This new article is available as a PDF:
D. A. Carson, “Excerpts From A Sermon: The Call of the Prophet in Declining Time: Ezekiel 1–3,” The Spurgeon Fellowship Journal (Fall 2007).
Highlights:
“Now what is vital for us, in the opening chapters, is the nature of God’s call on Ezekiel’s life. For God does not call all prophets in exactly the same way.”
Yarbrough, Robert Wayne. The Salvation Historical Fallacy? Reassessing the History of New Testament Theology. Edited by Robert Morgan. History of Biblical Interpretation Series 2. Leiden: Deo, 2004. xiv + 402 pp.
1. Introduction
Yarbrough is a NT professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, where he serves as chair of the NT department. The Salvation Historical Fallacy? (henceforth SHF) builds on Yarbrough’s “The heilsgeschichtliche Perspective in Modern New Testament Theology” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Aberdeen, 1985; xiii + 520 pp.), incorporating two additional decades of research (cf. many of the articles in Yarbrough’s Curriculum Vitae).
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Harrisville, Roy A. and Walter Sundberg. The Bible in Modern Culture: Baruch Spinoza to Brevard Childs. 2d ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002. xiii + 349 pp. $35.00.
Harrisville and Sundberg (henceforth, HS) are professors at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. Harrisville is professor emeritus of NT, and Sundberg is professor of church history. This second edition updates the 1995 edition, subtitled Theology and Historical-Critical Method from Spinoza to Käsemann, by slightly revising the pervious chapters and adding new ones on Schlatter, Ricoeur, and Childs.
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Neill, Stephen and Tom Wright. The Interpretation of the New Testament 1861–1986. 2d ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. 464 pp. $39.95 paper.
Stephen Neill (1900–1984) was a missionary, Anglican Bishop, professor, and linguist, and N. T. Wright (b. 1948), who earned his Ph.D. from Oxford in 1980, is now the famous and influential Bishop of Durham. The Interpretation of the New Testament 1861–1986 (henceforth, INT) attempts to summarize the major people and events in the vast field of NT interpretation over a 125-year period. Neill’s first edition, which was the outgrowth of his Firth Lectures at the University of Nottingham in 1962 (p. ix), was published in 1966 and covered one hundred years of NT interpretation (1861–1961). Neill began updating INT for its second edition, but he died before completing it. He did, however, discuss the second edition with Wright, who edited Neill’s work (chapters 1–8, pp. 1–359) and replaced Neill’s previous conclusions with a final chapter that accounts for twenty-five more years of NT interpretation (pp. 360–449). The subject matter is almost exclusively British with some discussions of significant advances elsewhere (e.g., Germany), so the volume could be appropriately titled The Interpretation of the New Testament in Britain from 1861 to 1986.
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,
I just stumbled across a convicting quotation by Dr. Carson that I wrote down during one of his class lectures last March:
“Most people go through life concerned that others will think too little of them. Paul was concerned that others would think too much of him.“
He made this comment while exegeting verse 6 in 2 Cor 12:1–10:
Below is a picture of the Eric True family. Eric is my brother-in-law, and his wife, Alicia, is my older sister. (I’m the second of seven children.) Their two boys are Brandon (age 4) and Jonathan (age 2).
God has burdened Eric to glorify Him by serving as a pastor in Southern California. Check out their . . .
Eric’s plan is to begin by spending about two years serving at Grace Bible Church of Menifee, pastored by Tim Lovegrove.
I’ve known Eric well since about 2001, and I couldn’t dream of a better brother-in-law. He is above reproach. He’s perfect for my sister, and God has gifted him with outstanding pastoral gifts such as teaching, leadership, and overall people skills. Also, from my perspective, his theology is rock solid. And since Eric is a native of Southern California, it’s hard to think of a better fit for church planting. (Can you tell that I’m excited about this?!)
What can you do?
For more info, contact GBC of Menifee.
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.