G. K. Beale Archives - My Digital Seminary

Review: God Dwells Among Us by Beale & Kim

Explorers, mountain climbers, space expeditions. Mankind has a drive to reach the “unobtainable” and bring near the distant. Tragically, the most ambitious and important goal, that of reaching “God”, is truly unobtainable. That is, unless He Himself chooses to draw near to us, which is what our creator God, YHWH, truly desires to do, and this is climaxed in Jesus: God with us. But what else does Scripture reveal about YHWH’s desire to dwell with His people? And what role do we play? In God Dwells Among Us , Mitchell Kim and G. K. Beale have attempted something less ambitious, but ambitious nonetheless. They have a twofold goal: 1) to explore this theme of the unobtainable but near God from Genesis to Revelation in an approachable way, 2) by means of bringing near to us a book that would be otherwise unobtainable to many, Beale’s 458-page groundbreaking academic work The Temple and the Church’s Mission.

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April 16, 2015 / 1 Comment

Review: Hidden but Now Revealed by Beale and Gladd

“Behold! I tell you a mystery”, “I want you to understand this mystery”, “the mystery that was kept secret for long ages”, “the mystery was made known to me by revelation”. Quotes such as these are so common that Bible readers surely recognise them, but are they so familiar that we forget we don’t have a clue what they mean? One common understanding of these texts would read dictionary definitions of mystery back in to the Bible and conclude that it denotes an enigmatic idea. Another common view is that mystery refers to a novel idea entirely absent from the Old Testament. Both definitions contain some truth but the authors of Hidden but Now Revealed want to sharpen our focus. But, really, an entire book about mystery? G. K. Beale and Benjamin Gladd believe that mystery plays an important role in interpreting the whole Bible. It is both a bridge that spans the Old Testament to the New and a compass for navigating the continuity and discontinuity in the Testaments.

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November 27, 2014 / 0 Comments

Review: From Creation to New Creation edited by Gurtner and Gladd

G. K. Beale has had a significant impact on students, pastors and scholars throughout his scholarly career. Despite already releasing influential works such as his “magesterial” commentary on Revelation (NIGNT), the rich and “paradigm shifting” The Temple and the Church’s Mission, the “indispensable“ Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (co-edited with Carson), and his “magnum opus” (1,000+ pg) A New Testament Biblical Theology, I’d argue that Beale is currently at his prime. However, in light of the Lord’s work through him, Daniel Gurtner and Benjamin Gladd have worked together to produce From Creation to New Creation, a collection of essays in honour of Beale.

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October 30, 2014 / 18 Comments

Why Samson May Not Have Visited a Prostitute (Judges 16:1-3)

I’m highlighting a few essays in From Creation to New Creation (a tribute/fenschrift to G. K. Beale); not necessarily those I think are objectively superior, but rather stood out to me as interesting and post-worthy.

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October 20, 2014 / 0 Comments

Did the Apostle Paul Dare to Be A Daniel?

Did Paul dare to be a Daniel? If you’re expecting a sarcastic lambasting of that expression, then I’m sorry to disappoint (that will have to wait for another post!). Getting back to the question, Benjamin Gladd, professor at Reformed Theological Seminary, would answer “yes”; in in fact, in From Creation to New Creation Gladd goes even further and says that Paul consciously himself “as a Danielic figure…someone who wades in the stream of Danielic behaviour” (p272-3). As in, Paul saw himself much like Daniel and hinted at it in his letters.