Preface
Preface
My thanks to Harry Boonstra, Allan Janssen, and Jonathan Pater for their invaluable help in providing base translations for the various parts of this volume. As with the previous two volumes, I have reviewed and revised their work and given the translation its final form. The few editorial footnotes are mine. Again, thanks are due to the project manager, Justin Marr, and to the copy editors for their work.
The heart of any sound systematic theology or dogmatics is its treatment of Christology. Christ as the center of the entire saving self-revelation of the triune God finds full and rich expression in this present volume. There is much here to be read and reflected upon with great profit.
In the preface to volume one, I noted that with this translation English readers will be able to compare the early Vos of the Reformed Dogmatics (which was completed by the time he was 30) with his subsequent work in biblical theology. My statement then that such a comparison “will substantiate deep, pervasive and cordial continuity” is certainly proving to be true.
Still, there are some differences. One noteworthy difference is that in this volume (as he did in volume one), he cites Romans 1:4 as a proof text for the deity of Christ. This contrasts with the position—expressed in 1912 in “The Eschatological Aspect of the Pauline Conception of the Spirit”—that Romans 1:4 refers to the transformation of the incarnate Christ by the Holy Spirit in His resurrection. Also, he does not yet appear to have a clear understanding of the “already-not yet” structure of biblical eschatology, with its overlap of the two world-ages (aeons) in the interadvental period. He would later provide a now-classic articulation of this understanding in chapter one of The Pauline Eschatology, which informs his biblical theological work as a whole.
On the other hand, in this volume he already holds, as he argues convincingly in his later biblical-theological work, that in the description of the resurrected Christ in 1 Corinthians 15:45 as “life-giving Spirit,” the reference is to the Holy Spirit.
R. Gaffin, Jr.
May 2014