I was hoping that at least one of the views expressed in [amazon:978-0310490333:inline], edited by Alan Stanley, would recognize that the theological problem looks very different—and frankly much less problematic—from a narrative-historical perspective. Sadly not. The four positions can be efficiently summarized using the chapter headings:

• Robert Wilkin: “Christians will be judged according to their works at the rewards judgment, but not at the final judgment.”
• Thomas Schreiner: “Justification apart from and by works: at the final judgment works will confirm justification.”
• James Dunn: “If Paul could believe both in justification by faith and judgment according to works, why should that be a problem for us?’
• Michael Barber: “A Catholic Perspective: our works are meritorious at the final judgment because of our union with Christ.”

Each chapter is followed by critical—and sometimes quite scathing—responses from the other three disputants. [pullquote]In my view the manner in which these four theologians tie themselves in knots trying to rationalize the data is pretty strong confirmation that the traditional paradigm is flawed.[/pullquote] What follows is a rough outline, with some exegetical illustration, of how I think the issue might better be approached.

Elkanah had two wives. Peninnah has children, but Hannah has no children. Elkanah favours Hannah, but Peninnah “used to provoke her grievously to irritate her, because the Lord had closed her womb”. At the temple in Shiloh Hannah prays that the Lord of hosts will look on the affliction of his servant and give her a son. Eventually the boy Samuel is born, and when he is weaned, Hannah takes him to the temple and hands him over to the Lord. She then utters an impassioned prayer: “My heart exults in the Lord; my horn is exalted in the Lord. My mouth derides my enemies, because I rejoice in your salvation…” (1 Sam. 2:1).

I have found John Barton’s defence of “biblical criticism” as a fundamentally semantic or literary enterprise extremely helpful in clarifying what I mean by a narrative-historical hermeneutic. The biblical text relates, on the one hand, to how things really were, and it is the task of historical-criticism to examine that referential relationship: is the text what it purports to be? does it give an accurate and trustworthy account of the people and events to which it refers? But it relates, on the other hand, to the communities which produced and read the text. This is also a historical relationship, but the critical task in this case is primarily to understand what is being said by and for the benefit of the original communities. It is this emphasis on what is being said that is so valuable in [amazon:978-0664225872:inline].

I managed to get an internet connection on the bus between Antakya (Antioch on the Orontes) and Tarsus and followed a link from Michael Bird to a Themelios article by Don Carson on “Kingdom, Ethics, and Individual Salvation”, republished on the Gospel Coalition site. It doesn’t seem an inappropriate theme to reflect on as we ride in air-conditioned comfort in the footsteps of Paul.

Carson is responding to a number of different views on the kingdom of God advanced in recent years that diverge from “traditional evangelicalism and traditional Reformed thought”. Most of them are attempts to reintroduce a social and ethical dimension to the church’s understanding of the kingdom of God, either alongside or in displacement of a supposedly Pauline focus on individual salvation. As Carson puts it:

…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).

I was asked a while back by Brad Knight what I thought of this post by Roger Olson. Olson addresses the question:

When composing a Christian statement of faith, a statement of faith for a Christian church, educational institution, whatever, what or whom should the first article be about? Where should it begin?

He rejects starting either with God, because it may lead to subordinationism, or with the Bible, because it may lead to biblicism, and argues instead that “our primary focus of faith as Christians, that which conditions all else, is Jesus”. We cannot begin with a “generic or even pre-Jesus” account of God and then “project that onto Jesus”. We must confess fundamentally and primarily, in the words of Archbishop Michael Ramsay, that “God is Christlike, and in him is no un-Christlikeness at all”. Martin Luther, Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf, Karl Barth and Jürgen Moltmann are also invoked in support of this view.

Following the brilliantly intense Christian Associates staff conference in Budapest, my wife and I are spending a couple of weeks in eastern Turkey. Yesterday we went to see the remarkable rock structure, in the hills close to the border with Iran, that is believed by some to be the petrified remains of Noah’s ark. The archaeological site is named after the Turkish army captain İlhan Durupınar who noticed it in aerial photographs taken after it was exposed by earthquakes and heavy rain in 1948, but it is known locally as Nuhun Gemisi, “Noah’s ship”.