Bible, Theology & Philosophy

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The key principle in Romans 10 is that no one intrudes into a relationship with God. By His grace, there is a door, but that is the only way in. That door is Jesus Christ.

Look closely at what Jesus said in John 14. He told the men He was leaving, and He was about to be preparing their place in Heaven. Thomas wanted the location and directions. Jesus gave them—I am the way there, and there is no other.

Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. “In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way where I am going.” Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” (NASB, John 14:1-6)

#1: The Word

John 1:1—“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Jesus was in the beginning (He had no beginning), He was with God, and He was God. The grammatical structure of the passage supports the idea that Jesus was the Word, and that He was God, but that He was not the Father or the Spirit, as both persons are distinguished clearly from Jesus (e.g., Jn 15:9, 26). While the concept of the triune God, or the trinity is prevalent in the New Testament, it is not simply a New Testament concept, as it is found in Old Testament as well (e.g., Isaiah 48:12, 16).

#2: The Image of the Invisible God

Colossians 1:15-17—“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.” That He is the firstborn of all creation means that He is sovereign over creation, not that He is the first created thing Notice the parallel reference to Jesus as the firstborn from the dead in 1:18. Clearly this shows His sovereignty over death, as the one conquering death. The passage is not indicating that He was the first to die.

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Philip Wesley Comfort is well known to students of the text of the New Testament. He has produced some informative works on the subject such as Early Manuscripts and Modern Translations of the New Testament, and Encountering the Manuscripts. Both productions, as well as the one under review, are marked with a clarity of style which makes them accessible to interested readers. He has produced, with David P. Barrett, The Text of the Earliest New Testament Greek Manuscripts, of which the present book is the companion. Along with these efforts Comfort has edited several helpful books, of which the The Origin of the Bible is perhaps the most noteworthy.

This commentary is divided into three main parts. After an introduction and a listing of the earliest Greek mss. lying behind each verse in the NT, what I will call Part One deals with a brief survey of the manuscript tradition. Unsurprisingly, the author favors the Alexandrian tradition as found in the papyri; with special exemplar status given to P75 through Codex B (Vaticanus) (24-26).

If there were a line between Traditional Dispensationalism and Progressive Dispensationalism, I suspect I would be barely over that line. But there is no line. The relationship between Traditional Dispensationalism and Progressive Dispensationalism is anything but clear cut.

Although the Traditional Dispensational camp views the Progressive Dispensational position as a compromise or infringement upon the clarity of its divisions, modern Traditional Dispensational interpreters often interpret passages using the basic principles of Progressive Dispensationalism—either without recognizing it or without admitting it.

The Progressive Dispensational Hermeneutic Is Commonly Found in Traditional Dispensationalism

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Paul made the case that Jews of his day were abandoning the message, but Gentiles were coming to Christ even though they hadn’t been seeking the God of Abraham. At the end of Romans 9 we read:

What shall we say then? That Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, attained righteousness, even the righteousness which is by faith; but Israel, pursuing a law of righteousness, did not arrive at that law. Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as though it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone. (NASB, Rom. 9:30)

The first insight that we surely must gain from that reality is this:

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One of my favorite evangelical jokes showed up in a Christianity Today a number of years ago. It was an ad for a (fake) new book called The Collected Blurbs of J. I. Packer. The joke, if you don’t already get it, is funny on two counts: Packer is always blurbing books, and he’s always having his occasional works collected by editors.