Deus Misereatur

I remember taking an Introduction to the New Testament class while I was in the Air Force. It was from a local college that met on the Air Base where I was stationed. I'd already been in the military 7 years and was a young Christian, having been converted while stationed in Turkey a few years earlier. The class was taught by a local pastor from a "mainline" denomination. Besides the questionable curriculum we had to read, there was a huge disjuncture between the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament. Now, many decades later, and after Seminary and my doctoral studies, I was delighted to see a new 560-page textbook that introduces the New Testament by couching "every major passage within the broad history of redemption," and that strives to "make sense of the New Testament in light of the Old" (XI). G. K. Beale, the J. Gresham Machen Chair of New Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary, has teamed up with Benjamin L. Gladd, associate professor ...

The Temple and the Church's Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God by G.K. Beale My rating: 5 of 5 stars "The Temple and the Church's Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God" is an extended study that shows exactly what the title claims. Beale traces out the roadways that lead from Eden to Revelation 21-22. If you've never considered how Eden was a Temple, with Adam and Eve fulfilling the priestly roles of working and keeping it (Genesis 2:15); or how the Tabernacle and Temple were a renewed Garden of Eden; or how the final Temple of the New Heavens and New Earth are pictured as an expanded and intensified Eden, then this is the book to get. In Beale's own words, "the eschatological goal of the temple of the Garden of Eden dominating the entire creation will be finally fulfilled...Hence, eschatology not only recapitulates the protology of Eden but escalates it" (368). And yes, the author masterfully shows how t...