Last Things First, Fesko

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Robert Truelove

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Has anyone here read Last Things First by J. V. Fesko?

I completed it a week ago and there is much to commend (recommended read). However, I'm left scratching my head a bit...

Fesko seems to take his literary interpretation to lengths that would be dismissed as novel and fanciful if it were coming from someone outside the Reformed camp. Some of the conclusions (not all) seem to really stretch things. I understand that some great theologians have taught the same sorts of things so I am cautious with criticism. Has a critique been done of this work by a trusted scholar or expositor? Am I missing something?
 
I wouldn't agree with everything that Fesko has ever written, but I tend to give him the benefit of the doubt because he's 10X smarter than just about anyone.

Let's define "Reformed" as that which all the Reformed confess with one heart and mouth (see the Confessions). We wish to state that ALL that the Reformed so confess is contained in, and is central to, the Christian faith. But also acknowledge that there is more to the Christian faith than we confess in unison. There should be room within the bounds of orthodoxy for us to investigate and explore, and build our knowledge of the faith--though we may be in disagreement at times--until we are compelled to settle on some established doctrine that must be further confessed, in order to exclude some virulent error.

Perhaps Fesko isn't seeking to be defined in this work as maintaining a strict Reformed stance on the subject (certainly he would not want to be read as teaching contrary to the Reformed tradition) as much as he's putting himself within the broader framework of Christian interpretation. He may be able, thereby, to show how the Reformed convictions are in no way opposed to the best Christian insights to revelation, even when coming from those who are not (were not and could not be, if they lived before the 16th century) Reformed. We should be able to say that the truth is always compatible with itself.

We want to avoid the mistake of so perfectly identifying the Christian tradition with the Reformed faith-expression, that anything that doesn't come to us (so to speak) as more-or-less a restatement, recapitulation, refinement, enlargement, or similar of some previous Reformed doctrinal deliverance is immediately suspected of being unChristian. So that if it's good (or "I like that"), then it's surely "Reformed," and Christian; and if it's bad (or "I don't like it"), then it's obviously not "Reformed," i.e. Christian. Well, if it's truly bad, then it isn't Christian or biblical, and therefore not Reformed; because we confess the Reformed faith within the Christian tradition.


I don't have this book by Fesko, so I can't say what (if anything) might make me uncomfortable about his explanation. I do understand he is not too concerned with affirming an historical, chronologically precise reading of Creation out of Gen.1&2. But he's busy mining the text for its other treasures, and I'm not willing to fault him on the other; which is the case even if he and I don't agree on the purpose of the text at the level of chronology.

Ask only whether some interpretation of his transgresses an hermeneutical bound. If so, how so? For a long time now, we've been illegitimately constrained in much of our approach to Scripture, out of concern over Rationalist (18th c.) criticism of previous, wholistic methodology (e.g. see Semler). They were reductionistic, and attacked the earlier humanist/reformational exegesis.

The Reformation wasn't so much a wholesale rejection of Medieval exegesis (as is often alleged), as it was improvement, refinement, and rediscovery of the real foundations of trustworthy, sane biblical interpretation. The pre-rationalist tradition still treated the Bible as a single Book, if delivered in portions over time. Certainly, the Reformed tradition is largely formed by a Christocentric reading of the whole Bible. Wholistic exegesis is responsible for the development of Covenant Theology, and for a Reformed defense of practices like infant baptism.

Because of the Rationalists, the believing interpretation became (in many quarters) reductionist itself, in order to combat the Rationalist claims to superior exegesis. A literary/biblical-theological approach is (in certain respects) a reintroduction or rehabilitation of wholistic exegesis.

Hope this is helpful, even if I didn't address your main concern as expressed.
 
Thanks for the reply. When I spoke of Reformed scholars, I was simply trying to identify sound, biblical men whose works I greatly respect.

My initial post may make it sound like there was more I disagreed with Fesko than I agreed which is not correct. I am only speaking of what appears as a tendency to take things too far with the literary approach here and there. Overall I thought it was a great book.
 
Bruce,

I certainly agree with everything you noted. I think the concern about much of this is often hard to pinpoint and I'm always wondering, at the end of the day, if we're really dealing with a fundamental, hermeneutical shift. I think some of the questions that were left un-probed in the past were not left un-probed because they didn't occur to people but because they thought that it began to cross a boundary across which men believed a creature should not cross. Calvin speaks vividly of the idea that we must always be guided by the "thread of Scripture" and be willing to "limp along" the path that it provides whereas he warned of theology that tried to speculate about God as being a "labyrinth" where we will get lost.

I know these are generalities and I'm not accusing Fesko, per se, of anything lest I be misconstrued. Nevertheless, I think we're in an age of hermeneutics that is unlike the hermeneutics that characterized our Reformed forebears. Men tread into that "labyrinth" freely today and come to certain conclusions precisely because they're not operating on the same foundation. As you're well aware, exegesis is affected by hermeneutics and so it's not simply a matter of going where the text takes one but whether or not an idea that arose out of speculation ends up being now imposed on the text itself.

I don't think anybody can deny, for instance, that there is a proper Redemptive historical hermeneutic and that it is not a recent invention any more than Biblical theology is. There are appropriate insights that can be developed that have, heretofore, not been developed. That said, it's also hard to argue that what many are doing with "Biblical Theology" these days has lost any mooring to Systematic theology and there are some who resemble the medieval Quadriga in their conclusions.

Again, I want to state that I agree with your caution because our forebears had blind spots just like we do and I don't want to pretend there is some golden age that developed the Scriptures fully. That said, I wish that I saw more interaction on basic foundational issues because we're often arguing over the conclusions that the hermeneutical differences have developed rather than asking whether or not we should have abandoned or refined the hermeneutic.
 
Listening to Mr. Fesko's sermons (I went through his 2 Corinthians series) he seemed a sound expositor and preacher. I was a bit surprised, then, when I picked up his book on Justification. I can't express it as well as the gentlemen above, but it does seem like he is trying to deal with the broader academic topics of the day. Perhaps a willingness to look more widely than the typical reformed academic perspective allows a voice in the discussions that might otherwise be dominated by those who do not have as much respect for confessional positions.
 
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