Considering Resurrection and Redemption

I have an odd “relationship” with Richard Gaffin. While in seminary, he came to teach a one week course Studies in New Testament Eschatology. I sat in for a few, but missed at least half of them.

At some point I bought his book Resurrection and Redemption: A Study in Paul’s Soteriology. Based on the ink used to underline in it, I have been reading it at 3 different points in my pastoral ministry. Often, I suspect, just prior to Resurrection Day. I would inevitably get bogged down or distracted by some other book I needed to read.

That being said, this is a difficult book to review now that I have finally finished it. I suspect that much of what was in that class is found in this book. For Gaffin, as it was for Vos, soteriology is eschatology!

In the forward, Sinclair Ferguson notes:

“In particular, Resurrection and Redemption raises important critical questions for the traditional formulations of the ordo salutis in Reformed theology. … One of our more serious malfunctions in some contemporary evangelical teaching has been the tendency to offer the benefits of the gospel virtually separated from Jesus Christ as the Benefactor. Consequently salvation is severed from the lordship of Christ.”

This points to a few of the important threads of this book. First, taking a redemptive-historical approach Gaffin does indeed challenge the traditional views of the ordo salutis since it neglects our union with Christ in which we receive all the benefits of salvation. The absence of this union with Christ is what lies behind many of the then contemporary issues regarding the lordship of Christ.

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Considering the Virginal Conception

aka, the Virgin Birth.

It is listed as one of the 5 fundamental beliefs during the fundamentalist-modernist controversy of the early 20th century.  Is it a fundamental belief?  It is necessary for Jesus to be conceived in this way if he is to be fully divine?

There are a surprising number of people who are saying it isn’t necessary.

Emergent (revisionist) pastor Rob Bell, in his book Velvet Elvis, stated that while he personally affirmed the virgin birth, it was not a necessary belief.  You don’t need the ‘spring’ of the virgin birth to ‘jump’ (cue the Van Halen please), so he says.  He includes some shoddy exegesis and historical context to make his point about why you might think Matthew doesn’t mean what we thought he meant.  Got that?

Easy for me to disregard Rob Bell; he doesn’t have conservative street cred.  But Michael Green, another story.  He wrote the commentary on Matthew in the Bible Speaks Today series edited by John Stott.  I’m reading this for my sermon series from Matthew this Advent.

Green covers the standard arguments against the virginal conception, and counters them pretty well.  Like Bell, he personally holds to the virginal conception.  But he didn’t stop there, and I was a bit shocked.

“However, it is only proper to say that there is nothing necessary about the virgin birth.  The deity of Christ is not inextricably tied to it.  God might well have entered  this world in the normal manner, or chosen some unprecedented way of becoming one of us.  He need not have come through a virginal conception.  The documents, however, assert that he did.”

This precisely where a good biblical and systematic theology save you from a mass of heresy.  Adoptionism (the view that God adopted the human Jesus to be his divine son) would be a denial of the Trinity.  Any other method would presumably include Joseph or other male.  If an ordinary man is involved, Jesus is born “in Adam”.  All who born of 2 human parents are born under the covenant with Adam (Romans 5) and are therefore subject to sin and death.  Jesus, in order to save other, must be free from sin and death.  He must not be “in Adam” as his covenant head.  He becomes the 2nd Adam, the head of a new covenant so that all who are in him by faith are delivered from sin on account of his obedience, death for sin and resurrection on our behalf.

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