Kevin Bauder recently preached a five-part series on the gospel at Bible Baptist Church (apparently downloadable in IE but not Firefox):
HT: Chuck Bumgardner
I benefited immensely in 2003 from these two four-page articles by my former pastor, Dr. Mark Minnick:
The two PDFs above occur in the middle of the Sept./Oct. and Nov./Dec. 2003 issues of Frontline. These two articles condense Minnick’s outstanding four-part sermon series:
After praising J. Christiaan Beker, Buz Meyers brashly asserts,
Nevertheless, the apostle Paul and other members of the first generation were wrong about the timing of the Parousia. Christ did not return, and the End did not arrive as was expected. This embarrassing miscalculation on the part of the early Church may help to explain in part why the apocalyptic dimension of the NT has not been fully appreciated until relatively recently. Doctrines of biblical inspiration and infallibility may have encouraged overlooking or ignoring NT passages that speak about the Parousia’s arrival in the near future. Errors with regard to the timing of the Parousia, however, have allowed later interpreters to question the certainty of the Parousia’s arrival as well and then dismiss the Parousia altogether. In other words, because the Parousia did not occur when it was supposed to, it probably will never happen, so why consider the Parousia at all? The apostle Paul’s thinking, however, demonstrates that a change in the timing of the Parousia need not undermine the certainty of its coming. . . . [A]lthough Paul may have changed his mind about whether or not he would be alive at the Parousia, Paul never gives up hope in Christ’s future return.
– Charles D. Myers Jr., “The Persistence of Apocalyptic Thought in New Testament Theology,” in Biblical Theology: Problems and Perspectives: In Honor of J. Christiaan Beker (ed. Steven J. Kraftchick, Charles D. Myers Jr., and Ben C. Ollenburger; Nashville: Abingdon, 1995), pp. 212–13 (bold emphasis added).
So Jesus’ coming really isn’t imminent, nor is the Bible inerrant. But even though Paul was way off on the timing bit, we can take comfort that he really was right that Jesus will actually return someday. What a blessing.
Is it possible to hold both the imminency of Jesus’ second coming and biblical inerrancy? I believe it is. Responding to a bold assertion similar to Buz Myers’ above, John MacArthur writes,
This is a humbling reminder:
[I]t was his [i.e, Paul’s] conversion on the Damascus road that enabled him to see many things in a new perspective. . . . Even though he knows full well that he came to his Christian understanding via the Damascus road experience, and not in classes on exegesis, he also argues that what he, as a Christian and an apostle, finds in the Scriptures is actually there, and the reason unconverted Jews do not see it is because “to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it take [sic] away. Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts” (2 Cor 3:14–15). In other words, as far as Paul is concerned, conversion to Christ removes the veil to enable the reader to see what is actually there. Judging by his passionate handling of Scripture in Galatians, and in his slightly less passionate but scarcely less intense handling of Scripture in Romans, Paul is concerned to show that the gospel he preaches has in fact actually been announced by what we now refer to as the Old Testament: the δικαιοσύνη [i.e., righteousness] he announces is that “to which the Law and the Prophets testify” (Rom 3:21).
–D. A. Carson, “Mystery and Fulfillment: Toward a More Comprehensive Paradigm of Paul’s Understanding of the Old and New,” in The Paradoxes of Paul. Vol. 2 of Justification and Variegated Nomism (ed. D. A. Carson, Peter T. O’Brien, and Mark A. Seifrid; Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 181; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004), pp. 410–11.
Last week I linked to Scott McKnight’s five-part series on the new perspective(s) on Paul. Here are some other recent perspectives:
Update: Cf. Phil Gons’s more thorough summary: “Recent Discussion on the New Perspective on Paul.”
“Thinking About the Gospel” is another thoughtful, compelling, and sometimes provocative series of short essays by Kevin Bauder.
Note: Central Seminary emails these essays every Friday afternoon. You can join the mailing list (as well as access the archives) here.
This evening John Piper wrote a moving short essay: “Putting My Daughter to Bed Two Hours After the Bridge Collapsed.”
