Themelios 48, 3 (December 2023)

The latest Themelios is online here (and available here as a single pdf), containing the below articles.

Editorial

Brian J. Tabb

Dealing with Criticism: Lessons from Nehemiah

Strange Times

Daniel Strange

Skin in the Game?

Andreas J. Köstenberger

Geerhardus Vos: His Biblical-Theological Method and a Biblical Theology of Gender

This article seeks to construct a biblical theology of gender based on Geerhardus Vos’s magisterial Biblical Theology. The essay first sets forth five hallmarks of Vos’s method: (1) putting God first; (2) focus on the text; (3) viewing Scripture as progressive divine revelation; (4) displaying a historical orientation; and (5) a belief in the practical utility of biblical theology. The remainder of the essay develops a biblical theology of gender as Vos might have developed it in keeping with the four major scriptural movements of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation.

David V. Christensen

The Lamblike Servant: The Function of John’s Use of the OT for Understanding Jesus’s Death

In this article, I argue that John provides a window into the mechanics of how Jesus’s death saves, and this window is his use of the OT. When interpreters look through this window and ask how John understands Jesus’ death, our eyes are caused – by the passages John chose – to see substitutionary atonement as essential to the inner mechanism of how Jesus’s death saves.

G.K. Beale

The Greco-Roman Background to “Fighting the Good Fight” in the Pastoral Epistles and the Spiritual Life of the Christian

What does Paul mean by the expression “fight the fight” in 1 Timothy 1:18 (NASB)? The Greek verb στρατεύω with the noun στρατεία can be also rendered “battle the battle,” or more generally “perform military service” or “serve in a military campaign.” This expression occurs often in Greco-Roman literature as a patriotic warfare idiom for good character revealed by persevering through warfare or military campaigns. It also occurs in legal contexts to affirm someone’s innocence and good reputation before the court. This idiom is applied to Timothy to demonstrate his good Christian character and reputation over against the false teachers’ bad character. Paul similarly exhorts Timothy to “struggle the struggle”… in 1 Tim 6:12, which most commentators recognize to be synonymous with “fight the good fight” in 1:18 (cf. 2 Tim 4:7).

Jeremy Sexton

Postmillennialism: A Biblical Critique

Postmillennialism had been pronounced dead when R.J. Rushdoony and his fellow Reconstructionists resuscitated it in 1977 with stimulating though non-exegetical publications. In the following decades, many in Rushdoony’s train added innovative biblical arguments whose interpretive methods do not withstand scrutiny. This article examines the hermeneutical idiosyncrasies and exegetical fallacies displayed in defenses of postmillennialism by Greg Bahnsen, Kenneth Gentry, David Chilton, Keith Mathison, Douglas Wilson, and others. Postmillennialists routinely keep textual details out of focus or interpret them tendentiously, in service of the belief that the prophecies of worldwide righteousness and shalom will reach fulfillment on earth before rather than at the second coming.

Jason G. Duesing

Beacons from the Spire: Evangelical Theology and History in Oxford’s University Church

Thought to be the most visited church in England, the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Oxford has hosted, from its pulpit, figures of note of English church history. This essay applies the metaphor of a signal beacon to trace the development of evangelical history and theology through the examination of significant sermons preached in St. Mary’s by Thomas Cranmer in the 16th century, John Owen in the 17th century, John Wesley in the 18th century, the evangelical response to the Anglo- Catholics in the 19th century, and C.S. Lewis in the 20th Century.

N. Gray Sutanto

Cultural Mandate and the Image of God: Human Vocation under Creation, Fall, and Redemption

While the term “cultural mandate” is well-recognized as a way of understanding the relationship between Christianity, culture, and human vocation, its origins from within the Dutch neo-Calvinist tradition are less known. Drawing from this tradition, then, this essay sketches the logic of a neo-Calvinistic account of the cultural mandate through the states of creation, fall, and redemption.

John Jefferson Davis

Is the One God of the Old Testament and Judaism Exactly the Same God as the Trinitarian God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – of the New Testament and Christian Creeds?

This article argues that the One God of the Old Testament and Judaism is exactly the same God as the Trinitarian God of the New Testament and Christian creeds. The standpoint presupposed is that of the orthodox biblical teachings on the Trinity expressed in the Nicene and Athanasian creeds. The paper presents new arguments supporting the unity and coherence of Old and New Testament revelation, employing (1) new analogies from modern physics, and (2) new philosophical insights concerning the properties of objects nested in a larger whole, and how those objects are to be properly counted in relation to the larger whole.

Gary J. Cundill

Do Companies Have Social Responsibilities?

Business and Christianity do not always enjoy the most comfortable of relationships. One approach Christians have taken when considering business’s place in the world is to describe it in terms of corporate responsibility, i.e., that business has a responsibility not merely to deliver financial returns but to offer broader societal benefits. This article surveys the biblical evidence for such a view and finds it unconvincing. Rather, it is evident that Christians, not businesses, have social responsibilities and can and should discharge these in the world of business. Practical suggestions are offered in conclusion.

Jonathan D. Christman

A Biblical Framework for Deciding Workplace Moments of Conscience

A well-known Christian intellectual and cultural commentator, John Stonestreet, has often publicly spoken of the need for Christians to develop a theology of “getting fired.” This call is not one for mass exodus of Christians from the workplace. Rather, this call recognizes that more and more Christians are facing moments of conscience in their workplace, when the obligations of a job – one’s current calling or vocation – come into conflict with one’s beliefs or convictions. Grounding both calling and convictions in Scripture, this article proposes an overarching framework and practical guide for analyzing, assessing, navigating, and deciding those workplace moments of conscience. Doing so entails both individual and corporate dimensions that are grounded in wisdom, humility, the means of grace, and life-giving community in the body of Christ.

Robert P. Menzies

Pentecost: Not Really Our Story Afterall? A Reply to Ekaputra Tupamahu

Menzies responds to Tupamahu’s post-colonial critique of the Pentecostal reading of Acts and the missionary enterprise. According to Tupamahu, the disciples are marginalized Galileans who move from the periphery to the center of the Roman world. Thus, white American Pentecostals need to rethink their vision of the expansionist mission. Menzies argues Tupamahu’s racially colored, post-colonial reading of Acts distorts Luke’s intended meaning, reflects a diminished view of the gospel, and betrays the legacy of Pentecostal leaders like William Seymour. In Acts the disciples are commissioned by Jesus (Luke 24:46–49; Acts 1:4–8). Their mission centers on the Spirit-inspired proclamation of the gospel. Luke emphasizes that their mission is our mission (Luke 10:1–16; Acts 2:17–18). Thus, to reject our mission is to repudiate the significance of our message and to resist the leading of the Spirit.

Book Reviews

A New World Order?

I contributed this week’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. An earlier version of it first appeared in a book, Whole Life, Whole Bible: 50 Readings on Living in the Light of Scripture, written with LICC colleagues Margaret Killingray and Helen Parry (published by BRF).

When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.

Acts 2:1-4

Pentecost was a harvest festival, when thankful worshippers would offer to God the firstfruits of their crops. Celebrated fifty days after Passover, coinciding with the giving of the law, it also became associated with the covenant made between the Lord and his people. The nation that was first constituted at Sinai, gathering together in Jerusalem to renew their relationship with God, is now, so many years later, reborn – the firstfruits of a new harvest – as God pours out his Spirit to ratify the new covenant.

Certainly, Peter is aware that something momentous has happened. His subsequent explanation ties together the ministry, death, resurrection and exaltation of Jesus with several passages from Scripture, notably God’s promise through Joel that ‘I will pour out my Spirit on all people’ (Joel 2:28). Previously the Spirit was given only to special people, like kings and prophets, or only for specific tasks; now all of God’s people receive the Spirit – men and women, old and young – as part of God’s end-time renewal of all things. Pentecost marks the beginning of that era not in Moses giving the law, but in Jesus giving the Spirit – to ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord’ (Acts 2:21).

In fact, this is nothing less than the inauguration of a new world. It may remind us of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9), but it is not necessarily a reversal of Babel – where the scattering reaffirms God’s original purpose for men and women to fill the whole earth. The basis of the unity of humankind is not found in the recovery of a single language, but in a people indwelt by the Spirit of God. If there is a reversal, it is that at Babel people want to make a name for themselves (Genesis 11:4) whereas at Pentecost they proclaim ‘the wonders of God’ (Acts 2:11). Many languages are spoken and all of them are fitting to praise God.

This fits with the international perspective of Acts. Jerusalem is full of Jews from all parts of the world, each with their own language and dialect. And they hear the great things of God spoken of in the vernacular tongues of their pagan neighbours – showing that what starts in Jerusalem will become a worldwide mission enabled by the Holy Spirit which will result in the worship of God to ‘the ends of the earth’ (Acts 1:8).

The Purpose of Pentecost

I contributed this week’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact. Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear... Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.

Acts 2:32-33, 36

Many Christians belong to a Pentecostal denomination, but there’s a sense in which all Christians are ‘Pentecostals’. We take our identity from the giving of the Spirit on that first day of Pentecost as much as we do from the crucifixion and resurrection.

Peter explains the significance of the dramatic events unfolding before the eyes and ears of those gathered in Jerusalem. The Father has raised Jesus and enthroned him as Lord of all. Now seated at the Father’s right hand, he has given the Spirit to his people, just as he promised. The coming of the Spirit has started God’s countdown to the last great day of the Lord.

And in this period before the end, what are God’s people to do? Jesus has already laid it out for the disciples in Acts 1:8 – they are to be his witnesses. That’s what the Spirit makes possible – empowerment for mission.

What comes with Pentecost is not a superficial burst of energy and excitement, or an injection of spiritual adrenaline to give us a boost when we’re feeling low. What comes with the Pentecost gift is the power to witness to Jesus. Nor is it just for overseas missionaries or church leaders, or for those who have attained a second tier of discipleship. Previously the Spirit was given only to special people or only for specific tasks; now all of God’s people receive the Spirit – men and women, old and young – as part of God’s end-time renewal of all things.

By God’s grace and the power of his Spirit, all of us are made a part of his mission to reach the ends of the world with the message that the crucified Jesus is none other than the Lord and Messiah, the only name on whom people must call if they are to be saved.

The book of Acts is clear that God calls some, like Paul, to plant churches. But it is equally apparent that the work was carried out by ‘ordinary’ believers, who spread the news wherever they went. The same gracious God, the same exalted Christ, the same powerful Spirit, and the same amazing plan means we too play a part in the continual unfolding of this story – witnessing to a renewed relationship with God and the restoration of the whole of life under the lordship of Christ.

Interpretation 66, 1 (2012)

Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology, is now being published by SAGE. The first SAGE issue is now out and contains essays devoted to the theme of ‘Liturgy and Pentecost/Trinity Sunday’. For a while, at least, it is freely available online here.

The main essays and their abstracts are as follows:

Beverly Roberts Gaventa

Pentecost and Trinity

Luke’s story of Pentecost gathers into itself many biblical motifs having to do with the work of the Spirit, which creates and re-creates communities of faith, even if it remains out of their control. Trinity Sunday returns us to the richness of Scripture’s reflections on God, where we find the constant feature to be the claim that, in all God’s doing, God acts for us and for our salvation.

Andreas Schuele

The Spirit of YHWH and the Aura of Divine Presence

One of the characteristics of Spirit language in the Old Testament is that it occurs in places that have particular significance for the literary formation as well as the theological profile of the Hebrew Scriptures. This essay examines texts from 1 Samuel, Ezekiel, Isaiah 40–66, and Psalm 104 and reconstructs an awareness across the biblical traditions that the experience of divine presence unfolds in and through the “Spirit” as part of God’s “aura.”

Jennifer L. Lord

Pentecost and Trinity Sunday: Preaching and Teaching New Creation

Any renewal of preaching and teaching on Pentecost and Trinity Sundays will be helped by revisiting the nature of these feasts as inseparable from the larger paschal cycle. From the perspective of the larger feast cycle, the preacher and teacher can see these feast days as eschatological proclamation: the ongoing gift of the Holy Spirit is the work of new creation; all creation’s existence, redemption, and sanctification are the results of the ongoing work of the holy Trinity for the life of the world.

Jeremy S. Begbie

The Holy Spirit at Work in the Arts: Learning from George Herbert

If we want some clarity about the relation of the arts to the Holy Spirit of the Christian faith, it is wise to let the arts have proper space to operate theologically. The remarkable poem by George Herbert, “Ephes. 4. 30,” along with material from some of his other poems, gives a fair sense of what Herbert would have assumed about the relation of the arts to the third person of the Trinity, and is especially enlightening for the theology–arts discussion today.

Heidi J. Hornik and Mikeal C. Parsons

The Feast of Pentecost and Trinity Sunday: Liturgical Art in Context

This article explores several visual depictions of the event of Pentecost and the doctrine of the Trinity from the history of Christian art. These images can aid contemporary faith communities seeking to reflect in liturgy and worship on the theological significance of these mysteries of the Christian faith.

Word for the Week: Whole Life, Whole Bible (39/50) – The Day of Pentecost: A New World Order?

‘Word for the Week: Whole Life, Whole Bible’, from London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, is a series of fifty emails designed to look at the main milestones of the biblical story, seeking to show how whole-life discipleship is woven through Scripture as a whole, from beginning to end. Here is the thirty-ninth of the fifty emails.

When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. Now there were staying in Jerusalem Godfearing Jews from every nation under heaven… Utterly amazed, they asked: ‘Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language?… We hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!’
Acts 2:1-4, 5, 7-8, 11

Pentecost was a harvest festival, an opportunity for thankful worshippers to offer to God the firstfruits of their crops. Celebrated fifty days after Passover, coinciding with the giving of the law, it also became associated with the covenant made between the Lord and his people at Sinai. The nation that was constituted at Sinai, gathering together in Jerusalem to renew their relationship with God, is now reborn – the firstfruits of a new harvest – as God pours out his Spirit to ratify the new covenant.

Certainly, Peter is aware that something momentous has happened, as his subsequent explanation makes clear when he ties together the ministry, death, resurrection, and exaltation of Jesus with several passages from Scripture, notably God’s promise through Joel that ‘in the last days… I will pour out my Spirit on all people’. Previously given only to special people, like kings and prophets, or only for specific tasks, now all of God’s people receive the Spirit – men and women, old and young – as part of God’s end-time renewal of all things. Pentecost marks the beginning of that era not in Moses giving the law, but in Jesus giving the Spirit – to all who ‘call on the name of the Lord’ (2:21).

In fact, this is nothing less than the inauguration of a new world. It may remind us of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9), but it is not so much a reversal of Babel – where the scattering reaffirms God’s original purpose for men and women to fill the whole earth. The basis of the unity of humankind is not found in the recovery of a single language, but in a people indwelt by the Spirit of God. If there is a reversal, it is that at Babel people want to make a name for themselves (Genesis 11:4) whereas at Pentecost they proclaim ‘the wonders of God’. Many languages are spoken and all are appropriate for giving praise to God.

This fits with the international perspective of Acts. Jerusalem is full of Jews from all parts of the world, each with their own language and dialect. And they hear the great things of God spoken of in the vernacular tongues of their pagan neighbours – showing that what starts in Jerusalem will become a worldwide mission enabled by the Holy Spirit which will result in the worship of God to ‘the ends of the earth’.

For further reflection and action:

1. Read the whole of Acts 2, reflecting on Peter’s explanation of the event (2:14-41) and its immediate impact on the early followers of Christ (2:42-47).

2. Many Christians belong to a ‘Pentecostal’ denomination, but in what sense – and with what significance – are all God’s people ‘Pentecostals’?

3. We might be used to the notion of the ‘priesthood of all believers’, but Acts 2 suggests there is also a ‘prophethood of all believers’ (2:17-21). Previously the Holy Spirit had enabled mainly prophets to speak God’s words (cf. Numbers 11:29); now speaking the word of God – prophesying – is a task given to all of God’s people (4:31; 5:32; 6:10; 13:4-5). How should this encourage us? And how should it challenge us?