Foundations 84 (July 2023)

Issue 84 of Foundations: An International Journal of Evangelical Theology, published by Affinity, is now available (here in its entirety as a pdf), which includes the below essays.

Donald John MacLean

Editorial

Peter Sanlon

Glories That Form and Deform Identity: The Roads Ahead

This paper seeks to analyse what has become the main presenting issue of the day for western culture, that of identity. This question penetrates a good deal deeper than the vexed matters of gender, sexuality and ethnicity; essentially it comes down to a clear and binary choice: whom do we love, worship and glorify – self or God? The quest for self-realisation and self-fulfilment may take many forms, from pornography to conspiracy theories to a culture of ‘victimhood’, but each of these are diverse expressions of the same fundamental motivation – to worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever – Amen! (Rom 1:25). Against all this, the next generation is summoned to walk ‘The Road Less Travelled’, where we gather under the cross of Jesus Christ.

Robin Gray

Divine Light and Holy Love: Genuine Conversions in the Works of Jonathan Edwards

This paper opens up the key question of genuine conversion by delving deep into the mind of Jonathan Edwards (1703–58) on the subject, and in particular, his Religious Affections, which were the mature fruit of Edwards’ deep reflection, years after many striking and ‘surprising’ events in his own ministry. Few minds have thought as hard and as deeply as Edwards about the subject of conversion, but fewer by far have written about the subject as incisively as he did. Whilst many other scholars and pastors have very helpfully brought Edwards’ thinking to the attention of the contemporary church, this paper, as it succinctly summarises Edwards’ main observations, will undoubtedly prove to be a precious additional resource in the hands of twenty-first-century pastors, not only in evaluating professed conversions in their own churches but in keeping a close watch on their own souls (1 Tim 4:16).

Phil Heaps

Sanctification and Consistent Godly Living

This paper will lead us to the Sermon on the Mount and to the Beatitudes in particular (Matt 5:3-12) demonstrating that this ‘Jesus Seminar’ is unparalleled as ‘a discipleship course for the 2020s’. Here is material which is intensely practical and yet is addressed directly to the human heart; here is a masterclass for the formation of Christian character but one which is to be worked out in the corporate context of the church. The Lord Jesus Christ – and the Beatitudes are, supremely, a delineation of Christ’s own spiritual character – calls his people to a radical obedience which is motivated by humility, ‘poverty of spirit’ (Matt 5:3) but which is the only path to the growth for which God looks, growth in holiness.

Mark Thomas

Pastoring the Twenty-First Century Church

This paper begins with the tremendous, transcendental reality that God himself is the Pastor of his people (Ps 23:1, 80:1), and then fleshes out in detail how the pastoral office of the undershepherd is described in Scripture. Throughout, the calling of the pastor is described and illustrated with many examples in the Reformation and Puritan tradition – not least from the ‘three Bs’ of Bucer, Baxter and Bridges. The climactic feature of this paper is its recognition and analysis of contemporary culture and how it impinges on young people attached to churches. Whilst there are timeless issues and considerations that every pastor and church must face, there are some that are peculiar to today, and pastors are urged to face up to these – they include anxiety, exhaustion, ‘influences’ and, as in Paper 1, the whole question of ‘identity’.

Patrick Fung

Faithfulness Amidst Trials and Persecution

This paper begins with an in-depth treatment of the narrative of persecution in Luke-Acts, showing how it was first directed against Jesus and then against his disciples. The key consideration is not simply that persecution happened, but that the early church needed to know how to respond to it. The next section of the paper we describe in detail the Boxer Uprising in China in 1900 and in particular the response of the church, exemplified in the approach of Dixon Edward Hoste (1861–1946), Hudson Taylor’s successor as leader of the China Inland Mission. Hoste’s approach was humble, gracious, visionary and deeply instructive for the church today. We conclude with a survey of the state of anti-Christian persecution in the world today, both ‘east’ and ‘west’, and calls us to prayerful, patient, self-denying witness.

Sarah Allen

Review Article: Complementarianism

Book Review

Glen H. Stassen on the Sermon on the Mount

[The following review was first published in August 2007 on the UK Christian Bookshops Directory website, which contains lots of helpful reviews, and is my first port of call for looking up the location of Christian bookshops. Thanks to Phil Groom for giving me the opportunity to review the book.]

Glen H. Stassen, Living the Sermon on the Mount: A Practical Hope for Grace and Deliverance (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006), xvii + 222pp., ISBN 9780787977368.

The constant stream of books and studies published on Matthew 5-7 shows the enduring appeal and challenge of the section commonly known as the Sermon on the Mount. Now Glen H. Stassen, Professsor of Christian Ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary, has added another contribution, which forms one of the volumes in the ‘Enduring Questions in Christian Life’ series from Jossey-Bass, nicely produced as a compact-sized hardback.

Although written in a clear and engaging style, this book comes with the significant academic reinforcement provided by the volume Stassen co-authored with David P. Gushee: Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context (Downers Grove: IVP, 2003). This means that those who would like to do so may ‘graduate’ from this book to the longer, more detailed one; and those who for various reasons might deem Kingdom Ethics too unwieldy could find this one more useful for their needs.

Some of the points Stassen makes have been made before, but are worth making again. One is that the Lord’s prayer (Matthew 6:9-13) provides an organising centre for the whole sermon with its main themes picked up in the surrounding text. More significantly, perhaps, is the reminder that Jesus’ teaching comes with his claim that the kingdom of God has arrived in his ministry; and Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom needs to be understood in the light of the Old Testament, Isaiah especially, and its promises of salvation for the people of God. Some approaches to the Sermon on the Mount have tended to allow its teachings to float free as contextless ethical maxims. But Jesus understood his own mission in terms laid down in Isaiah, that God was reaching out to Israel and the nations through his own ministry of teaching and healing. This means the exhortations in the Sermon are not faceless demands, but presuppose certain things about Jesus and the kingdom he brings.

This alone should be enough to suggest that it would be hard to overestimate the significance of the Sermon on the Mount in reflections on Jesus’ teaching and Christian ethics. It’s also difficult to imagine there could be any fresh perspectives, but Stassen offers a distinctive view that the Sermon is not patterned in terms of ‘high ideals’ (that we don’t be angry, and don’t lust, and don’t take oaths, and don’t assert rights), but in terms of ‘transforming initiatives’.

So, in Matthew 5:21-26 (on murder and anger), Jesus is often interpreted as giving a command not to be angry and not to call anyone a fool. In fact, Stassen points out, what’s described in 5:22 is a vicious cycle we can get stuck in: we get angry, we insult one another, and it leads to trouble. Jesus does give commands, but they’re not found in 5:22, they’re found in 5:23-26, and they’re examples, says Stassen, of ‘transforming initiatives’; they are ways of deliverance from anger. They are not merely illustrations attached to a command not to be angry; they are the climax of the teaching. In this case, the angry person is transformed into an peacemaker who, in turn, transforms the enemy into a friend.

Stassen sees the teachings in the main body of the Sermon as a series of such ‘transforming initiatives’, where the main emphasis is placed on the third part of the sayings, not on negative commands but on the regular practices which enable us to participate in God’s way of deliverance from vicious cycles. Even if this pattern is not always as clear as Stassen makes out, it does shed helpful light on a number of passages.

The Sermon on the Mount not only shows us what Jesus is like, but what God is like – the one who brings the grace and deliverance mentioned in the subtitle. It’s a liberation which involves the things about which the sermon speaks: practising reconciliation, keeping our marriage covenants, telling the truth, making peace, loving enemies, forgiveness, economic simplicity. The challenge is not just to know these things but to live them out; hence the first word in the title – Living the Sermon on the Mount.

The book could profitably be used by housegroup leaders or preachers working through the Sermon on the Mount, or as a devotional aid for an individual, and comes highly recommended.

Walter T. Wilson on Matthew 6:19-7:12

Walter T. Wilson, ‘A Third Form of Righteousness: The Theme and Contribution of Matthew 6.19-7.12 in the Sermon on the Mount’, New Testament Studies 53, 3 (2007), 303-24.

Aside from the introduction (5:3-16) and conclusion (7:13-27), the main body of the Sermon on the Mount is regularly seen as divided into three parts: 5:17-48; 6:1-18; 6:19-7:12. It has proven difficult, however, to detect the overarching structure, subject matter, and purpose of the third major section (6:19-7:12).

In this intriguing article, Walter T. Wilson compares the section with various examples of wisdom instruction, each of which deals with the moral issue of ‘goods’, broadly understood as ‘that which confers good standing or status, not only in economic terms but in social and spiritual terms as well’ (303).

That’s the nutshell version.

Here’s the more long-winded version…

He begins by noting broader considerations about the possible setting and character of the gospel of Matthew, holding that ‘Matthew’s community developed out of a Jewish matrix’, and that ‘its most recent history is one of antagonism with Judaism’; that there was also a ‘growing openness in Matthew’s community to the Gentile mission’; that, in comparison with Mark, Matthew ‘seems to address an audience that includes a greater number of prosperous members’; and that ‘strengthening communal solidarity is a special priority for Matthew’, encouraging an ‘egalitarian ethic’ (303-305). [Of course, all this is read from between the lines of the gospel text itself…]

He then highlights how some scholars (W.D. Davies, Hans Dieter Betz, Ulrich Luz) have sought to understand the place of 6:19-7:12 in the sermon as a whole, but remains unconvinced about their proposals (305-309).

Next he explores the compositional history of the passage, noting that the extent and nature of changes suggests ‘a rather high level of editorial involvement on the evangelist’s part’ (310). It is here he suggests that the reference to ‘righteousness’ (in 6:33) near the centre of the third section ‘raises the possibility that the question of the readers’ moral relationship to “goods”… and specifically how they are to practice righteousness with respect to such goods, is a unifying theme for the passage’ (310). The section, he suggests, can be divided into three parts corresponding to its major themes – dealing with mammon, judging others, and dependence on God (315).

Wilson then looks at ‘self-regard’ and ‘other-regard’ in wisdom instruction (315-19), observing (with Robert Guelich) that ‘most of this material [in Matthew 6:19-7:12] belongs in form and content to the genre of wisdom instruction’ (315). He notes some sections of wisdom literature which provide ‘a sustained critique of what we might call an ethic of self-regard, according to which the significance attached to advancing one’s own interests overshadows the development of proper moral relationships with God, neighbor, and wealth’ (316), where the starting point of walking in singleness of heart is ‘one’s attitude towards such basic human concerns as money, food, clothes, and length of life’ (318).

He also considers similar themes in the letter of James: a section which admonishes readers not to judge (4:11-12), a section which criticises those who in profit-making presume to have gained control over the future (4:13-17), and a section which condemns the rich (5:1-6):

‘Within a relative close proximity we have an admonition against judging “brothers” to the neglect of divine judgment (Jas 4.11-12; cf. Matt 7.1-2), directives regarding the proper attitude towards “tomorrow”, namely that it lies in God’s hands and not in efforts to gain material things (Jas 4.13-14; cf. Matt 6.34), and a warning not to lay up the sorts of treasures that will spoil (Jas 5.2-3; cf. Matt 6.19-21)’ (319).

Such wisdom texts, according to Wilson, ‘illustrate how exhortation on the proper attitude towards material wealth, towards others, and towards God could be integrated into a unified instruction organized around an ethic that is not self-regarding but other-regarding in its orientation’ (319).

‘As with the wisdom authors, for the evangelist this is an ethic that eschews greed and envy, disparaging speech, and the presumption that life can be determined apart from divine justice and benevolence, embracing instead practices grounded in contentment, generosity, tolerance, and humility’ (319).

Finally, Wilson avers that the mention of ‘righteousness’ in 6:33 links the third section with the other two sections of the sermon, where righteousness is ‘thematized’ (5:20; 6:1), suggesting that ‘the full import of this concept cannot be grasped without considering the coordination of the three parts’ (321).

He considers triadic schemes in Philo’s comments on the Essenes (highlighting what Philo sees as their three basic principles of the love of God, love of virtue, and love of others) and from Qumran’s Damascus Covenant, arguing that the three categories interpenetrate even while remaining distinct (321-22).

He concludes about the Sermon on the Mount:

‘The first part (5.17-48) offers instruction on how to practice righteousness in one’s relations with others, expounded as an interpretation of the law. The second part (6.1-18) turns to the community’s religious life, the ways in which the readers are to practice their righteousness, not before others, but before “your father in heaven” (6.1). And the third part (6.19-7.11) instructs them on practicing righteousness with reference to “goods”, referring in the first place to mammon, but including other measures of personal worth as well… Consideration of texts like this… suggests that a triadic schema organized around the categories of God, others, and “goods” would have lent itself to forms of discourse whose purpose was to summarize a body of teaching or a way of life’ (323).

Finally, the three forms of ‘righteousness’ are ‘mutually interpretive’: it’s clear, for instance, that the issue of ‘goods’ is taken up in part 1 (5:38-42) and part 2 (6:2-4), while part 3 also includes instruction on interpersonal conduct (7:1-6) and religious practice (7:7-11), all of which contributes to the internal coherence of the Sermon on the Mount as well as demonstrating some of Matthew’s ‘principal concerns in explicating righteousness’ (324).