Elyse M. Fitzpatrick and Jessica Thompson, Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus

Crossway, 2011, 213 pgs.

Summary: Mrs. Fitzpatrick and Thompson argue that most Christian parenting books and strategies tend to create moralistic Pharisees and angry rebels rather than Christians. The reason for this is our (meaning you, me, and our kid’s) tendency to trust in our own strength rather than God’s grace.

Instead of encouraging our children to rely on their own strength to please us and ultimately God, the authors suggest we speak candidly to them about God’s law and their inability to obey it from the heart and the need for God’s grace. They do this by considering parental guidance in five categories: management is teaching the basic rules of life (eat broccoli-don’t hit your brother) and outward conformity to God’s law; nurture (love them and show them how Christ loves them); train them (show them how Christ’s death resurrection answers the problem); correct them (in the context of Christ’s work); and remind them of God’s promises. All of this has to be done within a framework of gospel wisdom rather than moralism or guaranteed “biblical” principles.

Detriments: There are some minor issues: a long and wholesome Andrew Murray quote without any disclaimers about his perfectionism; a few bizarre throwaway lines like, “But Jesus wouldn’t idolize God’s approval”—I don’t even know what is intended by these words. And there’s a lack of clarity on God’s use of the law to limit evil among non-believers (cf. 43). Pastors might find Ursinus’ Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism sections on the law and the gospel of God helpful to clarify this for their congregations.

Benefits: One of the most helpful books I’ve read on parenting, because it requires parents to be wise and trust God and does not give new laws for us to follow.

A practical suggestion: Attempt to draw your children’s attention to the gospel a couple of times a day, but don’t create a new law that all your interactions with your children must include a link to the gospel. Proverbs 26:4-5 means that if and when we answer or teach is dependent on the situation.

See also, my review of J. C. Ryle’s, The Duties of Parents.

B. B. Warfield, Counterfeit Miracles

The Banner of Truth Trust, 1972, 327 pgs.

Summary: A series of lectures on counterfeit miracles given in 1917 to 1918. The book is divided up into six chapters: the cessation of the charismata, patristic and mediaeval marvels, Roman Catholic miracles, Irvingite gifts (cf. review of The Life of Edward Irving), faith-healing, and mind cure.

Warfield’s basic argument is that with the passing of the apostles and those on whom the apostles laid their hands the charismata subsided in history. He believes that the purpose of the miraculous gifts was to confirm the truthfulness of the apostles’ gospel.  Once the apostolic message was written the the miracles ceased.

Or as Warfield notes with approval, “It is unreasonable to ask miracles, says John Calvin—or to find them—where there is no new gospel. By as much as the one gospel suffices for all lands and all peoples and all times, by so much does the miraculous attestation of that one single gospel suffice for all lands and all times, and no further miracles are to be expected in connection with it” (27).

Warfield then delves into history to show that this position is supported by the data. And then reviews the claimed miracles of his day, including some cults and quacks.

He also makes the important point from Deut 13:2 that the inexplicable cannot be called a miracle of God if it somehow invalidates the revealed truth of the Bible or reason within the confines of revelation (53, 122-123):

It is at least very commonly supposed that we are bound to examine carefully into the pretensions of any alleged miracle produced in support of any propositions whatever, however intrinsically absurd; and, if these alleged miracles cannot be at once decisively invalidated, we are bound to accept as true the proposition in support of which they are alleged. No proposition clearly perceived to be false, however, can possibly be validated to us by any miracle whatever; and the perception of the proposition as clearly false relieves us at once from the duty of examining into the miraculous character of its alleged support and invalidates any claim which that support can put in to miraculous character—prior to all investigation. (53)

Benefits/Detriments

A helpful overview of the historical data. For most intents and purposes I accept Warfield’s assessment as correct. Rhetorically, however Warfield’s argument doesn’t carry a lot of punch because it’s based on the intended purpose of the gifts rather than direct scriptural testimony as to the cessation of the charismata. The argument is not directly scriptural in the sense that there is no verse stating with the passing of the last person on whom the apostles laid hands the miraculous gifts will cease, but it is biblical if Warfield has correctly identified the purpose of charismata—to directly validate the apostolic message to the first generation of Christians.

The second weakness is definitional; he makes a careful distinction between special providences and miracles (162), but he doesn’t explain the difference or define them systematically. From the context he seems to define miracle as something that does not use physical means and which confirms God’s revelation, and special providence seems to be defined as events orchestrated by God in response to prayer yet using physical means. If I’ve understood these definitions aright, this leads to the possibility that the crossing of the Red Sea was not a miracle but a special providence, because the natural cause was a blowing wind (Exod. 14:21).

The final issue is that it is not clear to me from Warfield’s review of Christian history that we can discount the occasional miracle. Occasional miracles would not validate the unscriptural claims to charismata in the modern church, but would allow for some events to be miraculous rather than merely providential.

D. A. Carson, The Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: The Life and Reflections of Tom Carson

Crossway, 2008, 160 pgs, $15.99.

Summary: One of the most brilliant-evangelical theologians in the United States writes of the life and efforts of his father, Tom Carson. Tom Carson for about fifteen years (1948-1963) struggled to pastor a small English speaking Baptist church while simultaneously working as a missionary to the French speaking population of Quebec. He then became a civil servant, but remained in French speaking Quebec to continue serving as a lay pastor. After mandatory retirement from the civil service, he again returned to fulltime ministry until his wife’s battle with Alzheimer’s.

Tom Carson and the other pioneer Baptist missionaries to French speaking and Catholic Canada laid the groundwork for the revival of the 1970s. By God’s grace Pastor Carson was able to participate in those momentous events from the early work of the ‘40s to the late ‘80s. Pastor Carson’s godliness, sobriety and industry are exemplary, and his son does not hide his weakness, confusion, and sin. I would be greatly blessed to live, preach, and die as Tom Carson did.

Benefits/Determents:

There are a very few false notes in the book, and I was edified, deeply moved, sobered, challenged, and encouraged by it. Highly recommended for all, but especially pastors.

Charles Williams, The Image of the City and Other Essays; War in Heaven

The Image of the City and Other Essays, Reprint: The Aporcyphile Press, 2007; Oxford University Press, 1958, 199 pgs.

War in Heaven, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1982, 256 pgs.

Summary: The philosophical, theological, and poetic musings of a moderately brilliant poet who wrote histories, popular journal articles, fiction novels (War in Heaven), and gave lectures to the developing middle class on art and culture to pay the bills. Williams apparently wandered in and then out of genteel British occult (The Image, xxiii) practice and decided to stick with an eccentric but mostly orthodox Anglicanism.  He was a member of the Inklings.

As a poet his imagery is more powerful than his ability for the nuanced logic necessary for theological and philosophical reflection. The reader gets the feeling that the argument is more the mental aroma, or perhaps the colors in the shades of the word pictures. Williams might be right in the end, but the difference between the smell of burnt banana peels and dirty socks is too fine a distinction for most readers to live by or to organize a church around.

His theology is framed by creedal orthodoxy, but he brings interesting quirks to bear; he’s radically neo-Platonic and a hyper-something. I’d like to say he’s hyper-Calvinist, but that would be unfair to Calvin and Duns Scotus (The Image, 76) and Julian of Norwich (War, 239). Perhaps, it would be best to say that he’s neo-Platonic with a heady stream of mysticism as channeled through polite English literary society by a fellow who got schorched playing with “white magic.”

My sense is that he believes the Platonic form of man is the Son of God incarnate. (Apparently, Duns Scotus taught this or something like it.) Thus even fallen man draws his formal existence from the Son incarnate in a way similar to Plato’s scheme. To will in conformity with one’s formal nature is to unify the self with Christ and to act against the form is to move away from unity. All humanity is to a greater or lesser degree in Christ, based on their agreement with the form. Those that are traveling towards unity with Christ can then “share each other burdens” (Gal. 6:2) in a literal sense just as “He took our illnesses and bore our diseases” (Matt. 8:17), because they are participating in the unity of the Son of God form. Because the Son of God incarnate was in the mind of God prior to the Fall as the form of Adam or perhaps the Son was incarnate prior to the Fall in history, the essence of physical and spiritual man is drawn from the Son.

Williams’ ideas leads to all sorts of interesting theological shards, but the reader is never told what will be created if all these pieces were assembled into a coherent system rather than word pictures and protestations that the glittering fragment fits into orthodoxy. It’s not clear to me that his theology is coherent or if made coherent would be orthodox.

Exemplar quotes:

“The name of the City is Union: the operation of the Infamy is by outrage on that union. The process of that union is by the method of free exchange. The methods of that exchange range from childbirth to the Eucharist—the two primal activities of the earth and the Church. There is, in the first case, a mutual willingness between the father and mother which results in the transference of seed. That it is so common does not lessen the trust implied; that one should abandon his seed to another, that one should receive the seed of another, is an exhibition of trust; it is almost the chief natural exhibition of that supernatural quality known as ‘faith’. . .” (The Image, 102).

“The Mother of God was not an apostle, yet the apostles were—only apostles. Do you suppose she and they wrangled over equality?” (Ibid., 129).

“‘But,’ [the Satanist] said doubtfully, ‘had Judas himself no delight? There is an old story that there is rapture in the worship of treachery and malice and cruelty and sin.’ ‘Pooh,’ Lionel said contemptuously; ‘it is the ordinary religion disguised; it is the church-going clerk’s religion. Satanism is the clerk at the brothel. Audacious little middle-class cock-sparrow.’” (War, 168).

Benefits/Detriments: An incredibly helpful resource for understanding Lewis’ The Magician’s Nephew and the space trilogy. Likely, a good source for pastors to grapple with the experience of those coming out of the occult, as long as the pastor has read and understood the esoteric teaching of C. S. Lewis’s fiction canon. But if a little wine is good for the stomach, Williams is literary whiskey. Physical, spiritual, and mental sobriety is commanded by Scripture (1 Thes. 5:5-8). There is much good to take from Williams, but much that might mislead, confuse and drunken, and I suspect he’s more tipsy then exuberant.

Michael P. V. Barrett, Beginning at Moses: A Guide to Finding Christ in the Old Testament

Ambassador Internal, Greenville, 2001.

Summary: A solid, scholarly, and conservative introduction to interpreting the Old Testament from a Christocentric perspective:

From Final Thoughts: “My contention is that there is a relevant message in the Old Testament that is discernible and discoverable by sound and sensible methods of interpretation that consider the full, not just the surface, meaning of the text. Although not in every line and perhaps not on every page, the message of Christ overshadows the entire Old Testament. Finding Christ is the key that both unlocks and locks in the message of the whole Word of God. Jesus Christ is God’s final, perfect, incomparable Word. In the final analysis, it is safe to say that Jesus is God’s only Word for man” (327).

Benefits/Detriments: The book should serve two purposes: it is an incredibly helpful model for those with an academic bent on how to introduce others to finding Christ in the Old Testament: and the book is a solid introduction to the interpretive framework necessary to rightly divide the word of truth.

It is not an academic book in the sense that there is no bibliography or footnotes. It is scholarly, in that the author is obviously aware of the current academic debates and questions, but the book is intended for a thoughtful and conservative layman. I highly recommend it.

Richard Bauckham, The Bible in Politics: How to Read the Bible Politically

Louisville, Westminster/John Knox Press, 1989.

Summary: A thoughtful establishment of a hermeneutical process for developing biblical application of the Bible to modern politics and ethics.

The process looks like this:

1. Identify what the text meant to the initial audience.

2. Determine the differences between the initial audience and believers today.

3. Develop universal principles from the text.

4. Correlate the principle with New Testament teaching.

5. Apply the modified universal principle to life today.

(The process summary is drawn from Tidball, The Message of Leviticus, 29).

Bauckham exhibits the outcome of this system in meditations on, Leviticus 19, Proverbs 31:1-9, Psalm 10 and 126, Jesus on taxes (Matt. 17, Mark 11-12), Exodus Revelation 18, the Book of Esther, and the Genesis Flood.

The risen Jesus is our future. He beckons us forward to the goal of creation and gives all Christian activity the character of hopeful movement into the future which God has promised. Not that we ourselves can achieve that future. Resurrection makes that clear: we who ourselves end in death cannot achieve the new creation out of death. The Kingdom in its final glory lies beyond the reach of our history, in the hand of the God who interrupted our history by raising Jesus from death. This transcendence of the Kingdom beyond our achievement must be remembered. But in Jesus God has given us the Kingdom not only as hope for the final future but also to anticipate in the present. As the vision of God’s perfect will for his creation it is the inspiration of all Christian efforts to change the world for the better. In relation to our political activity, it is a double-edged sword, cutting through both our pretensions and our excuses. On the one hand, as the goal we do not reach, it passes judgment on all our political projects and achievements, forbids us the dangerous utopian illusions of having paradise within our grasp, keeps us human, realistic, humble and dissatisfied. On the other hand, as the goal we anticipate, it lures us on beyond all our political achievements, forbids us disillusioned resignation to the status quo, keeps us dissatisfied, hopeful, imaginative, and open to new possibilities (150).

Benefits: Politics is a subcategory of the wider study of ethics, and thus Bauckham’s work is useful for all of ethics. He engagingly challenges his readers to read the Bible carefully, think rigorously, and apply the Bible wisely to politics, for the purpose of worshiping God. I know of no better example of how to do this well.

Detriments: Interpreting the Bible is dependent on the hermeneutical process and the belief policies of the reader. For example, the reader who comes to the text rejecting the possibility of divine revelation will make little effort to harmonize the different human authors’ perspectives or grant the Bible any authority outside of its agreement with “nature.”

In the case of Bauckham, he has a high view of man’s sin against man, but a low view of man’s rebellion against God. He has a lowish view of Scripture, which we might summarize with “inspired, but. . .”, and he’s got an egalitarian streak. Because ethics is the application of God’s Word to man, Bauckham’s anthropology and his understanding of God (theology proper) influences his interpretation and application of the text.

Here’s a example where his theological presuppositions are exposed: “On the contrary, [Jesus’] loving concern reached all the people around him as he hung dying, his fellow victims on the crosses beside him, his mother in her grief, even his executioners, for whom he prayed forgiveness” (148).

The problem with this statement is the criminals on the crosses with Christ were not victims (cf. Luke 23:40-41) in the same sense that Christ was. The thief that was saved admitted both his guilt and the justice of the sentence. Bauckham’s first premises of interpretation require a degree of egalitarianism that is rejected by the Bible. And a consistent application of Jesus’ identifying “himself unequivocally and finally with the victims” (148) will lead to unmitigated theological and political disaster.

Yet, I highly recommend this book because Bauckham’s egalitarian and anthropocentric tendencies are often corrected by how carefully and intelligently he handles the text and an apparent love for Christ and humanity. When the text overrules his bad theology, he’s brilliant and incredibly edifying, but he can mislead the perplexed by promoting anthropocentric and egalitarian applications and theology.

Arnold Dallimore, The Life of Edward Irving: The Fore-Runner of the Charismatic Movement

Edinburgh, The Banner of Truth Trust, 1983.

Summary: The book records and explains the rise of speaking in tongues, prophecy, and the continuation of the apostolic office under the ministry of Edward Irving (1792-1834). Irving unintentionally established the framework of both Dispensationalism and the Charismatic Movement by being a catalysis for the popularization of a variety of unique views on the end times and the work of the Holy Spirit.

Irving translated “The Coming of Christ in Glory and Majesty” by the Jesuit Lacunza and adopted his view of the end times whereby Christ’s work with the biological seed of Abraham is different than his work with the Gentile Church. Further, he clearly establishes the Charismatic explanations for inaccurate prophecy, the fact that tongues speaking is not a known language, and the failure of faith healers.

Benefits/Detriments: Essentially what we learn is that the belief that we are necessarily in the final moments before Christ’s return can lead to a spiritual intensity that is ultimately unbiblical and unedifying. (Striking the more biblical balance between Christ’s potential imminent return and the possibility of Christ continuing to tarry is difficult, but it must be maintained to avoid endless speculation or spiritual coldness.) Further, the book serves as a helpful reminder to shun worldly popularity, crucify pride, and deplore theological speculation.

I found the book fascinating, easy to read, and a bit of an “Oh that makes sense” experience.

9 Marks Book Reviews

• The Irresistible Revolution, by Shane Claiborne

• The Great Exchange, by Jerry Bridges and Bob Bevington

• Turning to God, by David F. Wells

All Things Continue as They Were?

There came to him some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, and they asked him a question, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife, and died without children. And the second and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. Afterward the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife” (Luke 20:27-33).

In the Jewish world of Jesus’ day, the Sadducees were the most skeptical. Their understanding of the Old Testament focused on the “literal” or normal meaning of the words and prioritized the first five books as more authoritative then the rest of the Old Testament.

Their method of interpreting the Bible led them to “deny that there is a resurrection” (Luke 20:27) and reject angels and spirits (Acts 23:8). We are informed by the Pharisee and Jewish historian Josephus (c. 37-c. 100) that they rejected the “belief of the immortal duration of the soul, and the punishments and rewards in Hades,” and the sovereignty of God (The Wars of the Jews, 2.8.14).

In our day, we would identify Christians holding these views as liberal. The Sadducees were obviously skeptical of the more fantastic claims of the Bible, and they leaned heavily towards the materialism of Epicureanism (Acts 17:18). And in this tendency, they are similar to moderate evangelicals and liberal Christians. Their normal or “literal” is dependent on an understanding of God’s word and world that does not match God’s revelation.

The Sadducees’ basic argument in their question to Jesus is something like this: it is absurd to believe in the resurrection because of the potentially silly and horrifying possibility of seven husbands squabbling over one wife. Yet the linchpin of their argument is the assumption that in the resurrection human relationships will be defined as they as have been since the fall. The scenario they create is only laughable if current experience remains identical in the future.

Note how Jesus responds:

And Jesus said to them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.” (Luke 20:34-36)

Jesus attacks their skepticism by pointing out that in the age to come there will be a decisive break in human relationships. He finds no absolute uniformity and therefore no preposterous conflict at the resurrection. Jesus goes on in the text and corrects their wooden literalism by arguing that “the dead are raised even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush” (v. 36).

Just as modern skeptics the Sadducees laugh at what is taught in the Bible as absurd; yet their argument extrapolates from current circumstances to the future, and then they “prove” the Bible leads to preposterous or immoral conclusions. The Lord overcomes this by arguing from revelation against future uniformity.

Yet there are wider connotations of assuming future uniformity within Scripture. The Apostle Peter links the strategy of pressing current experience into the future to assuming past uniformity:

They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.” For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. (2 Peter 3:4-6)

It is here that we come to an important modern application. In our day the reigning philosophical system is Epicureanism as popularized by Charles Darwin and maintained and modified by the public consensus of scientists, academics, and the media. For modern Epicureanism or scientific materialism to have any explanatory power, it must assume the uniformity of nature.

And so they do. Absolute uniformity. An unbroken chain of physical causes started by a random event leads from the Big Bang to the end of the universe. A universal history is then taught in which everything is explained by physical causes alone. Anyone who believes anything else is a simpleton, fundamentalist, knuckle dragger because it’s ridiculous to believe anything but what popular scientific consensus currently teaches.

There are two issues that need to be observed: the first is that it’s never absurd to believe God. If God is who He claims to be in the Bible, there is nothing sentimental or unreasonable about believing His testimony about the lack of uniformity in the future and in the past.

Second, natural uniformity cannot be proven by the scientific method. Or as the philosopher Anthony Flew wrote in his second edition of A Dictionary of Philosophy under the term “uniformity of nature”:

A principle used in attempts to justify induction in particular and science in general. It is usually expressed as “the future will resemble the past”… However, to be a principle on which induction can be rested, the uniformity of nature must not itself rely on inductive justification.

He then goes on to argue that for the statement the “future will resemble the past” to be proven true, induction is necessary and that at best the uniformity of nature is a claim.

Philosophical jargon aside, the uniformity of nature is a claim and not a fact or philosophical principle. The supposed absurdity of disbelieving in the uniformity of nature is not supported by reason or facts, but by the faith of those who believe in uniformity. When skeptics, ancient Sadducees or modern neo-Darwinists, mock believers for trusting the Bible’s account of creation, the introduction of death, the destruction of the pre-diluvian world, souls that will never die, the intermediate state after death, the approaching “new heavens and new earth,” they do so because of their faith and not the facts.

The way Jesus, Paul (Acts 17) and Peter argue against skepticism is by proclaiming and believing the claims of Scripture against the scoffers’ claims of uniformity. If we are followers of Jesus and imitators of Paul and Peter as they follow Christ (1 Cor. 11:1), we must to do the same.

Do You Agree with Jesus?

Two of Jesus’ disciples were walking along the road to Emmaus on the first resurrection Sunday, and they were distraught: “Jesus of Nazareth who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God” was dead (ESV, Luke 24:19). They “had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel” (v. 21), but now he was dead. Their grief touches us even across the years.

A stranger appears and walks besides them and berates them by saying, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets had spoken!” (Luke 25:26). And then Luke describes what the stranger, who was Jesus, said to them, “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.”

Jesus on the Emmaus road did not add to Scripture. He did not give them a new revelation like what we have from John in the book of Revelation, but rather he explained or interpreted the Scriptures to prove that the Old Testament requires that it be “necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory” (v. 26).

The disciples’ “hearts burn within” them as he “opened up…the Scripture” (v. 32), but the stranger made no claim to authority. All that he did was interpret the existing Bible for them to convince them that the Old Testament taught the suffering, resurrection, and ascension of Christ. Because Jesus is not arguing from authority or adding to the Scriptures, Jesus’ interpretation is repeatable by others. The disciples and modern readers of the Bible can return to the Old Testament and find the necessity of Christ’s suffering and resurrection in its pages without the New Testament.

Our Lord takes his interpretation a step further when he appears to the disciples in verse 36 of Luke 24. Later in verse 46, he states, “It is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead.”

You will search the Old Testament Scriptures in vain for, “the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead.” But here is what you will find:

Psalm 16:10—“For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption.”

Isaiah 53:6, 9-10—“All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all… And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth. Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.”

Hosea 6:1—“Come, let us return to the LORD; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up. After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him.”

Our Lord Jesus is collating texts together that identify the people of God with the Messiah—through typology, the necessity of there being a payment for sinners’ rebellion, the promise of the resurrection, and the promise that God will raise his people up—all to mean “the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead.” It is written “the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead,” because Jesus said so, and because it is a necessary inference from Hosea 6:1, Psalm 16:10, Isaiah 53, and the rest of the Old Testament rightly understood.

If you had asked the disciples on the road to Emmaus, “Do you believe the prophets?” They with great indignation would have said, “Of course!” But if you asked them, “Do you believe the Bible in the same way as ‘Jesus of Nazareth.’” they would have begun to hedge about. If you pressed them, “Do you interpret the Bible, the way Jesus did? Can you say, ‘It is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead?’” They would have to say, “No.”

Our Lord Jesus Christ describes those who refuse to interpret the Bible the way he does as, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!” Here is at least half-hearted belief if not absolute disbelief. Earlier in Luke, Jesus taught, “If they do no hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead” (Luke 16:31), and so salvation is on the line.

Thus we come to a modern application that cuts at both liberals and conservatives. Our Lord Jesus obviously believes in the historical accuracy of the Old Testament from the creation account to Malachi. When Jesus argues with religious skeptics like the Sadducees, he argues against absolute physical uniformity (cf. “All Things Continue as They Were?”). As followers of Jesus, we must stand against the skepticism taught by neo-Darwinist, because the Bible rejects it and Jesus, Peter, and Paul deny us the liberty of interpreting Bible as if absolute physical uniformity was a fact.

Yet there is a subtle issue found among many conservative Christians which must be considered. They will accept Jesus and his Apostles’ handling of God’s Word as true, but not as the pattern of hermeneutics to be followed by Christians. So when Mathew writes, “This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I called my son’ ” (Matt. 2:15), we suddenly find talk about apostolic liberties with the text or revealed insights. There’s an almost embarrassed shuffling about because obviously Matthew’s quote and application of Hosea 11:1 couldn’t have been understood by the original reader and does not fit into many descriptions of a literal hermeneutic. But is this plea to apostolic revelation needed to explain Mathew’s use of Hosea or because we are not following Matthew’s method of interpretation?

The Old Testament uses typology without apology or explanation. For instance in Ezekiel 28:12, the prophet begins by describing the King of Tyre and immediately slides into describing Satan before the Fall and by verse 13 the King of Tyre was in “Eden, the Garden of God.”

The King of Tyre was not Satan, but he was of his “father the devil, and [his] will [was] to do [his] father’s desires” (John 8:44). The King of Tyre’s archetype was the devil and so a description of the King of Tyre included attributes of the Devil.

The Holy Spirit and Ezekiel expect their readers to recognize and handle typology framed by the opening books of Moses. God informed the Devil in Genesis 3:15, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” And in Ezekiel 28:12 we find the enemy of the offspring of Eve, Israel, at enmity with the offspring of the Serpent, the King of Tyre. There are no surprises in Ezekiel 28 for the original reader who had read, understood, and believed Genesis 3. Satan was the father of lies and his offspring was just like him.

Since the Holy Spirit requires that Old Testament readers use and handle typology when speaking of an earthly king and Satan, why would the Holy Spirit and Hosea not expect the same method of interpretation concerning the Christ? Only the archetype is not the devil, but the promised seed that was to crush the head of the Serpent. In fact the promised seed on which the LORD was to lay “on him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:6) “although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth” (v. 9).

If we recognize the seed of Eve (Jesus) as the single perfect representative of the corporate seed of Eve (Israel), then Matthew has no new revelation in his usage of Hosea; he’s just doing exactly what Ezekiel did only he’s speaking of Jesus and the not the wicked one. Matthew’s interpretation is inspired, but it is not based on a specific revelation given to him, rather it is inherent to the original text and canon. According to Jesus to disagree with Mathew is simply to be “slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken.”

Jesus and his Apostles are not merely asking us to submit to their authority; they require that we interpret the Scriptures with them. Jesus, Paul, Peter, John, James, and the rest, come to us in the text with arguments about what God’s word means and they want us to agree with the argument and then to follow their patterns of interpretation ourselves.

Paul commands the use of his method of interpretation and teaching explicitly in 2 Timothy 1:13, “Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.” The word translated as “pattern” can also be translated as model, form or prototype. Paul’s command to Timothy is “follow the pattern of the sound words” and not merely submit to apostolic insight or authority.

Jesus and the Apostle did not leave us an exhaustive commentary of the teachings of Jesus or the Old Testament, and so we must follow their pattern of doctrine and interpretation. If modern expositors must plead special revelation for the inspired author in texts where Jesus and his Apostles do not, then we have become “slow of heart to believe.” If we will only submit to Christ’s hermeneutic but not ourselves follow the pattern laid down, then we are sitting among the “foolish ones.”

Jesus and the Holy Spirit come to every Bible believer with is this: “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” (Luke 10:26). And the question we must ask ourselves is how do we read it? Do we interpret the Bible following the pattern laid down by Jesus and the Apostles or by some other means?