The title of Philip Esler’s New Testament Theology is ill-chosen. Although the book provides a good introduction to a number of aspects that qualify the task of writing a New Testament theology, the book itself is not a New Testament theology by any stretch. At most, it is a highly selective prolegomenon to the task of “doing” New Testament theology. That is not to say, however, that the book is not worthwhile to read—it is simply to say that readers will have to look elsewhere if they really want a New Testament theology.

One of the better features of this book is its discussion of the New Testament’s indebtedness to a dualistic anthropology, which is especially welcome in light of the current trend to argue that the New Testament’s anthropology is really fundamentally monistic. Esler exposes the shortcomings of the numerous attempts to sell readers on a monistic anthropology through a highly selective and tendentious reading of certain passages. (In the process, he also shows that Rene Descartes is not the extreme dualist he is often painted to be by today’s Enlightenment-bashers.)

Esler also steers clear of another trendy but misguided conceit when he affirms the intentionalist hermeneutic basic to the New Testament. But his chief argument in support of authorial intention, I think, is an unnecessary complication of what should be a much more straightforward task: he invokes the idea of the “communion of the saints” in order to say that we owe the “saints” enough respect to listen to what they intend (present tense), and not just what their texted artifacts can be made to say on the basis of a strong misreading. This is an intriguing argument, but it is rather circuitous and perhaps even costly in terms of commitments. Why not just say that we should look for what the author intended because the purpose of their writing in the first place was to convey an intention?

Reviewed by John C. Poirier

Originally published on the Pneuma Foundation (parent organization of PneumaReview.com) website. Later included in the Fall 2025 issue.

From the email promotion:

Whether you are familiar with Dr. Craig Keener or this is your first introduction to his work, we are delighted to announce an upcoming Bible webinar with the professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary.

Well-known for his research on the Jewish and Greco-Roman context of the New Testament, Dr. Keener will join us for a two-day online seminar to teach us more about the Jewish context of key books and passages of the Bible. It will be a wonderful teaching series that you will not want to miss!

Dr. Keener is the author of twenty-eight books—six of which have won book awards in Christianity Today. Altogether, more than one million copies are in circulation. His IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament (1993), now in its second revised edition (2014), has sold more than a half million copies, including editions in several languages and more than fifty thousand copies in Korean.

Image: Patrick Fore

Used with permission.

Veteran Bible teacher Charles Carrin introduces the central doctrines of the Christian faith drawn from the New Testament.

The truth of Scripture can never be reduced to a few theological abstractions. Jesus said, “The words that I speak to you they are spirit and they are life” (John 6:63). Spirit and life can never be examined under our theological microscopes. They totally defy all such attempts. Not only so but they are dangerous and abortive. Dangerous, because of the possibility—as happened frequently in the past—that such documents become tools to interpret Scripture instead of Scripture being used to interpret the documents. Additionally, the Bible speaks to every generation, culture, and circumstance, with truths relevant to each particular age. While Scripture remains unchanging, a specific illumination may appear—or disappear—according to need. As the Holy Spirit’s inspired volume, the Bible is to be revered, loved, believed, and protected. In that understanding, I share my limited understanding of the New Testament’s presentation. Is this conclusive? No. I am open to learn.

The Bible

“Holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit” (II Peter 1:20,21). The Old and New Testaments are Covenants (not mere books); the first, sanctified by Moses “sprinkling the blood of bulls and goats” and the second sanctified by the Messiah sprinkling His own blood (Hebrews 9:11-23;12:24). As such, each Covenant is inalterable, cannot be added to or taken from, and of which no part has lost the Divine Seal (Revelation 22:19). We therefore do not believe that I Corinthians 12 and 14, or similar passages, lost their validity with the death of the Apostles or upon the canon of Scripture being completed. As modern Christians, we believe it is our duty to preach all New Testament Scripture with commitment equal to that of first century Christians. Regarding the unity of the two Covenants, we understand the Old Testament to be the New Testament concealed; the New Testament to be the Old Testament revealed. Holy Scripture is the Divinely inspired Word of God and our only rule of faith and practice (II Timothy 3:16).

The Being and Nature of God

God is One, maintaining His unity while sovereignly manifesting Himself in three personages, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (II Corinthians 13:14; John 1:1-14; Genesis 1:26. 18:1,2). The Father isthe origin and initial cause of all that is. Jesus Christ, eternally pre-existent with the Father, became flesh, was born of a virgin into the earth, is the only sin-bearer for mankind, was crucified, resurrected, ascended, forever satisfied the demands of the Law, and will return again in Glory for the reclamation of the saints. “For he has made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (II Corinthians 5:20,21). The Holy Spirit was, is, and forever remains, God with us on the earth as the Divine Presence in creation, salvation, inspiration, continuation, and consummation.

Relationship with God

Jesus Christ is man’s complete and sufficient approach to God. He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man comes to the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). To receive eternal life, one must be redeemed in Christ, cleansed of sin in His blood, born-again by the Holy Spirit, and presented guilt-free to the Father.

Historian of Revival, William De Arteaga, makes it clear that heresy is an ancient and persistent threat to genuine revival. However, the heresies he examines might surprise you.

This essay asserts that there have been three unrecognized discernment heresies in operation throughout Church history that have retarded revival and hindered the Church from coming into its Spirit-filled destiny. This insight came to me 30 years ago when I was a student at a mainline seminary.

Heresy is an unpleasant topic to write about, but necessary. St. Irenaeus and many other leaders of the Early Church consistently struggled against one heretical group after another. Indeed, the 2^nd letter of Peter warned:

But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. Many will follow their shameful ways and will bring the way of truth into disrepute (2 Peter 2:1-2).

Jude also encouraged fellow Christian to battle heresy and proclaim true Apostolic teaching: “I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints” (Jude 1:3). The anti-heretical effort was necessary to establish fundamental biblical truths against distortions from Gnostics (see below) and other groups.

Biblical understanding of Heresy

In the New Testament, the Greek word that is translated as heresy is hairesis, and it simply means groups or “sects.” At times in the New Testament it is used in a neutral sense, as we might mention a certain political party (see Acts 28:22). Josephus, the First Century Jewish historian, uses the word in this sense to identify three major Jewish “sects:” the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes. The Pharisees and Sadducees were often mentioned in the Gospels; not so the Essenes. The Essenes lived in ascetic monastic communities awaiting a political-military Messiah. They were not cited in the New Testament and disappeared after the Jewish-Roman war that destroyed the Temple in 70 AD.

Which one is God’s Word? Are all three equally Scripture? Let’s take a closer look to see what sets each one apart from the other two.

The United Bible Societies’ compilation, now in its fifth edition, is the base-text of several modern translations, such as the New International Version, the New Revised Standard Version, and the English Standard Version.  Occasionally the translators deviated from this base-text, but such instances are exceptions.

It has been said that the Byzantine Text is a more accurate version of the Textus Receptus. Though this statement is imprecise, it may help the average person get some idea of the similarities between the two. After the Textus Receptus was compiled in the 1500’s, many more manuscripts became available. In 1982, when Hodges and Farstad published the Majority Text, their compilation provided the text represented by the consensus of known Greek manuscripts, thus setting aside minority-readings contained in the Textus Receptus.

Why are there two editions of the Byzantine Text, with differences between them?  In Matthew through Jude, there are some textual differences where the evidence is closely divided, and occasionally (especially in John 7:53-8:11) textual differences involve more than two alternative readings; in some cases, no single reading can claim support from a majority of the manuscripts.   In the book of Revelation, the number of differences between the Hodges-Farstad Majority Text and the Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Textform is especially high, mainly because Robinson and Pierpont took identifiable manuscript-families into consideration, rather than simply printing whatever reading had more manuscripts in its favor.

About 1,500 minor differences occur between any edition of the Textus Receptus and either edition of the Byzantine Text. All three major compilations – the Textus Receptus, the Byzantine text (whether represented by the Hodges-Farstad Majority Text, or by the Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Textform), and the UBS/Nestle-Aland text – agree over 95% of the time. Many readings within the remaining 5% have no discernible impact on translation.

However, some disagreements strongly impact translation – including readings in the Alexandrian tradition which appear to express errors, or which diverge from very early patristic testimony, or which do not support the deity of Christ to the same extent as the Byzantine alternative. Where such readings occur – such as in Matthew 27:49, Mark 6:22, Mark 10:24, Mark 16:9-20, Luke 22:43-44, Luke 23:34, John 7:8, John 7:53-8:11, First Timothy 3:16, and First John 4:3 – even some of the English translations that are mainly based on the UBS/Nestle-Aland text adopt the Byzantine reading, or mention it in a footnote, to compensate for the Alexandrian manuscripts’ shortcomings.

Some of the deeper issues at stake involve the question of the origin of the Byzantine Text.  The manuscript-evidence for the Alexandrian Text is older, but that may be merely an effect of the low-humidity climate of Egypt, which allowed manuscripts made of papyrus to survive longer there than in other areas.  Patristic and versional evidence demonstrates the use of an essentially Byzantine form of the text of the Gospels in the 300’s – the same century in which the two most important Alexandrian manuscripts, Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, were made.  Were those patristic writers and early translators using a novel form of the text, or a form that had been handed down to them from yet more ancient times?  In addition, because most Greek manuscripts (over 80%) tend to agree at any given point, some might say that this shows that if any text has a special claim to have been providentially preserved for the church, it is the Byzantine Text.

With this brief introduction to the issue at hand, we encourage students of God’s Word to weigh the evidence as they build, or test, their convictions on this subject.
 

The mother and son team of Verna and James Linzey wrote this article together.

A review essay of two books on biblical humility by Michelle Vondey.

Two books: both on humility, both using the Bible as a framework, both of interest to those who study humility academically and who take the need for humility seriously in their vocation. Though similar in topic, the books differ in intended audience and style. This review evaluates both Farley’s (2011) and Feldmeier’s (2014) work on humility.

Farley’s work [William P. Farley, Gospel-Powered Humility (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 2011), 199 pages, ISBN 9781596382404] is aimed at those working in Christian ministry, in particular preachers, but also anyone wanting to share the gospel with others. Farley asserts in the preface that God designed the gospel to promote humility, and the gospel should be preached with the goal of humbling sinners. It is not just sinners who need humbling, however, but believers themselves must also allow the gospel to humble them before they can expect or hope to bear spiritual fruit. He argues that humility is the chief virtue, out of which all other virtues flow. Using church history and the first three chapters of Romans, Farley shows how humility is a necessary condition for sinners to come to repentance and for the gospel to bear fruit in people’s lives. The last chapters of the book apply Farley’s thesis to ministry specifically, and discusses why ministry workers fail to preach God’s wrath and judgment for sin and how they should model humility in their own lives in order to cultivate humility in others.

William Farley

Kenneth C. Kinghorn, professor of Church History and Historical Theology at Asbury Seminary, herein offers a practical work for Christians. This book is not technical, nor necessarily academic in its orientation (though it is, of course, academically responsible). Rather, this book is seemingly focused to present practical information to the person in the pew. Not only are twenty gifts of the Spirit herein discussed, but Kinghorn also includes a personal inventory survey to help readers discover their own spiritual gifts.

Chapter one details three common problems that hinder our discovery and usage of the New Testament spiritual gifts. First, Kinghorn notes that there is unfortunately a lack of knowledge of spiritual gifts in the church. Second, he posits that a neglect of God’s laws and commands contributes to a lack of spiritual gift expression in the church today. Third, and perhaps most importantly, Kinghorn points out that an undisciplined life prohibits the expression of the New Testament spiritual gifts.

Although the New Testament does not give a forthright definition of a spiritual gift, Scripture nevertheless gives sufficient information regarding them. In chapter three, Kinghorn delineates the guiding principles that enable him to discern twenty spiritual gifts mentioned in the New Testament. Moreover, he gives three principles by which we may better understand spiritual gifts. First, he notes that true spiritual gifts are given by the Holy Spirit, and not another entity. Second, spiritual gifts enable one to do more than they are ordinarily capable of, which means that ‘natural talents’ do not qualify as spiritual gifts. Third, Kinghorn notes that spiritual gifts necessarily entail a responsibility for the employment of that gift by its recipient.

Kenneth Cain Kinghorn

In chapter three, Kinghorn lists the twenty New Testament spiritual gifts that he discerns, and comments upon them based upon the theological filter of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral (note, however, that he does not announce that he is doing such, but nevertheless it is apparent). Most readers of Pneuma Review will find no problems with the majority of the descriptions, though one needs to be aware that he does voice a distinctly Wesleyan understanding of tongues, which differs from the Pentecostal and charismatic understanding of the same. He notes, however, that minor differences in our doctrinal formulations about tongues-speaking should be allowed without breaking the fellowship wrought by the uniting Spirit. In an important note, Kinghorn believes in the continual relevance and availability of all twenty spiritual gifts for believers today.

I view it highly important that Kinghorn insists that all Christians have spiritual gifts, and that is our individual responsibility to discern and thereafter use them. Moreover, Kinghorn notes that God gifts us with spiritual gifts entirely without human merit (i.e., free grace), and that he grants them according to his sovereign will. Further, every gift is critical for a fully functioning church, as God intentions the spiritual gifts for ministry and service.

Kinghorn contends that Jesus left a promise, a legacy, and a mission to believers upon his ascent into heaven. Each of these three are being implemented and furthered by the Holy Spirit in believers today, Kinghorn contends. This book has two main aims, with one being to summarize the New Testament teachings regarding the spiritual gifts, and the other being to help one discover his or her own spiritual gifts. In my humble opinion, Kinghorn is successful in his venture.

Reviewed by Bradford McCall

Publisher’s page: http://www.emethpress.com/9780975543566.htm

Preview The New Testament Gifts of the Holy Spirit: https://books.google.com/books?id=utWYY2ZmpWEC

This review was originally published on the Pneuma Foundation (parent organization of PneumaReview.com) website on June 18, 2008.

Paul Pomerville has produced an uncompromising argument against Christian Zionism. Drawing upon his extensive experience in police work, he detects a gap in the collection of evidence in the literature on Christian Zionism. He claims that no evangelical works have heretofore made a case against Christian Zionism based on New Testament evidence (xviii). Employing a creative methodology of simulating a criminal trial, Pomerville interrogates key witnesses in the New Testament and appeals to the reader as jury to find Christian Zionism guilty of the charge of perverting the gospel.

Dr. Pomerville holds a Ph.D. in Intercultural Studies from Fuller Theological Seminary. He served for two years as Graduate Professor and Department Chairman of Christian Missions and Cross-Cultural Communications at the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary. He is the author of The Third Force in Missions (1985), a groundbreaking work on Pentecostal missiology.

The aim of The Christian Case Against Christian Zionism is to establish guilt by association, correlating Christian Zionism with the Judaizers of the New Testament (48). The scope of the book modulates between the Judaizers of the first-century church and contemporary Christian Zionists of a dispensational bent who believe that the plan of God holds a future for national Israel. Pomerville identifies his target audience as theologians, pastors, Christians in general, and Christian Zionists in particular. As to its place in the world of literature, although claiming to represent a fresh approach, this book is another of the many works devoted to the repudiation of Christian Zionism. Pomerville upholds the thesis that the brand of Christian Zionism which is dispensational in its hermeneutical orientation and pro-Israel in its political stance constitutes a distortion of the New Testament gospel of the kingdom.

One of the strongest points of Pomerville’s argument is his critique of dispensationalists for an undue focus on the futurity of the kingdom, which marginalizes the present reality of the kingdom and detracts from the gifts of the Spirit as central to the gospel of the kingdom inaugurated by Jesus. He also indicts dispensationalists for distinguishing two tracks in the divine plan of redemption, Israel and the Church. Pomerville castigates the most extreme form of Christian Zionism as “pseudo-Christian Zionism” because of its “retro-theology” of expecting the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem and restoration of a Jewish kingdom in the land of Palestine during the end times. Pomerville raises important questions about the identity of the people of God and the place of Israel in salvation history. He favors a “fulfillment theology,” according to which Jesus Christ fulfills Old Testament prophecy and creates a new spiritual people of God composed of both Jews and Gentiles. He writes, “Those born of the Spirit, Jew and Gentile, are the people of God” (160). “Membership in the people of God is not determined by Jewish ancestry, but by faith in Jesus, spiritual rebirth, and by the transforming power of God” (161). In regards to the place of Israel in salvation history, Pomerville argues that it is inappropriate to apply Old Testament prophecies to the modern State of Israel (173). The Christ event marked the end of the temple order of worship, Israel’s ancestral privilege, and territorial rights. “Gospel values won out over national values” (178) when Jesus unleashed a new spirituality based on the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and an inner spiritual kingdom which made obsolete the old spirituality of the nation and land. Hence, the author avers that holding on to a vision of an exclusive Jewish kingdom is at odds with the plan of God for universal salvation, which is to say that Israel has retained no privileged place in God’s plan of redemption.

Perhaps the most significant of Pomerville’s contentions is that the Judaizing conflict in the first-century church exercised a formative influence on the view of Israel and the Church adumbrated in Luke-Acts, Paul’s letters, Hebrews, and the Gospel of John. This conflict was addressed at the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15), yet not decisively resolved, as the church continued to struggle with the unification of Jewish and Gentile believers. Pomerville adeptly detects indications of this struggle between the lines of the writings of the New Testament books mentioned above. Concomitantly, he faults Christian Zionists for committing an offense analogous to the Judaizers by giving Israel a place in God’s plan of salvation separate from the Church. This is a charge worth pondering.

A subsidiary bone of contention intermittently raised by Pomerville has to do with the missiological implications of Christian Zionism. Pomerville argues that uncritical support for Israel among evangelicals has fomented “hatred” in the Muslim world, giving the impression that Christians are impervious to the injustices committed by the State of Israel, precluding acceptance of the gospel by Muslims. The barriers to evangelizing Muslims in the Middle East are complicated by Christian Zionism. My research found that the Pentecostal missionaries in Palestine who succeeded in planting sustainable churches in the West Bank had to distance themselves from Christian Zionism. They did so by contextualizing the Christian message, empathizing with the Palestinian reality, and speaking against the injustices committed against the Palestinian Arab population (Newberg 2012).

Craig S. Keener discusses his book, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts. Part of the Seedbed series from Asbury Theological Seminary.

Mark Allan Powell, Introducing the New Testament: A Historical, Literary, and Theological Survey (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009), 560 pages, ISBN 9780801028687.

In the long line of NT introductions, there are some whose chief merits lie in the depth of their analysis, and there are others that are judged better for their pedagogical merits. Powell’s NT introduction scores well in both departments. Powell has not skimped with respect to either the difficult questions or in presenting the necessary background material to understand a particular NT writing—with one exception (see below). Yet his writing is everywhere clear, and presumes no prior technical knowledge of the field. (Powell even defines words like “passion” and “synoptic” as he goes along.) The book’s layout is strikingly beautiful, with plenty of brightly colored photographs and charts, and lots of sidelights. (This is in keeping, of course, with the changing style of the college textbook. What the devolution of the college textbook to this more high-schoolish mode of presentation says about the modern college student is perhaps a depressing question.)

This book is poised to become one of the leading NT introductions in the coming decades. Its chief competitor will be Bart Ehrman’s The New Testament, now in its fourth edition.

Given the depth of Powell’s discussion, a course designed around this book could easily make due without assigning any supplementary reading. There is, however, one exception: teachers should beware that Powell’s discussion of the synoptic problem fails to mention any of the main arguments lying at the center of the debate, and the student will get a poor grasp of the field from Powell’s superficial (but drawn-out) discussion. (For example, the term [or concept of the] “minor agreement” does not appear anywhere on the eight pages devoted to the synoptic problem, and, indeed, there is no paragraph in which it might naturally fit, and yet the minor agreements are one of the main points of contention in the debate.) In the past 100 years, no expert on the synoptic problem has written a NT introduction (except perhaps Kümmel). Powell’s book is a reminder of that fact.

Reviewed by John C. Poirier

Companion site: www.introducingnt.com