Panel discussion on Christology in the OT: Hamilton, Garrett, Gentry

In correspondence, a sister from Jews for Jesus pointed me to this panel discussion on Christology in the OT at SBTS. The discussion is hosted by Dr. Thomas Schreiner, panel includes m'man Dr. James Hamilton, author of a wonderful book on Biblical Theology (among others), Dr. Duane Garrett, and Dr. Peter Gentry.

It's a good, solid, helpful discussion, with a few sparks here and there and more than a few helpful guidelines.

I'm saying this half to share with you, and half to bookmark for myself!

Enjoy.

Postscript: for any who don't know, my talks in a British conference on Messiah in the OT can be found via this post.

James Hamilton's definition of "typological interpretation"

In continuing to study for my lesson tonight on Exodus 30:1ff., I wanted to read something on typology. First place I turn (of course) is this excellent resource by my friend, Jim Hamilton. It in turn sends me to an article by him in the Southern Baptist Journal of Theology, where I find an expanded definition which I now share with you:

I would offer the following working definition of typological interpretation: typological interpretation is canonical exegesis that observes divinely intended patterns of historical correspondence and escalation in significance in the events, people, or institutions of Israel, and these types are in the redemptive historical stream that flows through the Bible.  Some exposition of aspects of this definition will perhaps be helpful, starting with the last part first: (1) the progress of revelation through salvation history as recorded in the Bible functions as banks of the stream for typological interpretation. Things that are outside the banks of this stream do not match the “type” of interpretations that qualify as valid typological readings. (2) Divine intention points to God’s sovereign, providential work in the drama of human history. (3) Typological interpretation of the Bible looks for the ways the human authors of the Bible have “read” God’s work in history, and it seeks to discern cues the human authors give as to how they have interpreted that work. (4) Typological interpretation then shapes the worldview of those who have learned interpretation from the biblical authors, and we who would learn from the biblical authors seek to interpret the world and our experiences in it in the same way that the biblical authors have. We seek to have our symbolic universe shaped by the symbolic universe portrayed in the Bible. We seek to build our interpretive framework after the pattern of the interpretive framework employed by the biblical authors. Our world is, as it were, read through the lens given to us by the Bible. ["Was Joseph a Type of the Messiah? Tracing the Typological Identification between Joseph, David, and Jesus," by James M. Hamilton (Vol. 12: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology Volume 12. 2008 [4] [49])

It's well-written and thus a bit dense. That's why I'm posting it, so you can mull and chew. Like I'm doing.

Calvinist hermeneutics

Gotcha.

Walvoord-Camping debate

Decades ago I heard that Harold Camping and John Walvoord, then president of Dallas Theological Seminary, had conducted an on-air debate. Only recently, I found where it could be downloaded and heard online. The debate lasts nearly six hours, and I just finished listening last night.

The debate is interesting and instructive. The moderator, a gracious man, seems stylistically to be on a radio show from the 40s (the crackling sound quality heightens this effect as he speaks); his is an oddly florid tone. But Camping and Walvoord are both straightforward and to the point.

I could do a fairly accurate job of summarizing the six hours like this: for the most part...

• Walvoord keeps reading Scripture and saying "I think it means what it says"
• Camping keeps working his decoder-ring hermeneutics to make Scripture not mean what it says

And that's pretty much it.

For instance, here's a big clue: Listen for Camping repeatedly cautioning that we must read a passage "very carefully," or admonishing that we must "let the Bible interpret itself" rather than being devoted to a particularly school "or consensus." Sounds good? How can you argue against either?

Yet every time, these words signals that Camping is about to explain how Scripture doesn't mean what it says. It means he is about to twist Scripture. He is about to bring together two things that have no bearing on each other, and make a bus bench in Ohio mean that a hamburger in California is really a cup of tea in England.

Figures; Camping also says that the whole Bible is in parables, and he says that it is is very difficult to understand. Perhaps his version of Hebrews 1:1 reads that God "spoke in incomprehensible code to the fathers by the prophets"?

Also interesting: a caller asks about not knowing the day or the hour, and Walvoord answers. Camping simply declines to answer, which is an exception. It looms large in light of his recent deadly error.

Now, this may sound as if I'm writing the next bit for effect, but it is literally true: around the third and start of the fourth hour, I was thinking very appreciatively about what gentlemen both Camping and Walvoord were, and I was anticipating praising both for their behavior — and then the fourth hour started. Camping became completely unhinged. He launched an absurd attack on premillennialism, listing off a dozen dire accusations, including that premillennialism distorts the Gospel, denies Christ's kingship, denies Christ's lordship, denies the Bible's authority to explain itself, and a veritable pile of verbal manure.

Camping did not just crack in recent years. He'd already jumped the shark at this point.

Walvoord remained a gentleman in his response, more so than I would have. He said something like this: "My, that is a very impressive list of accusations. The only problem is that every one of them is false." No kidding.

Ominous note.  There was a very poignant moment at about five hours and thirteen minutes. In the course of his answer, John Walvoord warned against the slippery slope that is spiritualization. He observed that many heresies and much liberalism involved the spiritualization of the Bible. And then he said this: "Once you start spiritualizing, there is no telling where you are going to stop."

He said this in front of Harold Camping who, decades later, after assuring people that the Bible guaranteed that Jesus would return to rapture His own on May 21, 2011, then said, "Oh yeah, about that — oops, sorry, it was actually a spiritual event."

A second poignant note is that in his attempt at a response, Camping actually — I kid you not — alluded to the Biblical admonition against many people becoming teachers (James 3:1f.)! You can't make this stuff up. If only Camping had heeded his own words.

Or listened to John Walvoord.

Two crucial hermeneutic principles

Carrying on from yesterday's meta:

1. "Jesus" is not God's way of saying "I can fudge on My promises and covenants" — to say the least.
2. "For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory" (2 Corinthians 1:20) is not a Biblely way of saying that "all the promises of God find their Fooled ya! in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Ah! ya got me! to God for his glory."

Sometimes a squirrel is a squirrel.

Discuss.

Did Jesus sweat drops of blood as He prayed in the Garden?

My heart is in the pulpit, even when the rest of me doesn't have that blessing. That being the case, among my great joys is knowing that the material I offer at my various sites is being used in pulpits on various continents.

This time, ahead of any Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter services, I offer a thought about a deeply ingrained fixture among evangelicals for a long, long time: the idea that Jesus sweated blood as He prayed in the garden.

The image is based on Luke 22:44 — "And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground."

You may notice a marginal note that both verses 43 and 44 are missing from some manuscripts. Since v. 44 is the only verse that mentions this phenomenon, it may not be the greatest idea to lean on something that is textually questionable. However, that isn't my focus here. Let us suppose, for our discussion, that the verse is textually certain.

Does Dr. Luke assert that our Savior sweat blood as He prayed? Many choice servants of God have thought so. Hear Spurgeon from just one place of many:

The mental pressure arising from our Lord’s struggle with temptation, so forced his frame to an unnatural excitement, that his pores sent forth great drops of blood which fell down to the ground. This proves how tremendous must have been the weight of sin when it was able to crush the Saviour so that he distilled great drops of blood! ...This sets forth the voluntariness of Christ’s sufferings, since without a lance the blood flowed freely. No need to put on the leech, or apply the knife; it flows spontaneously. No need for the rulers to cry, “Spring up, O well;” of itself it flows in crimson torrents. (pm for 3/23)

However, note what many say, as contrasted with what Luke said. Many say Jesus "sweated blood," "sweat blood." Luke does not say this. Luke wrote, "his sweat became like [ὡσεὶ, hōsei] great drops of blood. Do you notice the difference? One is a declarative statement ("sweated blood"), the other is a simile ("like great drops of blood").

Now, it is just possible that hōsei means "just like"... but still, there's that "like." Consider some of Luke's other uses of hōsei. For instance, in Acts 2:3 — "And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them." Does anyone argue that the tongues were actual flames? I don't think so. They were like flames of fire. Or was Stephen's face the actual face of an angel, or was it like an angel's face (Acts 6:15)?

So I take this as a simile. What is a simile? It is a figure of speech where two different objects are compared, often because of a single point of correspondence.

Maybe I can illustrate by a little family joke. I forget how it started, but my mother used to say with great fondness that I was "like a son" to her. We'd chuckle.

Why was it funny? Well, because I wasn't "like" a son to her. I was her son. If I were "like" a son, I would not be her son. A thing is not "like" what it is; it is what it is.

So, when Luke says that Jesus' sweat was "like" great drops of blood, he is saying that Jesus' sweat was not great drops of blood. No need to search for medical parallels, or to speak of "hemohydrosis." Had Jesus sweat blood, it would have been great drops of blood — not "like" great drops of blood.

Luke and our Lord lived in a different land and time. Their days weren't spent in safety-engineered offices and air-conditioned buildings with rounded, edgeless corners. They didn't earn their living by sitting on cushions and tapping out words on ergonomic keyboards. No, they worked out of doors, among sharp stones and rough wood and jagged iron. They saw many cuts, and plenty of bleeding. Certainly Dr. Luke had also seen his share of blood pouring from cuts and wounds.

Luke is telling us that Jesus did not build up a mild sweat, a thin sheen of perspiration. So heavy was His burden that the Lord Jesus looked as if He had been deeply cut, and were bleeding profusely. Only it wasn't blood that was pouring off His body in a great flow of steady, swollen drops. It was sweat.

Probably the closest any of us have come would be a heavy nosebleed. We lean over the sink and watch in some fascination: drip, drip, drip, drip. Steady, large succession of drops. So it was with Jesus, but all over, and in sweat.

The picture loses none of its poignancy with the loss of sanguinity. There is no need nor place for sacrificial shedding of blood in the Garden. That would take place on the Cross.

Now our Lord is well-nigh crushed by the prospect of bearing our sins, and His Father's just wrath. The Lord Jesus was in such an agony as He confronted the horrors awaiting him, the torment and torture of body and spirit that He would endure, that as He wrestled in prayer, sweat poured off of Him. So great was the cost of our salvation.

So great was our Savior's love.

Hallelujah! What a Savior.

My comment on Longman's shrug about the historicity of Adam

Justin Taylor, who (A) has a new site and (B) continues to display his maddening ability to find some of the most noteworthy, newsworthy items all over The Interwebs, yesterday linked to a vid where Tremper Longman (the third!) basically says "Adam-schmadam! Nice story, though." (Later, Justin also linked to a fine article detailing twelve reasons for treating Adam as an historical person.)

The former article engendered a lively discussion in which yr obdt svt took part. After a couple of dismissive comments, I added the following which, to prevent it being completely buried, I share with you (slightly edited):

The presumption of many folks like Longman (here) and his defenders is that we can shave off some select unpopular Biblical teachings here, without a negative impact on other equally-unpopular Biblical teachings there.

A secondary presumption is that any reading that today's flock of intelligentsia do not consider sufficiently "sophisticated" or "nuanced" should eo ipso be left at the roadside.

Unfortunately for both of those assumptions, there is a steady core of us Evangelicals who do remember history that stretches back more than ten years, and thus remember how the exact same line of argument in the late 1800s led to the apostasy and liberalism that vitiated the professing church through the 1900s, no matter how loudly and forcefully we are urged that "this time, it's different!"

We also remember that some of the first defectors maintained some core Christian beliefs that they liked, without the other equally-Biblical beliefs that they didn't — for awhile. But then their disciples applied their own premises more considerably, with an inevitable jettisoning of more and more core belief, until the core was pretty much gone.

So we decline the invitation to hop on the latest float in the parade, knowing (remembering!) that the ephemeral roses which make floats so pretty today won’t smell so sweet tomorrow.

Much as I agree with myself, my favorite comment still is the first, from a commenter named pduggie:

Yep, I have a sin nature because of something some guy did in a story.

UPDATE: Oh, dear. I should have predicted this. Don't miss the "Doubt as heroic" meme in the first meta linked, above.

Another powers-of-observation test (Who Done It?)

My particular task at work leaves me with far less free time that usual. I'm working on a post, but don't know when it will be done.

For now... check this out.

You've read that Bible verse how many times? Are you sure you've seen everything it teaches?

I think Psalm 119:18 is a prayer we should always pray, because there's always more for us to see. Not new things, but truths and angles we've missed.

(I'm told there's a glitch with the display of that verse. Can't address it from work; if you click on it, a window will open with it displayed)

Babylon... rebuilt?

Joel Rosenberg reports that funds are being directed towards the rebuilding of Babylon. Yes, that Babylon, the actual city of Babylon.

Saddam Hussein had been very invested in resurrecting Babylon to power and glory, but he's very invested in something else at the present. Nonetheless, the dream hasn't died.

This won't be of any real interest to the I-know-it-looks-like-a-squirrel-but-I'm-going-to-say-"Jesus" crowd, but those of us who think that prophecies about Babylon are about, well, Babylon, find it of at least passing interest.

Afterthoughts on yesterday's post: on moral reasoning, and word-studies

Today, a two-item smorgasbord for your edification.

In Bad love, bad end - and the Cross, we looked at Solomon's apostasy, through the grim narrative of 1 Kings 11. Recall the first two verses, which will spark two further observations:

Now King Solomon loved many foreign women, along with the daughter of Pharaoh: Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women, 2 from the nations concerning which the LORD had said to the people of Israel, "You shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall they with you, for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods." Solomon clung to these in love.

First, love is not self-justifying. We're told twice that Solomon had love for these women. The same Hebrew word is used in both verses. Isn't love a good thing? In this case, clearly not.

Why not? Because Yahweh had forbidden these unions. Things are not moral nor immoral in themselves, as if by some inherent quality — like one action has lots of "midi-chloreans," the other doesn't. No, acts and choices are moral or immoral as judged by God. After all, there are no such things as brute nor neutral facts. There are only created facts, facts created, defined, and categorized by God the Creator.

So I can imagine Solomon "reasoning" exactly as I've heard sinning, apostatizing "Christians" "reason." Solomon could have said,

"Is not love a good thing? Has not Yahweh Himself commanded that we love our neighbor? Are these not lost women who need the light and word of Yahweh? Is it not to the greater glory of Yahweh that we expand our reach, that we reach out in love to these benighted souls? Think of the new opportunities I will have to bear witness! And who better than I, the servant of Yahweh, who has seen visions of Yahweh and heard His voice? Surely it pleases God for me to hold my arms out wide, to love broadly in His name! Hallelujah! Isn't Yahweh wonderful?"

Plausible, isn't it? And isn't this precisely the sort of "reasoning" we hear in rationalizing various sins — heresies, homosexuality, women pastors, rebellion against authority, refusal to involve oneself in a local assembly, and perversions of the Gospel?

Just one problem: all is dashed to shards by the command of Yahweh.

This love was not beautiful and glorious. It was ugly and destructive. Under no circumstances could it have been otherwise for Solomon. It stood condemned a-borning.

I think you can see many modern applications.

And so, I pass to you this principle, not for the last time:

Never try to use a concept
to cancel a commandment.

Second, leave Greek to people who know Greek. How many times have you heard people — even preachers! — say, "Now, agapē means God's sacrificial, self-giving, unselfish love of commitment to the good of others." Whenever I hear that statement... well, I wince. I cringe.

Now, it may be true that the love to which God calls us is just that: selfless commitment to others' good. That's fine. But don't say that that is what agapē means, as if this were a special word, as if all those ideas were inherently wrapped up in that term. Because they aren't!

For instance, in the Greek translation of this passage, verse two says εἰς αὐτοὺς ἐκολλήθη Σαλωμων τοῦ ἀγαπῆσαι. That is, "Solomon was joined to them to love them." The translator(s) used the verb agapaō. Can you plug in the notion, "joined to them in God's kind of sacrificial, selfless, self-giving commitment to their good"?

No. His love for them was sinful, and therefore selfish.

So the meaning we find in agapē is not inherent in the word itself. It comes from the ways the Lord and the apostles use, demonstrate, and describe it.

Best not to comment on Greek, unless you know Greek. And knowing Greek involves much more than using concordances to do "word-studies."

Dispensationalism: defined?

I recommend subscribing to the Theological Word of the Day. Each day you'll be mailed a new term, brief definition, and sometimes some recommended reading.

But the last two have been... uneven. I'll pick on today's definition at this blog, and perhaps the other, later, at Pyromaniacs.

The word? Dispensationalism. Here's their definition in full:

A biblical hermeneutic paradigm common in conservative fundamentalist and Evangelical Christian theology. Originating from the Plymouth Brethren in the nineteenth century and popularized in the Schofield Reference Bible in the twentieth century, dispensationalism has three primary characteristics: 1) the call for a consistent literal or “normal” hermeneutic, 2) the separation of Israel from the church, 3) the separation of human history into several distinct epics, “economies,” or dispensations in which God relates to mankind in a distinct way. With regard to soteriological history (history of salvation), dispensationalism teaches that salvation has always been by faith alone, by grace alone, yet the content of the Gospel has been progressively revealed through biblical history. Dispensationalism has a variety of forms and has gone through some recent developments.

Well. For starters, I think I like referring to it as a "biblical hermeneutic paradigm." This correctly takes the focus off of counting or slicing dispensations (which everyone does), charts (which many do and anyone can), or even the timing of the Rapture (which all positions affirm, but with differing temporal location). It correctly isolates the issue as a hermeneutical issue. That, I like a lot.

However.

"Schofield"? Best-selling study Bible since the start of the last century? How about "Scofield"? Eek.

And then after a good beginning and two good distinctives, it slips on the third: "the separation of human history into several distinct epics, 'economies,' or dispensations in which God relates to mankind in a distinct way."

Um, no.

Every Biblical system distinguishes at least two different economies (hel-lo? Old Testament? New Testament?). Most would also grant that pre-Fall is a different set of expectations, and post-Second-Advent is another. Well, that's four — unless the individual is just so angry at dispensationalists that he'll Gumby up words to keep himself different.

But look: if you feel free to eat ham, go to church on Sunday, and ask God for forgiveness explicitly on the basis of Jesus' blood rather than offering an animal sacrifice .... gotcha!

Probably Ryrie's third distinctive is a better one: seeing the glory of God as the center of history, rather than man's redemption.

Thus far, my quibbles.