Ancient Wisdom Today » Hermeneutics

Beyond the Bible

Maer — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:40:34 +0000

Marshall, I. Howard. Beyond the Bible: Moving from Scripture to Theology. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academy, 2004.

This book is a collection of three lectures by I. Howard Marshall entitled “Evangelicals and Hermeneutics,” “The Development of Doctrine,” and “The Search for Biblical Principles.” These lectures are followed by two responses by Kevn J. Vanhoozer and Stanley E. Porter. Marshall’s third lecture is where he lays out his arguments of how one goes about finding biblical patterns and principles for going beyond previous Scripture. There are basically three: 1) Christian interpretation of the OT took place in light of the NT, 2) Jesus’ teaching was given “between the times,” and 3) we need to understand apostolic preaching in light of the whole revelation of the gospel. In Vanhoozer’s mind, this comes very close to William Webb’s “redemptive trajectory” approach. I think this is exactly where Howard is heading.

Some Final Thoughts on the Sabbath

Maer — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 14:29:39 +0000

There are many contributions on the discussion of the Sabbath in this book. The biblical data is considered when looking at Jesus’ attitude towards the Sabbath in the four Gospels, Luke and Acts, the Pauline epistles and Hebrews. What we can safely say from these discussions is that there was not a transfer from the Sabbath to Sunday. As a matter of fact, there is doubt as to when Sunday as a day of worship actually began and, whenever it was, it was not a substitute for the Sabbath. Richard Bauckham walks us through the history of the Lord’s day, including the book of Revelation, from the post-apostolic period to the Reformation which comprises a big chunk of the book. A. T. Lincoln then tries to synthesize the results from the previous articles.

From Sabbath to Lord’s Day

Maer — Tue, 27 May 2008 14:01:31 +0000

I was not planning to write about the Sabbath as my next topic in hermeneutics, but I happened to come across a book in the library called “From Sabbath to Lord’s Day,” edited by D. A. Carson. Although I thought a book like this would be stimulating in many ways, my experience has been that, by the end of a book about the Sabbath, I am still left with this annoying feeling that I should have understood the big picture, but the questions are still there. But, after reading the short introduction by Carson, I thought “I gotta read this book!”

In the introduction, Carson listed some of the arguments and conclusions with which he and the writers disagreed:

“First, we are not persuaded that the New Testament unambiguously develops a “transfer theology,” according to which the Sabbath moves from the seventh day to the first day of the week. We are not persuaded that Sabbath keeping is presented in the Old Testament as the norm from the time of the creation onward. Nor are we persuade that the New Testament develops patterns of continuity and discontinuity on the basis of moral/civil/ceremonial distinctions. However useful and accurate such categories may be, it is anachronistic to think that any New Testament writer adopted them as the basis for his distinctions between the Old Testament and the gospel of Christ. We are also not persuaded that that Sunday observance arose only in the second century A. D. We think, however, that although Sunday worship arose in the New Testament times, it was not perceived as a Christian Sabbath. We disagree profoundly with historical reconstructions of the patristic period that read out from isolated and ambiguous expressions massive theological schemes that in reality developed only much later” (16).