MAGNIFYING GOD IN CHRIST
A Summary of New Testament Theology
By Thomas R. Schreiner. IVP. 272 pages. £14.99
ISBN 978-1-84474-414-5
This is a good book; it’s taken me ages to review it because I found it difficult to get into, but it was well worth the effort.
Schreiner takes the ‘big themes’ of the New Testament — the ‘already/not yet’ tension, God the Father, Christology, the Holy Spirit, Sin, Faith and Obedience, the Law, the Promise, and the Consummation — and summarises how the different New Testament writers write about them. Schreiner is thoroughly evangelical — he doesn’t believe the different writers are in conflict. But he does believe their different approaches and vocabularies enrich our understanding, and he’s right. There is so much here to enrich a careful reader’s understanding of New Testament themes, to say nothing of the sermons of a preacher who is prepared to take the time. I am disappointed with his treatment of the Sabbath question — but, then, I usually am with modern writers.
Magnifying God is an abbreviated version of Schreiner’s earlier work, New Testament Theology, and has been prepared, he tells us, with the aim of making its argument available to lay people, students and pastors. (Who’s left for the big book? If you’re not ‘lay’ or ‘pastor’ what are you? Never mind…) He doesn’t totally succeed; it’s not a simple book. How many folks, for example, know what paraenesis is? Not, apparently, the Oxford Dictionary Online. (‘Exhortation’, according to Chambers.) And Schreiner’s style varies quite a bit: sometimes very ‘bullet-point’, sometimes quite wordy and repetitive. But don’t let it put you off — there’s real gold here, and very close to the surface.
Gary Benfold,
Pastor for Preaching, Moordown Baptist Church, Bournemouth
