Learning from a Humble Theologian

Richard B. Gaffin Jr. Word & Spirit: Selected Writings in Biblical and Systematic Theology. Edited by David B. Garner and Guy Prentiss Waters. Glenside, PA: Westminster Seminary Press, 2023. xxi+776 pgs. $35.99 hardback.

One of the most arresting moments in the New Testament is when the Epistle to the Hebrews introduces a quotation from Psalm 95. On one hand, the author notes that “David” wrote these words (Heb 4:7). On the other hand, simultaneously, these words spoken through David are ultimately the words of the Holy Spirit; when the Psalm is introduced, the author notes that it is the Holy Spirit who is heard currently speaking in and through these words in the present tense: “Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says…” These and other texts undoubtedly inform the theological imagination of Westminster Confession of Faith §1.10, which declares that in matters of religious controversy our primary authority, and the One “in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture.”

This dynamic between the Word of God and the Holy Spirit also raises numerous questions. How should the church read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest Holy Scripture such that we hear it as the present speech of the Holy Spirit?  What sense of what unity or coherence should the church discern between the diverse array of voices in the canon of both the Old and New Testaments? Further, theological questions related to the Spirit’s continuous speech in Scripture might include the following: how is not only the death of Jesus Christ on the cross, but particularly his resurrection and present heavenly session, integral to our salvation?

If Christ has a threefold office as prophet, priest, and king, how specifically is he a priest — how does his once for all offering of himself on the cross relate to Christ’s present and ongoing work of mediation at the right hand of God, having ascended into heaven? How is the person and work of the Holy Spirit integral to our salvation? What is  union with Christ, and why have confessionally Reformed theologians for centuries understood it as a central doctrine in Christian theology — both as the means whereby the Spirit subjectively applies to us the redemption objectively accomplished in Christ, and as the means whereby the benefits of salvation (sanctification, justification, adoption, glorification, etc.) are apprehended distinctly but inseparably as the Spirit joins us with Christ the Benefactor?

 That these questions occur to me at all largely owes to the life, writing, teaching, and ministry of Dr. Richard B. Gaffin Jr. But they are especially occasioned here by the recent publication of many of his notable essays, articles, and shorter writings. Gaffin’s teaching career as a professor at Westminster Theological Seminary began in 1965; he retired in 2010 but has continued teaching and writing in various capacities since then. 

In 1980, Gaffin published an edited book entitled Redemptive History & Biblical Interpretation: The Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos. It is difficult in only a few sentences to convey how extraordinarily influential Geerhardus Vos’ legacy has proved over time to thinkers associated in some way with Westminster Theological Seminary in Glenside, PA, but also how relatively obscure Vos remains elsewhere. Vos authored a Reformed Dogmatics in Dutch (published in the late 19th c., and translated into English by Gaffin in the 2010s), a work way ahead of its time on eschatology in the gospels (The Teaching of Jesus Concerning the Kingdom of God), a few books on Hebrews, The Eschatology of the Old Testament, and probably his best known work is his Biblical Theology; arguably Vos’s single greatest single publication was his final one in 1930, The Pauline Eschatology.

But Vos’ innumerable journal articles, book chapters, and more would easily have vanished into the sands of time and institutional memory were it not for Gaffin’s diligent work in tracking them down and making them available for students, professors, and general readers in our time. I can remember the different places where I sat as I read for the first time several of Vos’s articles that Gaffin compiled; in many ways, I learned how to read Holy Scripture from Vos in “The Eschatological Aspect of the Pauline Conception of the Spirit,”  “Hebrews, the Epistle of the Diatheke,” “The Doctrine of the Covenant in Reformed Theology,” and more. Those exercises not only stimulated my mind, but to this day have born a lasting impression on my own personal faith and piety as well as my ecclesial service in pastoral ministry. 

In 2023, editors David Garner and Guy Prentiss Waters performed a similar yeoman’s service for Gaffin’s own shorter writings, similar to that Gaffin performed almost fifty years ago for Geerhardus Vos. Gaffin has published influential and noteworthy books, perhaps the foremost being his Resurrection and Redemption, which articulated how not only the cross but particularly the resurrection is integral to our salvation; Perspectives on Pentecost, which provides a redemptive historical way to understand Pentecost and the coming of the Spirit amidst charismatic movements; and probably the best response to the New Perspective on Paul by a Presbyterian New Testament scholar, By Faith, Not By Sight.

Dr. Gaffin also preached not a few sermons across his career, such as his 2008 chapel message on Romans 8:26, “The Poverty of Prayer,” which became a cult classic in Westminster Seminary-adjacent circles. Notably, Dr. Gaffin was arguably as profound or better as a teacher than he was a writer. Audio lectures from his courses at Westminster Seminary from over the years bear this out, some of the best of which were published in his 2022 book An Introduction to the Biblical Theology of Acts and Paul. Gaffin’s influence upon not only other scholars but upon ministerial students is indelible. Dr. Gaffin has been the teacher of several generations of teachers, both in the church and the academy. 

Yet, arguably some of Gaffin’s most valuable contributions to scholarship and to the church were scattered across the enormous quantity of shorter writings he published across his long career. Like most scholars, the majority of Gaffin’s shorter writings were published in peer-reviewed journals that general readers cannot easily access, as chapters in edited books that are either expensive or now out of print, or otherwise are not easy to locate, let alone to know about today. I first read several of the essays compiled in this volume ten or fifteen years ago; in many ways I cut my theological teeth on a diet of Vos, Gaffin, Ridderbos, and related biblical scholars practicing biblical theology in confessionally reformed traditions. The opportunity to re-read and review them is in many ways like returning to my intellectual and spiritual roots, like returning to one’s hometown after living elsewhere for a long time and trying to understand the place I come from, to evaluate the connection between my memory of it and the place as it actually was and is, and to relate this experience to others. 

Comparable to his own compilation of Vos’ shorter writings, there is a vast array of topics, texts, and themes explored across these writings, but a strikingly consistent hermeneutic employed throughout. Because there are a total of forty-one separate works published in this book at nearly 800 pages long, any review of this book will necessarily be impressionistic and require some degree of generalization. 

Hence, I want to raise here what I regard as the ten strongest contributions of this collection of Richard Gaffin’s shorter writings. Subsequently, I raise what are not so much critiques, but three questions for those who wish to build on Gaffin’s legacy going forward. Notably, apart from the first one below, the remaining nine items are not in any definite order; they are closely related with and mutually inform one another, and I can scarcely do justice to the nuances of each in a brief review of such a lengthy book.

First, arguably the most profound entry in this volume is the two page foreword written by Dr. Gaffin’s sons, Richard III and Steven. They recount how:

Sometimes someone will ask us ‘what is he really like?’, looking, we imagine, for greater insight into the character of the professor they respect. Maybe they’re afraid that there's no way that the teacher they admire could be the same guy outside the classroom. But he is. When we were younger we’d say things like, ‘He takes us to lots of Phillies games’ or ‘He cooks great hamburgers’ and without realizing it, in this childlike way we’d answered the question of character that they were asking.

As we’ve grown older, we just say in so many words that what you see is what you get. What we knew then, what we continue to experience, and what is always a privilege to share, is that this man is also a great father and husband. Even as kids, it was clear to us that Dad loved his work — helping to prepare young men for the ministry — because he loved God, His Word, and the good news that those men were being trained to proclaim… growing up, it was clear to us that Dad understood his Christian vocation wasn't only fulfilled at Westminster, but also in his care for us, our sister, and our mother. This care manifested itself in many ways, especially in his patience. Patience is a virtue that flows from humility, and it is humility that is perhaps most characteristic of our father. (pg. xi)

Richard III and Steve additionally describe their father’s trust in and reliance upon God after his daughter and their sister Lisl died of cancer in 2004, and his wife Jean died in 2019 after more than sixty years of marriage.

Of all that can and should be said about Dr. Gaffin’s prolific career of scholarly writing, academic teaching, and ecclesial service in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, the paragraph above from his sons is surely his most significant accomplishment. As a younger scholar, teacher, and servant of the church, I am humbled and encouraged by the legacy of personal integrity and piety his sons describe. Of course, he was and is a sinner like anyone else, but it is a sterling achievement to raise children who testify that their father was himself captivated by the grace of God, persevered in the lifelong calling of every Christian towards continual repentance, and lived with personal integrity and character, loving God and neighbor. The apostle Paul, whom Dr. Gaffin focused upon for so many decades, describes how he disciplines himself lest after preaching to others he should disqualify himself (1 Cor 9:27). It is perennially a scandal and profound discouragement for the church when her shepherds and our theological heroes are exposed as having concealed their lack of personal integrity, perhaps affirming profound truths publicly but personally denying them in secrecy.

Much of Dr. Gaffin’s life that his sons describe above, from taking care of children to having fun with them, to being faithful to his wife and regularly participating in or leading the church’s weekly worship, required a deep sense of what matters and what does not. An actually Christian life is one of “looking to Jesus” and not to ourselves or anyone else as the source of endurance for hope and life (Heb 12:2). For Dr. Gaffin, that work was doubtless at times boring, at times exhausting, at times discouraging, and there were no shortage of temptations to stray off the path along the way. But he persevered, and that in itself is one of his greatest gifts to his students and readers. Dr. Gaffin’s lifelong writing and teaching on union with the crucified and risen Lord through Spirit-wrought faith is not an ethereal set of ideas, nor merely topics for intellectual exploration; his own way of life shows that it is a generative and eminently practical resource for personal holiness, devotion to Christ, and love for others.

Second, the opening chapter, a  definition of and argument for the use of a “redemptive-historical hermeneutic” represents one of Dr. Gaffin’s most enduring and influential contributions. Dr. Gaffin’s six principles on pgs. 5–11 that constitute the “basic elements of a redemptive-historical or revelation-historical approach” provide a reliable path for interpreters to see Christ himself as the subject matter of Scripture, who in His own person is the organic unity of revelation as it unfolded historically throughout Israel’s scriptures. This also has significant implications for understanding how the New Testament makes use of the Old Testament. The apostles, evangelists, and authors of the New Testament did not create arbitrary impositions upon or distortions of Old Testament texts, nor did they merely read the Old Testament texts in the context of their immediate historical contexts. The approach pioneered by Vos and expanded upon by Gaffin foregrounds that the self-revelation of the triune God provides the ultimate context for every biblical text, as that revelation unfolded historically with an organic unity centered on the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Third, Dr. Gaffin has been one of the finest exponents of a classical reformed account of union with Christ as the central doctrine of salvation and the heart of Christian living. That God’s objective salvation accomplished in Christ’s death and resurrection is subjectively applied to us as the Holy Spirit unites sinners with Christ in his death and resurrection, especially through the means of grace of the Word duly preached and the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist duly administered, shines throughout the Part V of the volume. Paul preached a Son-centered gospel (Rom 1:2). The gospel is not mainly about the benefits Christ procured for us, such as forgiveness, adoption and more. Rather, the Gospel is about the benefactor, Christ himself, and as the Holy Spirit unites us with Christ by faith, we come to share in Christ and all his saving benefits.

Consequently, we are justified not by God recognizing the worth of our moral performance, but only through our having been united with Christ when he was vindicated by being raised from the dead. Moreover, we cannot be justified freely without also living a life of holiness, because the only way we apprehend any of Christ’s benefits is by being united with Christ himself, and Christ cannot be torn apart. The heart of salvation is being “in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord’” (1 Cor 1:30–31).

In developing these conclusions Gaffin is not merely an exegete of the New Testament, though he is, but he is a sensitive reader of Book III of Calvin’s Institutes as well as Calvin’s commentaries. The chapters “Calvin’s Soteriology: The Structure of the Application of Redemption in Book Three of the Institutes,” “Union with Christ: Some Biblical and Theological Reflections,” and “Justification and Union with Christ: Institutes 3.11–18” on pgs. 577–628 are worth the price of the book. 

Fourth, the seven essays on Pneumatology that constitute Part IV of this volume develop at least two of Dr. Gaffin’s most enduring contributions. First, Gaffin continues a deep tradition running through Calvin and the magisterial Protestant confessions and catechisms of foregrounding the person and work of the Holy Spirit as integral to how the redemption accomplished in Christ is applied to believers. Second, across Gaffin’s career he defined, on strong biblico-theological and redemptive-historical grounds, a reformed response to the Pentecostal and charismatic movements. While appreciative of some aspects of contemporary popular attention to the work of the Spirit, Gaffin exegetically demonstrates that what happened at Pentecost in the New Testament is as unique, eschatological, and once-for-all-time and unrepeatable of an event as the death and resurrection of Christ.

Fifth, following in the footsteps of Geerhardus Vos, Richard Gaffin was a careful exegete of the epistle to the Hebrews, particularly with respect to the place of “covenant” in the epistle, and on the holographic way Christ’s priesthood is described throughout the epistle. Christ offered himself not only once for all time in his death on the cross as sufficient for atonement, but also the self-offering of the specifically risen and ascended Christ in the heavenly holy of holies is a key aspect of Christ’s ongoing work of mediation (pgs, 291–305). In the past decade of New Testament scholarship, key themes in Hebrews such as Christ’s divine status as royal “Son” and Christ’s heavenly priesthood have been brought into renewed focus and clarity through scholars such as David Moffitt and R. B. Jamieson. But several of these key  insights were anticipated already in Dr. Gaffin’s classroom lectures and articles on Hebrews decades ago, reprinted here.

Sixth, Dr. Gaffin proved a worthwhile conversation partner to the so-called “New Perspective on Paul” that emerged in the late twentieth century and perhaps reached its zenith of popular influence in the mid-2000’s. His chapters on “Paul the Theologian” provided nuanced appreciations and critiques of James Dunn and N.T. Wright’s reading of the Apostle Paul, especially on the meaning of justification and matters related to the atonement and application of redemption. Gaffin, having long been influenced by Geerhardus Vos’s approach to eschatology, Calvin’s prioritization of union with Christ, and the theology of the Westminster Standards and other Reformed confessions, provided one of the most learned and sensitive theological responses to Dunn and Wright, particularly where they argued against caricatures of Reformed perspectives and Reformed readings of the New Testament (pgs. 223–271).

Seventh, Dr. Gaffin is an exemplary writer. Stylistically his work is evocative of Calvin, namely, that he writes with lucid brevity. 

Eight, surely one of Dr. Gaffin’s most enduring contributions to scholarship is his work as a translator, especially of Dutch Reformed theologians and biblical scholars for the Anglophone world. To be clear, this collection of shorter writings does not itself contain any single work of translation. But as readers consult the footnotes throughout, they will not only notice that Dr. Gaffin regularly interacted with non-English scholarly interlocutors in German and other languages, but that Dr. Gaffin helped introduce his students and readers to deep wells for theology and biblical interpretation in the modern world that stood under the authority of the Word of God and sought to further deepen and build upon a confessionally Reformed heritage. One of the most significant works of Reformed systematic theology ever written was Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics published in 1895-1901. Bavinck’s work was not translated into English until 2004, a few years before Dr. Gaffin’s retirement.

Yet, across his career beginning with his earliest writing, Dr. Gaffin was a perceptive and skillful reader of Bavinck in Dutch, and brought his ideas to the attention of his students and readers. After his retirement, Dr. Gaffin translated the whole of Geerhardus Vos’ five volume Reformed Dogmatics from Dutch into English; this may prove to be one of his most influential achievements, since few have mastered both the Dutch language and Geerhardus Vos’ corpus of writings as Dr. Gaffin had, and Vos-style approaches to biblical theology have often been criticized for neglecting systematic theology. But beyond the literal work of translation, Dr. Gaffin to some extent was also a popularizer. Dr. Gaffin’s hero, Geerhardus Vos, was a polymath, but his English prose is not always the clearest or easiest for contemporary readers to follow.

But in Dr. Gaffin’s hands, the pioneering work of Vos on themes such as the kingdom of God, eschatology, and union with Christ are both better grounded exegetically in Scripture, and also articulated with greater clarity, such that students and readers can more readily grasp the explanatory power of this vision. Similarly, Dr. Gaffin was deeply perceptive and appreciative of N. Herman Ridderbos, whose translations into English contain some infamously challenging prose. For instance, Dr. Gaffin recounts in one essay how he first found the distinction “historia salutis/ordo salutis” in Herman Ridderbos (pg. 596), and that is now a well-traveled phrase. I personally have benefited enormously from Ridderbos’ Paul: An Outline of His Theology, When the Time Had Fully Come, The Coming of the Kingdom, and more; but I would probably not have known about them, nor read them as profitably, apart from being directed to them from Dr. Gaffin’s interactions with those works. 

Ninth, there is only one essay in this collection on the idea of canon (pgs. 345–362), but it is significant. Similar to Ridderbos’s 1988 book Redemptive History and the New Testament Scriptures, Dr. Gaffin’s writing on canon helpfully directs readers to think about the very notion of canon theologically (pg. 350), and situates the so-called closure of the New Testament canon and its apostolicity as befitting the once-for-all time, definitive accomplishment of an eschatological redemption in Christ (pgs. 351–360). The very notion of having a canon, let alone the criterion as to why some books were included in our Bibles while others were not, is often troubling to students and parishioners alike — but having a redemptive-historical framework for thinking through questions related to the canon can make all the difference.

Tenth, Dr. Gaffin’s writing is a highly potent and generative source for preaching, pastoral care, and the lifelong work of prayer and repentance that is the duty of every Christian, and especially so for ministers of the gospel. 

To be clear, neither these essays nor most of Dr. Gaffin’s writing and teaching belong to the genres of devotional or spiritual writing. But the focal point for all of Dr. Gaffin’s work is the glory of the triune God that is quintessentially revealed in the humiliation and exaltation of Jesus Christ and the eschatological sending of the Spirit — all of which summons us to respond appropriately. In the foreword to Dr. Gaffin’s In the Fullness of Time, Sinclair Ferguson commented that “A hallmark… is its penetration into the deep structures of Paul’s thought. There are many pages here where I suspect readers will want to slow down, perhaps reread, meditate, and, best of all, worship” (16). That is no less the case with Word and Spirit.

Given the sheer length of this volume, and the wide array of texts and topics treated therein, raising critical questions is as challenging as appreciating its strengths. While some minor quibbles might be raised about various exegetical conclusions scattered here and there, reading these shorter writings together as a collection prompts me to instead raise three questions about the present and future state of work similar to Dr. Gaffin’s.

First, much of Dr. Gaffin’s career of teaching and publishing straddled the disciplines of systematic theology and a very distinctive Reformed approach to biblical theology; but what is the future of such an approach to interpretation and theology, given the demise of the biblical theology movement in mainstream biblical studies, and given the developments over the last few decades of the Theological Interpretation of Scripture movement? To get at the heart of my concern, it might be worth quoting at length two especially pertinent paragraphs, from the conclusion of Gaffin’s introductory essay to redemptive-historical hermeneutics:

First, while the language and explicit concept of ‘salvation history’ is relatively recent, the significance of the redemptive-historical view sketched in this chapter is not its novelty or distance from all earlier forms of exegesis. The factor of continuity needs to be appreciated. A credible case can be made that already in the second century, the confrontation with Gnosticism indelibly impressed upon the church the controlling biblical insight of a redemptive-historical approach: salvation resides ultimately not in who God is or even what he has said but in what he has done in history, once for all, in Christ. Virtually from its beginning on and more or less consistently, especially beginning with the Reformation, the approach of the church to the Bible has been incipiently redemptive-historical or biblical-theological.

Second, on the much-debated issue of the relationship between biblical theology (biblical interpretation) and systematic theology (dogmatics), the redemptive-historical approach of this chapter entails a noncompetitive, mutually dependent relationship in which biblical theology is the indispensable servant of systematic theology. The former serves the latter on the understanding that systematic theology aims for a presentation of the overall teaching of the Bible as God’s Word under appropriate topics. To that end, redemptive-historical interpretation is indispensable because sound exegesis is the lifeblood of systematic theology, and it is essential for sound exegesis to pay careful attention to the redemptive-historical subject matter of Scripture and to the revelation-historical context of the various biblical documents. (At any one point in actual practice the relationship between biblical theology and systematic theology is of course reciprocal. As systematic theology builds on biblical theology, so biblical theology is inevitably influenced, at least implicitly, by some operating form of systematic theology and assessment of the Bible as a whole.)

This reciprocal relationship may be aptly compared to literary analysis of a great epic drama. Biblical theology is concerned with the redemptive-historical plot as it unfolds scene by scene. With an eye to that entire plot, systematic theology considers the roles of the primary actors, God and humanity. It notes in particular the constants that mark their characters and the dynamics of ongoing activities and interactions. A focus on this reciprocal relationship with a redemptive-historical approach minimizes the tendency, often present in systematic theology, toward unwarranted speculation and “dehistoricizing” in its formulations, and yet maintains the importance of systematic theology for biblical interpretation.

Here I do not so much want to raise issues with the vision sketched above by Gaffin, as sketch future lines of inquiry that need to be taken up. Vos and Gaffin both, across their careers, were fond of using the language of “progressive” to describe the unfolding of special revelation, and of appealing to narrative or storyline metaphors to describe the “organic unity” of revelation. As Gaffin clarifies above, he does not mean by “progressive” a historicist or Hegeglian vision of immanent historical processes that will produce the kingdom of God (contra some Nazi-like theologies of history), nor does he mean an evolutionary vision of biblical religion (contra some modernist ‘history of religions’ scholarship). Gaffin’s approach is also an excellent refutation of dispensationalism and Marcionite (mis)construals of the Bible’s unity.

But the New Testament also testifies in significant ways to God’s action in Jesus Christ as starkly dis-continuous with all prior and subsequent human history; the revelation of Jesus Christ is the catastrophe and cure of human history, simultaneously being both a rupture and also promised beforehand in the Old Testament. How helpful ultimately is the metaphor of a story with a surprise ending that illuminates the whole — does Christ therein become only one more chapter alongside other episodes? Is there perhaps a better or further metaphor that is needed? Gaffin was probably correct to caution about “dehistoricized” systematic theology, assuming he means by that a speculative dogmatics that has become unconcerned with or unaccountable to the economy of salvation as testified to in Scripture. But after the Enlightenment, it is arguably the case that Christian theology is much more imperiled by an anti-metaphysical, and almost wholly historicist, approach to theology and biblical interpretation.

Second, it is not a fault of these essays that they interacted with then-dominant contemporary conversations in scholarship, but upon re-reading them today I could feel the weight of all that has transpired since they were first published. Probably the most notable example of this is that the so-callled ‘New Perspective on Paul’ and the work of James Dunn and N.T. Wright were indeed prominent in the 1980s and 1990s, and Gaffin offered compelling responses to their work. But non-confessional scholarship on the Bible is as ever-changing as waves on the shore, and the conversations on Paul among New Testament scholars have long since shifted away from (or outright against) Dunn and Wright, in different and fragmented ways that are by no means a return to classical, confessional Protestant readings of Paul.

There are probably two dominant paradigms today within mainstream Pauline Studies, namely, readings of Paul within Judaism, and Apocalyptic readings of Paul. Both of these movements are notoriously difficult to define with precision, the former being largely practiced by scholars with historical-critical foci, the latter being practised more often by theologically interested readers of Paul who often have an affinity for Karl Barth. Sometimes while reading the latest scholarship from these two approaches I have wondered what Vos or Gaffin might say in response to the latest conversations on Paul. It is now the task of his students and readers to receive a kind of torch from him, tend its flame, and take his line of faithful biblical and theological interpretation forward into the uncharted territory of our own time.

Third, probably most important of all, we need to more clearly identify the sense in which biblical theology or redemptive-historical hermeneutics are (lower-case ‘c’) catholic. Occasionally, perhaps often, the most committed students of biblical theology develop an anti-metaphysical or anti-pietistic bias while reading Holy Scripture, as was the case for me personally when my interest in Vos and Gaffin was at its highest 10-15 years ago or so. I am not necessarily faulting Dr. Gaffin for this phenomenon. It might well have been personal user error — though I observed this trend among some of my peers and classmates in seminary, and have sometimes observed it among my own students today. This bias tends to be dismissive of a crucial element in the church’s historic reading of the Scriptures, especially on questions of ontology such as the Christological and trinitarian debates of the patristic era. Instead, this inclination would insist, we need to focus on the redemptive-historical context of this or that biblical text, rather than speculating about ‘being’ or abstract doctrines such as divine simplicity.

My sense is that the only people today who believe in and are passionate about biblical theology (again, to be clear, not meaning ‘theology that adheres to the Bible,’ but specifically the discipline of tracing the organic unity and unfolding of special revelation across covenant history, especially in the tradition of Vos and Gaffin) are people in conservative/evangelical institutions, such as certain Reformed seminaries, the Evangelical Theological Society, and NAPARC denominations such as the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. In Mainline and/or mainstream circles elsewhere, the so-called ‘biblical theology’ movement of the mid-20th century has long since been abandoned by historical-critical scholars, and there is a dizzying and disorienting array of postmodern ideological and theological approaches employed today.

Now, of course, biblical theology and classical theism are not necessarily mutually exclusive; they can and should complement one another. As Gaffin notes, biblical theology itself arose under a strange and unhelpful philosophy of history among people such as Gabler (pg. 56), and Vos’ strong doctrine of revelation and eschatology in many ways anticipated and pre-dated the reactions to classical liberal Protestantism of both Karl Barth and Albert Schwetizer, while avoiding some of their over-corrections (in Barth’s case, against natural law) and exegetically unsustainable exaggerations (in Schweitzer’s case, in matters of cosmology and eschatology). 

But why do students who are inclined towards biblico-theology often become uninterested in or somewhat antagonistic towards metaphysics? Is biblical theology so tied to historical consciousness, or so rooted in historicist modes of thinking, that it mitigates against other necessary modes of reading the scriptures, such as the reading practices necessitated by dogmatics and moral theology? Again, to clarify, I am not faulting Dr. Gaffin himself; his diligent study of Calvin and the historic Reformed confessions attest to his own commitments. But especially in the Post-Christian West, where theological anthropology is increasingly the epicenter for pastoral care and discipleship, proponents of biblical theology need to more clearly situate their work in relationship to the church’s historic reading of the Scriptures to draw ontological conclusions. I think Dr. Gaffin is right, where he indicates that Irenaeus of Lyons in his On the Apostolic Preaching is doing something resembling biblical-theology by showing how the ‘rule of faith,’ the creed-like essential beliefs of the Christian faith, are attested to through both the Old and New Testament. 

But where precisely are the similarities and differences between patristic hermeneutics and modern, Reformed biblical theology? When Gregory of Nyssa in Life of Moses finds Christ contemplatively throughout the Sinaitic theophany, how is that both similar and different from the work of Vos, Ridderbos, and Gaffin? How is the fourfold, Medieval approach to scriptural exegesis, or what Hans Boersma calls ‘spiritual reading,’ both similar to and distinct from biblical theology as specifically practiced by confessional, Reformed interpreters? Dr. Gaffin has shown how biblical theology can be practiced in a mode that is confessionally reformed and evangelically faithful. But his students and redemptive-historical successors would do well to show how biblical theology can, or should, be not only Reformed or evangelical but also catholic, perhaps along the lines of Stephen O. Presley’s forthcoming book, Biblical Theology in the Life of the Early Church: Recovering an Ancient Vision.

It is only fitting to conclude this review with the words of Dr. Gaffin himself, from an essay warning against theonomy and trying to immanentize the eschaton. On the church’s present mission in relationship to the Last Things we look forward to, he writes: 

The perennially demanding, often perplexing path the church is called to follow, until Jesus comes, can be negotiated only as “we live by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor 5:7)... the writer of Hebrews operates with a simple enough eschatological profile: the bodily absence of Christ means the church’s wilderness existence; his bodily presence, its entrance into God’s final rest. What he must confront in his readers is a perennial problem for the church, a primal temptation bound up with its wilderness existence: the veiledness, for the present, of messianic glory and of the believer’s eschatological triumph; “at present we do not see everything subject to him” (Heb 2:8), with the longing as well as the promise that “at present” holds for the church. All of us, then, are involved in a continuing struggle—against our deeply rooted eschatological impatience to tear away that veil and our undue haste to be out of the wilderness and see the realization of what, just because of that haste and impatience, will inevitably prove to be dreams and aspirations that are ill-considered and all too “fleshly.” “For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.” (Heb 13:14).

Originally published in the spring 2025 Mere Orthodoxy print journal. To become a member and receive future issues, join today.