God's Glory in Salvation through Judgment: A Biblical Theology

by James M. Hamilton Jr.

Overview

Drawing from God’s self-revelation in Exodus 34, Hamilton moves through the Bible book by book, showing that there is one theological center to the whole Bible: God’s glory in salvation through judgment.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781581349764
Publisher:	Crossway
Publication date:	11/04/2010
Pages:	640
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

James M. Hamilton Jr. (PhD, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is professor of biblical theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and preaching pastor at Kenwood Baptist Church.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

CAN THE CENTER HOLD?

1. Introduction

William Butler Yeats captured the spirit of Our Time in the opening lines of his poem "The Second Coming":

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
The image of a world spinning out of control, a world no longer heeding the call of its Master because truth is only "true for you," matches the default settings of our intuitive templates. Biblical scholars and theologians are no exception

Describing theologians since the 1960s, David Wells writes:

They, too, began not with divine revelation but with human experience, not with God's interpretation of life but with the interpretation that in our self-asserted freedom we have devised for ourselves. They rejected the idea that there is any center to the meaning that they sought, any normativity to any one proposal

Academic practitioners of biblical theology have not transcended the spirit of the age. Walter Brueggemann has written that "in every period of the discipline, the questions, methods, and possibilities in which study is cast arise from the sociointellectual climate in which the work must be done" While I would never assert that everyone who thinks biblical theology has no center has either capitulated to or consciously embraced the spirit of the age, the "sociointellectual climate" corresponds to the view that biblical theology has no center We are all affected by the temperature of the times. We need not look far to see that the center has not held, and things have fallen apart. As Brueggemann writes, "The new situation in Old Testament theology is reflective of a major breakpoint in Western culture. ... The breakpoint concerns modes of knowledge that have too innocently yielded certitude"

The purpose of this book, quixotic as it may seem, is to seek to do for biblical theology what Kevin Vanhoozer has done for hermeneutics and David Wells has done for evangelical theology The goal is not a return to an imaginary golden age but to help people know God. The quest to know God is clarified by diagnosis of the problem (Wells), the vindication of interpretation (Vanhoozer), and, hopefully, a clear presentation of the main point of God's revelation of himself, that is, a clear presentation of the center of biblical theology. I hasten to embrace the humility articulated by Schlatter and recently restated by Schreiner: there is more than one way to pursue biblical theology, and there can be no final, definitive treatment of the subject. Though I am pursuing the center, I celebrate the fact that "each of the various approaches and perspectives can cast a different light upon the NT, and in that sense having a number of different approaches is helpful" I hope that even those who are not convinced that I am right about the center for which I argue will nevertheless profit from the perspective articulated here.

Vanhoozer describes his goal as "reinvigorating author-oriented interpretation through a creative retrieval of Reformed theology and speech-act philosophy." The urgency of his task grows out of the recognition that "the fate of hermeneutics and humanity alike stand or fall together" Similarly, Wells writes, "It is not theology alone in which I am interested but theology that is driven by a passion for truth; and it is not evangelicalism alone in which I am interested but evangelicalism as the contemporary vehicle for articulating a historical Protestant orthodoxy" These academic sallies are necessary because, in the words of Machen, "what is today a matter of academic speculation begins tomorrow to move armies and pull down empires" The ramifications ideas have in the wider culture reflect their impact on the church, and as Justin Taylor has noted, "As goes the academy, so goes the church" For Wells, in the providence of God, the upheavals in society "that could portend a very troubled future and perhaps the disintegration of Western civilization" also point to "a moment when, in God's mercy and providence, the Church could be deeply transformed for good"

The transformation the church needs is the kind that results from beholding the glory of God in the face of Christ (2 Cor. 3:18–4:6). This glory of God is a saving and judging glory — an aroma of life to those being saved and death to those perishing (2 Cor. 2:15–16), and this saving and judging glory is at the center of biblical theology. If there is to be a renewal, it will be a renewal that grows out of the blazing center that is the glory of God in the face of Christ. This saving and judging glory, I contend, is the center of biblical theology.

Seeking to exposit the center of biblical theology is necessary because many today question whether the Bible tells a coherent story. There are many who do not embrace the idea of a center for biblical theology and yet maintain that the Bible is coherent, but if the Bible tells a coherent story, it is valid to explore what that story's main point is. That leads us to ask whether the Bible shows us what God's ultimate purpose is. Understanding God's ultimate purpose, even with our limited human capacities, gives us insight into the meaning of all things. We know why things exist because we know the one "for whom and through whom are all things" (Heb. 2:10). This knowledge will organize our relationships and priorities, and it is desperately needed in Our Time. Wells writes,

Whatever else one may say about modernization, one of its principal effects has been to break apart the unity of human understanding and disperse the multitude of interests and undertakings away from the center, in relation to which they have gathered their meaning, pushing them to the edges, where they have no easy relation to one another at all

Evangelicals have lost the "theological center," and this theological center is the Bible's center. With no center, of course things fall apart. The problem, however, is not that the gravitational center of the Bible's theology cannot hold. The problem is more along the lines of what Yeats described as the falcon not hearing the Falconer. That is to say, if we will listen carefully to the Bible, it will proclaim to us the glory of God. If we do not hear this, the problem is with us, not the Bible. As Schreiner has pointed out, "We could easily fail to see the supremacy of God and the centrality of Christ in the NT precisely because these themes are part of the warp and woof of the NT. Sometimes we fail to see what is most obvious, what is right before our eyes" God means to reveal himself in an astonishing display of his mercy and justice, with the justice highlighting the mercy Before we can pursue the demonstration of this thesis, however, we must consider several preliminary questions.

2. Do Things Fall Apart? (Is There a Unity in the Bible's Diversity?)

There is much discussion today about the real diversity that exists within the overarching unity of the Bible In some circles there is also a widespread suspicion that there might be not one orthodoxy or a single theology of the Old and New Testaments but orthodoxies and theologies Walter Brueggemann asserts that there is "no going back to a singular coherent faith articulation in the text (much as canonical approaches might insist on it)" We cannot go back, but I believe that if we do as Francis Watson proposes and radicalize "the modern theological and exegetical concern to identify ever more precisely those characteristics that are peculiar to the biblical texts," we will find ourselves face to face with, as Brueggemann puts it, "a singular coherent faith articulation in the text." At its center, I contend, will be the glory of God in salvation through judgment.

Denny Burk makes the point that scientific study "makes empirically testable predictions" and that theories "can only be tested by attempts to falsify" them In this book, I am putting forth the theory that the glory of God in salvation through judgment is the center of biblical theology. This theory will be tested against the "grammar" of the biblical evidence, with special attention given to any evidence in the Bible that might falsify it (and see chap. 8, where I discuss objections to the thesis). The remainder of this book will seek to show that this is "a theory that adequately explains a grammatical phenomenon [in this case, the teaching of the whole Bible!] without being falsified by the relevant body of empirical data"

One obstacle facing those committed to the unity of the Bible is a certain disdain some biblical scholars have for systematic theology. A strong desire to avoid the charge that one's prior theological conclusions control one's exegesis, coupled with a vague sense that "belief has a distorting effect on historical inquiry," leads many to prefer to "let the tensions stand," indefinitely postponing legitimate and necessary theological synthesis.

As the spiral of meaning widens into incoherence for some, we can focus our gaze by beginning with the purpose of biblical theology. Having considered the purpose of biblical theology, we will take up the question of how to define the center of biblical theology and then ask how we identify the center of biblical theology.

2.1 Finding Our Way in the Widening Gyre: The History and Purpose of Biblical Theology

We can think of the practice of biblical theology in two ways. On the one hand, we have the practice of the believing community across the ages. On the other hand, we have a label that describes an academic discipline. Regarding the first, I would argue that biblical theology is as old as Moses. That is, Moses presented a biblical-theological interpretation of the traditions he received regarding Cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers, and his own experience with his kinsmen Joshua then presented a biblical-theological interpretation of Israel's history (Joshua 24), and the same can be said of the rest of the authors of the Prophets and the Writings, the Gospels and Acts, the Epistles and the Apocalypse. The biblical authors used biblical theology to interpret the Scriptures available to them and the events they experienced. For the believing community, the goal of biblical theology is simply to learn this practice of interpretation from the biblical authors so that we can interpret the Bible and life in this world the way they did.

It seems to me, then, that the history of biblical interpretation in the church is a history of more and less success in accurately understanding the interpretive strategies used by the biblical authors. Some figures in the history of the church were more adept at this than others Some failed miserably, but it seems that a shift happened with the rise of the so-called Enlightenment. Prior to that time, the effort to interpret the Bible the way the biblical authors did was an effort to follow them in typological interpretation, or figural reading of the Bible Hans Frei has shown how, in view of the rise of historical criticism, figural reading and typological interpretation came to seem "preposterous" and "lost credibility" And this brings us to the second way of thinking about biblical theology, namely, as an academic discipline whose results are measured more by the academy than by the believing community, for as Frei has written, "Figural reading, concerned as it was with the unity of the Bible, found its closest successor in an enterprise called biblical theology, which sought to establish the unity of religious meaning across the gap of historical and cultural differences"

Many recognize that the method of study referred to as biblical theology was marshaled by the Reformers, who wanted to "chasten the church's unbiblical theological speculations." During the Enlightenment, biblical theology came to be employed by many whose objective was to separate their study of biblical texts from the authority of the Bible and Christian readings of it Adolf Schlatter called this approach to the Bible's theology a "radical and total polemic against it." Geerhardus Vos is regarded as something of a pioneer by many North American evangelical students of biblical theology. In a sense, Vos salvaged the tool from the damage done to it by the Enlightenment. Vern Poythress suggests that biblical theology had a "checkered history before Vos redefined it"

For Vos, biblical theology was a kind of exegesis that studied "the process of the self-revelation of God deposited in the Bible." Biblical theology is "the study of the actual self-disclosures of God in time and space which lie back of even the first committal to writing of any Biblical document," and it "deals with revelation as a divine activity, not as the finished product of that activity" In the years since Vos wrote, some less conservative scholars — not necessarily following Vos — have pitted "what happened" against "what the text says," and some have suggested that Scripture is merely a record of God's revelation rather than itself being revelation from God This is probably not what Vos meant to articulate, but because of what has happened since he wrote, his description of biblical theology might be confusing in today's context.

For this reason I would suggest a slightly different description of what biblical theology is and what it should do. Again, there is more than one way to do biblical theology, and this book will not be the final word on the subject. There are insights to be gained from a variety of approaches because the Bible cannot be exhausted, and its truths are such that looking at them from different angles only increases our appreciation of the book's humble, and yet stunning, beauty. In this study, I will pursue a biblical theology that highlights the central theme of God's glory in salvation through judgment by describing the literary contours of individual books in canonical context with sensitivity to the unfolding metanarrative In my view this metanarrative presents a unified story with a discernible main point, or center. This study will be canonical: I will interpret the Protestant canon, and the Old Testament will be interpreted in light of the ordering of the books in the Hebrew Bible (see further below). It will be literary: I will seek to interpret books and sections of books in light of their inherent literary features and structures as we have them in the canon

Interpretation in light of the unfolding metanarrative assumes that the historical and chronological claims in the books be interpreted as they stand. That is, I will assume, for instance, that Deuteronomy was part of the impetus for rather than the product of Josiah's reforms. In doing this, I seek to allow the book to tell its own story instead of imposing onto it an alternative story generated by the modern academy. I would hope that even those who do not believe, as I do, that there was a real Moses who wrote the Pentateuch will nevertheless show themselves liberal enough to grant that the texts do make that claim, and tolerant enough to allow space for interpretations that deviate from critical orthodoxy Rather than interpreting a disputed scholarly reconstruction, I will interpret the claims the texts make. I believe the texts are true and trustworthy, so Brueggemann's words on Barth's perceived fideism seem relevant:

It is relatively easy to indict Barth for fideism and theological positivism, and that indictment has been reiterated often. The problem is that there is obviously no legitimate starting point for theological reflection, and one must begin somewhere. The counterindictment is somewhat less obvious and has only more recently been mounted: that the Cartesian program of autonomous reason, which issued in historical criticism, is also an act of philosophical fideism

Biblical theology seeks to understand the Bible in its own terms, in its own chronology, as reflected in its canonical form. One of the key tasks of biblical theology is to trace the connections between themes and show the relationships between them There is an important point of application in connection with this weighing and sorting of scriptural themes: biblical theology is concerned with what the Bible meant for the purpose of understanding what the Bible means. The biblical theologian who writes in the service of the church does so to elucidate the biblical worldview not merely so that it can be studied but so that it can be adopted This approach rejects the view that biblical theology is concerned with what the Bible meant, leaving what the Bible means to systematic or dogmatic theology

To make such a declaration is, in a sense, to plant a flag. Brueggemann explains that

most scholars who have attempted to work in Old Testament theology since Barth have been double minded. ... The tension that scholars face is between the epistemological assumptions of modernity that issue in historical criticism and that resist normative statements as fiduciary and potentially authoritarian, and the neoevangelical statement of normative theological claims that are perhaps impositions on the biblical materials. ... Old Testament scholarship until recently has refused to choose and has sought to have it both ways. This refusal to choose has constituted the great problem for Old Testament theology

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "God's Glory in Salvation through Judgment"
by .
Copyright © 2010 James M. Hamilton Jr..
Excerpted by permission of Good News Publishers.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Analytical Outline, 11,
List of Illustrations, 21,
Acknowledgments, 25,
A Strategy for Reading This Book, 29,
Abbreviations, 31,
1. Can the Center Hold?, 37,
2. God's Glory in Salvation through Judgment in the Torah, 67,
3. God's Glory in Salvation through Judgment in the Prophets, 139,
4. God's Glory in Salvation through Judgment in the Writings, 271,
5. God's Glory in Salvation through Judgment in the Gospels and Acts, 355,
6. God's Glory in Salvation through Judgment in the Letters of the New Testament, 443,
7. God's Glory in Salvation through Judgment in Revelation, 541,
8. God's Glory in Salvation through Judgment and Objections to Its Centrality, 553,
9. God's Glory in Salvation through Judgment in Ministry Today, 565,
Selected Bibliography, 573,
General Index, 589,
Scripture Index, 607,

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“I was riveted. Never do I sit down and read sixty pages of ANY book that I get in the mail. But I could not stop—could not stop reading and could not stop rejoicing over God’s Glory in Salvation through Judgment. It is the kind of overview of redemptive history Edwards wanted to write. It’s what I hoped would be written.”
—John Piper, Founder, desiringGod.org; Chancellor, Bethlehem College & Seminary

“As readers of Scripture we long to know the message of the Bible as a whole. We do not want to miss the forest for the trees. Unfortunately, there are few books that help us to be faithful to the whole counsel of God. What a delight, then, to read Jim Hamilton’s book where the story line of the Scriptures is unfolded. Hamilton rightly sees that the glory of God is at the center of the scriptural record, demonstrating with careful attention to the biblical text the supremacy of God in both the Old Testament and the New. Scholars, students, and laypeople will all profit from reading this work, which instructs the mind, enlivens the heart, and summons us to obedience.”
—Thomas R. Schreiner, James Buchanan Harrison Professor of New Testament Interpretation and Associate Dean of the School of Theology, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

“In an era when centers in general no longer hold, Hamilton makes a strong case for the centrality to biblical theology of what C. H. Dodd called the ‘two-beat rhythm’ of biblical history: salvation through judgment. Hamilton discovers this theme in every book of the Bible and argues that it is the heartbeat of God’s ultimate purpose: the publication of his glory. In seeking to do justice to scriptural unity and diversity alike, Hamilton’s work represents biblical theology at its best.”
—Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Research Professor of Systematic Theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

“Centered on the important themes of salvation and judgment, Hamilton’s book models well how a thematic approach toward biblical theology might be applied to the whole of Scripture. It is to be warmly welcomed as an invitation to reflect on biblical truth and an opportunity to dialogue on how the unity of the Old and New Testaments may be articulated best.”
—T. Desmond Alexander, Senior Lecturer in Biblical Studies, Union Theological College, Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK

“Who said that the search for a center in biblical theology is a dead end? In this bold and courageous book, which deals with the entire Bible, James Hamilton Jr. dons the mantle of an explorer in search of the holy grail of biblical theology. As he journeys through the Bible, there are many sights in the biblical landscape that will arrest the attention of those who accompany him, including the pivotal revelation of God in Exodus 34:6–7. Hamilton’s thoughtful analysis and reflection provide many insights into the biblical text. While you may not agree with all of his conclusions, you won’t come back from your journey with him without a greater sense of God’s majesty and glory. Rather than being a dead end, this is a gateway into a new world.”
—Stephen G. Dempster, Professor of Religious Studies, Crandall University