I have been asked to write a review of Tom Schreiner's New Testament Theology: Magnifying God in Christ. It is an interesting and well-considered work.
Schreiner wants to argue that the anchoring theme of NT Theology is something like:
God magnifying himself through Jesus Christ by means of the Holy Spirit.
That is, God's concern for God's own glory is the driving heartbeat of the NT witness and mission. His self-referencing self-regard is what perpetuates his plans and his interaction with his creatures.
Of course, accusing this God of narcissism is beside the point: he is God after all. But is this really a true depiction of the Biblical God? Isn't God - the who God who is love - fundamentally other-regarding?
18 comments:
Michael,
I'm down to begin reading Schreiner tomorrow for a review for Themelios.
Well I will be interested to hear how you find it.
It is all pretty standard stuff - very conservative from a very reformed point of view. Shows the influence of Piper and Carson in large measure. Defence of forensic view of righteousness. Asserts rather than argues I feel. So, just says 'argument X is overstated'. But then, doesn't say HOW?
Your question strikes at the heart of the Edwardsean framework of John Piper, from which I suspect Schreiner is also working. Edwards' "Dissertation Concerning the End for Which God Created the World" presents a forceful argument for God's self-regardingness, pulling together an impressive number of texts in support of his thesis. Although Edwards tries to reconcile his thesis with a biblically high view of the love of God, I doubt that everyone would be persuaded. But it is probably a good place to begin to see where Schreiner is coming from.
I had a similar complaint when I recently read a friend's essay on Calvin's doctrine of God: Calvin was not an Edwardsean! This whole business of "God magnifying himself" or of God redeeming the world "for the sake of God's own glory" is pretty perverse — its basic problem is that it forgets to include "Jesus Christ" in the definition of "God".
If (as in the Fourth Gospel) divine "glory" is manifest in Christ's cross, then I reckon we get a very different picture of what it means for God to "glorify himself": God does not "magnify himself" (literally "make himself bigger", from the Latin magnus), rather he humiliates himself and makes himself smaller. Taken along those lines, God's glory could never be understood apart from God's humanity in Jesus Christ.
Anyway, sorry for the rant... But I agree with your reservations about Schreiner: his Edwardsean understanding of the core NT message represents a stunning theological misreading of the NT.
I think one of Edwards' replies would be that the supreme manner in which God shows his love (and, indeed, could show his love) is by enabling us to enjoy his glory (a glory that reveals itself at the cross). This is one of the things that separates God from narcissism.
From a slightly different angle, doesn't this idea find some warrant from repeated emphasis in the prophets (perhaps especially in Ezekiel) that God's redemption of Israel is for his name's sake?
Now, Ben, I didn't quite go as far as you have in critiquing the Schreinerean proposal!
I think you are right about the Christology, but I do think also that it isn't quite an either-or: God's self-magnification also includes the magnification of creatures; his glory is refracted throughout the creation, and includes the glorification of human beings in Christ.
Where I have the trouble with the Edwardsian vision is that humanity disappears utterly from the picture...
Miroslav Volf has some interesting things to say on this in Free of Charge (p. 39). He faces Barth's claimn that for God to seek his own glory would make him self-seeking and precoccupied with himself by saying,
"But we don't have to give up on the idead that God seeks God's own glory. We just need to say that God's glory, which is God's very being, is God's love, the creative love that wants to confer good upon the beloved. Now the problem of a self-seeking God has disappeared, and the divinity of God's love is vindicated. In seeking God's own glory, God merely insists on being towards human beings the God who gives."
I found that helpful anyway.
I think Edwards is basically saying the same thing as Volf here in ch. 1, sec. 4, obj. 1 of his "Dissertation Concerning the End for Which God Created the World":
"God may have a real and proper pleasure or happiness in seeing
the happy state of the creature; yet this may not be different from
his delight in himself, being a delight in his own infinite goodness, or the exercise of that glorious propensity of his nature to diffuse and communicate himself, and so gratifying this inclination of his own heart. This delight which God has in his creature’s happiness cannot properly be said to be what God receives from the creature. For it is only the effect of his own work in and communications to the creature, in making it and admitting it to a participation of his fullness, as the sun receives nothing from the jewel that receives its light and shines only by a participation of its brightness."
It seems helpful to consider the end of the Bible. If God is God, He will achieve his purposes fully, so if we look at the final scene, clues as to those purposes should be apparent. I think that the current Dean of St Andrew's Cathedral's line, something like "the purpose of Creation is that Jesus Christ would be worshipped by a people he has redeemed" works pretty well.
That is an observation of the final scene in the New Jerusalem, and while it is compatible with Schreiner's theme you mention, it does have the benefit of including people.
In his line ("God magnifying himself through Jesus Christ by means of the Holy Spirit"), people are almost superfluous. Some mention, surely, of those for whom Christ died is a central part of the story?
Do you think it's fair to say that in Schreiner's thesis 'humanity disappears utterly' from the purposes of God? Surely his 'through Jesus Christ' carries some pretty obvious implications about incarnation and salvation history.
Or were you drawing a distinction between Schreiner and 'the Edwardsian vision' on this point?
More generally, I agree that God's zeal for his glory and his love for us need not be treated as mutually exclusive categories. But I think the former should shape our understanding of the latter at least as much as the latter should shape our understanding of the former.
Yes, it isn't fair for me to tar Schreiner as yet, not having read the whole book. And, I should say, the 'Edwardsian vision' is perhaps not quite fair to Edwards either.
Should glory have priority over love, or are you saying that there is a kind mutuality between the two?
"Should glory have priority over love, or are you saying that there is a kind of mutuality between the two?"
Good question! I hedged my bets with my "at least as much as" formulation, so I deserved to be asked the follow-up question.
If God's attributes are inseparable and eternal, then I suspect there will always be a mutuality about the way in which (say) his righteousness and his love are to be understood in relation to one another. (I'm working here on a Piperesque understanding of God's righteousness, which ties it pretty closely to his zeal for his name and glory, but you can feed in a slightly different understanding of 'righteousness' and I think the argument still holds...). The most loving thing that God can do for us is to give us a vision of his glory, since we were created to glorify and enjoy him; conversely, the pinnacle of the revelation of his glory is in the self-giving love of Christ on the cross. So 'for God's glory' and 'because of his love' are always going to be mutually interpreting.
Nevertheless, there is still the question of whether one of these realities (God's righteousness/glory or his love) is a subset or implication of the other - in that sense I guess you'd say the larger concept had a kind of 'priority'.
If God's love is defined narrowly, as his love for us humans - and if it is defined still more narrowly as his elective, saving love for his church - then I think you could run an argument that this is a smaller (and penultimate?) reality compared to the larger (and ultimate?) reality of the display of his glory.
But then you could come back with the argument that the
'circumferential' displays of God's glory (in the non-human creation, in his patience with and judgement of the reprobrate...) still in some sense revolve in a motion that is not only Christocentric but also ecclesiocentric (eg. Rom. 8:19, 9:23, Eph. 1:22-23).
And then there is the difficult question of whether we should read texts like John 10:17 as saying something about the eternal, immanent Trinity or as speaking exclusively in terms of the economy. If the Father loves the Son "because" the Son lays down his life (for the sheep) then that seems to suggest that the incarnation and crucifixion are not only expressions of and overflows of the (ordered, mutual) love of the eternal Trinity but actually hard-wired into the intra-Trinitarian relationships.
But that text seems to me to be the exception to a more general and larger pattern in which the story of our salvation is described as fitting into a larger, intra-Trinitarian story about the Father and the Spirit glorifying the Son in order that the Son might glorify the Father...
What do you think?
Is not the purpose of man to bring glory to God? If so, then would you consider that perverse as well?
All of the negative comments presuppose that man has some redeeming quality within himself and that God created him as some type of companion. As if God were in need of companionship.
That's a weak god.
Daniel - well, even the Westminster confession adds 'and enjoy him forever'... (Ben used the perverse word, not I, by the way).
I don't think you are right about the 'negative comments' (which aren't negative as I see them). That is, the love of God conditions his utter independence, surely? His love is not needy, but it is true to who he is. He is not a God who wills to be isolate! And, in fact, the God who became incarnate in Christ and who bleed for the race WAS kinda 'weak', no? At least, he embraced weakness because of the priority of love.
David - I think there is something in what you say. That is, the intra-Trinitarian relations show that even the divine seeking of the divine glory is other-person centred!
I don't think that man has a redeeming quality within himself, or that God created him as a companion. Quite the reverse. The elect are God's treasured possession simply because the Lord loves them and not (as in Dt 7) because there is anything to recommend them.
But a summary statement of the whole New Testament without reference to people seems a bit, well, incomplete. God magnifies himself through Jesus Christ by means of his Holy Spirit from all eternity. People are not needed for God to accomplish that. It is just that he has done so in history; and the New Testament describes how God did bring glory to himself by saving people.
I'm often struck by how a system and "key" to the NT ends up deforming important parts of the NT. Sure, there is a place for "God's glory and not yours" to wound proud hearts and expose our self-worship.
On the other hand, apply the principle to, say, the parable of the Prodigal Son, then you've got the Father standing in the porch, not running and losing his honour, rather calling all the servants round and saying (with an Alan Partridge voice, let the British reader understand): "Hey chaps, look at me, I'm really merciful, I am - I'm letting the little beggar come back. Pat me on the back, get me a gin and tonic!"
If a system messes up the Scripture, then I say leave it. We must let the texts work according to their intended function.
Sorry, I know I'm a couple of weeks late, but I still thought it might be worth mentioning this post by Jeremy Pierce.
Post a Comment