Gems from Jonathan Edwards: Seeing the End in the Beginning

Jewels and Treasures From the Past

About fifty years ago the theological community was confronted with an allegedly new discipline, named Biblical Theology.  This was contrasted with the discipline of Systematic Theology.  Systematics dealt with the content and structure of biblical doctrines (e.g. divine revelation, the Incarnation, etc).  Biblical Theology, on the other hand, dealt with the progressive accomplishment of redemption and revelation.

It turns out, however, that one of America's greatest theologians, Jonathan Edwards (working and writing in the mid-eighteenth century) was way ahead of the curve.  His book, The History of Redemption remains to this day one of the best works on biblical theology ever printed.

We reproduce his biblical-theological commentary on the Flood as a prime example.

Chrestomathy

Like a Mighty Flood

Not a little confusion exists today over the work of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament dispensation, contrasted with the New.  Below is B. B. Warfield's excellent summary of the matter:

The old dispensation was a preparatory one and must be strictly conceived as such.  what spiritual blessings came to it were by was of prelibation.  They were many and various.  The Spirited worked in providence no less universally then than now.  He abode in the Church not less really then than now.  He wrought in the hearts of God's people not less prevalently than now.

All the good that was in the world was then as now due to him.  All the hope of God's Church then as now depended on him.  Every grace of the godly life then as now was a fruit of his working.  But the object of the whole dispensation was only to prepare for the outpouring of the Spirit upon all flesh.  He kept the remnant safe and pure, but it was in order that the seed might be preserved. This was the end of his activity then.

The dispensation of the Spirit, properly so called, did not dawn, however, until the period of preparation was over and the day of outpouring had come.

Book of the Month

Book of the Month/October 2012 

Engaging the Culture - Book Review
Written by Douglas Wilson
Sunday, 30 September 2012



This is a superb little book, one that addresses a screaming need with clarity, while at the same time avoiding a simplistic 1,2,3 triteness.

The theme of the book, as the title suggests, is that provocative little phrase from the Westminister Confession which says this:

"The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man's salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture" (WCF 1.6).

The subject can get complicated, so let's begin in the shallow end.

Muddy Waters

Are Theologians Necessary

Canadianchristianity Magazine interviewed J I Packer--and asked him, amongst other things, whether theologians are necessary to the Church.

Distinguished theologian J.I. Packer is the author of more than 40 books -- including Knowing God, which has sold nearly two million copies and has been translated into 25 languages. He is the Board of Governors Professor of Theology at Regent College.
 
Meg Johnstone: You've been quoted as saying: "In all my teaching and writing, I am trying to show that theology is extremely practical." So, are theologians really necessary?

J.I. Packer: (chuckling) I think the answer is yes, but you have to define what a theologian is. His business is to make sure that the church has what I will call a pure water system -- thinking of the word of God as the water of life. You could describe him, therefore, as a kind of ecclesiastical plumber, or sewage engineer. In the church, there's always going to be muddy water, there's always going to be mistaken ideas going around; theologians are the people whose business is to keep the flow clear and pure. In order to do that, they have to understand the faith as a whole, and that usually means that they have to do something like specialist work in the exposition of Bible truth -- because the people who are stirring up the mud are also doing specialist work. . . . Any section of the church which doesn't have theologians -- as point people and whistle blowers and plumbers and water engineers -- is, sooner or later, going to be bogged down in muddy water.

Hat Tip: Justin Taylor

Public Declarations

Christ Coming into His Kingdom

Biblical Theology, Prophecy

As regards the Second Coming of Christ, it will scarcely be questioned that it was somehow connected with statements, which we now see to have primarily referred to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple.  Equally there can be no doubt, that the men of Christ's time expected His Advent, and also that every age since has done the same; and, indeed, was intended to do so. . . . 

And the destruction of Jerusalem and of the Temple was not only a symbol, but in an initial sense the very coming of Christ into His Kingdom.That coming of Christ into His Kingdom, which had been denied in explicit words, and negatived by public deed, when by wicked hands they slew Him, was vindicated, and, so to speak, publicly enacted when the Roman solider threw the torch into the Temple, and when afterwards Jerusalem was laid level with the dust.  As regards the men of that land and generation, it was the public proclamation, the evidence, that Christ Whom they had rejected had come into His Kingdom.  By the lurid light of those flames no other words could be read than those on the Cross: "This is the King of the Jews".  I say, then, the burning of Jerusalem was to that generation--and whatever kindred events successively came within the focus of the telescopic vision of following generations, were to them, the fulfilment of that prophecy, of which the final completion will be the personal reappearance of Christ at the end of the Aeon.

Alfred Edersheim, Prophecy and History in Relation to the Messiah (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1980), p. 132f. 

A Saved World

For God So Loved The World . . .

You must not fancy, then, that God sits helplessly by while the world, which He has created for Himself, hurtles hopelessly to destruction, and He is able only to snatch with difficulty here and there a brand from the universal burning.  The world does not govern Him in a single one of its acts: He governs it and leads it steadily onward to the end which, from the beginning, or ever a beam of it had been laid, He had determined for it. . . . Through all the years one increasing purpose runs, one increasing purpose: the kingdoms of the earth become every more and more the Kingdom of our God and His Christ.  The process may be slow; the progress may appear to our impatient eyes to lag.  But it is God who is building: and under His hands the structure rises as steadily as it does slowly, and in due time the capstone will be set into its place, and to our astonished eyes shall be revealed nothing less than a saved world.  

B. B. Warfield, from a sermon on John 3:16 entitled "God's Immeasurable Love," in Biblical and Theological Studies (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1968), pp.518f. Cited in David Chilton, The Days of Vengeance: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation (Fort Worth, Texas: Dominion Press, 1987), p. 215.