An International Journal for Students of Theological and Religious Studies Volume 42 Issue 2 August 2017
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An International Journal for Students of Theological and Religious Studies Volume 42 Issue 2 August 2017 EDITORIAL: On Knowing When to Resign 255 D. A. Carson STRANGE TIMES: The ‘Only’ Option 259 Daniel Strange Confession of a Reformed Philosopher: Why I Am a 263 Compatibilist about Determinism and Moral Responsibility John C. Wingard Jr. Natural Selection and an Epistemology of Evil: An 285 Incompatible Pair J. Daniel McDonald Wendell Berry’s “Risk”: In the Middle on Gay Marriage? 297 Jacob Shatzer The Preeminence of Knowledge in John Calvin’s Doctrine 306 of Conversion and Its Influence Upon His Ministry in Geneva Obbie Tyler Todd Redeeming Edwards’s Doctrine of Hell: An “Edwardsean” 321 Account Christopher Woznicki A Missiology of Excluded Middles: An Analysis of the T4T 335 Scheme for Evangelism and Discipleship George A. Terry Book Reviews 353 DESCRIPTION Themelios is an international, evangelical, peer-reviewed theological journal that expounds and defends the historic Christian faith. Its primary audience is theological students and pastors, though scholars read it as well. Themelios began in 1975 and was operated by RTSF/UCCF in the UK, and it became a digital journal operated by The Gospel Coalition in 2008. The editorial team draws participants from across the globe as editors, essayists, and reviewers. Themelios is published three times a year online at The Gospel Coalition website in PDF and HTML, and may be purchased in digital format with Logos Bible Software and in print with Wipf and Stock. Themelios is copyrighted by The Gospel Coalition. Readers are free to use it and circulate it in digital form without further permission, but they must acknowledge the source and may not change the content.. EDITORS BOOK REVIEW EDITORS General Editor: D. A. Carson Old Testament Systematic Theology and Bioethics Trinity Evangelical Divinity School Peter Lau Hans Madueme 2065 Half Day Road Malaysian Theological Seminary Covenant College Deerfield, IL 60015, USA Seremban, Malaysia 14049 Scenic Highway [email protected] [email protected] Lookout Mountain, GA 30750, USA [email protected] Managing Editor: Brian Tabb New Testament Bethlehem College & Seminary David Starling Ethics and Pastoralia 720 13th Avenue South Morling College Jeremy Kimble Minneapolis, MN 55415, USA 120 Herring Road Cedarville University [email protected] Macquarie Park, NSW 2113, Australia 251 N. Main St. [email protected] Cedarville, OH 45314, USA Contributing Editor: Michael J. Ovey [email protected] Oak Hill Theological College History and Historical Theology Chase Side, Southgate Jonathan Arnold Mission and Culture London, N14 4PS, UK Boyce College Jackson Wu [email protected] 2825 Lexington Road International Chinese Theological Louisville, KY 40280 Seminary Administrator: Andy Naselli [email protected] East Asia Bethlehem College & Seminary [email protected] 720 13th Avenue South Minneapolis, MN 55415, USA [email protected] EDITORIAL BOARD Gerald Bray, Beeson Divinity School; Hassell Bullock, Wheaton College; Lee Gatiss, Wales Evangelical School of Theology; Paul Helseth, University of Northwestern, St. Paul; Paul House, Beeson Divinity School; Ken Magnuson, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; Gavin Ortlund, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School; Jonathan Pennington, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; Mark D. Thompson, Moore Theological College; Paul Williamson, Moore Theological College; Stephen Witmer, Pepperell Christian Fellowship; Robert Yarbrough, Covenant Seminary. ARTICLES Themelios typically publishes articles that are 4,000 to 9,000 words (including footnotes). Prospective contributors should submit articles by email to the managing editor in Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx) or Rich Text Format (.rtf). Submissions should not include the author’s name or institutional affiliation for blind peer-review. Articles should use clear, concise English and should consistently adopt either UK or USA spelling and punctuation conventions. Special characters (such as Greek and Hebrew) require a Unicode font. Abbreviations and bibliographic references should conform to The SBL Handbook of Style (2nd ed.), supplemented by The Chicago Manual of Style (16th ed.). For examples of the the journal's style, consult the most recent Themelios issues and the contributor guidelines. REVIEWS The book review editors generally select individuals for book reviews, but potential reviewers may contact them about reviewing specific books. As part of arranging book reviews, the book review editors will supply book review guidelines to reviewers. Themelios 42.2 (2017): 255–58 EDITORIAL On Knowing When to Resign — D. A. Carson — D. A. Carson is research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, and general editor of Themelios. ertain kinds of questions come my way by email fairly regularly—every few weeks, every couple of months. One of these regulars runs something like this: “How do I know when it is time to resign?” If this is being asked by a pastor who is still young, it is usually prompted by a difficult Csituation that he longs to flee. Circumstances of that sort are so diverse that I won’t attempt to address them here. What I have in mind is the pastor who poses this question at the age of 55, or 60, or 65, or 70. This pastor is wondering when it is time to lay down the burden of local church ministry, and consider something else—itinerant ministry, perhaps, or teaching overseas for a while, or working with a mis- sion agency, or half-time pastoral work, perhaps as someone else’s associate. Are there any biblical and theological principles that should shape our reflection on these matters? (1) In one sense, this is the right question to ask. Here is not someone who has reached some long- awaited ideal retirement age and is looking for an excuse to withdraw from ministry in favor of buying an RV to spend the next couple of decades alternating between fishing lakes and visiting grandchildren. After all, there is no well-articulated theology of retirement in Scripture. Rather, this is a serious question from someone who has borne the heat of the day, and who, for various reasons, wonders if it is not only permitted but right to ask if it is time to move on. (2) In recent years, I’ve been passing on what I’ve picked up from a few senior saints who have thought these things through. The most important lesson is this: Provided one does not succumb to cancer, Alzheimer’s, or any other seriously debilitating disease, the first thing we have to confront as we get older is declining energy levels. Moreover, by “declining energy levels” I am referring not only to the kind of declining physical reserves that demand more rest and fewer hours of labor each week, but also to declining emotional energy without which it is difficult to cope with a full panoply of pastoral pressures. When those energy levels begin to fall is hugely variable (at age 45? 65? 75?), as is also how fast they fall. But fall they will! It follows that if one attempts at age 85 to do what one managed to accomplish at age 45, a lot of it will be done badly. Frustrations commonly follow: old-man crankiness, rising resentments against the younger generation, a tendency to look backward and become defensive, even an unwitting destruction of what one has spent a lifetime building up. Three things follow: a. As long as God provides stable energy levels, one should resist the glitter of common secular assumptions about retirement—e.g., that there is (or should be) a universal retirement age, that somehow your work entitles you to a retirement free from all service, that the end of life should be dominated by pleasurable pastimes emptied of self-sacrifice 255 Themelios and service. This is not to argue there is no place for, say, time devoted to creative tasks of one sort or another; it is to argue that it is sub-Christian to imagine that our service across the decades entitles us to a carefree retirement. b. Once energy levels start to decline (whenever that might be), then, assuming that neither senility nor some other chronic disease is taking its toll, the part of wisdom is to stop doing some things so that with one’s remaining energy one can tackle the remaining things with enthusiasm and gusto. I can think of two or three senior saints who have become wholly admirable models in this regard. In their late 60s, they slowly started to put aside one task after another, with the result that, now in their early 90s, they can still do the one or two remaining things exceptionally well. One of them, for instance, will still preach, but never more than once a day. And he won’t fly anywhere: travel to the place he is to preach is either by car (with someone driving him), or by train. But when he does preach, you can close your eyes and listen to a man thirty or forty years younger. c. There is another element in such decisions that is partly subjective, partly temperamental, partly a reflection of one’s sense of call—and of the ways these various factors interact with one another. John Calvin died on May 27, 1564, at the age of 54. All his life he held himself to the most rigorous, punishing schedule. That stunning self-discipline, a reflection of his passion for the glory of God and for the promotion of the gospel, was used by God to make the man astonishingly productive. On the other hand, all the biographies I have read of him speculate that if in his latter years he had slowed down a little, he might have lived a good deal longer—and had he lived another decade or two, still with stable health, he may well have produced a great deal more.