Southern Baptists and American Evangelicals
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 65, No. 2 - Spring 2023
Managing Editor: Malcolm B. Yarnell III
By Vern S. Poythress. Wheaton: Crossway, 2022, 159pp., $21.99
Vern S. Poythress, distinguished professor of theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, makes it clear that the purpose of this book is not just to explore theological topics as typical theological texts do. Rather, rejecting postmodern relativism and skepticism, he aims to unfold each chapter of biblical doctrine with the presuppositional commitment to a Christian understanding of truth.
For Poythress, truth functions as a perspective through which all the biblical doctrines, as traditionally taught in systematic theology, are interpreted and appreciated. Four components frame the book: the doctrine of God, the doctrine of man, redemption, and application of redemption, which reflects a typical way of direction in the redemptive history of biblical interpretation.
The first section of the doctrine of God deals with the concept of truth in which all other attributes of God are displayed. Each attribute of God is described and confirmed in light of the idea of divine simplicity. Poythress notes that, “Truth is one attribute of God. So, in this attribute it ought to be possible to see the other attributes, all of which belong to truth” (p. 27). When it comes to the doctrine of the Trinity, the nature of truth is revealed in the Trinity by the interpersonal love within the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as well as by the coinherence that “each person of the Trinity indwells each other person” (p. 41). Through the rest of the sub-sections, i.e., creation, providence, and revelation, Poythress relates truth as perspective to God’s unique nature and work to harmonize with those theological doctrines (pp. 53-69).
Next, Poythress unfolds the doctrine of man and redemption. God who is and possesses truth in himself, in the power of “the archetypal communicating truth in the Trinity,” manifests truth by speaking creation into being, including mankind (pp.73-74). When the first covenantal communion with God in truth was broken in the fall, “Adam failed to believe the truth about God’s truthfulness and his goodness” (p. 81). Then, the incarnate Christ, in harmony with the truth in the Godhead planned before the foundation of the world, comes in the second person of the Trinity, providing atonement by his penal substitutionary work (pp. 105-6, 113-19). Poythress, discussing penal substitution, sharply criticizes modern theology’s “antipathy to penal substitution,” which it considered “irrational.” But, claims Poythress, “the real irrationalism is to try to be more rational than God!… Modernism has in its arrogance discarded whatever it cannot fit into its own impoverished framework” (p. 118).
The truth of God that has been initiated in fulfillment of salvation in the redemptive history affects in a comprehensive way the people of God: the gospel of truth demanding a response to the truth; justification indicating God’s judgment in truth; sanctification expecting conformity to Christ the truth (John 14:6); and, finally the church sharing the truth, all of which together will draw “the consummation of the manifestation of truth” (pp. 129-45).
Poythress successfully demonstrates the truthfulness of biblical and theological doctrines in systematic theology, demonstrating their harmony in and from the perspective of truth. The existence of God who condescended and accommodated himself for the sake of his creatures in the second person of the triune God, translates himself in theology on a human level, and manifests truth in Jesus Christ who himself is the way, the truth, and the life. I gladly recommend this short book, which will provide a prolonged impression on orthodox Christian truth for those who seek to trace the understanding of biblical doctrines in light of God’s truthfulness.
