Graeme Goldsworthy

(Gospel and Kingdom, Gospel and Wisdom, Gospel and Revelation)

Goldswothy Trilogy

Sean Wilson

Gospel & Kingdom

Gospel & Kingdom is a good introduction into the world of biblical theology, which emphasises the narrative unity of the scriptures through use of types, repeated themes and patterns. Goldsworthy focuses on the Kingdom, which of course is an enormous theme in Scripture and thus there is a lot to talk about. He helpfully summarises the Kingdom of God as “God’s people in God’s place under God’s rule”.
Of course, Christ is the Central Station to which all trains in Scripture eventually arrive, and from which they continue their journeys. So I found the rapid flyover of the Old Testament helpful, as it does show how the anticipation for Christ builds over the course of the Scriptures. Goldsworthy has an expansive view of the gospel, and notes that it involves “a restoration of relationships between God, man and the world” (110).
That said, many the applications of the principles were underwhelming. I observe a nervousness about allegory and attention to detail. For just one example, Goldsworthy is “careful not to make too much of incidental details which belong to the immediate life-situation described in the text. David’s taking of food to his brothers in the army hardly demands interpretation any more than the dimensions of Goliath’s armour” (119). But David isn’t simply bringing generic “food” to his brothers, but an ephah of parched grain, ten loaves, and ten cheeses (1 Sam 17:17-18). I suggest (as a partial answer) that Jesse is offering up his son David complete with a grain offering, much as Hannah offers a bull with an ephah of flour to the Lord after Samuel is born, Samuel himself being her real offering (1 Sam 1:24). Whatever you make about this particular suggestion, my point is that deciding a priori that some details in the text don’t have anything to tell us is to opt out of being an attentive reader of Scripture, and you aren’t far from placing the Scripture upon the Procrustean bed of your own framework.
Four stars.


  Gospel & Revelation

Gospel & Revelation I found less helpful, not simply because I have some significant differences with Goldsworthy’s perspective, but because it seems to exhibit the same gliding-past-the-details approach that was my least favourite part of Gospel & Kingdom. The metanarrative of Scripture that Goldsworthy uses in this book is theologically valid on its own terms, but frequently works as a filtering mechanism to decide which details in the text to pay attention to (or not). Worse, it is sometimes employed to assist the reader in not being misled by what the text appears to be telling us.
As I said, the framework that Goldsworthy employs is generally valid theologically. Goldsworthy notes that with the first advent of Christ, the end of the world has come (234). The body of Christ shares in the suffering of its head as it awaits its vindication and glorification (235). The wrath of God has already fallen on those who are joined to Christ (229). This allows him to make helpful applications of Revelation to the modern Christian reader, who is still waiting for Christ’s last coming.
Goldsworthy emphasises that Revelation was written to specific churches in the first century, and thus any reading that removes any relevance to those initial readers is useless. Goldsworthy rightly pushes against the literalistic approach that some forms of premillennialism employ, showing that the advent of Christ in the world is the interpretive lens through which the prophetic witness of the new age must be read, and thus Christians ought not to await a throwback to the OT in the time before right before the final judgment.
However, even if it this framework is theologically valid, it lands unsteadily upon the terrain of the text. Goldsworthy invariably “genericises” the figures and images that appear in Revelation, referring them to ongoing dynamics throughout church history, without any particular referent (whether in the first century or in any other time):
 
	 - The beasts of Daniel and Revelation become a figure for “godless humanity” in general, and so the texts that indicate the connection between the scarlet beast and the Roman Empire are ignored (Rev. 17:8-12). 
	 - The great city “where their Lord was crucified” (Rev 11:8) is the unbelieving world in general rather than Jerusalem, so the two witnesses become the faithful church throughout all ages, rather than the early church or the OT prophets who preached against the apostate Jews. 
	 - Babylon becomes “the symbol of all Satan’s strongholds among men” (256): how then are “all of Satan’s strongholds” distinct from the scarlet beast upon which she is riding at first, and by whom is the harlot devoured? (Is Satan divided against himself here?) Further, nothing is made of the fact that the harlot is dressed in Old Covenant priestly garb (cf. Ex. 39). Goldsworthy does note that this city is a harlot, which connects it to “idolatry and apostasy” in the rest of Scripture, but nothing more is made of this clue either. 
 
These kinds of details help to illustrate what is going on in the book and its connection to the rest of the biblical narrative, but they have a tendency to clog up the all-of-church-history framework and thus they are simply not dealt with.
This idealist perspective also tends not to notice progression of any sort throughout Revelation, as in this framework the fall of Jerusalem and the Mosaic economy doesn’t register as the notable redemptive-historical development between Pentecost and Christ’s last coming. Goldsworthy observes six times (by my count) that John follows the Old Testament writers in portraying a “simple linear perspective” on the succession from the old age into the new, but Goldsworthy reminds the reader that the OT linear perspective must be modified by the gospel. Thus there is no passage in Revelation that could possibly falsify the framework, because the framework is always available to tell us what John really had in mind: “As we follow through the visions of Revelation we find that John has found no reason to deviate in any marked way from the portrayal of the linear succession of the two ages […] The New Testament perspective of the overlap of the ages is not evident in the apocalyptic visions.” (230).
There are many helpful applications of Revelation to the life of the believer awaiting Christ’s last coming, but these are arrived at not through the text so much as around it.
Two stars.


  Gospel & Wisdom

Gospel & Wisdom was well worth the cost of the entire volume, and offered the most helpful guide to the wisdom literature and how they fit into the larger story of Scripture.
Goldsworthy’s attentiveness to the big-picture integrity of the entire biblical narrative is a great help here, and he shows how wisdom is a feature of Adam’s vocation and thus of Christ’s kingly office in fulfilment of that: “wisdom is a theology of the redeemed man living in the world under God’s rule. It is thus as much an aspect of kingdom theology as salvation history is.”
In contrast to my critiques of the other two works in this volume, I appreciated Goldsworthy’s resistance to forcing a “straightforward solution” upon Ecclesiastes in the face of its confronting content: “We must beware of the tendency to rescue difficult parts of the BIble when they seem to strike a discordant note” (400). Ecclesiastes forces us to live by faith in the tension of a world that requires that we engage with it by God’s wisdom, but often seems to thwart that effort.
I also appreciated the expositions of particular passages that connect wisdom themes with redemptive history, especially Psalm 73, and the failure of the deed-outcome relationship in that scenario: “What God has done in his saving acts in history is given as the basis of confidence in the face of the apparent attack on the order of things.” (415).
There was a tantalisingly brief application of these matters to Christian schooling, which seemed to veer off into a discussion of creation/evolution, and then ended abruptly. I’d have loved to see more!
Four stars.

Goldswothy Trilogy (Gospel and Kingdom, Gospel and Wisdom, Gospel and Revelation)

Reviews