An International Journal for Students of Theological and Religious Studies Volume 44 Issue 3 December 2019 EDITORIAL: But That’s Just Your Interpretation! 425 by D. A. Carson STRANGE TIMES: Remembering a Principal’s Principles 433 by Daniel Strange Cultural Marxism: Imaginary Conspiracy or 436 Revolutionary Reality? by Robert S. Smith Adam and Sin as the Bane of Evolution? A Review of 466 Finding Ourselves After Darwin by Hans Madueme Do Formal Equivalent Translations Reflect a Higher 477 View of Plenary, Verbal Inspiration? by William D. Mounce Power for Prayer through the Psalms: Cassiodorus’s 487 Interpretation of the Honey of Souls by Matthew Swale The Oxford Movement and Evangelicalism: Initial 503 Encounters by Kenneth J. Stewart Athens without a Statue to the Unknown God 517 by Kyle Beshears Inerrancy Is Not a Strong or Classical Foundationalism 530 by Mark Boone The God Who Reveals: A Response to J. L. 548 Schellenberg’s Hiddenness Argument by Daniel Wiley Book Reviews 560 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: Brian Tabb Old Testament Systematic Theology Bethlehem College & Seminary Peter Lau David Garner 720 13th Avenue South Malaysian Theological Seminary Westminster Theological Seminary Minneapolis, MN 55415, USA Seremban, Malaysia 2960 Church Road [email protected] [email protected] Glenside, PA 19038, USA [email protected] Contributing Editor and President: New Testament D. A. Carson David Starling Ethics and Pastoralia Trinity Evangelical Divinity School Morling College Rob Smith 2065 Half Day Road 120 Herring Road Sydney Missionary & Bible College Deerfield, IL 60015, USA Macquarie Park, NSW 2113, Australia 43 Badminton Road [email protected] [email protected] Croydon NSW 2132, Australia [email protected] Contributing Editor: Daniel Strange History and Historical Theology Oak Hill Theological College Geoff Chang Mission and Culture Chase Side, Southgate Hinson Baptist Church Jackson Wu London, N14 4PS, UK 1315 Southeast 20th Avenue Mission ONE [email protected] Portland, OR 97214, USA East Asia [email protected] [email protected] Administrator: Andy Naselli Bethlehem College & Seminary 720 13th Avenue South Minneapolis, MN 55415, USA [email protected] EDITORIAL BOARD Gerald Bray, Beeson Divinity School; Hassell Bullock, Wheaton College; Benjamin Gladd, Reformed Theological Seminary; Paul Helseth, University of Northwestern, St. Paul; Paul House, Beeson Divinity School; Hans Madueme, Covenant College; Ken Magnuson, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; Gavin Ortlund, First Baptist Church, Ojai; Mark D. Thompson, Moore Theological College; Paul Williamson, Moore Theological College; Mary Willson, Second Presbyterian Church; Stephen Witmer, Pepperell Christian Fellowship; Robert Yarbrough, Covenant Seminary. ARTICLES Themeliostypically 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 44.3 (2019): 425–32 EDITORIAL But That’s Just Your Interpretation! — D. A. Carson — D. A. Carson is emeritus professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois and president of The Gospel Coalition. n mid-June of this year, a former theology student (let’s call him Demas) posted the following. Demas had successfully completed his M.Div. at a well-known evangelical seminary, and then had served a few years as a fruitful pastor of a growing church in a metropolitan area, while pursuing Ia PhD in New Testament studies. He was a pretty good student, a steady preacher, and was invariably warm and personable with people. Sadly, he entered into an adulterous relationship and ended up sell- ing real estate. Mercifully, he and his wife held their marriage together. So this is what Demas posted on social media in June of this year, several years after resigning his pastorate: Here’s my public contribution during #PrideMonth: Whenever I talk with a conservative Christian or pastor (who [sic] I love and esteem, and whom I believe good things about, and which I used to be) about homosexuality now, whatever I actually end up saying to them—what I’m actually THINKING is, “Look. I’ve done biblical and theological training at a very high level. At least as high if not higher than you (for 99.9% of the population). And I’m telling you: You. don’t. know. for sure.” You don’t know for sure that your reading of the Bible is right. Or if your hermeneutics are correct. You do not know for sure how interwoven or weighted the divine and human authorship(s?) of the Bible is. You do not know that. You don’t know 100% for certain which ancient books are actually God Almighty’s eternal Word. Because there were a lot of books. And we rely on these particular books because they’re the ones the Church happened to be using when the Church first put a “Bible” together. Moses did not bring the whole Bible down the mountain from God. We love these books, but we have very thin understandings of how this collection of books came together and why and on who’s [sic] authority. We do not know. We don’t know for absolutely certain how God wanted us to use these books. How he wanted them applied to the 21st century western world. We do not know for certain. We cannot know for certain. Believing in the Bible is an act of faith. For everyone. And I believe in the Bible. But when my eyes are open to the fact that I can say BOTH “This book is holy” AND “There is a lot of uncertainty about how it should be applied to our society” I immediately 425 Themelios realize that I could get the “answer” to the homosexuality question wrong—one way or the other. I could end up approving something God hates or hating something God loves. Could go either way. Because the issue is not certain. It’s not. We know the same facts. You know it’s not certain. So, if my potential mistake it [sic] to love something God hates, then I’m going to err on the side of what looks and feels to me most like love. Because whatever else I believe about God, I believe that God Is Love. So, I should try to approve of the things that look most like love. Which makes me an LGBTQ+ affirming Christian. And I should be willing to say that more. Happy Pride Month. In the past, Christians who spoke about the status of the Bible tended to speak of the Bible’s truthfulness, reliability, sufficiency, inspiration, inerrancy, and so forth. In line with many contemporaries, however, Demas, without overtly calling into question any of these more familiar categories, has undermined several of them by raising epistemic and hermeneutical questions: How can I know with certainty what the Bible is saying? How can I be certain what books really belong in the Bible? How can I be sure that my interpretation of any text is correct, and, still more, what its proper application is when I draw lines from texts that are two or three thousand years old and written in another language and in another culture, to our life in the early 21st century? At a milder level, many preachers who are not entertaining the sweep of the epistemic challenges that Demas raises may nevertheless face somewhat similar challenges as they prepare their Sunday morning sermons. Which interpretation of the text in front of me is correct? How can I declare what the Word of the Lord is saying if I cannot be certain what it is saying? Or which of us have tried to explain what the Bible says on some sensitive topic or other, only to be dismissed with the line, “But that’s just your interpretation”? The subject is much too large and multi-faceted for a brief editorial, but it may not be inappropriate to lay down a handful of markers, the first four in a little more detail than the final entry. First, it is deceptive, and even idolatrous, to set up omniscience as the necessary criterion for “certain” or “sure” knowledge.