Part One Isaiah 11 A great monarch, called the “Branch” (Isa. 11:1. Cf. 4:2) will be possessed of the Holy Spirit (11:2). His wisdom and justice will be equal to Yahweh (11:2-4). Already Isaiah has taught us that this person will be miraculously conceived by a virgin (7:14 cf. Gen. 3:15); and no wonder, because He will be “Immanuel” – God with us. Now we understand more clearly the import of Micah’s words about the coming One, “Whose goings forth …
Category: Theology
This post and those to follow are extracts from a draft chapter in the book ‘The Words of the Covenant: A Biblical Theology’ Vol. 1 (forthcoming d.v.) The prophet Isaiah prosecuted his ministry between around 755 to 685 B.C.[1] Isaiah has a lot to say about both the developing picture of the Creation Project and the person of the promised King who will reign upon the earth. His presentation of both of these broad themes furthers the developmental picture of …
The well-known biblical scholar James Barr, in his book Biblical Words for Time, wrote that the dispute about whether God is timelessly eternal or eternally time-bound cannot be decided by going to a Hebrew and Greek lexicon and looking at the terms. The evangelical scholar Carl Henry claimed that “The Bible’s explicit teaching about the nature of divine eternity is inconclusive.” This is an important subject. There has been a lot of debate about whether God is necessarily in time …
Having been asked to recommend a few books on Calvinism I thought it might make a good post at Dr Reluctant. I myself am about as much a modified Calvinist as I am a modified Dispensationalist. Although many will not agree with me, I believe that “plain-sense,” old fashioned grammatico-historical hermeneutics requires some readjustment of standard Reformed formulations of Calvinist doctrines. My reason for this is that the hermeneutics of Reformed Calvinism, when aimed at eschatology, produces supercessionism and covenant …
Part Three Block’s Challenge Recently the Old Testament scholar Daniel Block has vigorously challenged the whole Cosmic Temple thesis.[1] Even if his counter-arguments are somewhat provisional[2], and he retains certain questionable positions on some matters (e.g. the presence of a covenant in Eden[3]; violence beyond Eden[4]; Jesus replacing the Jerusalem temple[5]), I think he has banged more than a couple of nails into the coffin. Allow me to set out several of his major criticisms[6]: The depiction of Eden in …
Part Two Objections to the Cosmic Temple Motif in Scripture In Beale’s book The Temple and the Church’s Mission, both the garden of Eden and the Jerusalem temple are types of the Church, which is confusingly called the literal non-physical temple.[1] Beale’s thesis, which is fed by many ingeniously interpreted though vague allusions – mainly reliant upon reinterpreting OT texts by privileged interpretations of the NT – is that the OT stories of Adam, Abraham, and Israel recapitulate the same …
Part One Firmer Ground Following the biblical narrative it appears that the design and furnishings of the tabernacle/temple have some correspondence with the Paradise which Adam forfeited. This “remembrance” would only increase the sense of what was lost and what the Promised One (Gen. 3:15) would restore. It would act as an encouragement to faith. And the expectation would only be heightened once it was also revealed that the sanctuary was modeled after one in heaven (Exod. 25:9; Heb. 8:1-5).[1] …
“Israel’s temple was a symbolic shadow pointing to the eschatological “greater and more perfect tabernacle” (Heb. 9:11) in which Christ and the church would dwell and would form a part. If so, it would seem to be the wrong approach for Christians to look in hope to the building of another temple in Jerusalem composed of earthly “bricks and mortar” as a fulfillment of the OT temple prophecies.” – G. K. Beale, A New Testament Biblical Theology, 634 The above quotation …
This was written as an Excursus for a chapter in the book ‘The Words of the Covenant’ I am well aware of the view held by many respected scholars who believe that “the Kingdom of God” is the main theme of the Bible.[1] But it must be admitted that it has not been an overarching theme of Genesis, and therefore of the first several thousand years of history. Though it may be rightly intimated from the image of God of …
Part Two Going Far Beyond the Bible All of the major advocates of apocalyptic gather data, albeit not exclusively, from outside of the Bible. Brent Sandy demonstrates his procedure of going beyond Scripture when he says, “In order to understand the language of apocalyptic, we must review the period of world history relevant to Daniel 8 and then examine Daniel’s language.”[1] He is not alone. Notice what is entailed in this statement about the genre: Apocalypse was a literary genre …
