Psalm 45 Publications

When Paul quoted Genesis 2:24 in Ephesians 5:31, and expounded upon it thus: “This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the Church”; he was engaging in a hermeneutical process that had definite roots in Old Testament revelatory processes, as exemplified most notably in Daniel chapter two; and also, in the exegetical methods of the Qumran community. In the Danielic passage, King Nebuchadnezzar receives divine revelation in the form of a dream, which lacks the information necessary to arrive at a thorough understanding of all the implications which inhered in the revelation from the beginning. At this stage it is called a “mystery” (Aramaic, razah, translated musterion in the ancient Greek versions), until Daniel receives from God the vital information that was lacking, by means of which he is enabled to give to the King the full significance of the revelation. Similarly, the Qumran expositors regarded the texts of scripture as so many “mysteries” which lack one vital element, namely, the person or time ultimately referred to, without which the full meaning inherent in the text could not be apprehended. Of course, this missing element could only be received by divine revelation (see F. F. Bruce, The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the Ephesians [NICNT], pp. 394-395, together with his footnotes). Continue Reading

To many people, the very idea of a comprehensive, or macro-cosmic biblical theology is a little strange. Biblical theology by its very definition is less than comprehensive, is it not? Biblical theology has to do with the study of the revelation of a particular era, a particular biblical author, or so on. Whatever else, it is, it cannot be macro-cosmic: a macro-cosmic view of revelation is the domain of systematic theology; and biblical theology is concerned with developing the building blocks of systematic theology. Once it starts putting those blocks together, it has gone beyond the realm of its appropriate employment, and can no longer be designated “biblical theology” at all. At that point, it is something else. Continue Reading

If it is true that the first and last psalms in our psalter serve as bookends to the whole, the first standing as an introduction to the entire collection and the last as a concluding doxology; then what we may learn about these psalms in particular will color our understanding of all that comes between. The 150th psalm certainly teaches us that our ultimate purpose, and the end for which we ought to employ the psalms, is, as the catechism instructs us, “to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” But what may we learn of the first psalm that will assist us more accurately to understand and apply all which follow it?

When I first began to read Augustine’s monumental Expositions of the Psalms, my attention was immediately arrested at the very first sentence, in which I encountered an observation which, if true, must have a profound impact on my interpretation of the entire collection of the psalms. This observation was rendered all the more captivating by the fact that, in all the explanations I had ever heard of Psalm One, this proposition had never been suggested; and yet, as I paused to consider the manner in which the New Testament authors unexceptionally seem to use the psalms, I became convinced that it must be the truth. The profoundly simple assertion to which I refer is this: “‘Blessed is the man that hath not gone away in the counsel of the ungodly’ (ver. 1). This is to be understood of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord Man.” Continue Reading

It is widely recognized that the formal principle underlying the Reformation was nothing other than sola scriptura: the reformers’ diehard commitment to the other great solas was an effect arising from their desire to be guided by scriptures alone. The exegesis and interpretation of the bible was the one great means by which the war against Roman corruption was waged; which is almost the same thing as saying that the battle was basically a hermeneutical struggle. In light of these observations, one could say that the key event marking the beginning of the Reformation occurred, not in 1517, when Martin Luther nailed his theses to the church door in Wittenberg; but two years prior to that, when he rejected Origin’s four-layered hermeneutic in favor of what he called the grammatical-historical sense. This one interpretive decision was the seed-idea from which would soon spring up all the fruits of the most massive recovery of doctrinal purity in the history of the Church. We would do well to learn from this: our ongoing struggle to be always reforming, always contending for the faith which was once delivered to the saints, is essentially a process of bringing every doctrine under the scrutiny of scripture. And in order to have the confidence that we are doing so legitimately, we must give much effort to being hermeneutically sound. Hermeneutics is the battlefield on which the war is won or lost. Continue Reading

As evangelical Christians today, we should be ever grateful that, in the gracious dispensation of the sovereign God of history, when all the world lay in bondage under the grievous doctrinal errors of Roman Catholicism, the great reformers of the church arose to contend for the pure gospel that had been delivered to the saints. It is no accident that this earnest contending for the faith coincided with the recovery of a grammatical and historical hermeneutic, nor is it mere chance that the ongoing battle against the various forms of modern liberal theology continues to be waged by means of the same basic hermeneutic. If we intend to be serious about submitting our own thoughts to the word of God, it is vital that we never lose our commitment to a literal interpretation of the scriptures. Continue Reading