THREE MORE BOOKS ON THE BIBLE: A CRITICAL REVIEW*

Trinity Journal, Spring 2006 by Carson, D A

That is to say, revelation is the manifest presence of God which can only be had on its own terms, and which cannot be converted into something plain and available for classification. Revelation is God's presence; but it is God's presence, (p. 15)

Its purpose is saving fellowship, and thus its end "is not simply divine self-display, but the overcoming of human opposition, alienation and pride, and their replacement by knowledge, love and fear of God. In short: revelation is reconciliation" (pp. 15-16). Webster quotes Barth: "Reconciliation is not a truth which revelation makes known to us; reconciliation is the truth of God Himself who grants Himself freely to us in His revelation" (p. 16).6 In other words, "revelation is itself the establishment of fellowship" (p. 16). For

knowledge of God in his revelation is no mere cognitive affair, it is to know God and therefore to love and fear the God who appoints us to fellowship with himself, and not merely to entertain God as a mental object, however exalted. (p. 16)

It follows that "the proper doctrinal location for talk of revelation is the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, and, in particular, the outgoing, communicative mercy of the triune God in the economy of salvation" (pp. 16-17). In sum:

"Revelation" denotes the communicative, fellowship-establishing trajectory of the acts of God in the election, creation, providential ordering, reconciliation, judgement and glorification of God's creatures. (p. 17)

2. Sanctification

Webster understands that the application of this term to the doctrine of revelation is non-standard, but he argues that much can be said for it. Sanctification he understands to be "the act of God the Holy Spirit in hallowing creaturely processes, employing them in the service of the taking form of revelation within the history of the creation" (pp. 17-18). What Webster is attempting to address is a perennial and deepening problem in "modern intellectual culture" (p. 18), viz., "how we are to conceive the relation between the biblical texts as so-called 'natural' or 'historical' entities and theological claims about the self-manifesting activity of God" (p. 18). The more that "modern Western divinity" has stressed the "natural" and the "historical," the less space remains for a justifiable revelatory function "within the communicative divine economy" (pp. 18-19). Otherwise put, this is the challenge of "the dualistic framework of modern historical naturalism as applied to the study of the biblical texts" (p. 20), dominant from the time of Spinoza. It is no solution to follow those theologians who

leapt to the defense of Scripture by espousing a strident supernaturalism, defending the relation of the Bible to divine revelation by almost entirely removing it from the sphere of historical contingency, through the elaboration of an increasingly formalised and doctrinally isolated theory of inspiration. Rather than deploying theological resources to demonstrate how creaturely entities may be the servants of the divine self-presence, they sought to dissolve the problem by as good as eliminating one of its terms: the creatureliness of the text. (p. 20)