An International Journal for Students of Theological and Religious Studies Volume 39 Issue 1 April 2014 EDITORIAL: Do the Work of an Evangelist 1 D. A. Carson OFF THE RECORD: The Covert Thrill of Violence? 5 Reading the Bible in Disbelief Michael J. Ovey Editor’s Note 8 Brian J. Tabb A Biblical Theologian Reviews Gerald Bray’s Systematic Theology 9 Thomas R. Schreiner Response to Tom Schreiner 17 Gerald Bray A Systematician Reviews Tom Schreiner’s Biblical Theology 18 Gerald Bray Response to Gerald Bray 26 Thomas R. Schreiner Revival Defined and Defended: How the New Lights Tried 29 and Failed to Use America’s First Religious Periodical to Quiet Critics and Quell Radicals Collin Hansen Should Evangelicals Embrace Historical Criticism? 37 The Hays-Ansberry Proposal Robert W. Yarbrough PASTORAL PENSÉES: The Care of Souls: 53 The Heart of the Reformation Ray Van Neste Book Reviews 64 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 online at www.theGospelCoalition.org. It is presented in three formats: PDF (for downloading and printing), Logos edition (for searchability and mobile access), 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: Brian Tabb Dane Ortlund Bethlehem College and Seminary New Testament Crossway 720 13th Avenue South Alan Thompson 1300 Crescent Street Minneapolis, MN 55415, USA Sydney Missionary & Bible College Wheaton, IL 60187, USA [email protected] PO Box 83 [email protected] Croydon, NSW 2132, Australia Contributing Editor: Michael J. Ovey [email protected] Mission and Culture Oak Hill Theological College Jason S. Sexton Chase Side, Southgate History and Historical Theology Golden Gate Baptist Seminary London, N14 4PS, UK Nathan A. Finn 251 S. Randolph Avenue (Suite A) [email protected] Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary Brea, CA 92821, USA P. O. Box 1889 Administrator: Andy Naselli [email protected] Wake Forest, NC 27588, USA Bethlehem College and Seminary [email protected] 720 13th Avenue South Minneapolis, MN 55415, USA [email protected] EDITORIAL BOARD Gerald Bray, Beeson Divinity School; 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; Jonathan Pennington, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; James Robson, Wycliffe Hall; Mark D. Thompson,Moore Theological College; Paul Williamson, Moore Theological College; Stephen Witmer, Pepperell Christian Fellowship; Robert Yarbrough, Covenant Seminary. 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 39.1 (2014): 1–4 EDITORIAL Do the Work of an Evangelist — D. A. Carson — D. A. Carson is research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. “Do the work of an evangelist.” (2 Tim 4:5) ne of the odd things about the English language is how many words it has. For example, Eng- lish has about three times as many words as French. That doesn’t mean that the working vo- cabulary of the average English speaker is larger than the working vocabulary of the average OFrench speaker, of course. Most competent speakers of any language use only a small part of the total vocabulary of the language in which they are speaking. Nevertheless the difference in size of the total vocabulary is curious. The primary reason for the difference in vocabulary size between English and French lies in the different ways in which the two languages were formed. In keeping with other ro- mance languages, French has depended on Greek and Latin for much of its word formation (though of course it has “borrowed” plenty of words from other languages). By contrast, English arose out of not only Greek and Latin, but Anglo-Saxon, with side input from Norse and Celtic languages. The result is that English has many synonyms that have sprung up from separate linguistic heritages. These synonyms rarely share exactly the same semantic range; usage introduces distortions. The subject is deep, we say; it is very profound. In this context, it is difficult to discern a substantive semantic difference betweendeep and profound. On the other hand, we happily affirm that the well in the farmyard is deep; we would not say it is profound. Why not? Simply because we do not use profound in that way. By contrast, a French speaker will have no difficulty averring that both the subject and the well are “profond,” and will render both English deep and English profound by the French “profond.” If a scholar were trying to translate a French document into English, however, and came across the French word “profond,” he or she would have to think carefully about whether to choose deep or profound. This is a rather roundabout way of reflecting on the fact that both translational and theological pitfalls lurk in the underbrush when moving from one language to another. In modern English, we distinguish expiation and propitiation. The former is the sacrificial act by which sin is canceled: the object of the action is the sin. The latter is the sacrificial act by which God is made propitious: the object of the action is God. Granted who the God of the Bible is, it is difficult to see how you can have one without the other: the same sacrifice that cancels sin by the sacrifice that God has ordained also turns aside his own the judicial wrath. Nevertheless it is useful to distinguish between the two notions. French has only one word, “expiation,” and it can convey both the cancellation of sin and the setting aside of the wrath of God, depending on the context. Competent French speakers simply do not have a word equivalent to the English propitiation. That is not to say that French theologians know nothing about the concept of propitiation, of course, for the concept depends on much, much more than the meaning 1 Themelios of a single word. But it is to say that they do not have one word that univocally means what English- speakers mean by propitiation. And that in turn means that the history of debate about what the cross achieves differs significantly in French and English scholarship. Sometimes the fact that English uses two words where the French (and the Greek!) have only one can trip us up and focus our gaze in a slightly misleading direction. For the purposes of this editorial, one of the most telling examples is one so close to us we sometimes fail to see it. English has two words, “gospel” and “evangel,” where the Greek has only one, εὐαγγέλιον. Themelios is sponsored by an organization called “The Gospel Coalition.” What signals would be hoisted if, instead, we called ourselves “The Evangel Coalition”? We may say, “Evangelicals believe the gospel,” which does not sound entirely tautologous, but to say it as a first-century Greek speaker must, “Evangelicals believe the evangel,” would be passing strange. And then, of course, if we start to reflect on all the related words now used in English—evangelicalism, evangelism, evangelical, evangelist, evangel, evangelization, evangelize, evangelically, evangelicism—we observe that some of them have no Greek counterpart. Interestingly enough, the more-or-less synonymous gospel does not boast the array of cognates that evangel does. Most of us would not translate 2 Tim 4:5, “Do the work of a gospeller” or “Do the work of a gospelist.” To make matters more complicated yet, one or two of the Greek cognates of εὐαγγέλιον are sometimes rendered into English in ways that, on the surface, seem less than direct. For instance, one might have expected εὐαγγελίζομαι to be rendered “to evangelize,” but in most English Bibles, it is more likely to be rendered by “to preach the gospel” or “to preach the good news” or the like, equivalent to τὸ εὐαγγέλιον κηρύσσω. If this were another sort of editorial, it would be worth exploring why this is the case.