For His Renown

I’m reading Andreas Köstenberger’s commentary on John, and I found the statement I’ll quote in a moment fascinating. Before I quote Köstenberger, let me set the stage. Throughout the latter half of the 20^th century it was fashionable for scholars to view the Gospel of John as the product of a community, circle, or Johannine school. In his commentary, Raymond Brown described a hypothetical 5 stage process of redaction that the Gospel went through. J. L. Martyn also wrote a famous book called History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel. This way of reading the Gospel reflects the judgment that the Gospel of John reflects as much of the “history of the Johannine community”—what happened to the Christians connected to John—as it does the history of Jesus’ earthly life. Köstenberger relates this anecdote:

“In a stunning ‘confession,’ Robert Kysar, at a recent session of the Johannine literature section convened under the auspices of the Society of Biblical Literature, has chronicled the rise and fall of the Martyn/Brown-style ‘Johannine Community’ hypothesis and expressed personal regret for ever having endorsed it.” (Köstenberger, John, 3).

If it’s faddish to look at a naked emperor and go on and on about his beautiful clothes, don’t get taken in by the fad. If it’s faddish to look at a Gospel that claims to be about Jesus and go on and on about what happened to the Christian community in the 50–70 years after Jesus died, don’t get taken in by the fad. The emperor is naked, and one day there will be regret.

This post is mainly in response to Damion’s question in a comment on my previous post. Damion asked about how judgment fits in the equation. Brett commented that this is a no-brainer, and all I can say is that when you look at typical surveys of Biblical Theology in resources such as the Anchor Bible Dictionary or the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia or the relevant article in the Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, you won’t find a the glory of God mentioned as a possible center of Biblical Theology.

For fuller discussion of these issues, please see the paper I presented, a revised version of which will be in the next issue of Tyndale Bulletin.

Briefly, here’s how I see the “salvation through judgment” part working:

1. Salvation shows God to be “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin” (Exod 34:6b–7a).
2. Judgment shows God to be the one “who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children to the third and fourth generation” (Exod 34:7b).
3. Thus, salvation and judgment balance one another. The reality of judgment should keep us from thinking of God in purely sentimental terms as though he were a grandfatherly buddy who just lets things go. The reality of salvation should likewise keep us from thinking of God as a terrifying vengeful judge. Those who flee to him will be saved, but those who do not fear him will be judged.
4. Salvation always comes through judgment in various ways.
   1. Salvation for the nation of Israel at the Exodus came through the judgment of Egypt, and this pattern is repeated throughout the OT. When God saves Israel, he delivers the nation by bringing judgment on the nation’s enemies.
   2. Salvation for all believers of all ages is made possible by the judgment that falls on Jesus at the cross. The cross allows God to be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus (Rom 3:24–26). Even though members of the remnant live before Jesus, saving faith is explicit trust in the promises of God. I believe the promises of God begin in Genesis 3:15, and I think that many of these promises concern an anointed redeemer whom God will raise up to accomplish the salvation of his people—Messiah. So even though OT saints don’t know that the Messiah will be named Jesus, grow up in Nazareth etc., they have heard God promise to raise up a man who will save them and they trust God to keep his word. So they are saved by faith in God’s promised Messiah.
   3. Everyone who gets saved gets saved through judgment. All who flee to Christ and confess that he is Lord and that God raised him from the dead do so because they realize their need for a Savior. They realize their need for a Savior because they have become convinced that God is holy, they are sinful, and they know God will judge. In a sense, they feel the force of condemnation and justice, the wrath that remains upon them, and they recognize that Jesus is their only hope.
   4. Thus, historically (in Christ on the cross) and existentially (in their own experience of the wrath of God that makes them feel their need for Christ) believers are saved through judgment.

All of this reveals God as righteous and merciful, loving and just, holy and forgiving, for his glory forever. And his glory is what is best for all concerned. . . This is not my philosophy. Those who raise issues of omni-benevolence need to wrestle with what the texts say. The texts are the controlling elements in the discussion. The texts lead me to these conclusions. Soli Deo Gloria.

The main argument employed by those who don’t think that Romans 7 is describing the experience of believers is simply that in Romans 6 Paul has described believers as dead to sin (6:2), crucified with Christ and no longer enslaved to sin (6:6), and thus, having died, believers are set free from sin (6:7). These things being the case, it is argued that when Paul writes in Romans 7 of the one who is “sold under sin” (7:14) and serving the law of sin in the flesh (7:25), he cannot be describing believers.

There are several reasons I find this unpersuasive. There are probably more than the ones I will articulate here, but these are the ones that come to mind (influenced by Tom Schreiner’s commentary on Romans and John Piper’s sermon on Romans 7).

(1) Having described the way that believers have been freed from sin through union with Christ in his death in Romans 6:1–10, Paul commands believers in 6:11, “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (ESV). This tells us that while there is a positional reality that has been described in 6:1–10, there is an ongoing process of “mental transformation” (12:1–2) that still needs to happen in the experience of believers. Believers must “reckon” themselves dead to sin, and this “reckoning” is described with the same Greek verb used repeatedly in Romans 4 to describe Abraham being “reckoned” righteous not because of what he had done but according to grace (e.g., 4:3–5). So it seems to me that just as Abraham was “reckoned” righteous by faith in spite of his sin, so also believers must “reckon” themselves dead to sin even though they will groan til the day when they are set free from corruption (8:18–25). Why does Paul have to command believers to “reckon” themselves dead to sin? Because of the reality he names in Romans 7:17, 20, and 23—indwelling sin. (See also the command in 6:19, and the reasoning in 6:20–22).

(2) Why would Paul use the first person singular pronoun (“I”) in Romans 7 if he were not describing a reality that he himself experiences? Is there another place in Paul’s writings where he speaks in the first person singular (“I”) but is really not describing himself? The pervasive use of the first person singulars (“I” “me” “my”) and the lack of any indication that Paul is not describing himself argues against the position that Paul is not, in fact, describing himself.

(3) The poignancy of the anguished statements in 7:24–25 should be taken as indicative of Paul’s own feelings (Compare his anguish in 9:1–3). If the desperate cry, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” in 7:24 is not describing Paul’s own experience, don’t these words seem a little melodramatic? Wouldn’t it be more typical of Paul to describe the inability of unbelievers in a more detached way as we see in Rom 8:7, 1 Cor 2:14, or 2 Cor 4:4?

(4) If Paul is not describing his own experience as a Christian in Romans 7, he sure confuses the matter with the concluding words of the chapter: “So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin” (7:25b). If Paul meant to describe the experience of an unbeliever, which culminates in the wretched cry in 7:24 (“Who will rescue me?”), shouldn’t the opening words of 7:25 (“Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”) be followed by a Romans 6 type affirmation? In other words, the answer to the cry in 7:24 is given in 7:25a—Jesus will rescue me from this body of death, thank God! If Paul has been describing an unbeliever, why doesn’t Rom 7:25b read like Rom 6:7? Shouldn’t 7:25b, according to this interpretation, read more on the lines of: “now you’ve died with Christ and you’re set free from sin!”?

I submit, then, that the reason Paul has to write Romans 6 at all, the reason he has to command the Roman believers to “reckon” themselves to be what they (positionally in Christ) are in 6:11, is explained in Romans 7. In Romans 6, Paul introduces some of the only commands in all of Romans 1–11 because believers find themselves in the conflicted state described in Romans 7—we want to do good but we often do what we hate instead (cf. 7:15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25).

The answer to this dilemma is then explained in Romans 8:1–17, where Paul describes the difference between living according to the flesh and living according to the Spirit. Those who walk according to the Spirit will indeed “fulfill the law” (8:4), but this walking according to the Spirit entails putting to death the “deeds of the body” by the power of the Spirit (8:13). Here again, these “deeds of the body” have to be “put to death” because they arise from the “indwelling sin” described in Romans 7.

From the following quotations it would appear that Daniel P. Fuller holds to inerrancy (quotations from The Unity of the Bible, 1992):

“. . . rather than simply stating at the outset that the Bible is indeed the verbally inspired, inerrant Word of God, I arrive at this conclusion by beginning with facts and axioms and then work upward from these to establish the Bible’s verbal inspiration” (xvii).

“. . . I have felt that to follow this method was most appropriate in establishing the Bible’s inerrancy and unity” (xviii).

“In chapters 3 and 4, then, I conclude that the twenty-seven books composing the New Testament canon are also [with the OT] inerrantly and verbally inspired by God” (24).

But in describing “Black Saturday,” December 1, 1962, in Reforming Fundamentalism George Marsden recounts that

While Ockenga, as chairman, could have left it at that, he opened the door for major debate by asking immediately, ‘But why do we need a new creed?’ He could see no such need. Dan Fuller, the model of candor . . . saw his chance to assume his new leadership role. He pointed to what he saw as a vital need to revise the statement on inerrancy. ‘Dr. Ockenga,’ he asserted before the whole faculty and board, ‘there are errors which cannot be explained by the original autographs. It is simply not historically feasible to say that these errors would disappear if we had the autographs.’ He went on to explain his whole theory of the nature of biblical inerrancy—essentially, that the Bible claimed inerrancy only for its ‘revelational’ teachings, that is, matters that make one wise unto salvation. . . .

Ockenga responded with thinly veiled indignation. 'Well, what are we going to do then? Dan Fuller thinks the Bible is just full of errors' (211–12).

Then Marsden records this fascinating detail: “As a matter of course, stenographers had made a shorthand record of the entire planning conference. Within a few days the elder Fuller [Dan’s father, Charles, the evangelist who with Ockenga founded Fuller Seminary] had gathered all the notes and the transcripts typed from them and placed them in his safe. Eventually they disappeared” (215).

The account goes on,

A few days later Ockenga called him [Dan Fuller] in and asked him if he could sign the statement of faith. Fuller said ‘sure’ he could. He observed that Article II of the creed, that concerning Scripture, combined the statement that the Bible was inerrant with the classic formula that it was ‘the only infallible rule of faith and practice.’ That phrase, Fuller argued, implied that it was as a rule of faith and practice that the Bible was ‘free from error in the whole and in the part’ (216).

It seems to me that this is a classic case of “equivocation,” which exploits the ambiguity in the meaning of words or phrases. On the one hand, Fuller asserts that the Bible has errors, and on the other hand, he signs a statement saying the Bible has no errors. Then, 30 years later he publishes The Unity of the Bible and defends “inerrancy”! Did his mind change or does he mean by “inerrancy” what he meant in 1962? What Fuller meant by the term was clearly not what the conservatives at Fuller (e.g., Ockenga, Carl Henry, Harold Lindsell, Wilbur Smith) meant by the term.

Marsden recounts that in the view of at least one of the Fuller trustees, “Those who were not in accord with the creed should, in honesty, leave” (215).

Unfortunately, those who disagree with creeds are apparently never willing to leave. They stay around and either change the creed or ignore it. As Marsden notes on the previous page,

Beginning with the gradual slippage of Harvard into Unitarianism, the past two hundred years had seen an endless repetition of the same story. Most of America’s greatest academic institutions had been founded by conservative Bible-believing evangelicals. But nearly every one of these schools had eventually fallen to the onslaughts of theological liberalism, and then to outright secularism. A vast empire lay in ruins (214, and see further Marsen’s The Soul of the American University).

Those interested in a full explanation of Inerrancy should consult “The Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy,” which in my view accurately represents what the Bible claims about itself.