Edward Fisher

In discussions about salvation and interpretation of the Old Testament, two related questions are often asked.

How were the Old Testament saints saved? Or, in whom or what did they believe?
How much did the Old Testament know about the coming Christ?

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Recently, in reading through The Marrow of Modern Divinity by Edward Fisher, I came across a succinct, if slightly archaic, answer to these questions. In conversation form, Fisher explains how the Old Testament saints beheld Christ through the types and shadows of the Law. In short, he answers that the salvation we possess is of a piece with those under the old covenant. There are not two ways of salvation, but one, as Hebrews 11 suggests.

The difference between Israel and the church (which is today composed of Jews and Gentiles) is less about how they are saved, but how they came to know the one savior, Jesus Christ the Son of God. The former saw Christ through a veil of old covenant shadows and types; the latter have seen him in the substance of his person and work, now proclaimed through the witnesses of his apostles.

As always, such questions require elongated consideration about the whole Bible. But for short answers, what follows helpfully explains how the Old Testament saints beheld Christ. Continue reading →

It has been said that on the cross God’s wrath and mercy meet. Indeed, on the cross the full revelation of God’s undivided attributes are manifested. As just and justifier, Jesus receives in his body the full outpouring of God’s wrath. Yet, as God Incarnate, he simultaneously displays the love of God, as 1 John 3:16 states, “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” Accordingly, all other moral attributes (e.g., truthfulness, justice, goodness, mercy, peace, righteousness) are revealed in perfect proportion.

I say proportion, but in the Lord there are not proportions, parts, or passions (taken in the older sense of the word, where men are moved by passionate forces outside themselves). In truth, God’s holy character is perfect light. Yet, refracted through creation and especially the cross, we come to see the many hues of God’s holy character. And because our minds require time and sequence to contemplate God’s unified holiness, the cross not only reconciles us to God, it also reconciles in our minds how seemingly divergent attributes are held together in the Lord.

On this point, Edward Fisher in his work The Marrow of Modern Divinity proposes a conversation between God’s many attributes and how they might have talked about the cross of Christ. To be sure, his conversation is maximally anthropological (i.e., it uses human speech to talk about God). In this way, it is unhelpful in thinking on the simplicity of God (i.e., the nature of his unchanging, undivided essence). But for us, finite creatures, who must come to understand the rainbow of God’s glory through sequential time and logical relationships, his conversation is helpful and I share it below. Continue reading →