Biblical Interpretation and Doctrinal Development in the Reformed Tradition: Essays in Honor of James De Jong

Written by Arie Leder and Richard A. Muller, eds. Reviewed By Paul Helm

A good deal of noticed and influential scholarly work has been done on the dogmatic output of Reformed Orthodoxy (including Puritanism) in the last generation or so, as can be seen in some of the contributions to the currently-agitated question of Antinomianism. In the same period there has been a parallel though narrower stream of work giving attention to the exegetical labors of members of the same group. This seems to have caught less attention, perhaps because the acids of criticism have bitten deeper into biblical studies than in dogmatics, or (an opposite reason) perhaps because conventional evangelical and conservative exegesis has recovered some of the trajectory of Puritans and others already.

But since the groundbreaking Biblical Interpretation in the Era of the Reformation, edited by John L. Thompson and Richard A. Muller (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 1996), this narrower and slower stream of work has been flowing steadily. For example Muller’s extensive piece “Scripture and the Westminster Confession” in Richard A. Muller and S. Ward, Scripture and Worship, Biblical Interpretation and The Directory for Worship (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2007), and his pieces on the debate on vowel points and on Henry Ainsworth and Protestant exegesis in After Calvin (Oxford: OUP, 2003). Examples of other work are Jon Balserak, “‘There will always be prophets’: Deuteronomy 18:14–22 and Calvin’s Prophetic Awareness” and John L. Thompson, “Reformer of Exegesis? Calvin’s Unpaid Debt to Origen” in Calvin—Saint or Sinner? Ed. Herman J. Seldenhuis (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), and no doubt much more.

In the book under review Arie Leder and Richard Muller have edited a volume in honor of James De Jong, former professor and president at Calvin Seminary, and brought together a number of works which feed this exegetical stream. The following contributions are noteworthy for their variety:

  • Richard A. Muller, “An ‘Immeasurably Superior’ Rhetoric: Biblical and Homiletical Oratory in Calvin’s Sermons on the History of Melchizedek and Abraham”;
  • Al Wolters, “Calvin’s Lectures on Zechariah: Textual Notes”;
  • Keith D. Stanglin, “Adopted in Christ, Appointed to the Slaughter: Calvin’s Interpretation of the Maccabean Psalms”;
  • Raymond A. Blacketer, “Henry Ainsworth, Harried Hebraiser (1570–1622)”;
  • Jay J. Shim, “The Interpretation of Christ’s Descent into Hades in the Early Seventeenth Century”;
  • John S. Bergsma, “Critical and Catholic Exegesis in the Seventeenth Century Low Countries”;
  • Won Taek Lim, “Biblical Interpretation and Doctrinal Formulation in John Flavel’s Works”;
  • Arie C. Leder, “Bible Commentary for the Untutored: the Bijbelverklaring of 1780–1795, by Jacob van Nuys Klinkenberg and Gerard Johan Nahuys.”

Each of these papers manifest two features to some degree: treating the Bible as a theological document as well as an exegetical treasury; and a concern for direct pastoral application. Perhaps this is most evident in Lim’s article on John Flavel.

There are also a number of other papers, more or less related to the theme of the collection. I have picked out three of the contributions for further comment.

In ch. 12, J. Mark Beech addresses the debate between Bishop Bramhall and Thomas Hobbes on freedom and necessity. He gives a good account of the debate itself and its literary fall-out. What he does not do are two things: he does not contextualize the debate sufficiently theologically, nor does he help the reader much with its terms. One might easily gain the impression that to have a scholastic outlook on these issues (like the Bishop) is to have a semi-Pelagian or Arminian outlook, while to be anti-scholastic is to be Augustinian and Reformed. But this is far from the truth. Many anti-scholastics, like John Locke, were Arminian. And Arminius himself was scholastic. The Reformed Orthodox were scholastic, the biblicistic Socinians were—Socinian. What was the significance of Hobbes’s materialism? It is a pity, too, that Beech could not take the opportunity for a sidelong glance at similarities—and differences—between the Reformed Orthodox and the anti-scholastic Jonathan Edwards. Though Beach’s is a substantial essay from which one can learn, he does not attempt to connect it with other people and issues, but contents himself with giving some of the major points in the debate, making it seem rather self-contained.

In ch. 14 (“Herman Hoeksema Was Right”) John Bolt turns another page in his on-going discussion of the 1924 hoo-ha in the Christian Reformed Church regarding common grace. That church, as I understood it, was in 1924 and to an extent still is, Kuyperian in its outlook on grace. But it turns out from Bolt’s and others’ researches, that in their reaction to Hoeksema, the church (or its courts) had lost sight of the distinction between general and particular grace, which Kuyper endorsed and wrote reams about. They came to hold, all the while thinking it was Kuyperian to do so, that common grace has to do not with God’s undeserved gifts to the race in general, but also with the way the gospel is preached. Hoeksema demurred. It now turns out that Father Abraham was on Hoeksema’s side. So among Kuyper’s warring children Hoeksema was the true Kuyperian, not the church as served by its authorities. Other questions regarding common grace (apart from the fudging of it with the particularity of grace), Hoeksema was prepared to chat about, as the Dutch do, but not if they became a dogma of the church, which they effectively did become. And so Hoeksema left. So by a paradox or antinomy or whatever, though Hoeksema left the court, it was game, set and match to him.

The reader should be warned, however, that the story is much more complicated than is my summary, involving inter alia the translation of the Dutch terms gratie and genade. In his writing De Gemeene Gratie, the fons et origo of his views on common grace, Kuyper made a point of taking gratie to mean ‘favor’ grenade to mean ‘grace’. Got it? Aha, but wait a moment. Perhaps through the effects of putting pen to paper in a cloud of cigar smoke, “Kuyper is not fully consistent with his own distinction and uses the two expressions interchangeably. We need to acknowledge that the distinction in the Dutch language may be a distinction without a difference since both genade and gratie point to the same Latin noun, gratia” (p. 301). So in being inconsistent Kuyper was in effect being consistent! Alice, Alice, where are you?

Bolt’s conducting and refereeing of this important dispute was first-class, enlivened by amusing moments which may not have been intentional. Both Beach’s and Bolt’s contributions may be said to be peripheral to the main spine of this collection—that is, to be Dutch for a moment, if the connective in the title is to be interpreted as an inclusive conjunction, not exclusively. If not, then they are not peripheral, for each may be said to be concerned with doctrinal formulation.

As a final taste, we shall take a look at a more mainstream essay by Won Taek Lim, “Biblical Interpretation and Doctrinal Formulation in John Flavel’s Works” (ch. 11). John Flavel (1630–1691) was a later Puritan, having to endure the 1662 Act of Uniformity and the disintegration of Puritanism ecclesiastically as well as its running out of steam, when no doubt he had earlier expected to be a part of the state church envisaged by the Westminster Assembly (he was ordained in 1650). He spent nearly all his subsequent life in Devon, and was minister in the port of Dartmouth from 1656 until ejected six years later. Granted limited toleration, the likes of Flavel became free to preach again, under tight conditions.

He seems to have been a textbook Puritan; learned, devoted to books and people, prepared to suffer for principle’s sake, tireless as a preacher and painstaking as a pastor in expounding and applying the word of God to a variety of circumstances. He ended up dying of a stroke. His published books tell the tale, titles such as A New Compass for Seamen, Navigation Spiritualized, Tidings from Rome, or England’s Alarm, A Saint Indeed: A Treatise on Keeping the Heart and The Heavenly Use of Earthly Things. There were also grander treatises, such The Mystery of Providence and Pneumatologia: A Treatise of the Soul of Man, published posthumously. His practical and pastoral theology was quite different from the evangelical moralism of today.

To begin with, the application of Scripture was theological. Flavel had the Westminster Confession as an overall framework (even though it was never embodied in English law), and he did not try to re-invent or supplant it. Rather in his ministry he used Scripture to draw out what may be called local theological inferences and applications for seafaring Dartford. The applications all arose from theological propositions drawn from Scripture, and though sometimes ingenious the applications were never fanciful. Won Taek Lim does a fine job in depicting this excellent proponent of biblical exegesis and doctrinal construction.

Obviously this is a valuable book for those working in the history of Reformed exegesis, besides being (as I hope to have shown) a good read.


Paul Helm

Paul Helm
University of London
London, UK

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