JV Fesko

Top Ten Books of 2008

/ davidsschrock

Studying at Southern Seminary has afforded me the gracious opportunity to read some of the choicest books on the Bible, theology, and Christian ministry.  This is a list of my Top Ten Books of 2008, books that I had the opportunity to read this year that I would commend to you for your perusal in 2009.  The list is eclectic, and intentionally so, but my hope is that each book would whet your appetite for more of Christ.  (The list is in chronological order, but I will say the best is last).

1. Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age by Bill McKibben.  The most fascinating book I read all year; not one I would have picked up by myself.  Assigned for my Ethics class with Dr. Russell Moore, Enough, written by an unbelieving environmentalist, is a fascinating look at the technologically-advacning world we live in.  The book deals with nanotechnology, articificial intelligence, and gene therapy, just to name a few.  McKibben goes into painstaking detail to show what science is researching and hoping to create, and from a secular point of view he asks the question, “When will it be enough?”  It is a great read, and it will challenge your thinking about what it means to be human. 

2. God and Marriage by Geoffrey Bromiley.  Before Christian Bookstores were flooded with marriage books, historical theologian, Geoffrey Bromiley, produced a short book that traces marriage through the Bible, shows the Trinitarian-marriage connections, and shows why a good theology of marriage is so important for a healthy marriage.  For less than five dollars used, you cannot pass this up.

3. Marriage: Sex in the Service of God by Christopher Ash.  Most thorough and rigorously biblical book on marriage today.  A must read for any pastor or biblical counselor.

4. Married for God by Christopher Ash.  The follow up to Ash’s first book on marriage, this popular level book grounds marriage in biblical theology and then proceeds to practically apply the Bible to today’s marriages.  Very readable, and worthwhile for any and all married couples, or those getting ready for marriage.

5. Against Heresies by Irenaeus of Lyons.  One of the earliest “biblical theologies” you can find.  Irenaeus was a second-century church apologist who read the Bible very well.  Challenging, but worthwhile.

6. Last Thing First by J.V. Fesko.  An edifying and stimulating look at eschatology (the study of last things) and  protology (the study of first things) in Genesis 1-3.  It ultimately is a book about Christ, as the alpha and omega.  In the spirit of Meredith Kline and William Dumbrell, it shows how God’s plan of redemption begins in the first 3 chapters of Genesis.  Very good!

7. The Letter to the Colossians and to Philemon (Pillar Commentary) by Douglas Moo.  Moo’s commentary was the most current and most biblical-theological commentary that I found on Colossians.  As I preached through the book in September – December, it served me well to see the OT-NT connections that Paul employed in his Christ-centered letter to the church at Colossae.

8. Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament edited by D.A. Carson and G.K. Beale.  Tremendous resource for preachers who want to pay special attention to inter-canonical connections.

9. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit by Andreas Kostenberger and Scott Swain.  The latest volume in the D.A. Carson edited New Studies in Biblical Theology.  Even though this book will be finished in 2009, it is too good to leave off the list.  The attention to biblical content and the faithful Trinitarian synthesis is excellent.  This is a must have for anyone preaching or teaching in or through the Gospel of John.

10. The ESV Study Bible.  The Bible is surely the best and most important book I read all year; and this year the ESV Study Bible is simply the most edition published in 2008, maybe the century–not a hyperbole.  Speaking of the notes and articles, I have not read it en toto, but in scanning its contents and contributors, it is clear that this marks the finest evangelical study Bible to date.  ( Tim Challies provides a full review; Albert Mohler gives a helpful guide to using study Bibbles).  The biggest selling point though in our tech-savvy age, however, is the unbelievable online capabilities that accompany every copy.  At The ESV Study Bible website you can listen to the Bible, record your own notes, and hyperlink to every cross-reference.  Simply amazing!  This a great feature that sets the ESV SB light years ahead of the rest.  I pray that this volume will gain a large readership as it will tremedously benefit students of the Bible to read the Scriptures better…

…Which is the hope and prayer of 2009.  Of making manny books there is no end, and much study wearies the flesh (Ecc. 12:12), but the Word of God is life-giving and enriching.  It points us to Christ and shows our wickedness and desperate need for salvation (cf. John 5:39; 2 Tim. 3:15).  So then, let us endeavor to read the Bible more in 2009, and to find books that will help us understand the Scriptures with greater clarity and commitment.  

Tomorrow, I will post the 10 books I am most looking forward to in 2009…that I pray will enhance our understanding of and passion for the Bible.

Sola Deo Gloria, dss 

The Mystery of Marriage: A Parable of Christ and the Church

/ davidsschrock / 5 Comments

Marriage is a mystery!  Empirically speaking, this is proven every time blissful lovers get married and discover the unforeseen realities of married life.  A young wife may think, “Why didn’t I see that his charming idiosyncracy in courtship is actually a really annoying habit in marriage?”  In every generation and with every marriage, the mystery proliferates, because woven into the fabric of humanity is God-given peculiarity associated with sexual differentiation.  This was implicit in creation, and has been exaggerated by the Fall.  All the same, it is part of God’s plan.  Solomon captures this creational profundity, when he writes, “Three things are too wonderful for me; four I do not understand: the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a serpent on a rock, the way of a ship on the high seas, and the way of a man with a virgin” (Prov. 30:18-19).  From elementary school playgrounds, to high school dances, to twenty-five year anniversaries, the relationship between boys and girls that matures into the coupling of husband and wife is a profound mystery. 

Biblically speaking, marriage is also mystery; but in the Bible, the term “mystery” does not connote obscurity or uncertainty.  Instead, it is used to depict a reality hidden now revealed.  In Ephesians, Paul calls the ingathering of the Gentiles a mystery, describing the way in which nations outside the covenantal people Israel, were made “fellow citizens with the saints and the household of God” (2:19).  He also describes marriage as a mystery (Eph. 5:32).  In both instances, what was once only seen in types and shadows, has now been explained and made clear (cf. John 16:29-30).  The Old Testament promised salvation to gentiles but until Christ’s incarnation, the full plan of salvation for the nations had gone unnoticed.  Just the same, the pattern of men and women leaving and cleaving, coupling one with another in marriages has been patterned since Adam and Eve (cf. Gen. 2:24); yet, only in the fullness of time did the significance of this holy institution become known.  Pertaiing to marriage, it is important for us to understand that God’s telic purposes did not come after the first marriage, but rather they preceded the first marriage. 

J.V. Fesko has called this kind of understanding proleptic understanding of history, “protology,” meaning that in the beginning, God imbued significance to people, events, and institutions that in the fullness of time would find ultimate meaning in Christ and the effects of his redemptive work.  Looking backwards from the fully disclosed canon of Scripture, this could be called typology, but since it is prophetic and future-oriented, it seems better to call it protology (see Fesko’s Last Thing First).  In the case of marriage, when God brought Eve to Adam, he was taking strides to accomplish his eschatological goal of Christ and the church.  As Isaiah writes about our covenant Lord, “God declares the end from the beginning” (Is. 46:9), and in the case of marriage this is absolutely true.

Consider the words of New Testament scholar, George Knight III, as he described the eternal purposes of God in marriage:

Unbeknownst to the people of Moses’ day (it was a ‘mystery’), marriage was designed by God from the beginning to be a picture or parable of the relationship between Christ and the church.  Back when God was planning what marriage would be like, He planned it for this great purpose: it would give a beautiful earthly picture of the relationship that would someday come about between Christ and His church.  This was not known to people for many generations, and that is why Paul can call it a ‘mystery.’  But now in the New Testament age Paul reveals this mystery, and it is amazing.

This means that when Paul wanted to tell the Ephesians about marriage, he did not just hunt around for a helpful analogy and suddenly think that “Christ and the church” might be a good teaching illustration.  No, it was much more fundamental than that: Paul saw that when God designed the original marriage He already had Christ and the church in mind.  This is one of God’s great purposes in marriage: to picture the relationship between Christ and His redeemed people forever!  (George Knight III, “Husbands and Wives as Analogues of Christ and the Church” in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism, edited by John Piper and Wayne Grudem [Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1991], 175-76)

Marriages that embrace and embody this truth, of seeing themselves as miniature portrait studios of Christ and the church are blessed with knowing the reality for which they were united in covenant love.  Those who do not know this mystery are tragically living in the dark.  Still the saddest group of all may be those who know Christ and his salvation, but do not know how his relationship with the church should shape and inform their marriage.  By choice or ignorance, they embody an egalitarian marriage, and chaff against the gospel.  Scripture’s wise design for marriage as a parabolic representation of Christ and the church, that includes male headship and female submission is not a product of the curse, but a divinely-revealed mystery that God promises to bless.

May we who love God’s wise design in marriage and the gospel that it “mysteriously” reveals, pray for a vision to see God’s design for marriage incarnated in our own marriages and in those around us, so that the world may see a mosaic of marriages within the chruch that illustrate the mystery of Christ and the church.

Sola Deo Gloria, dss

Last Things First: Meditations on the Image of God

/ davidsschrock

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation (Colossians 1:15).

This weekend, I will be preaching from some of the richest Christological verses in the Bible, Colossians 1:15-20.  And in preparation this week, I have been reading JV Fesko’s Last Things First: Unlocking Genesis 1-3 with the Christ of Eschatology.  Fesko’s treatment of “protology,” eschatology, and Christology are incredible stimulating and illuminating.  Seeing that Genesis 1-3 is not just a polemic against Charles Darwin, nor a proof-text the age of the earth, but rather a glorious beginning to the story of Jesus Christ–his creation, redemption, and new creation.  Fesko effectively demonstrates that these passages are about the Triune God and the true man, Jesus Christ. 

Drawing on a rich history of commentators, Fesko quotes Anthony Hoekema, G.K. Beale, and John Calvin as they seek to explain the context and the concept of the Imago Dei.  Their reflections are worth pondering in order to better understand this tremendous biblical truth–namely, what it means to be made in the image of God, and that Jesus Christ himself is the Image of God!  Quoting from Hoekema’s The Image of God first, Fesko remarks: 

The image of God in man must: “be seen as involving the structure of man (his gifts, capacities, and endowments) and the functioning of man (his actions, his relationships to God and to others, and the way he uses his gifts).  To stress either of the of these at the expense of the other is to be one-sided…To see man as the image of God is to see both the task and the gifts.  But the task is primary; the gifts are secondary.  The gifts are the means for fulfilling the task” (A. Hoekema, quoted by Fesko in Last Things First, 47).

To Hoekema’s balanced representation of structure and function, Fesko incorporate’s Beale’s cultural-historical observations:

G.K. Beale explains the connection between monarchs as images of deities and explains, “ancient kings would set up images of themselves in distant lands over which they ruled in order to represent their sovereign presence.  For example, after conquering a new territory, the Assyrian king Shalmanesar ‘fashioned a mighty image of my majesty’ that he ‘set up’ on a clack obelisk, and then he virtually equates his ‘image’ with that of ‘the glory of Assur’ his god.  Likewise, Adam was created as the image of the divine king to indicate that earth was ruled over by Yahweh” (G.K. Beale, quoted by Fesko, 49).

Finally, Fesko quotes the great reformer, John Calvin, whose comments highlight the dignity bestowed upon humanity’s nature. 

The chief seat of the Divine image was in his mind and heart, where it was eminent…In the mind perfect intelligence flourished and reigned, uprightness attended as its companion, and all the senses were prepared and molded for due obedience to reason; and in the body there was a suitable corresondence with this internal order’ (John Calvin, quoted by Fesko, 50).

In short order, John Fesko, summarizes some of the most important aspects of the doctrine of humanity.  He supports a holistic definition that incorporates Calvin’s substantive understanding, that mankind has essential properties that reflect the Godhead; Hoekema’s dual understanding that mankind is made to rule (function) and that God has given mankind gifts and abilities to carry out that task (structure); and Beale’s cultural-historical understanding of humanity’s place as delegated vice-regents to rule over creation, to expand the glory of God by ruling over creation and proliferating the image of God.

Of course, there is much more to say because this original program was aborted as soon as Adam’s feet touched earth.  Humanity proceded to reflect the image of God, but in a marred and perverted way.  Nevertheless, eternal God’s intention for the true Imago Dei was never thwarted!  As highlighted by Last Things First, Scripture teaches that Jesus Christ was always the intended telos of mankind.  We are made in his image, but He is the image of God (cf. Col. 1:15; 2 Cor. 3:18; 4:4; Heb. 1:3).  Fesko distills the preceding quotations well, so we will finish with his summary:

Set against the ancient Near Eastern religions in which the ‘forces of nature are divinities that may hold the human race in thralldom, our text declares man to be a free agent who has the God-given power to control nature’ (Nahum Sarna, Genesis, 13).  Moreover, no man or any other creature is a deity.  Rather, God’s image, his incommunicable attributes, were given to man so he could rule as God’s vice-regent over the creation (50).

Made in the image of Christ, may we rejoice in the True ImageoDei, Jesus, and press on to Christ-like conformity as we embrace our roles as vice-regents, looking for the day when our bodies are redeemed and we will ever reign with Christ (cf. Rom. 8:23; 2 Tim. 2:12).

Sola Deo Gloria, dss