A Brief Book Summary from Books At a Glance
Editor’s Note: Today we continue our series of “bonus” summaries covering all thirty-six chapters of the monumental volume, The Enduring Authority of the Christian Scriptures (D.A. Carson, ed.).
Chapter 8: Accommodation Historically Considered
by Glenn S. Sunshine
(Summarized by Mark Coppenger)
Sunshine begins with a definition:
The basic principle of accommodation is simple to understand: for an infinite, perfect, and holy God to interact with finite, fallible, and fallen humanity, he must accommodate himself to our ability to understand him, coming down to our level so that we can grasp what he says and does.
He then proceeds to delineate his understanding of its proper employment as well as its misconstruals. He cites, appreciatively, the various angles taken by such Fathers as Irenaeus (“progressive revelation”), Origen (“baby talk”), Chrysostom (“anthropomorphisms” and variant dietary laws), and Augustine (allegorical doctrina christiana) – in each case assuming the inerrancy of Scripture but insisting on proper, contextual interpretation. He also cites the Jewish Moses Maimonides, who contributed to the notion that. . .
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