Journal: Grace Theological Journal
Volume: GTJ 11:2 (Fall 1990)
Article: Response to Elliott Johnson
Author: Tremper Longman III

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GTJ 11:2 (Fall 90) p. 153

Response to Elliott Johnson

Tremper Longman III

Let me begin by thanking Dr. Johnson for his thoughtful paper. I am delightfully surprised with how much we are in agreement on a number of important matters. Each year, I believe, dispensationalist and covenantal biblical scholars come closer and closer to one another. The biblical text itself is bringing us together in unity.

I must also confess, however, that a part of me is asking whether we are really dealing with “the fundamental difference between dispensationalist hermeneutics and other expressions of evangelical hermeneutics.”1 My skepticism arises because, though we seem able to agree to such a large extent on method, exegetical conclusions are often so different.

Nonetheless, if Dr. Johnson’s paper represents the heart of dispensationalism, then it is truly welcome to see how close it is to a Vosian biblical theology. Johnson’s use of the organic metaphor of bud-flower for the relationship between the Testaments is very typical of the school of biblical theology as we practice it at Westminster. While saying this, let me also protest that it is unfair to place the bud-flower analogy over against Waltke’s egg-shell image as if that describes his whole approach to the relationship between the New and the Old. Indeed, I don’t think we can use one type of metaphor to understand the relationship between the Testaments.

It is reductionist to describe the complex and subtle relationship between the Testaments under one model. I can see, on the one hand, how certain themes unfold slowly and progressively along the lines of a bud turning into a beautiful flower. The divine warrior theme so develops. However, some themes and institutions of the Old Testament pass away and are discarded in a sense. The tabernacle was an important institution and theological concept in the Old Testament, but it is rendered obsolete once Christ comes. As a matter of fact, it may be best to see that often there is both organic development (bud-flower) as well as a contrast (egg-shell) between the Old and New Testaments. As we study covenant, we chart an organic development as one covenant builds on another finally culminating in the New Covenant. But we must also feel the force of a statement like that of Heb 8:13:

By calling the covenant “new,” he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear.

In light of the above, I would address three questions to Dr. Johnson:

1. How does your understanding of the progress of redemption especially as captured in the organic bud-flower image differ from that of co...

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