One of [Machen’s] students recalled his saying that

“the great Dr. Hermann presented his position with such power I would sometimes leave his presence wondering how I could ever retain my confidence in the historical accuracy of the Gospel narratives. Then I’d go to my room, take out the Gospel of mark and read it from beginning to end at one sitting—and my doubts would fade. I realized that the document could not possibly be the invention of the mind of a mere man.”

Machen came to see that Herrmann’s position was fallacious for two reasons. First, the picture of the ‘liberal Jesus,’ which called forth Hermann’s unbounded reverence, was a fictitious creation. Second, the type of religious experience that Ritshclian liberalism endeavored to conserve was hardly true Christian experience. It knew nothing of the biblical view of sin and redemption through the death of Christ.

David B. Calhoun, Princeton Seminary: The Majestic Testimony, 1869-1929 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1996), 230.

Because the liberals of Machen’s day were so pious, many in the churches would not remove them from the church. But if the liberals’ reverence was directed toward a “fictitious creation” of their own making, it was not praiseworthy but idolatry.

Barth explains his objections to exegesis that never moves beyond the historical-critical level [for context see previous two posts]:

Taking Jülcher’s work as typical of much modern exegesis, we observe how closely he keeps to the mere deciphering of words as though they were runes. But, when all is done, they still remain largely unintelligible. How quick he is without any real struggling with the raw material of the Epistle, to dismiss this or that difficult passage as simply a peculiar doctrine or opinion of Paul! How quick he is to treat a matter as explained, when it is said to belong to the religious thought, feeling, experience, conscience, or conviction,—of Paul! And, when this does not at once fit, or is manifestly impossible, how easily he leaps, like some bold William Tell, right out of the Pauline boat, and rescues himself by attributing what Paul has said, to his ‘personality’, to the experience on the road to Damascus (an episode which seems capable of providing at any moment an explanation of every impossibility), to later Judaism, to Hellenism, or, in fact, to any exegetical semi-divinity of the ancient world!

Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, trans. Edwyn C. Hoskyns (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), 7f.

The most influential opponent to the kind of commentary critiqued in the previous post is Karl Barth. In the Römerbrief Barth critiqued historical criticism’s failure to serve the preacher. He advocated moving beyond historical critical study in order to understand what God is saying to Christians in the present day. This demanded the commentator understand the theological import of the text. Barth also insisted that each part of the Bible be interpreted in light of the whole.

Though Barth’s polemics against liberalism made him unpopular among many liberals in his day and in the decades that followed, the influence of postmodernity on theology led to a revival in interest in Barth. For some Barth is attractive because he provides theologians with a way of addressing the problems of modernism without entirely abandoning their liberal presuppositions or theology.  (For the view that Barth’s theology, despite its critique of liberalism, remained liberal theology see Gary Dorrien, The Making of American Liberal Theology: Imagining Progressive Religion (Louisville: WJK, 2001), xxi.)

In April, Rick Phillips made this insightful observation about commentaries:

I also find that if you want doctrinal insights and applications, you need to look at older commentaries.  More current commentaries are far more likely to note literary connections, and often to real profit . . . . Yet, while the technical exegesis is in some respects improved of late, the sense of the message of the text has regressed.  If our commentaries reveal anything, we are becoming more technically acute but also less receptive of the prophetic message of the text for us.  Does this indicate a professionalization of the exegetical calling, so that we are more skilled in working over the Word and less attuned to sitting under the Word?  Yes, I think it does.

Rick Phillips, “Working Over or Sitting Under the Word,” Reformation21.

The roots to this shift go back to Benedict Spinzoa. Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise in 1670 marked a decisive turning point in biblical studies. In that work he de-privileged the Bible from its canonical status and laid the basis for the historical critical method. As a result, the Bible was no longer a canonical text that supplied theological meaning but one religious text among others to be dissected historically.

Christians (using the term in Machen’s sense) have for centuries rejected historical criticism of the kind proposed by Spinoza, but they have also been profoundly affected by it. In their defense of orthodoxy conservatives have often been shaped by the emphases of their opponents, if in the inverse. Craig Bartholomew comments, “There has been an (understandable) tendency for orthodox scholars to fight the battle for Scripture where opponents have attacked. Thus a huge amount of Christian energy has been devoted to historical issues during the twentieth century. Far less, alas, to interpretation of the Bible as God’s address” (“Calvin, Barth, and Theological Interpretation,” in Calvin, Barth, and Reformed Theology, ed. Neil B. MacDonald and Carl R. Trueman [Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2008], 164).

The Post-Reformation Digital Library looks to be an enormously valuable resource. Nick Batzig says “This is the most comprehensive collection of free online PDF theological resources. It will be, without a doubt, a massively important site for those interested in pre-20th Century studies.”

There is an enormous amount of helpful theological primary sources available on Google Books, Internet Archive, and other sites. The PRDL helpfully organizes these by category: Reformed, Lutheran, Roman Catholic, Anabaptist, Arminian-Remonstrant, and Socinian-Unitarian. Also included are smaller sections on Early Modern Philosophy and Patristic and Medieval Philosophy.

In the nineteenth century the Princtonians, despite some hyper-spiritualist statements (Hodge, 451f., 453), clearly affirmed that the eternal state would be on the new earth, though at times this is termed heaven (Hodge, 457, 460-62). Bavinck provides a much clearer defense of the new earth as the eternal home of the redeemed (page 716ff.).

Dispensationalists have long held to a re-created earth in the eternal state. Scofield and Chafer seem to have taught that Israel would dwell on earth for eternity while the church would dwell in heaven (Reimers’ Eschatology notes). Alva McClain states, “The ‘heaven’ and ‘earth’ here undoubtedly refer to the physical universe. The ‘first’ or original universe passes away, and is replaced by a ‘new’ universe. This does not necessarily mean the annihilation of our present world of matter; for the Greek kainos may mean new in character rather than in substance. The same term is used of the regenerated believer: he becomes a ‘new creation’ (II Cor. 5:17, ASV) in a crisis which does not annihilate the personal entity but transforms it” (McClain, 510).

Though the popular view of the eternal state remains an eternal existence in heaven, several popular works, including Randy Alcorn’s Heaven and N. T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope, have argued for the eternal state on the recreated earth.

Bibliography

Alcorn, Randy. Heaven. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale, 2004.

Bavinck, Herman. Reformed Dogmatics: Volume 4: Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation. Edited by John Bolt. Translated by John Vriend. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008.

Hodge, Archibald Alexander. Outlines of Theology. New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1863.

McClain, Alva J. The Greatness of the Kingdom. Chicago: Moody, 1959.

Wright, N. T. Surprised by Hope. New York: HarperOne, 2008.

By the time of the early Medieval period, the conception of heaven as the place of beatific vision was firmly established by authors such as Pseudo-Dionysius and Gregory the Great (Russell, 93, 96). Nonetheless, it is important to note theologians still affirmed physicality of the resurrected body (Russell, 95). In popular discourse, people still described heaven in physical terms and often as a garden or a city. With the revival of towns, heaven was more often described as a city (McDannell and Lang, 72-73). It is not clear whether these physical paradises were conceived to be located in the present world or in heaven. The latter is most likely.

As interest in astronomy grew, theologians began to locate heaven in the outermost of the heavenly spheres as a realm of pure light. Thomas Aquinas did not deny the existence of a future new earth (though he did deny that it would have any plant or animal life). Nonetheless, in Aquinas’ thought the saints will do nothing but contemplate God in the eternal state  (McDannell and Lang, 82-83, 89).

During the Renaissance the conception of heaven as a static place of contemplation gave way to a two-tiered vision of eternity. Above was the New Jerusalem as the dwelling of God and below was a garden paradise. The redeemed could move between contemplation of God above and the joys of human reunion and companionship below (McDannell and Lang, 119, 142-43).

The reformers Luther and Calvin both affirmed the restoration of earth and the access of the saints to both the restored earth and heaven. Unlike Aquinas, Luther and Calvin believed plants and animals would exist on the restored earth. The focus of the eternal state remained the worship of God (McDannell and Lang, 154f.). Diversity of views existed among the theological descendants of the Reformers. In his The Saints Everlasting Rest, the puritan Richard Baxter emphasized the delight in and knowledge of God that the saints will experience. The puritan Cotton Mather spoke of a re-created earth, but it is difficult to tell if he saw this as a millennial or eternal habitation (Smolinski, ed., 268ff.).

Bibliography

McDannell, Colleen and Bernhard Lang. Heaven: A History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988.

Russell, Jeffery Burton. A History of Heaven: The Singing Silence. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997.

Smolinski, Reiner, ed. The Threefold Paradise of Cotton Mather: An Edition of ‘Triparadisus.’ Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995.

Irenaeus taught that at his return, the Messiah would establish the “Kingdom of the Messiah” on the present earth and that the saints would be resurrected to enjoy a thousand years of life in which there would be agricultural abundance and peace between humans and animals. This would be followed by “the Kingdom of God the Father” of which Irenaeus said little. McDannell and Lang understand this to be a spiritualized kingdom (McDannell and Lang, 50-53). If so, this Irenaeus’ view was identical to that of Tertullian, who authored the first book about the eternal state: About Paradise (now lost). Tertullian taught the saints would be raised to live in the New Jerusalem for 1,000 years after which they would live as spirits in heaven for eternity (Russell, 67). By contrast, Origen simply taught an eternal spiritual existence in a spiritual heaven (Russell, 76).

With Ambrose’s About Paradise the emphasis turned toward a heavenly eternity alone. Though described with the earthly imagery of the garden and the city, communion with God was the centerpiece of Ambrose’s vision (Russell, 80). Augustine followed Ambrose’s vision of a spiritual heaven in which the redeemed will enjoy the beatific vision and respond in praise (McDannell and Lang, 59). In the east the Cappadocian Fathers and Chrysostom also emphasized the beatific vision (Russell, 84). These theologians rejected the earthly kingdom taught by Irenaeus and Tertullian. Their less material and more spiritual vision of heaven may be due to the rise of monasticism which devalued the physical world and valued mystical contemplation (McDannell and Lang, 58). Craig Blaising also ties the development of a “spiritual vision” approach to eternity to the influence of Platonism on early Christian theologians (168).

Bibliography

Blaising, Craig A. “Premillennialism.” In Three Views on the Millennium and Beyond. Edited by Darrell L. Bock. Counterpoints. Edited by Stanley N. Gundry. Grand Rapids: Zondervan: 1999.

McDannell, Colleen and Bernhard Lang. Heaven: A History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988.

Russell, Jeffery Burton. A History of Heaven: The Singing Silence. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997.

The Baptist Bulletin provides a link to a PDF version of new book by Paul Hartog on Calvin and the extent of the atonement.

I’ve not read it yet, but I’ve heard good things about Paul Hartog and expect it to be a worthwhile read.

The latest edition of American Theological Inquiry has an article on the Irish Baptist pastor and scholar Alexander Carson that is well worth reading.

Clary, Ian Hugh. “Alexander Carson (1776-1844): ‘Jonathan Edwards of the Nineteenth Century.’” American Theological Inquiry 2.2 (July 15, 2009): 43-52.