Nathan Nocchi (NN): Stephen Coleman, our readership is keen to know more about you and your family. Would you mind telling us a bit about your life? How did you come to faith in Christ, and how did you come to love and study the Old Testament?
Stephen Coleman (SC): Certainly! I came to faith in Christ as a child. I had the privilege of growing up in a Christian home and had the sort of conversion that we oftentimes hope and pray for all our children, namely that there was never a day in life in which I didn’t know myself to be a sinner and God to be my savior in Christ Jesus. I was taught these precious gospel truths from the youngest age, and as far as I can remember, I believed them from my earliest days.
My dad was a pastor at a church which he pastored for almost 35 years. I had the privilege of growing up in a Reformed and Presbyterian congregation that took those convictions seriously, which means they took seriously the call to teach me the Bible. They took seriously the call to instruct me in our standards, particularly our catechetical heritage. I was catechized as a child, for which I remain deeply grateful. The Westminster Shorter Catechism, which I memorized with my family during family worship, became, indeed, the grammar of my faith. And, as I grow older, I appreciate this all the more.
In high school, I keenly sensed a call to ministry. At that time I was involved in Young Life. I enjoyed both the evangelistic component as well as the various Bible studies that are typically associated with Young Life. I soon got involved in the leadership, and I sensed a desire to follow in my dad’s footsteps in pastoral ministry. Some of my heroes were theologians like R.C. Sproul and Francis Schaeffer, among others. I looked to these men and saw that they were both pastors and teachers, and I desired to follow in their footsteps as a pastor and a teacher. Therefore, the natural next step was to undertake PhD studies. As I journeyed through my college and seminary days, God, in His kindness, confirmed that sense of calling in my heart at every stage in a way appropriate to that stage. And, after 12+ years in pastoral ministry in which I was teaching on the side, I am now in a teaching ministry in which I have occasion to preach on the side.
NN: Why did you undertake a PhD in Semitic and Egyptian languages? That field of inquiry might seem a bit obscure to some.
SC: Well, the program at the The Catholic University of America, with its focus on the Semitic languages, enabled me to engage the biblical literature as well as certain cognate literature at a deep level with respect to both their languages as well as the cultures which produced them. And one of the things that drew me to Old Testament studies was the literature of the Old Testament, and how reading it in its original languages brought to life certain aspects that were difficult to see in some of our English translations. Semitic languages, in a way, became a means to that end. Being able to read Hebrew reasonably well, and then also interact with the Aramaic and Akkadian and Ugaritic sources, helped me enter into the world of the Bible.
NN: After you completed your PhD studies at The Catholic University of America, what did the Lord have planned for you subsequently? How did you come to Westminster?
SC: While undertaking my PhD, I was involved in part-time (at first) then full-time ministry. In fact, this ministerial work caused my coursework to take a somewhat longer time than I, and especially my wife, had hoped. I do not regret that in any way. Being intimately engaged in the weekly life of Christ’s church helped keep me grounded throughout the writing process of my dissertation. I regularly thought about why I was doing what I was doing, which was to serve the church. When I completed my PhD, I had been teaching at a number of institutions, including RTS in Washington DC, and also at my alma mater, The Catholic University. There, I taught the Intro to Hebrew for the Semitics department. I was also an adjunct professor here at Westminster Theological Seminary. This had me on the search committee’s radar when a position opened in the Old Testament Faculty. About one year after I completed my PhD, I took the position up here at Westminster.
NN: And now you hold the Tong Chair of Reformed Theology! Can you tell us a bit about this remarkable event?
SC: It is a remarkable privilege, and I am deeply honored to have been appointed to this Chair. It is associated with Dr. Stephen Tong who is, unquestionably, one of the leading Reformed theologians in East Asia. He is known throughout the world for his gifts of evangelism and for his preaching and teaching ministry. He has also taught theology and philosophy at the seminary level. Dr. Tong is truly one of those renaissance men who is gifted not only in theology, but also in music, architecture, literature, and art. Many of the faculty here at Westminster have had the privilege of traveling to Indonesia to teach, preach, and evangelize, and guest lecture at the Reformed Seminary in Jakarta, which is associated with Dr. Tong and his church. This chair in Reformed theology is an honor, indeed, as Reformed theology stands behind all my work in biblical studies. It represents the impetus of my convictions.
NN: Let us consider precisely that. Christians are to think of the Old Testament as our history; it is Christian history. We are to receive this history as true, for if this history would be devoid of actual events, Christianity would be devoid of its substance. The defense of this history as ours and true has occupied Christians throughout the centuries. Indeed, with competing accounts of origins and ethnic histories, such as those found in Greco-Roman antiquity, early Christians were confronted with the apologetic task of defending the biblical narrative against idolators. Can you help us understand why this battle over the facts of history is so vital? Why is it necessary to maintain the historicity of the Old Testament?
SC: This is an important question. For Christians, history is meaningful because of our God who is sovereign over history. He has ordained all that has come to pass, and all that will come to pass. And he has ordained it for a purpose, namely that all things would find their fulfillment in the person and work of his Son, Jesus Christ, who took on flesh and died for the sins of his people, was raised to new life and has ascended into heaven, promising to return. It is vital to understand that certain historical events are God’s revelation of himself. Think for a moment of the events of the Exodus. God reveals who he is as the Sovereign Creator over all things, who holds every sphere of creation in his hand.
And He is revealed not only as Creator, but also as Redeemer, for he redeems his covenant people by delivering them out of Egypt, out of the bonds of slavery. This event is meaningful. It revealed to the Egyptians and to Israel, who Yahweh, the God of Israel, is. And then the authoritative interpretation of that event comes to us in sacred Scripture. Both are God’s revelation of himself and as such, we must affirm that both the event and the record of the event are true as the God who authored them. The Bible comes to us as God’s word. That’s critical for the Christian. We were just discussing this precious truth today in Old Testament Introduction.
NN: Any student of the history of interpretation knows that these convictions have not been universally shared. While one can find evidence of this throughout history, there was an increasing skepticism of the truth of Scripture’s account of ancient events in the nineteenth century. This is in no small part due to the rise of the documentary hypothesis. As we are thinking about J. Gresham Machen and his noble efforts to combat Liberalism, I wonder if you can offer a brief sketch of the documentary hypothesis, and how it occasioned much of the skepticism that Machen sought to combat?
SC: Of course! So, the documentary hypothesis pertains to the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. It claims that these five books are made up of a variety of sources, and have therefore not come from Moses. It suggests that there are discrete documents that one can identify which contain distinct theological approaches. This conjures up this idea that there are inconsistencies, given the different approaches. Notably, the hypothesis suggests that there is conflicting information about what God has done in history and what he commands of his people. One example of this concerns the “D” (Deuteronomistic) source’s emphasis on “heartfelt obedience” and the Lord’s preference for obedience to his commands over sacrifices. Of course, it is easy to recall many passages in the prophets that affirm this. Another source called “P” (Priestly) has a fundamental character that opposes that former source, “D.” The “priestly” source maintains that Israel’s cultic life needs to be governed by very strict ritual actions, and any violation of such ritual actions results in devastating consequences for the covenant community.
This hypothesis arose in a context in which the Bible was reduced to an exclusively human document, as well as with an evolutionary view of the progress of human history. When these two notions are brought to the field of biblical studies, and particularly the development of Israel’s religion, it wreaks all sorts of havoc. Scholars who advocate the Documentary Hypothesis maintain that Israel’s religious life had a series of stages, moving from animism to henotheism, to refined monotheism, then culminated in external ritualism.
This view of Scripture is completely antithetical to Scripture’s view of itself as divinely inspired, coherent, and as organically developed and thus related. It also cuts against the grain of Jesus’s view of Scripture. Recall that Jesus said to the Pharisees in John 5 that, if you believed in Moses, you would believe in him, for Moses wrote of Christ. Jesus understood the Torah to be Mosaic in origin and evidencing a coherence that finds its fulfillment in him. These nineteenth-century issues are as relevant today as they were in Machen’s Day.
NN: It is in this scholarly context that Machen penned his seminal Christianity and Liberalism.
SC: Yes, indeed.
NN: What do you think of that work and its importance?
SC: What Machen did in that work was make a clear distinction between Christianity and what had become known as a sort of liberal or modernist Christianity. Machen argued that the modernist “Christianity” is not, in fact, Christianity; it is something else altogether. Machen was insistent that it was certainly not orthodox Christianity. There are a number of reasons for that. One of those reasons is the modernist’s posture towards supernatural revelation, towards anthropology, and towards sin. Machen strongly opposed this modernist drift and affirmed the possibility and veracity of supernatural religion, of the biblical doctrine of man as by natural sinful, and of the person of Christ as both God and man (to name a few). In other words, his chief interest was to draw clear lines, and guide people to the historic, biblical, orthodox, confessional Christianity. This is why Christianity and Liberalism is still relevant today. If you abandon the supernatural, then you abandon Christianity.
NN: Thinking now about the task of training ministers for pastoral ministry, how can embracing the Old Testament as history and paying close attention to its typology benefit a pastor in training? How can it benefit one’s preaching?
SC: Oh, in so many ways. Jesus tells his disciples on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24 that beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. He continues to say to them, “was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter His glory?” (Luke 24:26) The sufferings and the glory of Christ are portrayed in a variety of ways throughout the Old Testament.
NN: Can you list a few of those ways?
SC: Absolutely. For example, the riches of what Christ accomplished on behalf of his people is portrayed in the sacrifices of Leviticus. Consider the burnt offering that was entirely consumed on the altar and the peace offerings (which were not). These point to Christ’s atoning work, for as Christ was wholly consumed on the cross his sacrifice covered his people’s sins, and he himself is the peace offering, which was essentially a fellowship meal, which Christ’s people feed on weekly, being nourished by his body and blood with thanksgiving. To offer another example, the Old Testament also provides a window into the inner life of our Savior. Consider the Psalms, and how they portray Christ’s worship, his life of lament, his sufferings and glory. Every student of Christ today ought to embrace the Old Testament, because it provides a vision into the experience of Christ.
SC: And, returning to the point of typology, much can be said. Consider the flood in the days of Noah as a type of judgment, where the waters washed away the wicked. In the days of Moses, the waters washed away the Egyptians, which was a sign of God’s judgment against them. These judgment waters anticipate Christ’s baptism. As he says to his disciples James and John in Mark 10, after they asked who shall sit on your right and left hand, Christ says “are you able to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” The answer is clearly no, for he has a unique baptism to undergo, which is the baptism of the cross. In a typological sense, Christ drowned in the waters of God’s judgment. Why? As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10, that we might pass safely through the waters of baptism. The waters of our baptism are not waters of judgment, but waters that wash us clean, ushering us into a new creation.
SC: We could literally spend hours pulling out this thread or that thread, discovering how these Old Testament realities anticipate the sufferings and glory of Christ.
NN: As we think about pastoral ministry, what advice would you give someone who is pursuing the ministry today?
SC: My advice would be that your ministry be focused on Christ first, and Christ’s flock second; and think of yourself very little. It is a temptation, especially in our day and age, to want to curate our image and to make our ministries about ourselves. I think that the more we can adopt John the Baptist’s posture, which says, “He must increase, and I must decrease,” the better off our flock will be. In other words, assume the posture of a shepherd, a shepherd always with an eye to the Great Shepherd.
NN: Stephen, it was a pleasure to chat with you. How can the Westminster community pray for you?
SC: I always need prayer, and I am always appreciative when people pray for me. First, please pray that I would continue to be faithful in my calling, and faithful, first and foremost, to Christ. Second, pray that God would continue to use me to raise up future pastors and teachers, elders and counselors, that they would go well-equipped to rightly handle the word of truth. And when these students come to the Old Testament, pray that they would come with eyes that are able to see Christ on every page.