The Goldsworthy Trilogy

The gospel interprets the entire bible. This book presents a unique and essential method of hermeneutics; it will either confirm or adjust your soteriology and eschatology. It is near the top of my recommended reading list.

This review is only of the second book, The Gospel in Revelation. I have been greatly blessed by previous Graeme Goldsworthy books that I've read and I was really anticipating pulling The Gospel in Revelation. But I have to admit I was also a little nervous. The study of Revelation and Prophecy is many times and for many people a diversion or distraction. I have known of people who have gotten so obsessed with end times theology that it simply overwhelms their Christian life and transcends the importance of the Gospel in their lives. For many it can also become unnecessarily divisive. Dividing over the rapture, the timing of the rapture, or their understanding of the millenium. So I was nervous, and hopeful since this was Goldsworthy. Goldsworthy refreshingly and powerfully argues that the Gospel in central in understanding the message of Revelation. He points especially to the repeated images of Lion and Lamb. That Jesus is described as returning as the Lion. The image of power and conquest. But whenever they turn to look at the Lion what is described is the Lamb slain. The idea here is that Jesus conquers not by power or might but by His sacrificial death for sin. Goldsworthy is passionately arguing that we must keep the Gospel central in reading the book of Revelation and not get sidetracked by beasts and prophecy charts. Graeme Goldsworthy is a scholar. A really wicked smart scholar. As a matter of fact he is one of my favorite New Testament scholars for a very particular reason. He is crazy smart but has an amazing ability to write clearly. Where we can all understand what he's saying. Even when he is saying something deep and a little difficult. So when he writes and aims at non-scholars he does it well. He is writing for all who love and believe the Bible. Now if you are unfamiliar with the Bible through newness or neglect I wouldn't start here. But if you are acquainted with your Bible this book is very readable for you. In addition to pointing out our frequent neglect of Gospel centrality in the book of Revelation Goldsworthy makes several really powerful points. He reminds us that the book of Revelation was written during the context of a suffering Church to a suffering people. This book was written to encourage people being persecuted, not just to help us get our end times ducks in a row. Also he points out that in the Old Testament the Day of the Lord was multifaceted. That it could be referred to as an event of the past (like the Exodus), or as a present event (the exile being experienced), or as a future event (a future exile or the final consummation). Thus coloring the understanding in Revelation as a Day in three parts. The Day in the past when Jesus conquers His enemies as the Lamb on the Cross. The present experience of the Church in overcoming the enemies of God. The future experience when Jesus returns as the Lamblike-Lion who finally does away with His defeated enemies forever. This was a powerful emphasis in the book,

If you think Goldsworthy has written much better books since these you're wrong. These are fantastic ! I was blown away by the depth he brings out of scripture. He is a skillfull exegete, and has a good handle on the big picture of scripture. I had previously read his book "According to Plan" and while it too was excellent, there is only so much detail you can put into an overview book before it ceases to be an overview. These books provided the depth I needed. These books could not be more useful - if there is one thing I could say Goldworthy has opened my eyes to, it is that the Gospel is central in all things. We see everything from Christ. He is the supreme revelation of God himself. All the prophets testify of Him, and he is the one who has fulfilled the prophetic hope. These books are easy to read, non technical yet surprisingly detailed books on biblical theology. A very worthy addittion to anyones library.

This is a review of Gospel and Kingdom, one of the three books in The Goldworthy Trilogy. Gospel and Kingdom is an immensely helpful, gospel-laden, theologically-rich, lay-friendly feast in this short book on the Old Testament. Writing from "a deep concern for the recovery of the Old Testament as part of the Christian Bible" (5), Goldsworthy masterfully demonstrates how the gospel of Christ provides the key to interpreting the three-quarters of the Bible that most Christians tend to neglect. In his Introduction, Goldsworthy rehearses a scene that most of us have probably experienced - a young man faced with the challenge of sharing a Bible lesson to a group of children during a Sunday School Anniversary service. The big question is how to apply a familiar story from the Old Testament to his young hearers. He has recently seen someone tell the story of David and Goliath, but he was troubled with the application. "The fellow dressed up as Goliath had progressively revealed a list of childhood sins by peeling cardboard strips off his breastplate one by one, as the speaker explained the kind of `Goliaths' we all have to meet. Then a strapping young David appeared on cue, and produced his arsenal - a sling labeled `faith' and five stones listed as `obedience', `service', `Bible reading', `prayer', and `fellowship'" (8). Was this a legitimate application of the familiar story? We've all faced similar quandaries and, if we've given the least amount of reflection to it, have wrestled with such questions. "Every time we read the Bible we meet this problem of the right application of the text to us" (9). To help us navigate the choppy waters of Old Testament interpretation is the purpose of this book. Chapter one begins with a more basic question: why read the Old Testament at all? There are multiple reasons why most people do not: on the left, there are those who view the Old Testament as sub-Christian and believing that it is merely the record of man's natural religious evolution, have written it off as irrelevant. On the right are those who are desperately trying to reconcile a high view of Scripture with disturbing things as imprecatory Psalms, Israel's slaughtering of enemy nations, and the imposition of the death penalty for a wide variety of crimes in the Mosaic law. Still others avoid the Old Testament because they find it "dry and uninteresting . . . wordy, cumbersome, and confusing" (12). To add the confusion are many "false trails" (13) that lead to faulty interpretation, especially the "allegorical method" of the early and medieval church (the author mentions W. Ian Thomas's If I Perish, I Perish as a modern example). Help, however, can be found from the Protestant Reformers whose rallying-cry of Sola Scriptura (Scripture alone) helped believers begin to see the value of the Old Testament and its "significance for Christians because of its organic relationship to Christ" (17). This brief foray into history is concluded with the author's cont

As a child growing up, my parents taught me a great deal of what theologians would call systematic theology. That means, how do you order the Christian religion. This has a most important application: evangelism and discipleship. However, there is another side of the coin: Biblical theology. Biblical and systematic theology are not enemies, nor is one more important than the other. However, if you look at the order of events in evangelism or discipleship, Biblical theology comes first. Biblical theology is concerned about rightly extracting meaning out of the Bible. This process has many facets, including an understanding of the culture of the times, Greek and Hebrew grammar, and understanding the writers' intentions. Graeme Goldsworthy has correctly identified the whole flow of the Bible: it's _all_ about Christ. Some people mention this fact in different ways. One common form is say that the Bible is the history of redemption. Another form is to say that the Bible is all about covenants: God's dealings with men. Either way, it still comes down to Christ. One example of this is found on page 28, in which Goldsworthy tries to debunk (at least partially) what he calls the "character study approach" to the Old Testament. In that approach, as an example, we study the story of David and Goliath in order to make sure we know that, just like David, we must rely on God's strength and power to conquer our Goliaths (which happen to correspond to whatever random collection of sins we want it to be). In contrast to this character study approach, Goldsworthy puts forth the importance of the context of the passage, which happens to be the whole Bible. In that approach, we should not identify ourselves with David, but with the ordinary Israelite soldiers on the sidelines who watch David, the type (which means pattern or foreshadow) of Christ, deliver and save Israel (which in the New Testament corresponds to the church). This example really broadened my view of the Bible in a number of ways. Certain passages in the Old Testament, which seemed "dry" or "boring", really have their voice in speaking about Christ.I would highly recommend this book!