Evolution and our Theological Traditions: Calvinism, Part 13

"The BioLogos Forum" frequently features essays from The BioLogos Foundation's leaders and Senior Fellows. Please note the views expressed here are those of the author, not necessarily of The BioLogos Foundation. You can read more about what we believe here.

Today's entry was written by Pete Enns. Pete Enns is a former Senior Fellow of Biblical Studies for The BioLogos Foundation and author of several books and commentaries, including the popular Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament, which looks at three questions raised by biblical scholars that seem to threaten traditional views of Scripture.

Introduction

In my last post, we looked at how J. Gresham Machen, Old Princeton professor and then founder of Westminster Theological Seminary, respected the need to read Paul’s letters in the context of the ancient Judaism of Paul’s day. Even though Machen was not trained to handle the Jewish sources, he understood their importance for understanding Paul on his own terms.

What Machen may not have fully appreciated is how the Jewish background of Paul specifically and the New Testament in general can wind up being a theologically reorienting experience. Paying attention to the historical context of Scripture can begin a process of rethinking how Scripture is to be understood.

One example of the effects of reading the Bible in context in the Old Princeton tradition comes from his former Princeton colleague, Geerhardus Vos (1862-1949), who was trained in the Jewish background of the New Testament and applied this attitude of historical sensitivity with great insight. Vos articulated more clearly than Machen the positive role that historical research, especially the Second Temple Jewish environment, can play in our understanding of Scripture.

The New Testament, Eschatology, and Early Judaism

A central element of Paul’s teaching is eschatology, i.e., how the resurrected Jesus brings about the end of God’s story that began in the Old Testament. Paul’s eschatology is often described as an “already/not yet” eschatology, meaning that in Christ’s first coming, God already set into motion a process that will inevitably come to its consummation (not yet) at Christ’s second coming.

In other words, the resurrection of Christ is a present-time in-breaking of future reality. Those who are “in Christ,” as Paul likes to put it, already take part in the future that will not be fully realized until the final consummation. Much of Paul’s letters is devoted to explaining how Christians are to live in this in-between time where they already possess future reality even though the fullness of that future is not yet present to them.

This view of eschatology pervades Paul’s letters, and it is all anchored in the significance of Christ’s resurrection. Vos, however, saw in Paul’s theology another anchor—a cultural one.

Vos investigated the “already/not yet” against the backdrop of Second Temple Judaism and concluded that Paul’s eschatology is to a certain degree dependent upon this earlier theological development—even though Paul certainly has distinctive marks.

Vos argued that both Pauline and Second Temple Jewish eschatology have their basis in the Old Testament. However, he goes on to say, correctly, that both Paul and Judaism go beyond what the Old Testament says. He writes,

There is no escape from the conclusion that a piece of Jewish eschatology has been here by Revelation incorporated into the Apostle’s teaching. Paul had none less than Jesus Himself as a predecessor in this. The main structure of the Jewish Apocalyptic is embodied in our Lord’s teaching as well as in Paul’s.¹

There is little ambiguity here. Vos states there is an ultimate Old Testament root for both Jewish and Pauline eschatology, but that root cannot fully account for those eschatologies. Something happened in Judaism before Paul’s time to shape views on eschatology. Those views were then brought by Paul into his thinking about the gospel. Vos claimed that this entire historical process was part of God’s revelation (itself a provocative thought) to Paul and that Jesus himself was already incorporating that Jewish eschatology into his teaching.

It is perhaps an indication of a cautionary stance that we find this quote embedded in a footnote—albeit in a two-page footnote—in Vos’s The Pauline Eschatology. Still, scanning those footnotes reveals that Vos seemed to be quite conversant with the Jewish primary sources, more so than Machen. The reason for this is that Vos’s doctoral work, although likewise in Germany, was in Arabic Studies, which is the nineteenth century equivalent of ancient Near Eastern studies today. Vos’s education necessarily dealt with Semitic matters, and so for him it was perhaps quite natural to engage this important historical dimension.

For us, however, the crucial point to appreciate is how Vos brought contemporary historical biblical scholarship to bear on understanding particular issues regarding the Bible—in this case Paul. And let us not lose sight of what these synthetic insights were applied to: not something so relatively innocuous as the dating of Ecclesiastes (as we saw in an earlier post with W. H. Green of Old Princeton) and not simply left as a general observation (as with Machen), but for understanding nothing less than a central element in Paul’s theology.

Vos’s handling of the Jewish evidence illustrates how an increased understanding of the context of Scripture should, with great joy, be brought into a deepening and broadening of how we understand Paul—even if that deepening and broadening presents theological challenges like “Paul’s eschatology was directly influenced by his culture.”

The historical context does not control Paul, the Spirit does. But the “Paul” that the Spirit controls was a first century Jew. And a deeper understanding of that environment, Vos is saying, cannot be ignored. It is not simply the Old Testament that forms the background for the study of Paul, but Paul’s Second Temple context, as well. To understand the Jewish background better is to understand Paul better.

The purpose of this example, as well as several others in previous posts, is to illustrate the profound attention to historical context within the Calvinist tradition—a tradition that has had a marked influence on mainstream evangelical thought in the twentieth and now twenty-first century. In my next post, I will summarize some of the points made in the last several posts for the science/faith conversation.

Notes

1. The Pauline Eschatology 27-28, n. 36. See also Larry R. Helyer, “The Necessity, Problems, and Promise of Second Temple Judaism for Discussions of New Testament Eschatology,” JETS 47/4 (December 2004): 597-615.