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An International Journal for Students of Theological and Religious Studies Volume 38 Issue 2 July 2013 An International Journal for Students of Theological and Religious Studies Volume 38 Issue 2 July 2013 EDITORIAL: Kingdom, Ethics, and Individual Salvation 197 D. A. Carson OFF THE RECORD: From Moral Majority to Evil Disbelievers: 202 Coming Clean about Christian Atheism Michael J. Ovey Abounding in the Work of the Lord (1 Cor 15:58): 205 Everything We Do as Christians or Specific Gospel Work? Peter Orr Carl F. H. Henry’s Doctrine of the Atonement: 215 A Synthesis and Brief Analysis Owen Strachan Will All Be Saved? 232 Gerald R. McDermott Book Reviews 244 DESCRIPTION Themelios is an international evangelical theological journal that expounds and defends the historic Christian faith. Its primary audience is theological students and pastors, though scholars read it as well. It was formerly a print journal 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 exclusively online at www.theGospelCoalition.org. It is presented in two formats: PDF (for citing pagination) and HTML (for greater accessibility, usability, and infiltration in search engines). Themelios is copyrighted by The Gospel Coalition. Readers are free to use it and circulate it in digital form without further permission (any print use requires further written permission), but they must acknowledge the source and, of course, not change the content. EDITORS BOOK REVIEW EDITORS Systematic Theology and Bioethics Hans Madueme General Editor: D. A. Carson Old Testament Covenant College Trinity Evangelical Divinity School Jerry Hwang 14049 Scenic Highway 2065 Half Day Road Singapore Bible College Lookout Mountain, GA 30750, USA Deerfield, IL 60015, USA 9-15 Adam Road [email protected] [email protected] Singapore 289886 [email protected] Ethics (but not Bioethics) and Pastoralia Managing Editor: Charles Anderson The Crossing New Testament Dane Ortlund 3615 Southland Drive Alan Thompson Crossway Columbia, MO 65201, USA Sydney Missionary & Bible College 1300 Crescent Street [email protected] PO Box 83 Wheaton, IL 60187, USA Croydon, NSW 2132, Australia [email protected] Contributing Editor: Michael J. Ovey [email protected] Oak Hill Theological College Mission and Culture Chase Side, Southgate History and Historical Theology Jason Sexton London, N14 4PS, UK Nathan A. Finn Ridley Hall [email protected] Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary Ridley Hall Road Administrator: Andy Naselli P. O. Box 1889 Cambridge, CB3 9HG Bethlehem College and Seminary Wake Forest, NC 27588, USA England 720 13th Avenue South [email protected] [email protected] Minneapolis, MN 55415, USA [email protected] EDITORIAL BOARD Gerald Bray, Beeson Divinity School; Oliver D. Crisp, Fuller Theological Seminary; William Kynes, Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church; Ken Magnuson, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; Jonathan Pennington, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; James Robson, Wycliffe Hall; Michael Thate, Durham University; Mark D. Thompson, Moore Theological College; Garry Williams, The John Owen Centre, London Theological Seminary; Paul Williamson, Moore Theological College; Stephen Witmer, Pepperell Christian Fellowship. ARTICLES Articles should generally be about 4,000 to 7,000 words (including footnotes) and should be submitted to the Managing Editor of Themelios, which is peer-reviewed. Articles should use clear, concise English, following The SBL Handbook of Style (esp. for abbreviations), supplemented by The Chicago Manual of Style. They should consistently use either UK or USA spelling and punctuation, and they should be submitted electronically as an email attachment using Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx extensions) or Rich Text Format (.rtf extension). Special characters should use a Unicode font. 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 38.2 (2013): 197–201 EDITORIAL Kingdom, Ethics, and Individual Salvation — D. A. Carson — D. A. Carson is research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. 1. The Challenge n recent years a number of stances have arisen that have set themselves over against traditional evangelicalism and traditional Reformed thought, not a few of them arguing, in part, on the basis of a particular understanding of the kingdom. These stances claim to be more biblical and thus Imore faithful than traditional stances. To some extent they overlap; to some extent each is identifiably different from the others. What are these stances, what can we learn from them, and what should be resisted—and why? 1. The kingdom, especially as emphasized in the Synoptic Gospels, is often tied to communitarian ethics rather than individual ethics. By contrast, Paul downplays the kingdom and focuses rather more on individual salvation. This has played into the individualism of the West, which must be resisted by restoring a return to Jesus himself, achieving a better balance with Pauline emphases. 2. The kingdom is bound up with a way of looking at reality that undermines the perceptions of the fallen and broken world order. Many of the “parables of the kingdom” have this fundamental reversal at their core, so it turns out that the last are first and the wild and wayward son is given the party. In this kingdom, we do not govern the way the world does: the one who wishes to lead must be the slave of all, even as Christ came not to be served but to serve (Matt 20:20–28). The kingdom-cross has more to do with ethics, especially the ethics of reversal, than with atonement. 3. With the triumph of Christ achieved on the cross and through his resurrection, the kingdom has dawned—a glorious anticipation of the spectacular glory of resurrection existence in the new heaven and new earth. That means Christ’s people are mandated to begin now to work out the dimensions of righteousness and justice that will be consummated at the end: saying “No” to raw power, caring for the poor and needy, reversing discrimination, being good stewards of the created order that anticipates the consummated created order. All of this is the mission of Jesus. 4. The clear command of Jesus is to seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness—and Jesus makes clear, not least in the Sermon on the Mount, that this entails a range of shocking ethical transformations: turning the other cheek to violence, recognizing that the heart is more fundamental than mere action, and forgiving others (because, quite frankly, we will not be forgiven unless we do). This stance is often associated with the Anabaptist movement, whether in its more traditional guise or in its Hauerwas form. The broad pacifism Jesus mandated finally means that the church in some measure, in some way, 197 Themelios must withdraw from the world: our job is not to transform culture, but to constitute a new people, to live by the shaping constraints and privileges of the kingdom. It is not our job to tell the world what to do, or even to figure out how to interact with the broader culture; it is simply our job to be the people of God. 5. A postmillennial anticipation of the coming of the kingdom, combined with either a soft sphere- sovereignty (think Kuyper) and/or with some form of theonomy, develops its own ways of thinking about the transformation of the culture. 6. At a popular level (think “Left Behind”), it is still not uncommon for some to think of the kingdom as virtually an exclusive reality, so that terms like “gospel” and “church” may be nicely tied to this generation, but “kingdom” has to do with the future, millennially conceived or not. These are all distinguishable ways of thinking about the dawning of the kingdom. Four of the six devote a lot of thought to the challenge of transforming culture; one (the fourth option, Hauerwas) specifically sets itself against such reflection, but devotes a lot of thought to the challenge of being a distinct society over against the surrounding culture. All but the last tend to depreciate individual salvation, while the last tends to emphasize it to the depreciation of large-scale communitarian and ethical reflection (i.e., where it focuses on ethics, it tends to emphasize the ethics of the priorities of individuals). By contrast, many in these camps who align themselves with social and communitarian ethics would take umbrage at the charge that they downplay individual salvation, since they acknowledge that individuals must repent and believe. Nevertheless, the focus of their frame of reference is one or another of these large visions, usually tied to a distinctive understanding of the kingdom, heavily leaning toward societal transformation (either of the entire society or, in the Anabaptist heritage, the ecclesial society). Individual supporters of these movements tend to emphasize different needs: the overwhelming challenges of poverty, of AIDS and other diseases, of abuse of power, of ecological responsibility, of reconciliation of various sorts (racial, ethnic, religious). 2. Preliminary Responses 1. Like most positions that claim to right a wrong, there is some level of truth in these proposals. Nevertheless, in each case there is something either reductionistic about the proposal or just plain exegetically wrong or both. For instance, with respect to the first proposal, which tends to pit Jesus and the kingdom over against Paul: once one has noted the difference in both literary genre and temporal location of Gospels and epistles, one can nevertheless trace out the many theological connections between Jesus and Paul.1 Or again, with respect to the second proposal, which elevates ethics in the Gospels above the atonement, it painfully overlooks just how central the cross is to the entire Bible’s storyline.
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