Evangelical Review of Theology 47, 2 (May 2023)

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

Introduction: Don’t Run from Controversy

Joseph W. Handley, Jr.

The Great Collaboration: Catalyzing Disciple Making for the Global Church

The author, a leading participant in the WEA’s Decade of Disciple Making and its associated ‘Galilean Movement’, surveys the current challenges facing the global church with regard to disciple making. He describes work being advanced by the WEA and the Lausanne Movement and calls for deeper engagement in collaboration to accelerate disciple making globally.

Jay Matenga

Our Missions Future: Local Impact, Ripples and Waves

Joel Pfahler

When the Game Stops ... for Prayer

Sports chaplains are always on call, serving a frequently unreached people group: professional athletes. This article describes their behind-the-scenes work in a manner that offers lessons for Christian ministry – and on how Christian sports fans can represent Christ more fully.

Thorsten Prill

Evangelical Missionaries and the Lack of Cross-Cultural Competence: An Historical Perspective

This article describes how 19th-century evangelical missionaries to Africa erected barriers that hindered the spread of the gospel due to their lack of cross-cultural skills. It also discusses positive examples and draws applications to the contemporary church setting.

Bruce Barron

Introduction to the Next Two Articles

Richard P. Moore

The New Apostolic Reformation and Its Threat to Evangelicalism

The New Apostolic Reformation, among the latest in a long series of theological and practical controversies among independent charismatics, has significant impact on evangelicals globally, especially through the music produced by Bethel Church in California. Along with conducting extensive research using primary sources, the author of this article has personally experienced the NAR’s impact in Europe.

Joseph Mattera

The Global Apostolic Movement and the Progress of the Gospel

The controversy over the New Apostolic Reformation (see previous article) can overshadow a different, more biblically grounded approach to mobilizing ‘apostles’ and ‘prophets’ strategically in church planting in mission. These excerpts from apostolic leader Joseph Mattera’s recent book present the biblical basis and positive potential of this approach, along with insightful distinctions between true and false apostles and challenges facing the church in Latin America, Africa and the USA.

Brent Neely

The Weight of Sin: Islam, Anselm and Barth

Muslim thinkers have often criticized Christians for a morbid view of sin, for a limited view of human capacity, and for insisting that only the death of Jesus could solve humanity’s sin problem. This article scrutinizes and affirms Christians’ penchant for taking sin very seriously, against the background of the challenges posed by a group of prominent Muslim thinkers.

Daniel Kirkpatrick

What Is Redeemed in Redemption? An Argument for Unconditional Redemption

This article engages recent literature regarding the doctrine of redemption, the person and role of the redeemer, and the object that is redeemed. It argues for a solely divine redeemer and faith as a response to, not a cause of, redemption.

Book Reviews

Christopher Watkin on a Biblical Theology of Culture

Christopher Watkin, author of the excellent Thinking through Creation: Genesis 1 and 2 as Tools of Cultural Critique (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2017), recently led two seminars at the 2020 FEUER Academic Speakers Network.

Taking his cue from John Stott’s call to ‘double listening’, he tackles the question of ‘how to read culture through the categories and patterns of the Bible, specifically through the creation-fall-redemption framework of biblical theology’.

The two videos are available here, and are well worth checking out by those interested in this area.

So Great a Salvation #2: The Cross and the Slave Market

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

For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God.

1 Peter 1:18-21

Imagine for a moment: you live under someone else’s control, bought and sold like a piece of property; you have no rights, and very little hope for the future. You’re a slave.

For many of Peter’s readers – as for millions around the world today – imagination wouldn’t be required. Slavery would be all too real. And Peter’s language of being ‘redeemed’ would resonate powerfully: short of an owner granting release, freedom would come about only through the payment of a ransom price.

Redemption always comes at a cost.

In using this imagery to unpack the significance of Jesus’ death, Peter weaves together several strands from the biblical story, echoing especially Israel’s release from slavery in Egypt. The image of the ‘lamb without blemish or defect’ brings to mind the Passover, recalling God’s great act of deliverance. In the case of Peter’s readers, redemption involves a liberation from bondage to an ‘empty way of life’. But such freedom comes with a price – nothing less than ‘the precious blood of Christ’.

Notably, God has not stood back and orchestrated deliverance from a distance. He has himself stepped into the situation, and at great personal cost. As Jesus put it, ‘the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many’ (Mark 10:45). Nothing less than his life was required. Nothing less than his life was given.

As Peter does elsewhere in this letter, he extends the blessing of God’s redemption to the scattered Christian communities, made up of Gentiles as well as Jews. Although they find themselves on the margins of society, they are brought into the very centre of God’s plan for all things, set in motion ‘before the creation of the world’, in which God has acted on their behalf – ‘for your sake’, Peter tells them, and for ours.

Moreover, this act of redemption doesn’t extract us from everyday life. Instead, it’s the ground for Peter’s exhortation ‘to live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear’ (1:17). Christ’s redemptive work is not merely an inspiration for living our lives this way, but the very basis for doing so. Our release from an empty and enslaving way of existence brings with it not the freedom to do as we please, but the freedom to enter service to God – a new Lord, with a new way of living.

Exodus #2: The Lord who Redeems

‘Therefore, say to the Israelites: “I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession. I am the LORD.”’

Exodus 6:6-8

The word ‘redemption’ belongs, first of all, to the world of buying and selling. It has to do with gaining or regaining possession of an item through the payment of a price. That wider sense carries over when we use the word in other contexts, as when we might say: ‘She didn’t work hard in her first year at university, but she redeemed herself in her second year.’

One of the most enduring movies of all time – The Shawshank Redemption – includes the word in its title. Starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman, it’s the story of a wrongly convicted man sent to prison, who refuses to abandon hope even in the face of adversity, bringing a liberation of sorts to his fellow inmates. Acknowledging its significance, Tim Robbins himself said that ‘many people feel enslaved by their environment, their jobs, their relationships – by whatever it is in the course of their lives that puts walls and bars around them. And Shawshank is a story about enduring and ultimately escaping from that imprisonment’.

Our cultural stories of redemption – and there are many – hold out the hope that all may not be lost. But they may also tempt us to think that it’s up to us to redeem ourselves from whatever hole we find ourselves in.

The exodus provides a different perspective.

The phrase ‘I am the LORD’ opens and closes these three verses in which God makes no less than seven declarations of who he is and what he will do for his people: I will bring you out, I will free you, I will redeem you, I will take you as my own people, I will be your God, I will bring you to the land, I will give it to you.

The passage embraces past, present, and future. It arguably captures not just the story of the exodus but the story of the whole Bible: God rescues us from slavery so that we might be his people, living well in the place he provides for us. The promise is ultimately made good in the death and resurrection of Jesus, and it is that which enables us to keep going when we’re tempted to doubt his love for us, when the opposition feels like it’s becoming too much for us.

What we can’t do for ourselves, he does for us. He loves. He pays the price. He redeems.

Echoes of Exodus

You know how it is, you wait for ages for one book called Echoes of Exodus to come along, and then two arrive at the same time:

Bryan D. Estelle, Echoes of Exodus: Tracing a Biblical Motif (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2018).

Alastair J. Roberts and Andrew Wilson, Echoes of Exodus: Tracing Themes of Redemption through Scripture (Wheaton: Crossway, 2018).

I wanted to do some study in Exodus during 2018, and will be starting with these, both of which I’m confident, based on previous work of all three writers, will be excellent showcases of evangelical biblical theology.

There is a pdf excerpt of the one by Alastair Roberts and Andrew Wilson here. They also talk about the book in an episode of the podcast ‘Mere Fidelity’ (here), to which they are both regular contributors.

Alastair links to a recent talk of his on Exodus on his blog (here), much of which is summarised in his ‘10 Things You Should Know about the Exodus’.

The Whole of Life for Christ (6): Whole-Life Hope

I contributed today’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. It’s the penultimate in a series introducing themes explored more fully in the book, The Whole of Life for Christ: Enriching Everyday Discipleship, written with Mark Greene.

‘See, I will create

new heavens and a new earth.

The former things will not be remembered,

nor will they come to mind.

But be glad and rejoice for ever

in what I will create,

for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight

and its people a joy.

I will rejoice over Jerusalem

and take delight in my people;

the sound of weeping and of crying

will be heard in it no more.’

Isaiah 65:17-19

The creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved.

Romans 8:21-24

In words that John will later pick up in Revelation 21, God – through Isaiah – lays out the goal of his redemptive work – nothing less than a new creation. Not an immaterial heaven, but heaven and earth combined in breathtaking renewal. A restored world washed clean of dirt and pollution, where weeping and crying will no longer be heard, where ugliness and scarcity will be overcome by beauty and abundance. Just pause to imagine such a world.

It’s not like that now (in case you hadn’t noticed...). Romans 8 is one of many places where Paul expresses the tension between how things are now and how they will be one day. And that tension between the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet’ is part and parcel of everyday discipleship.

The new age has broken into the present age, so that we enjoy ‘the firstfruits of the Spirit’ while awaiting the full harvest. The current experience of birth pains will give way to eventual relief. Paul depicts salvation as being set free from bondage, applying the imagery not just to women and men, but to the entire created order – yet one more reminder of the sweeping scope of God’s work in Christ, where such liberation is not simply ‘internal’ or ‘spiritual’, but the ‘redemption of our bodies’, and of creation itself.

The Bible tells the story of God’s work of redemption, which is a gloriously comprehensive rescue – ‘far as the curse is found’, as the old carol puts it. To be sure, biblical passages use figures of speech in their descriptions of what the future looks like, but they all underline not the removal of creation but its renewal, not its ruination but its restoration.

In this time between the times, our discipleship – in keeping with what will be – is all-embracing, as we make known and live out God’s rule over the whole of life. Seeking to avoid both defeatism (claiming too little) and triumphalism (claiming too much), we can testify to the wide-ranging sweep of God’s renewing power in politics and parenting, in economics and education, in art and athletics – being realistic about current ‘bondage’, but all the while looking forward to the complete restoration of what was originally declared ‘good’.

Such is our confidence and expectation – our hope – a hope of the full disclosure of God’s gracious reign that shapes each of us in the here and now.

Al Wolters on the 30th Anniversary of Creation Regained

This month marks the 30th anniversary of the publication of Al Wolters’ Creation Regained, a relatively short but highly significant book. Many years ago, it was my first introduction to the whole notion of a ‘Christian worldview’, and its strong assertion that the God who creates all things will also redeem all things has been very influential on me, as it has on many others.

In Wolters’ own words, it’s a message that ‘stresses the breadth of Creation, the extent of the Fall, and most importantly, the fact that salvation in Jesus Christ really means a reclaiming, a regaining, of the entire length and breadth of Creation with all of its cultural domains’.

Marking the anniversary, Comment has carried a helpful two-part conversation on the book between Wolters and Brian Dijkema (here and here).

The first part of the conversation takes in the distinction between ‘structure’ (the way things are meant to be, the way God instituted them) and ‘direction’ (the way those things are either distorted or reclaimed in Christ), the educational and theological context in which the book was written, how Scripture shapes the framework outlined in the book, its place in the broader tradition of neo-Calvinism with its recovery of a biblical perspective on the relationship of creation and redemption, or nature and grace, and Wolters’ own scholarly journey.

The second part of the conversation looks at what’s changed since Creation Regained was published, and some of the places where it has been received, what the book has to say to a post-Christian culture, the vulnerability of Reformed thought to secularisation, and the benefit of a variety of strategic approaches to public life, depending on context.

One small point. As one who struggles with the language of ‘redeeming’ culture, I was interested to see Wolters say: ‘We should seek to redeem – actually, I don't like that word, redeem – we should seek to profess the claims of Christ in every area of life.’

Andy Crouch on Power

Having thoroughly enjoyed as well as benefited from his Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling (Downers Grove: IVP, 2008), I have been looking forward to the new book by Andy Crouch: Playing God: Redeeming the Gift of Power (Downers Grove: IVP, 2013).

At this point, the volume is not even out in the UK, but it has already received some substantial coverage online:

• A lengthy profile by Byron Borger here

• A Gabe Lyons video interview with Andy Crouch here, some of which is excerpted here

• An interview with Justin Taylor here

• A piece in Christianity Today here, from which the following is taken:

‘I believe we need a new conversation about power in the church. I say a new conversation, because it will be a genuinely new topic for many pastors and laypeople.... [T]here are surprisingly few times when pastors and people directly address power. And this is especially true in churches that participate in the culture of middle- and upper-middle-class America, where we can easily take power for granted.

‘I also say a “new conversation” because when we do talk about power, we often talk about it strictly as something negative – something dangerous to be avoided – rather than as a gift to be stewarded...

‘But from beginning to end – that is, from creation to consummation – the Bible is full of references to power. You will often hear pastors say that Jesus “gave up power.” And indeed, the climax of salvation is the cross, on which Jesus is stretched out, suffers, and dies, having refused to grasp the power within his reach. But as the early Christians reflected on his life, death, and resurrection, they came to a different conclusion. Precisely because they were witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection after a violent death, the New Testament writers could no longer acquiesce to the idolatrous fiction that violence is the truest form of power. Instead, they had seen with their eyes, and touched with their hands, evidence of a much greater power at work in the world than Rome could muster...

‘What would a new conversation about power include?

‘It would acknowledge, indeed insist, that power is a gift – the gift of a Giver who is the supreme model of power used to bless and serve. Power is not given to benefit those who hold it. It is given for the flourishing of individuals, peoples, and the cosmos itself. Power’s right use is especially important for the flourishing of the vulnerable, the members of the human family who most need others to use power well to survive and thrive: the young, the aged, the sick, and the dispossessed. Power is not the opposite of servanthood. Rather, servanthood, ensuring the flourishing of others, is the very purpose of power...

‘[I]f power is a gift, then we can be accountable for its proper use – to its Giver, and to one another.’

Update (5 October 2013) – another review, by John Nugent, starting here, and another review by John Starke here.

Ken Myers on the Church and Culture

There’s a good, brief interview with Ken Myers, here in ‘The Christian Post’, in which Myers says that ‘it's not “the culture,” as we often hear, that poses the most significant challenge for the church today. It’s the culture of the church’.

‘What I mean’, he goes on to say, is that ‘we have reduced the Gospel to an abstract message of salvation that can be believed without having any necessary consequences for how we live. In contrast, the redemption announced in the Bible is clearly understood as restoring human thriving in creation’.

More fully:

‘Redemption is not just a restoration of our status before God through the life and work of Jesus Christ, but a restoration of our relationship with God as well. And our relationship with God is expressed in how we live. Salvation is about God’s restoring our whole life, not just one invisible aspect of our being (our soul), but our life as lived out in the world in ways that are in keeping with how God made us. The goal of salvation is blessedness for us as human beings. In other words, we are saved so that our way of life can be fully in keeping with God’s ordering of reality.’

Asked how the church has been too influenced by the broader culture, Myers response with four point for starters:

• The way in which the dominant role of technology in our lives promotes the deep assumption that we can fix anything

• The way in which proliferating mechanisms of convenience erodes the virtues of patience and longsuffering

• The way in which the elimination of standards of public propriety and manners undermines assumptions about the legitimacy of authority and deference to the communal needs

• The way in which the high prestige accorded to entertainers creates the conviction that every valuable experience should be entertaining

He goes on to talk about ‘relevance’, the church being held captive by so-called ‘youth culture’, and the importance of helping people mature in Christ.

He finishes with Robert Wilken’s point that ‘the principal way in which the early Church leaders sustained cultural influence was by discipling its members, by conveying to them that the call of the Gospel was a call to embrace a new way of life’.

David Naugle on Kingdom Living: Developing a Biblical View of Life

The Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview recently came to the end of a 17-part series by David Naugle on ‘Kingdom Living: Developing a Biblical View of Life’ (see below for the individual entries and his summaries).

Naugle has written more fully on worldview in a number of places, but these 17 short articles provide an uncomplicated introduction to the three essential themes of creation, fall, and redemption that he sees at the heart of the biblical worldview.

Such a worldview, he notes in the first article in the series, takes the whole of Scripture into consideration – from Genesis to Revelation. It also provides a way of tackling the problem of dualism, what Naugle refers to as ‘the tendency to divide life itself up into airtight compartments of the sacred and the secular’, leading to a ‘false, fragmented approach to Christianity’ which ‘hands huge chunks of life over to the kingdom of darkness’.

‘In place of this sinister dualism, a Biblically-based worldview offers a fresh, motivating vision of wholeness. It embraces the entirety of life. It redefines the nature of sacred and secular in terms of obedience and disobedience respectively. It brings the totality of life under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Christianity is concerned about the whole person, the whole of life, and the whole world! For God is not a God of dualism, but of unity, integrity, and completeness.’

1. Introduction to the Christian Worldview
Every human being is shaped by his or her worldview. For Christians, understanding the worldview one holds is especially critical because a biblical worldview is shaped by Jesus Christ himself.

2. Where On Earth Are We?
Every human being is shaped by his or her worldview. One of the critical elements of the biblical worldview is that God created the heavens and the earth. Christians must understand the origins, nature, and purpose of the universe in which they live.

3. Who On Earth Are We?
Every human being is shaped by his or her worldview. Christians cling to a biblical worldview that explains the origin and purpose of the human species.

4. Why Are We Here?
Human beings are shaped by their worldviews. The biblical worldview holds that God created human beings, and that he did so for specific purposes. Understanding these reasons is critical for Christian living.

5. Man, Woman, Marriage
The biblical account of God creating man and woman provides unique and intimate insight concerning the purpose God has ordained for humankind. Humans were created in the image of God, a fact that carries highly significant ramifications for all theaters of life, particularly concerning human understanding of spirituality and marriage.

6. Humpty Dumpty: What’s Gone Wrong?
As in the famous nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty, humanity has had a great fall. With the entrance of sin into the world through Adam and Eve, the plans God had for his creations were shattered like poor Humpty Dumpty. Fortunately for humanity, however, God provides a way for us to be put together again.

7. The Spread and Escalation of Sin (Genesis 4-11)
The opening chapters of Genesis provide the framework for understanding the rest of Scripture, and, indeed, the rest of human history. The sin of Adam and Eve resulted in the distortion of a good creation, as demonstrated through the stories found in Genesis 4-11.

8. The Fall in the New Testament: Jesus and Paul
Naugle discusses the New Testament depiction of sin as revealed in the teachings of Jesus and Paul.

9. A Theology of Creation and the Fall
Only through the lens of a biblical worldview can one pursue Kingdom living. In order to develop a biblical worldview, one must first determine an orthodox theology of creation and the fall.

10. Introduction to the Covenants
The overarching story of the Christian Bible is the story of redemption. The book of Genesis describes the creation of the world by God, the fall and distortion of this creation through the sin of mankind, and the subsequent promise God makes to redeem his creation – which he does! The biblical covenants illustrate the gracious, faithful, and loving character of God.

11. The Covenants with Noah and Abraham
Human beings are sinful; the biblical accounts of the flood and the Tower of Babel illustrate this sad fact. In his mercy, however, God has been working since the fall to redeem his creation. Part of how he accomplishes this goal is through covenants formed with Noah and Abraham.

12. Sinai, Davidic, and New Covenants
Since the entrance of sin into the world, God has been working to restore his creation. This process of redemption has been achieved through covenants, such as the ones made at Sinai and with David and culminating with the New Covenant of Jesus Christ.

13. Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God
The Old Testament ends with a note of expectation: the people were waiting for the kingdom of God. Finally, John the Baptist announced the arrival of the Lamb of God and the kingdom of heaven.

14. Redemption in John and Paul
In the books of the New Testament, there is theological diversity. What unifies the theology of the New Testament is the redemptive work of Jesus Christ.

15. Ethics and Eschatology
Christian faith is rooted in the belief that Jesus Christ came as a human being and that he will come again as an eschatological judge and king. This belief informs how Christians live their lives.

16. Christianity and Culture
Christians must determine how they are to live in the world, despite the deep divide between the Christian community and the secular world. While Scripture warns against worldliness, it also exhorts believers to engage the culture rather than retreat from it. Different Christian traditions have approached this problem in different ways.

17. Redeeming Vocation
Lay Christian believers often feel as though they are second class citizens in the Kingdom of God compared to those who serve as missionaries or pastors. This spiritual dualism is one of the things that the Protestant Reformers worked to correct, and we must again work to return to a biblical understanding of vocation.