Praise God for Smart Men

I purchased a book a little over a year ago written by Richard B. Gaffin Jr., entitled Resurrection and Redemption. Not only did I think the book was about something different than what its true purpose was; I was also not prepared for the sheer academic and intellectual style of Dr. Gaffin that is far beyond my comprehending at times. This is a quote for any of you who are proud and think that you're smart. Be humbled by this mans brilliance and be grateful that God has given smart men like this to the church as a gift. This is only a footnote in the book.

There is no need to read out of the argument developed to this point any unbiblical qualification or relativizing of the perfections of Scripture (necessity, authority, clarity, sufficiency!). An analogy from differential calculus may help to make the basic points clear. Redemptive events constitute a function (f), the authentication and interpretation of the New Testament its first derivative (f') and the interpretation of the later church its second derivative (f"). F', to be sure, is of a different order than f", since the former, the infallible verbal revelation (Scripture) which has God as its primary author, is the basis (principium) of the latter. But both, as derivatives, have a common interpretative reference to f. Indeed, it may be said that at its level (characterized by fallibility and tentativeness) f" "goes beyond" f' by seeking to make more explicit the structure implicit to the latter.

In the above discussion, the redemptive-historical distinction between canonical and noncanonical, between the apostolic and postapostolic periods, is not being overlooked or obliterated. Rather, stress is being placed on some implications of the fact that in "church" "apostolic" and "postapostolic" have their common (redemptive-historical) denominator.