Do you agree with Jordan’s assessment of the Reformation in light of new and changing trends that apparently Jordan sees occurring?

I don’t know about my view at all being “in light of” any “trends that apparantly Jordan sees.” My point in this post, as I’ve said a few times in these comments, was not to defend Jordan point-by-point but to use his thesis as a springboard to consider the meaning (or even existence) of some kind of progressive understanding of the revelation in Scripture throughout Church history.

Do you agree with Jordan’s assessment of the Reformation in light of new and changing trends that apparently Jordan sees occurring?

Also, are you a student at Westminster?

I do think that Jordan’s book is indeed a good challenge to us to “see through new eyes, especially with the challenge that there may be even more unity to the Bible than we even thought. Certainly he challenges us to develop a healthy “first read” (reading the Bible as its original readers would have read it), and I think that’s why prof. Green had us read it. I think where some of my fellow students were put off, John, was in Jordan’s “cocksuredness” that some of his most speculative interpretations are “obvious” and therefore correct. You have to admit that he gets a little midrashic now and then, but as Enns and Green have taught us, a little midrash now and then is not necessarily a bad thing (cf. New Testament use of the old).

I used to be bothered by Jordan’s exegesis. But then, having studied Klaas Schilder (one of the fathers of “redemptive historical” preaching: see Greidanus, Sola Scriptura) and others, my objections diminished. When I first preached through Judges, I found a lot of helpful stuff in Jordan’s commentary but wasn’t persuaded by other things. The second time I preached through Judges, I discovered that a lot of those “other things” were pretty compelling to me. What happened in between is that I did more reading, thought a lot more about how the Bible communicates, asked more questions, etc.

Besides, Jordan will often say that his work isn’t intended as the final word, but that he hopes it will be a helpful word. Who else do you know who’s written about the things Jordan writes about — e.g., Jachin and Boaz, or the chariots of water in the temple, or the dietary laws of the Old Covenant, or … well, the list could go on to include most of his Biblical Horizons papers.

As for Jordan’s relation to theonomy, if you listen to his lectures on the subject you’ll find that he isn’t a theonomist. He has many objections to Bahnsenian theonomy.