.K. Beale, A New Testament Biblical Theology: The Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic ©2011).

The rock that followed them

One of Peter Enns's prooftexts for denying the inerrancy/historicity of Scripture is his take on 1 Cor 10:4. Beale has a skillful rebuttal:

http://michaeljkruger.com/does-the-bible-ever-get-it-wrong-facing-scriptures-difficult-passages-1-greg-beale/

However, I'd like to approach the issue from a different angle. 

i) There's a circular quality to Enns's position. He regards Paul's interpretation as a fictional gloss on a fictional event. Therefore, he doesn't bother to ask what this would mean if, in fact, the Exodus really happened, as well as miracles by which God sustained the Israelites in the wilderness.

ii) The number of Israelites is disputed. But whatever the figure, the Sinai desert had insufficient food and water to naturally support the Israelites. They needed drinking water on a regular basis. What else did they have to drink? Wine production wasn't an option of a nomadic party in the desert. Maybe they could drink goat milk, but that wouldn't be enough. And, in any case, that only pushes the same problem back a step, for livestock required sources of water no less than the Israelites. Admittedly, livestock can drink water that's undrinkable for humans. 

There might be the occasional flashflood, but that's rare. Not a steady source of water. Same thing with seasonal wadis. Perhaps there were a few scattered oases in the Sinai. I don't know that for a fact. If there were, that would be prime real estate, jealously guarded by the locals. Not just there for the taking. That's my operating assumption.

On the face of it, it would take a miracle–indeed, repeated miracles–to supply the Israelites with enough drinking water throughout their 40-year slog. 

iii) In that respect, there's a parallel between a miraculous food supply and a miraculous water supply. Exod 16 records the onset of the manna while Josh 5:12 records the cessation of the manna. In-between, it's understood that God provided them with this miraculous foodstuff on a regular basis, without the Pentateuch having to chronicle that fact. 

iv) There are, moreover, tight textual parallels between the miraculous provision of manna (Exod 16; Num 11; Deut 8:3,16) and the miraculous provision of water (Exod 17:6; Num 20:8-11; Deut 8:15). Food and water go together. If the manna was a repeated miracle, so was the water. 

v) Finally, the two episodes narrating miraculous water from the rock (Exod 17; Num 20) bookend the wilderness wandering. The first episode occurs during the first year of the wilderness wandering while the second episode occurs during the last year of the wilderness wandering. The first episode concerns the first generation or Exodus-generation, while the second episode concerns the second generation or exit-generation. A distinction between entering the wilderness and leaving the wilderness. 

I think this framing device is a synecdoche. Like reading a book from "cover-to-cover," that's a way of saying the Israelites received a miraculous supply of water, not just on those two stated occasions, but on many occasions in-between, as needed. From start-to-finish, God provided water. 

vi) So, wherever they went, a freshwater supply was waiting for them. As if the water "accompanied" them or "followed" them wherever they went. No doubt they camped out at certain locations for extended periods of time. But whenever they were on the move, God would supply them with water. 

If you affirm the historicity of the wilderness account, as well as miraculous provisions, then I think that's a fairly necessary implication. That's something the implied reader would take for granted. 

Assuming there was a Jewish legend about a movable well, it has its basis in that underlying fact. And it's easy to see how that would be a poetic way of depicting a prosaic fact. If everywhere they go, they find a miraculous spring, then it's like the water goes whever they go. Not literally, but phenomenologically. Not that there was actually a movable well, but that's a poetic way of putting it. 

Can an inspired Bible contain errors?

http://files.wts.edu/uploads/images/files/WTJ/Beale%20-%20Inspired%20Errors.pdf

Alien DNA

It's amusing to see urban legends in the making. The tactic is to create a damaging narrative of the opposition, and hope that catches on. Since, moreover, you're playing to a sympathetic audience, they are likely to assume the worst about the opposition. So the pejorative memes and urban legends stick. 

On example is the "toxic" environment meme. Under the new regime, WTS has a "toxic environment." I've seen several critics try to popularize that part of the new narrative. And there are other plot devices in the WTS narrative:  

https://www.facebook.com/chris.fantuzzo?fref=nf

Fantuzzo Chris Emily Hi Linda, Yes, I think alumni who are using this phrase have in mind their training under 80s-90s faculty like Dillard and Longman, Silva, Conn, Gaffin and Ferguson (and certain students of theirs) before the inauguration of Peter Lillback in 2005. It appears to many that the new Westminster admin. and board is rolling the clock back before Dillard, utilizes Machiavellian tactics to achieve its ends, and has redefined WTS so narrowly and militantly that it has become an embarrassment to serious Christian scholarship.September 30 at 7:23pm · 1

I understand that Fantuzzo is bitter about his experience. And I'm certainly open to the possibility that he was treated shabbily. Given mixed signals. Hung out to dry.

In addition, it does indeed appear to me, as an outside observer, that the current regime is turning the clock back to before Dillard. And I'm glad they are resetting the clock–after the doctrinal power outage. 

Is Fantuzzo saying the exegetical work of Duguid, Beale, and Poythress is an embarrassment to serious Christian scholarship? 

Fantuzzo Chris Emily Linda, I'm indebted to a friend for the following way to see the movement at WTS. Early Westminster was all about authority/inerrancy (faculty symposium called Scripture and Confession). Middle Westminster was all about interpretation/hermeneutics (with earlier contributions from Kline and Murray), while building on earlier interests in authority (the 80s faculty symposium was called Inerrancy and Hermeneutic). New Westminster has returned to a focus on authority, sadly without much reflection on what was learned about interpretation during the middle Westminster years. This can be seen in the Confession regulating document "Affirmations and Denials," and in recent faculty publications, esp. by Lillback, Garner, and Beale, which many alumni think reveal an alien (DTS) DNA. Only a few of the current faculty and Lillback board members were actually trained at middle WTS. And for many alumni who were trained during its salutary middle period, what was most positive and constructive about it has died with Peter Lillback's presidency and must be sought elsewhere.October 1 at 5:16am

There are some stubborn fact that get in the way of Fantuzzo's relative chronology. Take the false dichotomy between authority/inerrancy and interpretation/hermeneutics. E. J. Young represents "Early Westminster." And he was certainly strong on inerrancy. Yet he also wrote major commentaries on Isaiah and Daniel, as well as a devotional commentary on Ps 139. 

Murray represents "Early Westminster." Yet his systematic theology was an exercise in exegetical theology. 

Conversely, O. Palmer Robertson represents "MIddle Westminster." The "salutary" period. He taught there during the 70s. Yet he's a critic of Dillard/Longman. So Fantuzzo's very schematic version of Westminster history suffers from too many serious anachronisms. 

I will address the "alien DNA" meme in a moment. 

But this also tells us something about why Westminster is changing in the direction it is hermeneutically. Bruce, Peter and Greg and others (notice that this celebration is being co-sponsored by others from Dallas) are all part of a group that were associated with Dallas seminary forty or so years ago (Dave Garner also has a DTS background).Their spiritual leader was S. Lewis Johnson of Believers Chapel. This group departed from their DTS background by rejecting dispensationalism, but they maintained a more literalist understanding of interpretation which includes a commitment to meaning found in the conscious intention of the human author.Without question, this theology stands behind their rejection of Christotelic and affirmation of something that they call a Christomorphic reading of the New Testament use of the Old Testament. 

https://www.facebook.com/tremper.longman/posts/830513933634569

Could it be, as some of us who support Dr. Green have recently surmised, that the dispensational background of some of the key players at WTS is significant here? Of course, I’m not at all saying that Professors Beale, Lillback, and Garner (all of whom have degrees from Dallas Theological Seminary) are dispensationalists. Far from it. But with dispensational literalism comes a rather narrow grammatical-historical hermeneutic, and with that a focus on the human author’s intent as decisive for interpretation that has been influential far beyond the confines of dispensationalism itself. Even when people leave dispensationalism proper they often retain that hermeneutical orientation.I sense that, in drawing our attention to the Believers’ Chapel connection, Dr. Longman is on to something quite important here.  I can easily imagine how people with that grammatical-historical bias who came to WTS with its conviction that Christ is pervasively present in the OT, and who were strongly opposed to the view of the NT’s use of the OT presented in Peter Enns’ Inspiration and Incarnation, would think it necessary to say that the OT writers had those NT Christological ideas in mind.  But these imported hermeneutical ideas simply don’t sit well with the Old Princeton heritage of WTS. 

https://theecclesialcalvinist.wordpress.com/2014/09/30/dallas-and-the-dutchman-trying-to-make-sense-of-the-christotelic-controversy/

Fantuzzo, Evans, and Longman are all recasting the issue in terms of "alien DNA." The rejection of the christotelic hermeneutic is driven by the "literalism" of their residual dispensational hermeneutic. And that "simply don’t sit well with the Old Princeton heritage of WTS."

Unfortunately, that allegation has to cut and tailor the facts to fit the theory:

i) Poythress, Duguid, and Trueman don't have a DTS background. I notice that Fantuzzo, Evans, and Longman simply ignore that conspicuous piece of counterevidence.

ii) But even on its own terms, dispensational DNA was part of the original gene pool of Westminster. Allan MacRae was one of the founding faculty members of WTS. Yet he was an ardent premillennialist. Indeed, he later became an editor of the The New Scofield Reference Bible. Here's a sample of his approach to prophecy:

http://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/ted_hildebrandt/otesources/27-daniel/macrae_daniel_text_audio/macrae_daniel_lecture10.pdf

Presumably, Machen was aware of MacRae's eschatological outlook. Yet he hired him anyway, and promoted him after Wilson's death. 

Beale's amil hermeneutic is far less dispensational than MacRae's premil hermeneutic. 

iii) Compare Dillard/Longman's OT introduction to E. J. Young's OT introduction, and ask yourself which one doesn't sit well with the Old Princeton heritage of WTS. 

iv) In addition, is Evans claiming that Old Princeton espoused a christotelic hermeneutic? The leading exegetes of Old Principle were Charles Hodge, J. A. Alexander, and Geerhardus Vos. Is it Evans' contention that they utilize a distinctively christotlic hermeneutic? Is so, I'd like to seem him present the documentation. 

Hidden But Now Revealed

I expect this will make a useful contribution to Messianic prophecy studies:

http://www.amazon.com/Hidden-But-Now-Revealed-Biblical/dp/0830827188

Hardening Pharaoh's heart

A classic analysis:

http://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/ted_hildebrandt/otesources/02-exodus/text/articles/beale-hardening-tj.htm

“The City of the Living God”

I’m posting some selections from T.D. Alexander’s “From Paradise to Promised Land: An Introduction to the Pentateuch”, one of the best works I’ve found on making the Old Testament understandable, especially in the light of the New Testament.

It’s important to note, as G.K. Beale does (“Handbook on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament: Exegesis and Interpretation”, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, ©2012), that the New Testament writers had the Old Testament firmly in mind as they wrote. Christ was the fulfillment of all Old Testament promises, and the language that they used “echoed” the Old Testament:

In tune with the overall movement in the book of Genesis, the author of Hebrews links the patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—with the divine construction of a unique city. Accordingly, in Hebrews 11 Abraham’s faith is reflected in the fact that he looked forward to “a better land,” a ”heavenly one,” a city with foundations, designed and built by God.

By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God…. All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them (Heb. 11:8-10, 13-16).

Particularly striking is the emphasis given here to Abraham’s anticipation of a city. The author of Hebrews stresses that Abraham’s journey to a foreign land was motivated by his “looking forward” to this city. Although some scholars find little evidence for this in Genesis, when the call of Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3 is read against the background of Genesis 1-11, and especially the building of Babel-Babylon, the interpretation adopted in Hebrews 11 makes good sense.

The author of Hebrews is convinced that the future experience of all believers involves a city. In Hebrews 12:22 he refers once more to this city, describing it as “the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem,” and later he states, “For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come” (Hebrews 13:14).

(T.D. Alexander, “From Paradise to Promised Land: An Introduction to the Pentateuch” (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, (2012 Third Edition), pg 131-132).

Beale interviewed at SCRBPC 2013

A few video clips from an interview with G.K. Beale. Beale was recently the keynote speaker at the SoCal Reformed Baptist Pastors' conference.

Paradigms, Tradition, and the Lexicon, Part 2

Or, Jason Stellman’s “already-existing apostolic tradition”

In his article The Tradition and the Lexicon, Bryan Cross says:

In general, Protestants think differently about how to go about interpreting Scripture than do Catholics. When trying to understand the meaning of a passage in Scripture, Catholics have always looked to the Tradition; we seek to determine how the Church has understood and explained the passage over the past two millennia. We look up what the Church Fathers and Church Doctors have said about the passage. By contrast, Protestants typically do not turn first to the Church Fathers when seeking to understand the meaning of a passage or term in Scripture that is unclear. Protestants generally turn to contemporary lexicons and commentaries written by contemporary biblical scholars whom they trust. Only rarely, and perhaps as a final step, do they turn to the Church Fathers. The common form of the Protestant mind is ready to believe that the Fathers often got Scripture wrong, and to use their own interpretation of Scripture to ‘correct’ or critically evaluate the Fathers.

Where does this “tradition” come from? Where does “the Church” first begin to “understand and explain” certain things?

God expects his word to be obeyed

Over at Reformation21, Scott Oliphint is working through the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF). At Chapter 1.4, he writes:

iv. The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed, and obeyed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any man, or Church; but wholly upon God (who is truth itself) the author thereof: and therefore it is to be received, because it is the Word of God.

One of the first things that must be firmly embedded in our minds, both as Christians and consequently as biblical apologists, is the absolute self-attesting authority of Scripture. It is generally agreed that, if any section of the Westminster Confession of Faith was more carefully crafted than another, it was the section that deals with Holy Scripture. You can, no doubt, understand some of the reasons for that, particularly in the face of opposition from Roman Catholicism. The Confession is concerned, particularly in section four of chapter one, to show that it is in Scripture's authority that we see its divinity and inspiration represented.

Notice first of all, that the divines are interested here in the authority of Scripture. And the intent of the paragraph is to set out for us the ground or reason why the Scriptures are authoritative, and thus why they ought to be believed and obeyed. They set out, very clearly, that the authority of Scripture does not, in any way, rest on the Church or its councils. Rather, its authority rests on its author, God, and is to be received because it is His Word. This is sometimes called the autopiston of Scripture, translated as self-attesting, or self-authenticating. What does that mean?

It does not mean self-evident. Self-authentication is an objective attribute, whereas self-evident refers more specifically to the knowing agent. It therefore does not mean that revelation as self-authenticated compels agreement. That which is self-authenticating can be denied. It does mean that it needs no other authority as confirmation in order to be justified and absolutely authoritative in what it says. This does not mean that nothing else attends that authority; there are other evidences, which the next section makes clear. What it does mean is that nothing else whatsoever is needed, nor is there anything else that is able to supersede this ground, in order for Scripture to be deemed authoritative. This is, at least in part, what God means when he says, in Isaiah 55, that His Word, simply by going out, will accomplish what He desires. This is the case because of what God's Word is in itself. It always goes out with authority, because it carries His own authority with it.

That, in a nutshell, is how “God’s word” works. It works. As the author of Hebrews writes, “the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

It requires no “interpretive paradigm”.

Michael Liccione said in a comment:

(1) The Catholic IP [“interpretive paradigm”] is preferable to the Protestant IP because the former, unlike the latter, supplies a principled distinction between divine revelation and human theological opinions.

I’m sure he’s outlined an argument for this somewhere. But what is it that makes it “preferable”? Preferable to himself, maybe, because he wants Rome’s views to come out on top, and this seems to me to be just a fancy way of stacking the deck.

Is this “IP” preferable to God? When has God ever outlined that this is preferable?

In speaking of God’s immutability, Bavinck writes, “God is as immutable in his knowing, willing, and decreeing, as he is in his being” (Vol 2 pg 154). Citing Augustine, he writes:

The essence of God by which he is what he is, possesses nothing changeable, neither in eternity, nor in truthfulness, nor in will (The Trinity, IV).

And citing Confessions:

For even as you totally are, so do you alone totally know, for you immutably are, and you know immutably, and you will immutably. Your essence knows and wills immutably, and your knowledge is and wills immutably, and your will is and knows immutably. (Confessions, XIII, 16)

He continues, “Neither creation, nor revelation, nor incarnation (affects, etc.) brought about any change in God. No new plan ever arose in God. In God there was always one single immutable will. He notes that this immutability as one of the incommunicable attributes of God is not questioned by the Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Lutherans, nor Reformed theologians.

Furthermore, as Steve Hays has said elsewhere, “Christianity is a revealed religion… Only God knows his own mind. We lack direct access to the mind of God. Intentions are hidden. We don’t know God’s intentions unless he tells us. That’s not something we can intuit or infer from the natural order.”

In the “35,000 foot view” model, John Currid, in his Genesis commentary (Vol 1) is able to make the statement that “Genesis 3:15 is Messianic. And the identity of the said descendant is clear from genealogies such as Luke 3 … Genesis 3 is the prophecy that God will send a redeemer to crush the enemy. Jesus is the seed who is descended from Eve and went to do battle against Satan. The remainder of Scripture is an unfolding of the prophecy of Genesis 3:15. Redemption is promised in this one verse, and the Bible traces the development of that redemptive theme.

God is consistent in time. In his plan, in his will, in his method of revelation, God is unchanging. And when we perceive something different, such as the movement between the “old covenant” and the “new covenant”, we see, as the writer of Hebrews tells us, the old was merely “copies of the heavenly things”. Christ himself revealed “the heavenly things themselves” (Hebrews 9:23)

It is in that way that He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature (Hebrews 1:3).

Where, then, in Revelation [“we don’t know God’s intentions unless he tells us”] does God posit, even in some “implicit, seed form” that having “a principled distinction between divine revelation and human theological opinions” is “preferable”?

I’ve cited Beale’s work on Adam, but Beale continues to show that God’s command to Adam continued through to the Patriarchs, then to Moses, where it was written down. Same set of commands:

To Adam:

And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

To Noah:

“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. Into your hand they are delivered. … And you, be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it.”

To Abraham:

“I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless, that I may make my covenant between me and you, and may multiply you greatly.” Then Abram fell on his face. And God said to him, “Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. … I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. 6 I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you.

He says the same to Isaac, and Jacob, and repeatedly to the nation of Israel:

And the LORD will make you abound in prosperity, in the fruit of your womb and in the fruit of your livestock and in the fruit of your ground, within the land that the LORD swore to your fathers to give you. The LORD will open to you his good treasury, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season and to bless all the work of your hands.

He traces this same phenomenon all through the OT. And even though history continued to occur, and prophets continued to speak, the “living voice”, so to speak, faded away, superseded by what was written, and what was written was authoritative.

God expects his command to be obeyed, without providing “a principled distinction between divine revelation and human theological opinions”. He doesn’t use the precise wording every time, but his intention nevertheless is never said to be in question. (Even though “people interpret it wrongly”).

Where, in all of Old Testament history, does the immutable God provide the model for the “IP” which you say is preferable?

The First Adam, Sola Scriptura, and his Commission as King, Priest, and Protestant

I’m continuing to work with Beale’s A New Testament Biblical Theology: The Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic ©2011) in looking at the question, “what is the church?”

Here’s God’s creation of, and charge to the first Adam:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

Beale notes that this breaks out into the following separate elements:

The commission of Gen 1:26–28 involves the following elements, especially, as summarized in 1:28: (1) “God blessed them”; (2) “Be fruitful and multiply”; (3) “fill the earth”; (4) “subdue” the “earth”; (5) “rule over … all the earth.”

Adam being made in the image of God “is what enables Adam to carry out the particular parts of the commission” (30).

God’s creation of Adam in his image as the crown of creation is probably to be seen as the content of the “blessing” at the beginning of verse 28. The “ruling” and “subduing” “over all the earth” expresses Adam’s kingship and is plausibly part of a functional definition of the divine image in which Adam was made. This functional aspect is likely the focus of what it means that Adam and Eve were created in God’s image.

After a brief discussion of how “image” and “function” were related in the ancient Near East (ANE), and noting that “Adam represents God’s sovereign presence and rule on earth”, Beale expands this to say “there is an additional ontological aspect of the “image” by which humanity was enabled to reflect the functional image”:

Adam was made in the volitional, rational, and moral image of God, so that, with regard to the latter, he was to reflect moral attributes such as righteousness, knowledge, holiness, justice, love, faithfulness, and integrity (for the first three attributes as part of the divine image, see Eph 4:24; Col 3:10), and above all he was to reflect God’s glory….

Adam’s commission to “cultivate” (with connotations of “serving”) and “guard” in Gen 2:15 as a priest-king is probably part of the commission given in Gen 1:26–28. Hence, Gen 2:15 continues the theme of subduing and filling the earth by humanity created in the divine image, which has been placed in the first temple [i.e., Eden. For Beale’s complete argument on this, see his work The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God].

Adam was to be God’s obedient servant in maintaining both the physical and spiritual warfare of the garden abode, which included dutifully keeping evil influences from invading the arboreal sanctuary. In fact, the physical and spiritual dimensions of Adam’s responsibilities in relation to the Genesis 1 commission are apparent from the recognition that Adam was like a primordial priest serving in a primeval temple. Adam was to be like Israel’s later priests, who both physically protected the temple and spiritually were to be experts in the recollection, interpretation, and application of God’s word in the Torah. Accordingly, essential to Adam and Eve’s raising of their children was spiritual instruction in God’s word that the parents themselves were to remember and pass on.

In this respect, it is apparent that knowing and being obedient to God’s word was crucial to carrying out the task of Gen 1:26–28 (and disobedience led to failure [cf. Gen 2:16–17 with Gen 3:1–7], pgs 32–33).

Roman Catholics are fond of asking, “where is Sola Scriptura in the Bible?” The first instance of it is right here, at the beginning, establishing the principle from the start. Adam and Eve had a word from God (though no “infallible canon”), and they were simply expected to understand and obey.

One should note that, according to Michael Liccione, this is “the very essence of Protestantism. One assumes that the deposit of faith is knowable independently of ecclesial authority, and that one knows its content.” So we have the formal principle of the Reformation right here starting with God’s word to Adam. One might say that God himself was the first to articulate the principle.

With respect to Roman Catholic ecclesiology, this requirement to know what God’s word was saying, perspicuously, and in an unmediated way, was taken for granted. There is no provision for an “infallible interpreter” at this point.

Thus, knowing God’s will as expressed in his word of command (Gen 2:16–17) is part of the functional manner in which humanity was to reflect the divine image, which assumes that Adam was created with the rational and moral capacities to comprehend and carry out such a command. The first two humans were to think God’s thoughts after him. Thus, Adam and his wife’s “knowledge” of God also included remembering God’s word addressed to Adam in Gen 2:16–17, which Adam’s wife failed to recall in Gen 3:2–3. After God puts Adam into the garden in Gen 2:15 to serve him he gives Adam a positive command, a negative command, and a warning to remember: “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge [LXX: infinitive of γινώσκω] of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die” (Gen 2:16–17).

When confronted by the satanic serpent, Adam’s wife responds by quoting Gen 2:16–17 but changes the wording in at least three major places (Gen 3:2–3). It is possible that the changes are incidental and are a mere paraphrase still retaining the same meaning as in 2:16–17. It is more likely, however, that she either failed to remember God’s word accurately or intentionally changed it for her own purposes. The telltale sign of this is that each change appears to have theological significance. First, she minimizes their privileges by saying merely, “We may eat,” whereas God had said, “You may eat freely”; second, she minimizes the judgment by saying “You will die,” whereas God said, “You will surely die”; third, she maximizes the prohibition by affirming, “You shall not … touch,” whereas God originally said only, “You shall not eat.” (33)

In effect, Eve has given us the very first instance of “the development of doctrine”, and the consequences of an improper “interpretation” are quite severe.

‘What is the church?’ Ask first ‘What does God intend for man?’

What is God’s intention with respect to man? That’s a key component in answering the question “what is the church?”

While keeping the Reformed confessions in mind, G.K. Beale, in his A New Testament Biblical Theology: The Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic ©2011) says this:

My thesis is that the major theological ideas of the [New Testament] flow out of the following New Testament storyline, of which the new-creational kingdom and its expansion are the central element leading to God’s glory: Jesus’s life, trials, death for sinners, and especially resurrection by the Spirit have launched the fulfillment of the eschatological already-not yet new-creational reign, bestowed by grace through faith and resulting in worldwide commission to the faithful to advance this new-creational reign and resulting in judgment for the unbelieving, unto the triune God’s glory [emphasis is Beale’s, pg 23].

Beale swoops out and takes a look at the grand sweep of Scripture. He stresses that “the resurrected Christ is ‘the foundation-stone of the New Creation [that] has come into position.” But elsewhere, he notes that the resurrected Christ has a “back story” that extends back through the Old Testament to Adam. He stresses that Paul’s contention in Romans 5, for example, is not a brand new thought of Paul’s, but rather, it is the result of a lifetime of the Apostle’s reflection on the Old Testament message:

The ‘people of God’: Old Testament expectations

In considering the question, “what is the church?” I noted that we have to go back a ways and ask “what was the church?”

That is, we have to ask, and understand, what was the church in the New Testament? What was the Old Testament expectation?

In understanding what “the church” is Edmund Clowney in his work “The Church”, (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, ©1995), relates that there is no question it has reference to “the people of God”. He notes, “the Bible does not deliver shipments of doctrine on cargo containers. Rather, the new grows out of the old, as the flower opens from the bud”. And in understanding the entire process of this unfolding, you have to go back to the beginning.

[The story of what God is doing in the world] does not begin at Bethlehem’s manger: it begins in the Garden of Eden, when God promises that the son of the woman will crush the head of the serpent. It continues in God’s promise to Abraham, made with an oath, ‘because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised’ (Hebrews 6:17). The story of the church begins with Israel, the Old Testament people of God (Clowney, pgs 27–28).

Clowney goes on to relate that, according to the Bible, “the church is the people of God, the assembly and body of Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit”.

Yes, man fell in the garden, and God promised to redeem him. But, the question is, “redeem him to what?” From what had he fallen?

What did it mean to God’s actually assembled people throughout history?

What is God trying to do in the world? Understanding God’s purpose in creation is a means of understanding what “the church” is today: what it means to be “God’s people”.

G.K. Beale, in his A New Testament Biblical Theology: The Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic ©2011) notes:

We can speak of Gen 1:28 as the first “Great Commission,” which was repeatedly applied to humanity. The commission was to bless the earth, and part of the essence of this blessing was God’s salvific presence. Before the fall, Adam and Eve were to produce progeny who would fill the earth with God’s glory being reflected from each of them in the image of God. After the fall, a remnant, created by God in his restored image, was to go out and spread God’s glorious presence among the rest of darkened humanity. This witness was to continue until the entire world would be filled with divine glory. Thus, Israel’s witness was reflective of its role as corporate Adam, which highlights the notion of missions in the OT.

According to Beale, this was the ongoing theme of the Old Testament.

Without exception, the reapplications of the Adamic commission are stated positively in terms of what Noah, the patriarchs, Israel, and the eschatological Israel or its king should do or were promised to do. Always the expectation is that of actual conquering of the land, increasing and multiplying population, and filling the promised land and the earth with people who will reflect God’s glory.

Never is there a hint that this commission is to be carried out by what we might call a negative act—that is, by death. Of course, Isaiah 53, Daniel 9, and Zechariah 12 (and a handful of typological Davidic texts such as Psalm 22) prophesy the messiah’s death as crucial to achieving Israel’s restoration, but these texts are the minority, and they are never directly associated with the repetitions of the Adamic commission. Therefore, the Adamic expectations and promises of obedience for Israel’s partriarchs, the nation, and its king are always stated in positive terms of what they were to do or were promised to do (Beale, 58).

Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection were for the accomplishment of a purpose, that was to be fulfilled in the creation and ongoing mission of the people of God.

Beale outlines this story line as it appears in the Old Testament:

I am not positing a center or single topic as the key to OT theology but rather a storyline around which the major thematic strands of the OT narratives and writings revolve. Although story as a hermeneutical approach to biblical literature has become popular in recent biblical scholarship and accordingly has even been applied to the doing of whole biblical theologies, the older Dutch Reformed scholars sometimes employed the notion of tracing the “redemptive-historical story” of “creation-fall-restoration.” It is also significant to recall that all the ancient creeds and confessions had a basic skeletal plotline of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation. The threefold pattern of “sin-exile-restoration” of Israel has been proposed recently as the framework of a biblical theology, as has a six-act structure of the Bible as a drama with kingdom as the overarching motif:

1. Kingdom establishment
2. Rebellion
3. The king chooses Israel
—interlude: the kingdom story awaits ending during the intertestamental period—
4. Coming of the king
5. Mission of the king’s message
6. Return of the king

As is evident from the preceding, both the threefold and the sixfold pattern are included here but compose only some of the elements of a larger overall cyclic pattern of sacred history.

In the light of the above, my formulation of the storyline of the OT is as follows:

The Old Testament is the story of God, who progressively reestablishes his new-creational kingdom out of chaos over a sinful people by his word and Spirit through promise, covenant, and redemption, resulting in worldwide commission to the faithful to advance this kingdom and judgment (defeat or exile) for the unfaithful, unto his glory.

Rather than referring to this as the “center” of the OT, I prefer to see it as the primary strand of the biblical storyline thread, composed of other minor strands that are held together by the primary one.

The kingdom of the new creation and its missional expansion likely form the major stepping-stone for the accomplishment of divine glory. Accordingly, in the classic fourfold division of the scriptural story as creation, fall, redemption, and consummation, the last two elements are better revised as redemption through new creation and consummation of that new creation. Thus, the story of the Bible in this formulation begins with creation and ends with the restoration of creation (61–62).

Next time, Lord willing, I’ll follow some of these threads through the Old Testament, and begin to tie them into expectations that Israel [the “people of God”] and the disciples carried with them in the New Testament.