The Master’s Seminary Journal 34, 2 (2023)

The latest Master’s Seminary Journal has been posted online. According to the Editorial, ‘the focus of the current issue… is the biblical imperative to teach the Word of God faithfully by interpreting it accurately in order to deliver the divine intent of each passage’.

A pdf of the journal can be downloaded here.

Iosif J. Zhakevich

Editorial: Accurate Interpretation of Scripture

John F. MacArthur

The Mandate of Biblical Inerrancy: Expository Preaching

The special attention evangelicalism has given to the inerrancy of Scripture in recent years carries with it a mandate to emphasize expository preaching of the Scriptures. The existence of God and His nature requires the conclusion that He has communicated accurately and that an adequate exegetical process to determine His meaning is required. The Christian commission to preach God’s Word involves accurately transmitting that meaning to an audience, a weighty responsibility. A belief in inerrancy thus requires, most important of all, expositional preaching that does not have to do primarily with the homiletical form of the message. In this regard, expository preaching differs from what is practiced by non-inerrantists.

John F. MacArthur, Austin T. Duncan

Inerrancy and Exposition: A Conversation with John MacArthur

This dialogue between John MacArthur and Austin Duncan explores the battle for biblical inerrancy and its relationship to biblical exposition. With years of preaching

experience and wisdom, Dr. MacArthur provides counsel to pastors seeking to

accurately and boldly preach the Word of God. In the previous article… Dr. MacArthur explained the inseparable partnership inerrancy has with hermeneutics and expository preaching. In this conversation, Dr. MacArthur reinforces the fact that, as Scripture is the eternal Word of God, so the charge to interpret it accurately and preach it boldly is also timeless.

Brad Klassen

The Doctrine of Inspiration and Its Implications for Hermeneutics

The doctrine of inspiration affects biblical hermeneutics. If every word of Scripture is to be affirmed as simultaneously God’s Word and man’s word in the truest sense, if every portion and element of Scripture equally possess all the qualities of the divine and human intents, if there is no separation to be sought between what was meant by God and what was meant by the human writer, then what method provides the most appropriate principles to study such a text? Because God is the Author of Scripture, the Bible is to be read unlike any other book. Yet, because God has revealed His Word through human biblical writers, the Bible is to be read like other books. The hermeneutical method that best achieves the study of this unique text is the grammatico-historical method.

Michael J. Vlach

Hermeneutical Principles and the Bible’s Storyline: A Dispensational Approach

This article addresses the issue of interpretation principles for understanding the Bible’s storyline from a dispensational perspective. The particular questions discussed are the (1) consistent use of grammatical-historical hermeneutics in all Scripture; (2) consistent contextual interpretation of Old Testament prophecies; (3) passage priority; and (4) Jesus as the means of fulfillment of the Old Testament. Application of these principles leads to a proper understanding of the Bible’s grand narrative from Genesis 1 through Revelation 22.

Tom Pennington

The Pastor and Systematic Theology

Pastors committed to expository preaching often fail to grasp in theory and execute in practice the legitimate use of systematic theology in studying the biblical text and in crafting the sermon. Some tend to downplay its importance in the interest of being biblical, while others give systematic theologies, creeds, or confessions too exalted a role in both exegesis and exposition. Part of the path forward is to understand the scriptural guidelines for the illegitimate and legitimate use of systematic theology in the normal pattern of consecutive exposition.

Noah Hartmetz

The Expositional Method of John Chrysostom

This article recognizes Chrysostom as a noteworthy expositor in the early church and examines the key aspects of his technique. After surveying Chrysostom’s life and training, the article explores Chrysostom’s view on the inspiration of the Bible, the effect of biblical inspiration upon his hermeneutics, and the particular elements of his hermeneutical and homiletical methodology. Chrysostom’s method defined his exposition of the biblical text such that his homilies were a clear explanation of the literal sense of Scripture.

John Calvin (with an introduction by Ian P. Hazlett)

Calvin’s Latin Preface to His Proposed French Edition of Chrysostom’s Homilies: Translation and Commentary

The contribution below consists of two parts. First, Ian Hazlett offers a helpful introduction to Calvin’s preface on Chrysostom and the value Calvin saw in this preacher with a “golden mouth”… The second part is the actual preface by Calvin to the homilies of Chrysostom. In his preface, Calvin indicates that while he affirms the priority of Scripture, he also recognizes the benefit of resources that help interpret Scripture. He turns particularly to Chrysostom to feature him as an example of a preacher who explained the plain meaning of the text and who would be profitable to the study of Scripture. Thus, Calvin defends the use of secondary resources specifically for the goal of accurately expositing the Word of God.

John Calvin

The Epistle Dedicatory: John Calvin on Exposition and the Book of Romans

The contribution below consists of two parts. The first part (“A Man Worthy of All Honour”) is a letter that Calvin wrote to another scholar and friend Simon Grynæus, describing to him the practice of Bible exposition. Calvin noted that the goal of exposition is to explain the mind of the author to the reader, both with simplicity and brevity. The second part (“Epistle to the Romans: The Argument”) is Calvin’s introduction to Romans in which Calvin moved through the book chapter by chapter in summary form. Calvin thereby illustrated exposition by demonstrating how Paul advances through his argument in the epistle. The ultimate purpose of Calvin’s work is to mature the believers in their love for Christ.

Reviews

Credo Magazine 6, 4 (2016)

The current issue of Credo is available, this one devoted to the topic of ‘Sola Scriptura’.

Matthew Barrett writes in the Editorial:

‘As he stood there trembling at the Diet of Worms, certainly it must have seemed to Martin Luther that the whole world was against him. Yet Luther could boldly stand upon the authority of God’s Word because he knew that not even his greatest nemesis was a match for the voice of the living God.

‘While our circumstances may differ today, the need to recover biblical authority in the church and in the culture remains. The next generation of Christians need to be taught, perhaps for the first time, that this is no ordinary book we hold in our hands. It is the very Word of God. In other words, if Christians today are to give an answer for the faith within them against those who would criticize the scriptures, then they need to be taught the formal principle of the Reformation: sola Scriptura – only Scripture, because it is God’s inspired Word, is our inerrant, sufficient, and final authority for the church.’

The magazine is available to read here, and a 24.5 MB pdf of the whole issue can also be downloaded here.

John Piper on the Christian Scriptures

John Piper, A Peculiar Glory: How the Christian Scriptures Reveal Their Complete Truthfulness (Wheaton: Crossway, 2016).

Crossway in the USA and IVP in the UK have just published a new book by John Piper, essentially on Scripture’s self-attestation. As so often, through the generosity of Desiring God, the book is also available as a free pdf download here.

There is a short video Piper introducing the book here, and a set of interviews with Michael Reeves on it here.

D.A. Carson et al. on Scripture

D.A. Carson (ed.), The Enduring Authority of the Christian Scriptures (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), 1256pp., ISBN: 978-0-8028-6576-2.

My summer holiday reading is now sorted!

As one who benefited enormously from the two volumes edited by D.A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge in the 1980s (Scripture and Truth and Hermeneutics, Authority and Canon), I’ve been looking forward to this collection of essays since I first saw it announced a couple of years back.

It’s not yet out in the UK, but there is plenty to whet the appetite for those who might be interested...

• A list of contributors and chapter titles, along with questions raised in each chapter

• FAQ with answers on scriptural authority in the history of the church

• An interview with Carson by Fred Zaspel on the book

• An interview with Carson by Ivan Mesa on inerrancy

• An 18-minute video interview with Carson about the book

Kevin J. Vanhoozer on the Inerrancy of Scripture

Theology Network has posted a piece by Kevin Vanhoozer on the inerrancy of Scripture. I recognise it as a piece that’s been around some time (first made available by Latimer House, if memory serves), but it’s well worth looking at for a brief and careful identification of ‘the conditions under which Scripture speaks truly’, in order to ‘enable believers to keep the doctrine in its proper perspective’.

Vern Sheridan Poythress on Inerrancy and the Gospels

Vern Sheridan Poythress, Inerrancy and the Gospels: A God-Centered Approach to the Challenges of Harmonization (Wheaton: Crossway, 2012), 238pp., ISBN 978-1-4335-2860-6.

Following on the heels of the earlier Inerrancy and Worldview by Poythress (see here) comes this volume, freely available in its entirety as a 3.2 MB pdf here.

Here’s some of the blurb:

‘Responding to the questions surrounding the Gospel narratives, New Testament scholar Vern Poythress provides an informed case for inerrancy in the Gospels and helps readers understand basic principles for harmonization. He also tackles some of the most complicated exegetical problems, showing the way forward on passages that have perplexed many, including the centurion’s servant, the cursing of the fig tree, and more.’

John D. Woodbridge on the King James Bible

An essay by John Woodbridge, available here, was given as an address at the King James Version Festival, hosted by the R.C. Ryan Center for Biblical Studies at Union University, in September 2011 It will also appear, along with other papers from the event, in Ray Van Neste (ed.), KJV400: Legacy and Impact (Borderstone Press, forthcoming 2012).

Woodbridge sets something of the historical background to the translation, noting that ‘it was created in a context of genuine turmoil for many Europeans’.

But in line with a number of his own published concerns, he focuses particularly on the specific beliefs of the translators regarding biblical authority, arguing that ‘their understanding of Scriptural authority remained within the central Augustinian tradition of the Western Christian churches’.

The struggle over biblical authority between Roman Catholics and Protestants, he avers, is revealed in the writings of the William Whitaker (1547-95), master of St. John’s College, Cambridge University, who was an Anglican and a Reformed theologian.

In his A Disputation on Holy Scripture (1958), Whitaker identified certain significant traits as constituent elements of his doctrine of Scriptural authority: (1) that Scripture is completely truthful (in line with what Whitaker believed was the central teaching of the western churches); (2) that Scripture’s principal author is God, the Holy Spirit; (3) that Scripture is an infallible rule of faith and practice (in that it contains sufficiently all we need to know about salvation); (4) that Scripture’s original texts were inspired of God (the Greek and Hebrew originals as opposed to, say, the Latin Vulgate); (5) that vernacular translations of the Bible are authoritative to the extent they faithfully reflect the Hebrew and Greek originals inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Woodbridge maintains that ‘the translators shared many of the same perspectives as those of William Whitaker’, showing that they too affirmed the full truthfulness of Scripture, that its principal author was the Holy Spirit, etc.

He ends the essay with a personal note:

‘Personally, one of the great joys in having pursued this study of the translators’ views of biblical authority was to encounter their closing counsel to their readers regarding their love of the Word of God. Their preface ends in an exposition of their heartfelt desire that readers of their translation would love the Word of God. Their comments are genuinely inspirational. Hopefully, they will lead us to treasure God’s Word even more than we may presently do.’

Credo Magazine 1 (October 2011)

Credo – which describes itself as ‘self-consciously Evangelical, Reformational, and Baptistic’ – is a brand new digital magazine, to be published bimonthly.

Issue 1, just out, is devoted to Scripture – ‘The Living Word’ – with pieces by Matthew Barrett on ‘Inspiration, Inerrancy, and the Trustworthiness of God’, Robert Saucy on the debate between Peter Enns and Greg Beale, Owen Strachan on Sola Scriptura, Gregg Allison on the clarity and sufficiency of Scripture, Fred Zaspel on B.B. Warfield and inerrancy, Michael A.G. Haykin on the story behind the King James Bible, and an interview with John Frame on his recent Doctrine of the Word of God, along with some other items. A section of reviews includes a review (by Fred Zaspel) of Christian Smith’s recent book, The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2011), which has already caused a bit of a stir in some places.

The magazine is available as an interactive pdf here, and can be downloaded as a 15.5 MB pdf here.

Spring Harvest Day 2

This year, Spring Harvest is exploring four key metaphors for Scripture. The first is Scripture as a sonnet:

‘Using the image of a sonnet we will explore the authority and inspiration of the Bible. These are the texts through which God speaks and in them we hear him speaking love to us. The authority of the Bible is rooted in its authorship and the desire of the author to make himself known. The Bible is the creator’s love-song for his creatures. However, not only are we the object of God’s affections – we are also the reason for his hope. The Bible declares God’s confidence in Christ and his people; together they will make all things new.’

The Bible readings this morning were based on Malachi 1:1-5, highlighting God’s choice of Israel, and introducing the theme of God’s covenant relationship with Israel.

The Bible focus in the evening Big Top Celebration was on Genesis 1:1-3 and 2:1-7 – the Holy Spirit in creation, exploring the Holy Spirit’s role in the making of the world, and the claim that every human breathes ‘the breath of God’.

John Stott on the Bible 2

John R.W. Stott, You Can Trust the Bible: Our Foundation for Belief and Obedience (Grand Rapids: Discovery House, 1991, first published in the UK by IVP in 1982 with the title The Bible: Book for Today).

See here for an introduction to the book.

In chapter 1 – ‘God and the Bible’ – Stott takes his cue from Isaiah 55:8-11…

‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,’
declares the LORD.
‘As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
As the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
and do not return to it without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.’

… from which he draws three lessons:

• The reasonableness of revelation
• The way of revelation
• The purpose of revelation

The reasonableness of revelation
Men and women will not discover God by their own unaided intellect (‘My ways… your ways’, etc.). Given the difficulty even of reading the mind of others, let alone God’s thoughts, ‘it is only reasonable to say… that unless God takes the initiative to disclose what is is His mind, we shall never be able to find out’ (14).

The way of revelation
God has revealed himself to us in the way we reveal ourselves to others – by works and words, the things we do and say. God is seen in his works (e.g., Psalm 19:1; Romans 1:19-20), his revelation in nature, but especially through his words, ‘the main model used in the Bible to illustrate God’s self-revelation’ (16).

With a sideways nod to 2 Timothy 3:16, Stott writes that Scripture is ‘God’s Word, issuing from God’s mouth’ (17).

Stott notes here that ‘God’s Word… was closely related to His activity’, which entails that we should not make a sharp distinction between ‘personal’ revelation and ‘propositional’ revelation. God’s words interpreted his deeds, as ‘He raised up the prophets to explain what He was doing to Israel, and He raised up the apostles to explain what He was doing through Christ’ (18).

In addition, ‘God’s Word had come to us through human words’ (19). God spoke through prophets and through apostles. Inspiration was not a mechanical process, but ‘a personal process, in which the human authors were usually in full possession of their faculties’ (19) and used their distinctive literary styles.

Such ‘double authorship’ is affirmed in the Bible itself, where the law is sometimes ‘the law of Moses’ and sometimes ‘the law of the Lord’, and where God speaks through the prophets. Although it is not an exact analogy, since Jesus is a person not a book, ‘as in the incarnate Word (Christ), so in the written Word (the Bible) the divine and human elements combine and do not contradict one another’ (20).

‘On the one hand, the Bible is the Word of God. God spoke, deciding Himself what He intended to say, yet not in such a way as to distort the personality of the human authors. On the other hand, the Bible is the word of men. Men spoke, using their faculties freely, yet not in such a way as to distort the truth of the divine message’ (20).

The Bible’s double authorship affects the way we read it: because it is the words of human beings, we study it as we would every other book, using normal methods of investigation; because it is the Word of God, we study it ‘like no other book’ (21).

The purpose of revelation
Why did God speak? To instruct us ‘for salvation’ (2 Timothy 3:15). Just as the rain and snow accomplish a purpose (Isaiah 55:10-11), so ‘God’s Word, issuing from His mouth and disclosing His mind, does not return to Him empty’ (21). It bears fruit, saving people and changing them into the likeness of Christ (salvation is in the context – Isaiah 55:7, 12).

Stott concludes with a call to humility – acknowledging the limitations of the human mind and our sinfulness, and sitting under God’s Word, ‘eager to hear it, grasp it, apply it, and obey it in the practicalities of daily living’ (23).