Evangelical Review of Theology 45, 1 (February 2021)

The latest Evangelical Review of Theology, published by The World Evangelical Alliance, is now online and available in its entirety as a pdf here.

Editor’s Introduction

The Young, the Not-So-Young and the Very Old

Efraim Tendero

As I Hand Off the Baton

Wesley Hill

When Christians Disagree

In this essay, a widely respected author, known for both his defence of traditional marriage and his irenic treatment of those who view the issue differently, probes the problem of sharp divisions amongst professing Christians and challenges some of the prevailing approaches to these divisions.

Frank Hinkelmann

The European Evangelical Alliance: An Historical Sketch

In the April 2020 ERT, Frank Hinkelmann, Austrian church historian and president of the European Evangelical Alliance, told the fascinating tale of how the EEA, now part of the World Evangelical Alliance, was originally founded as a counter-movement to it. In this sequel, Hinkelmann continues the story by describing the EEA’s evolution and significance up to the present.

Benjamin Isola Akano

Promoting Quality Worship Experience in Contemporary Nigeria

Many churches around the world struggle to recognize diversity in ways that overcome racial and ethnic barriers and unify the body of Christ. This article draws on concepts from communication studies to develop ways to intentionally improve intercultural relationships, with illustrations from Nigeria where the presence of hundreds of distinct ethnic groups makes virtually every congregation intercultural.

Francis Jr. S. Samdao

A Baptist Quadrilateral? A Filipino Outsider’s Perspective on Baptist Identity

Baptists are a particularly diverse stream of Christians, partly because their theological convictions empower individual decision making. This article discusses colourfully how the diversity of Baptists is reflected in the Philippines today. It seeks to articulate the core features of the Baptist identity and encourages Baptists both to enrich and to be open to learning from other parts of the body of Christ rather than isolating themselves.

Wayne Detzler

J.B. Phillips: From Paraphrase to Translation

Eighty years ago, there were few modern Bible translations. In the 1940s, J. B. Phillips initiated a modern translation of the New Testament. But his work gets little notice today. This article tells the story of Phillips and his project, offering important insights on the value and limitations of attempts to modernize the Bible message.

Mary Douglas

God and Humanity Brought Together: The Incarnation as Gospel

The Incarnation is celebrated at Christmas but do we really grasp its full import? This essay draws on the fourth-century church father Athanasius – one of the greatest defenders of the orthodox Christian conviction that Jesus Christ was truly God and truly man – to support its claim that evangelicals today impoverish their gospel witness by highlighting Jesus’ death and resurrection and overlooking the essential contribution of the Incarnation to our redemption.

Benjamin Marx

Clothing and Exchange of Garments in the Bible, as a Picture of God’s Dealings with His People

This article investigates the imagery of clothing and exchange of garments through the entire Christian canon (in nine books from Genesis to Revelation) to identify the redemptive analogies drawn by the biblical writers. From the beginning, God takes the initiative to clothe his people and thus restore our dignity, worth and relationship to him.

Jim Reiher

Did the Gospel of Matthew Come First? An Historian’s View

This essay takes us on an enlightening trip through numerous early church fathers to explain why the author believes Matthew was the first Gospel and why this issue is important. It provides a valuable introduction to and critical examination of what we know about the origin of the Gospels.

Book Reviews

Clothing in the Bible

There’s an enjoyable article by Nancy Guthrie, posted on the Crossway website – ‘10 Things You Should Know about the Garden of Eden’. It’s related to her forthcoming book, Even Better than Eden: Nine Ways the Bible’s Story Changes Everything about Your Story (Wheaton: Crossway, 2018), which looks like it will be a helpful run through of some lesser-worked biblical themes.

Back to the article, her fifth point on Eden is this: ‘Adam and Eve were naked, not yet robed in royal splendor.’

She comments:

‘When we read in Genesis 2 that Adam and Eve were naked in Eden, it may initially seem to us to be a good or neutral thing. But Moses’ original readers would have recognized that something was lacking. These were royal representatives of the great king. And royal representatives in Scripture are always dressed in royal robes (think of Joseph’s coat of many colors, Jonathan’s robe given to David, the robe and ring given to the prodigal son). The report of their nakedness indicated a need for royal clothing which would have been given to them had they faithfully exercised dominion. But instead of being further clothed, Adam and Eve lost the original glory that covered them. This is what made their nakedness before God so unbearable that they sought to cover themselves up with fig leaves.’

From what I understand, this is an unusual interpretation of the nakedness and subsequent clothing of our first parents, but it’s a view I’ve been increasingly persuaded by (largely through reading some of G.K. Beale’s works and and a 2006 Westminster Theological Journal article by William N. Wilder).

This is a reading of Genesis which says that the man and woman’s nakedness in Genesis 2 points to the need for clothing, which (it would be understood) would have been bestowed on them at some point in their fulfilling the role of filling and ruling and subduing to which they were called. It’s a view which recognises that, in an ancient Near Eastern context, clothing indicated an inheritance, a change in status – particularly associated with priests and kings, who were clothed as a sign of their new status of authority.

Adam and Eve, of course, grasp for reward in the wrong way at the wrong time. Then they ineptly try to provide clothing for themselves, but – even in declaring judgment on them – God graciously reclothes them to symbolise their future inheritance as rulers of the earth, a downpayment of a greater clothing to come – but garments of skin rather than garments of light (the Hebrew for ‘skin’ is almost indistinguishable from the word for ‘light’, suggesting to some a pun in the original text).

There’s much that follows in Scripture about the removing of old clothes and the putting on of new clothes – Joseph in Genesis 41, Eliakim in Isaiah 22, Daniel in Daniel 5, Joshua the High Priest in Zechariah 3, where it represents forgiveness of sin, several places in Isaiah (52:1-2; 61:3, 10) where the image describes the restoration of the people from exile. And, once again, all in a cultural context which understood a change from one set of clothes to a more glorious set of clothes as representing a change of relationship and status – which we see so beautifully expressed in Jesus’ parable of the lad who comes back home asking to be one of his father’s servants and is reinstated as a son.

And so we come to several passages in Paul which use the imagery of clothing – Romans 13, 1 Corinthians 15, Galatians 3, Ephesians 4, Colossians 3, and elsewhere too.

In these places, the point seems to be – echoing Genesis – that believers in Jesus have discarded the clothes of the old Adam and have been clothed with the attire of the new Adam. We have ‘put on the new self’, Paul explains in Colossians 3:10, ‘which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator’. As Christians, we are being remade in the image of Christ, restored under Christ’s Lordship to bring glory to Christ in all we do.

But then, having laid out what we might call our positional reality in Christ, our new status, Paul goes on to say in verse 12: ‘Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience’ – putting on those clothes which are appropriate for our new life in Christ.

And what of our final hope? We get a glimpse in Revelation 7:9, 13-17...

‘After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands...

‘Then one of the elders asked me, “These in white robes – who are they, and where did they come from?”

‘I answered, “Sir, you know.”

‘And he said, “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”’