Bøker av Geerhardus Vos

Eschatology is "doctrine of the last things." It deals with the teaching or belief, that the world-movement, religiously considered, tends towards a definite final goal, beyond which a new order of affairs will be established, frequently with the further implication, that this new order of affairs will not be subject to any further change, but will partake of the static character of the eternal.Vos stated that the purpose of the treatise was to investigate the extent to which Paul's eschatological teaching was tied to his doctrine of the Holy Spirit. This allowed Vos both to build upon the biblical theological insights of his "Theology of Paul" and to answer the questions that he had raised in his review of Kennedy's St. Paul's Conception of the Last Things. In setting forth the grand structure of Paul's teaching, Vos asserted that Paul taught that the future world had projected itself into the present life. Vos said, "Through the appearance of the Messiah, as the great representative figure of the coming aeon, this new age has begun to enter into the actual experience of the believer. He has been translated into a state, which, while falling short of the consummated life of eternity, yet may be truly characterized as semi-eschatological."Vos turned to Romans 1:3-4 to answer the question of how the Spirit was conferred upon Christ. He concluded that it was a history of redemption question (a contrast between the states of humiliation and exaltation) and not a question of natures (humanity and divinity). That is, the reference was not to two coexisting sides in the constitution of the Savior, but to two successive stages in his life. According to the flesh, Jesus descended from David. According to the Spirit, Jesus was declared to be the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead.The Apostle Paul understood that the subsequent state, the age to come, had intruded into the present age. Paul also understood that the soteric movement that had Christ at its center occurred within this cosmical setting of the overlap of the ages. The result was a philosophy of history where eschatology no longer formed one item in the sum-total of revealed teaching. Vos's purpose in the book was to show that unfolding Paul's eschatology meant unfolding Paul's theology as a whole.

This work contains six sermons preached at Princeton Seminary in the early 1900's by the great scholar of Biblical Theology reflecting the power of the word of God. It is clear that Vos has wrestled with every text and has come away having better known its challenges and wanting to share what he has discovered. John Murray said of him, "Dr. Vos is, in my judgment, the most penetrating exegete it has been my privilege to know, and I believe, the most incisive exegete that has appeared in the English-speaking world in this century."

Reprint Edition of 1948 Edition. Vos (1862-1949) was a Dutch American Calvinist theologian and one of the most distinguished representatives of the Princeton Theology. He is sometimes called the father of Reformed Biblical Theology. "Biblical theology is that branch of theology that seeks to "exhibit the organic growth or development of the truths of Special Revelation from the primitive pre-redemptive Special Revelation given in Eden to the close of the New Testament canon" (pp. v-vi). Vos shows how the plan of redemption is progressively revealed from creation to the book of Revelation. His main point is that the Bible is organized around the covenant. This means that God in Christ is progressively revealed throughout the Bible and biblical history in particular. More basically, Vos wants the reader to understand this: "All that God disclosed of Himself has come in response to the practical religious needs of His people as these emerged in the course of history" (p. 9). This is a progressive revelation of his love for his people, expressed by way of his covenant with them. The Bible teaches us that God indeed cares about our day-to-day needs, and he lovingly meets those needs in Christ. Biblical Theology is a long read, but it is worth the effort. If you study it carefully, your heart will be warmed and encouraged as this father of Reformed theology helps us to interpret the Bible more accurately and see God's love for us in Christ more clearly."https://www.opc.org/review.html?review_id=522

The aim of this book is no less than to provide an account of the unfolding of the mind of God in history, through the successive agents of his special revelation. Vos handles this under three main divisions: the Mosaic epoch of revelation, the prophetic epoch of revelation, and the New Testament. Such an historical approach is not meant to supplant the work of the systematic theologian; nevertheless, the Christian gospel is inextricably bound up with history, and the biblical theologian thus seeks to highlight uniqueness of each biblical document in that succession. The rich variety of Scripture is discovered anew as the progressive development of biblical themes is explicated. To read these pages--the fruit of Vos' 39 years of teaching biblical theology at Princeton - is to appreciate the late John Murray's suggestion that Geerhardus Vos was the most incisive exegete in the English-speaking world of the twentieth century.