Themelios 46, 1 (April 2021)

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

Editorial

Brian J. Tabb

The Neglected Virtue of Contentment

Strange Times

Daniel Strange

Coming to Our Senses: The Case for a Civil Elenctics and an Elenctic Civility

Henri A.G. Blocher

Canonicity: A Theologian’s Observations

The topic of the biblical canon raises a specific, twofold difficulty for evangelical systematic theologians: the appeal to the Spirit’s testimony and a recognition of divine providence in history. It is crucial to recognize that “canon” entails both a principle – a body of teaching incorporating the word of God that binds the conscience of believers – and a list of books officially recognized as authoritative by the world-wide church. The principle of canon and specific canonical books are organically linked. While the validity of our confession of the canon of Scripture cannot be proven on any “neutral” ground, believers have sufficient clarity and confidence to confess the rule we need in radical dependence on God.

Matthew Bingham

Brains, Bodies, and the Task of Discipleship: Re-Aligning Anthropology and Ministry

Exploring the intersection of anthropology and ministry, this article offers an appreciative critique of recent authors who suggest that effective Christian discipleship requires holistic, bodily engagement. James K.A. Smith and others have helpfully drawn attention to ways in which contemporary evangelical approaches to Christian formation can risk over-emphasizing the transfer of information while neglecting things like desire, love, and imagination. Having thus diagnosed the problem, these authors suggest that the solution lies in a turn towards “embodied rituals” that they believe can more effectively form the whole person. Through a critical evaluation of this proposal, the present article seeks to distinguish between its attractive aspects and those which would unhelpfully undermine the Reformation emphasis on the primacy of Word ministry. The article concludes by suggesting ways in which evangelicals might advance a more holistic approach to discipleship that is congruent with longstanding Reformation priorities.

Daniel K. Eng

‘I Call You Friends’: Jesus as Patron in John 15

This article proposes that John 15:13–16 draws on the language of Roman patronage, which impacts the understanding of Jesus’s sayings regarding friends. We will suggest that φίλος conveys a regent obedient to a royal patron. Thus, the role of Jesus’s friend is one of subordination, not equality. After an introduction to patronage, this article makes the case that Jesus portrays himself as the greatest patron. First, John’s farewell discourse points to the disciples being subordinates. Second, Jesus makes a contrast between slaves and friends, which is consistent with many patronal relationships. Third, Jesus describes himself as a broker, mediating benefit from the Father. Fourth, inscriptions and provincial coinage contained terms like ΦΙΛΟΚΑΙΣΑΡ (friend of Caesar), referring to regents of the emperor. Patronage best explains the saying, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends (15:13).” Jesus’s ultimate sacrifice for subordinates makes his patronage greater than Caesar’s.

Scott MacDonald

Spirit-Anointing and New Testament Church Leadership: Are Our Church Leaders Uniquely “Anointed?”

Does the church need Spirit-anointed leadership? “Anointing” is an increasingly common topic in relation to Christian leaders. This article aims to clarify the role of Spirit-anointing in the Old and New Testaments, with special attention to texts that are explicitly relevant to the church’s experience (i.e., 2 Cor 1:21–22; 1 John 2:20, 26–27). The misuse of the term “anointing” arises from a recast of Old Testament pneumatology as post-Pentecost. This misapplication of Old Testament texts denigrates the Holy Spirit’s expanded role of inhabitation in the New Testament era. Furthermore, the obfuscation of Spirit-anointing has incurred significant harm to the practices and doctrines that relate to local church leadership.

Doosuk Kim

The Parting of the Way: A Survey of  the Relationship between Jews and Christians in the First and Second Centuries CE

People today clearly view Judaism and Christianity as different religions. Undisputedly, however, Jesus and his followers were Jews in the first century. When did the parting of the way between Jews and Christians take place? What are the decisive factors that made the two ended up so far from each other? This essay examines this relationship in its social, theological, historical, and political context. The evidence suggests that though the exact time and impetus for the parting remain elusive, the parting of the way began in the first century and gradually became clearer in the second century.

John Kegley

The Nature and Task of Theology in John Owen’s Forgotten Work

Theologoumena Pantodapa may be John Owen’s most comprehensive theological work and his greatest contribution to the Reformed tradition. However, this work was not translated into English until 1994. Since its translation, it has received a noticeable lack of scholarly attention. This essay seeks to fill a part of the void in scholarship by examining Theologoumena Pantodapa’s historical context, structure, and key themes. This examination is profitable and pertinent for pastors, students of theology, and all Christians as it includes an analysis of Owen’s hermeneutical method, understanding of the relationship between theology and practice, and comments on the character of the gospel theologian.

Jarred Jung

Trinity, Creation, and Re-creation: A Comparison of Karl Barth and Herman Bavinck’s Trinitarian Doctrines of Creation

Karl Barth’s doctrine of creation, while rooted in his doctrine of the Trinity, errs in the way that creation is conflated into re-creation, resulting in a diminished doctrine of creation at the expense of his christological Trinitarianism. By comparing Barth’s doctrine of creation with that of Dutch Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck, this article argues that Bavinck offers a doctrine of creation that is as equally grounded in the doctrine of the Trinity as Barth’s and yet avoids the shortcomings of Barth’s doctrine by appropriately distinguishing between creation and re-creation. As such, Bavinck serves as an appropriate example of doctrinal emphasis for theologians and pastors.

Geoffrey Butler

Appeasement of a Monster God? A Historical and Biblical Analysis of Penal Substitutionary Atonement

Long considered a key tenet of evangelical theology, the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement has come under particularly intense scrutiny in recent years. Critics claim that it is a fairly recent innovation with little support prior to the Reformation, and that it depicts Yahweh as comparable with the pagan deities of the OT. This article makes the case that, on the contrary, the substance of penal substitutionary atonement has been taught from the church’s earliest days, arguing that the doctrine stems directly from a careful, thoughtful engagement with Scripture, which from beginning to end points toward the sacrificial death of Israel’s Messiah.

Robert D. Golding

Making Sense of Hell

Christian universalism (the view that all people are eventually saved) is largely predicated upon a negative reaction to the traditional doctrine of hell. It is therefore a “second option” to those who see hell as illogical, unnecessary, and/or cruel. In this article, I will argue that hell is not only logical and just but that it is also conceivably necessary. I will do this by way of a theological examination of those who occupy hell’s harrowing halls. This is essential because the loss of the traditional doctrine of hell can mean the loss of souls along with it. Doubting hell is playing with eternal fire.

Book Reviews

Credo 9, 4 (2019) on ‘Will All Be Saved?’

The current issue of Credo is available, this one devoted to the question: ‘Will all be saved?’

Here’s the blurb:

‘Will all be saved? There are few questions as sensitive as this one. It is sure to provoke an emotional response. For many, to answer “no” is to compromise the very character of God. A God who does not save everyone cannot be a God of love. In response, sometimes evangelicals rattle off texts that say Jesus is the only way or texts that teach the doctrine of hell, all the while neglecting the heart of the matter: the character of God himself. In this issue, pastors and professors alike look at the claims of universalism and show that the reason they fumble is first and foremost because they compromise attributes of God like justice and, yes, even love. Whether you are a churchgoer, pastor, or theologian yourself, it is only a matter of time before someone you love wrestles with universalism. It might even be you. So, prepare now.’

Individual articles, along with interviews and book reviews, are available to read from here.

Credo Magazine 2 (January 2012)

The second issue of Credo is now out, this one devoted to the topic of ‘In Christ Alone’.

According to the blurb:

‘The January issue argues for the exclusivity of the gospel, especially in light of the movement known as inclusivism. This issue will seek to answer questions like: Can those who have never heard the gospel of Christ be saved? Will everyone be saved in the end or will some spend an eternity in hell? Must someone have explicit faith in Christ to be saved? Contributors include David Wells, Robert Peterson, Michael Horton, Gerald Bray, Todd Miles, Todd Borger, Ardel Caneday, Nathan Finn, Trevin Wax, Michael Reeves, and many others.’

The magazine is available to read here, and can be downloaded as a 35.5 MB pdf here.

Horizons in Biblical Theology 33, 1 (2011)

The latest Horizons in Biblical Theology is out, with the contents and abstracts as below. According to Greene-McCreight’s editorial, four of the articles (Bockmuehl, Wagner, Kaminsky, and Lohr) were originally presented as papers at the 2009 Society of Biblical Literature Annual Conference for a session organized by the ‘Christian Theology and the Bible’ group. The title of the session was ‘Universalisms and Particularisms in Judaism and Christianity’.

Kathryn Greene-McCreight

Particularities and Universalities

Markus Bockmuehl

The Trouble with the Inclusive Jesus

In the long-standing debate between universalist and particularist interpretations of Jesus, recent years have witnessed the relentless rise of the idea that his was a socially radical and subversive gospel ahead of its time, fully in keeping with contemporary cultural agendas of “inclusion” or “inclusiveness”. The present study attempts to contextualize this “inclusive Jesus” within New Testament studies by means of three angles of approach: (1) recent work on the “inclusive”ethics of Jesus, (2) Jacob Neusner’s critique of New Testament scholarship on Jewish particularism and Christian universalism, and (3) the reception in current debate of Joachim Jeremias’ interpretation of Jesus’ view of Gentiles. In view of the overwhelming evidence that Jesus was “inclusive” as well as “exclusive” in both theology and praxis, Concluding Observations stress the location of this problem within a wider understanding of the biblical view of Election, and identify the Israelite particularity of Jesus as essential to his mission on behalf of Israel as well as the nations.

Joel N. Lohr

Taming the Untamable: Christian Attempts to Make Israel’s Election Universal

In this essay, the author suggests that contemporary ways of thinking about exclusion and particularism have profoundly affected contemporary interpretations of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments. This, the author suggests, becomes particularly evident when looking at the issue of Israel’s election. Through an examination of the theological interpretations of two evangelical Christian commentators on Deuteronomy, Christopher Wright and Gordon McConville, the author argues that each interpreter, to varying degrees, inappropriately reads a universal agenda into Deuteronomy in the service of Christian theology. The author maintains that a better approach is to accept the exclusive, particularistic nature of Deuteronomy (and of the Old Testament more generally) and to acknowledge that although a universal trajectory may be observed in the Bible overall, it should not be achieved through skewed readings of Deuteronomy, or at the cost of Israel’s irrevocable – and thus enduring – election.

Joel S. Kaminsky

Election Theology and the Problem of Universalism

This essay critiques the widespread tendencies to assume that universalism is always progressive while particularism is always regressive and that the Bible over time moves away from an intolerant particularism toward a tolerant universalism. In the course of the study, one comes to see that utilizing these binary modern categories often impedes one’s ability to understand the text in its own context. The author concludes by arguing that the Bible’s election theology provides evidence that universalism arose not through a waning of Israel’s sense of her self identity as God’s chosen people, but rather through Israel’s ever deepening reflection on the meaning and significance of her elect status.

J. Ross Wagner

Baptism “Into Christ Jesus” and the Question of Universalism in Paul

This essay adopts Paul’s occasional theological reflections on the concrete social practice of baptism as a vantage point from which to investigate the question of universalism in the apostle’s thought, examining passages from 1 Corinthians, Galatians, Romans, and Colossians. In these texts, Paul variously conceptualizes salvation as incorporation into “the one body of Christ”; “the seed of Abraham”; “the children of God”; or “the new humanity,” whose representative is Christ, the last Adam. Despite the different metaphors, it is clear in each case that it is the singular identity of the man Jesus Christ that is determinative for the collective identity of redeemed humanity; it is precisely – and only – with respect to union with him that diverse human beings become “one.” The essay concludes by considering briefly the implications of Paul’s christologically determined anthropology for the question of universal salvation and for the idea of the enduring election of Israel as God’s peculiar possession.

Benjamin Mangrum

Bringing “Fullness” to Naomi: Centripetal Nationalism in The Book of Ruth

Many interpretations of the Book of Ruth read the relationship between the Judean woman and her Moabitess daughter-in-law as the expression of an inclusive school of thought within Israel’s attempts to define itself. The foreigner, in this view, becomes accepted into the covenant people of God, demonstrating Israel’s multi-ethnic horizons and Yahweh’s universal concern. Yet this essay uncovers the presence of an ideological subtext undergirding the narrative: the nations, represented in the character of Ruth, are the means for Judah’s exaltation – an ideological position that I expose through a literary reading of the narrative. This reading has concomitant implications for the book’s Sitz-im-Leben. This article focuses primarily on two episodes in the narrative, 3:14-18 and 4:13-17, exposing the underlying centripetal ideology that anticipates the restoration and exaltation of Judah through the gifts (or “fullness”) brought in by the nations.