Geerhardus Vos has set the gold standard for conservative evangelical Biblical Theology.1 As one who has recently co-written a Biblical Theology,2 I appreciate the care Vos has taken to define his terms, to lay out his method, and to execute it impeccably in his landmark work Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments. This year marks the 75-year anniversary of the publication of his volume. Remarkably, Vos’s Biblical Theology appeared only the year before his death as comprising the essence of his thirty-nine years of teaching at Princeton Theological Seminary. In addition, he has written an essay, “The Idea of Biblical Theology as a Science and as a Theological Discipline,” that spells out his approach to Biblical Theology at some length.3

On a biographical level, I am intrigued by the parallels I have detected between Vos and one of my other theological heroes, the Swiss theologian Adolf Schlatter. Vos was born in The Netherlands in 1862, came to the US at age nineteen, and died in 1949 at the age of eighty-six. Schlatter was born ten years earlier, in 1852, and died in 1938, eleven years before Vos, also at age eighty-six. Thus, their life spans overlapped from 1862 until 1938, for seventy-six years, or thirty-eight years each in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. While space does not permit an exploration of the interconnections between these two eminent scholars, I believe Schlatter and Vos have much in common, including their theological conservatism and high view of Scripture and even their approach to Biblical Theology. In fact, I appreciate Schlatter’s approach so much that I translated his two-volume New Testament Theology from German into English—about 1,100 pages of difficult-to-translate Swiss German!4 And I have a similar appreciation for Vos. In addition, I also appreciate the fact that Vos was born in Europe and came to the US as a young man where he went to seminary and later engaged in a longtime career of teaching and writing. I similarly came to the US at age twenty-seven to go to seminary and since then have taught at various institutions for the past thirty years.

In what follows, I will engage in an exercise of historical imagination and extrapolation. Vos never wrote a work on a biblical theology of gender. But if he had, what would such a work have looked like? My starting point will be Vos’s magisterial Biblical Theology. I will first sketch the contours of his biblical-theological method in order to ensure that the following extrapolation will be faithful to the way in which Vos went about his biblical-theological work. While he never wrote a full-fledged theology of gender, I believe Vos has given us a skeleton, a framework, within which we can plausibly construct a more robust biblical theology of gender as he might have developed it, and such a theology, in turn, can inform contemporary discussions of gender.

1. Vos’s Biblical-Theological Method

Before I develop the idea of a biblical theology of gender5 in Vos’s writings and beyond, I would like to register a few observations about Vos’s biblical-theological method.6 Method is important! The first thing to note about his method is that it puts God first.7 This, of course, is the burden of a more recent movement calling for a “theological interpretation of Scripture” (TIS). TIS advocates insist that theology, properly conceived, must start with God, over against mere historical approaches (such as the historical-critical method) or literary or narrative methods. In this regard, theologians should take their cue from previous interpreters including patristic sources (the Church Fathers), medieval theologians (the quadrilateral), the Reformers (Luther, Calvin, and others), and more recent systematicians. However, as D. A. Carson astutely observed in a now-classic critique of the movement, much of what is new with the movement is not necessarily true and what is true about it is not necessarily new!8 This is demonstrated nowhere more clearly as in the case of Geerhardus Vos’s biblical-theological method which is nothing if not unapologetically and unequivocally God-prioritizing. At the outset, Vos cites Thomas Aquinas’s maxim that theology is “a Deo docetur, Deum docet, ad Deum ducit,” that is, theology “is taught by God, teaches God, [and] leads to God.”9 So, God is the be-all and end-all of Biblical Theology, its Alpha and Omega, as it were. This theocentricity is all the more remarkable in view of Vos’s acknowledgment that he wrote his Biblical Theology in a kind of theological vacuum during the first half of the twentieth century.

Interestingly, as you may realize, the title of Vos’s magnum opus notwithstanding, he himself preferred the nomenclature of “History of Special Revelation” to “Biblical Theology.”10 This nomenclature, I believe, is vital in trying to understand Vos’s approach and theological method, as this is exactly what he does in the 400 or so pages of his Biblical Theology: He traces the history of God’s revelation through two major epochs of salvation history: the Mosaic and the Prophetic periods (in which he includes Jesus’s proclamation of God’s kingdom). As such, Vos aims to trace the “organic growth … of the truths of Special Revelation.”11 In terms of its overall scope, Vos’s Biblical Theology starts with Eden and ends with Jesus’s proclamation of the kingdom of God. It may appear that his work is therefore unfinished, as he does not cover Paul’s letters, the General Epistles, or the book of Revelation. However, here it is important to remember that Vos does not set out to write a whole-Bible Biblical Theology the way, for example, G. K. Beale recently attempted to do, but instead endeavored to trace the history of divine revelation in Scripture. Just like we may not feel that Mark properly concluded his Gospel, or that Acts breaks off prematurely, Vos’s work may appear to conclude earlier than it should. But at a closer look, we realize that Vos did accomplish his stated purpose, since he viewed Jesus as the culmination of divine revelation in keeping with the opening words of Hebrews: “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” (Heb 1:1–2a).

In terms of its overall relation to the other theological disciplines, Vos rather conventionally places Biblical Theology in a position between exegesis and Systematic Theology. I say “conventionally,” because here he essentially follows the classic distinction made by J. P. Gabler, the “father of Biblical Theology,” between Dogmatics and Biblical Theology.12 Accordingly, Vos distinguishes between Biblical and Systematic Theology by noting that, in contrast to Systematic Theology, the organizing principle in Biblical Theology is historical rather than logical.13 He observes that “in not a few cases revelation is identified with history”14 and maintains that in Biblical Theology, “both the form and contents of revelation are considered as parts and products of a divine work” while in Systematic Theology “these same contents of revelation appear … as the material for a human work of classifying and systematizing according to logical principles.”15 This continues to be a widely-held view, though some today have rather blurred the line between the two and have produced works that exhibit a certain hybrid approach that combines features of both disciplines.16 D. A. Carson, my Doktorvater, essentially espouses a view similar to Vos’s, except that he seeks to refine the model by postulating a series of “feedback cycles,” in which the other disciplines inform (though not unduly prejudice) one’s biblical-theological reading of the relevant texts.17 We see a similar insight already in Vos when he notes that in general Biblical Theology precedes Systematic Theology, though, as he observes, “there is at several points already a beginning of correlation among elements of truth in which the beginnings of the systematizing process can be discerned.”18

With this, I come to the second important hallmark of Vos’s approach to biblical theology, namely his focus on the text and exegesis.19 I mentioned at the outset certain affinities I have observed between Vos and Schlatter. One such affinity pertains to Vos’s overall stance toward Scripture. Vos asserts categorically that in Biblical Theology, exegesis is primary. As such, the accurate interpretation of Scripture requires a “receptive” attitude on the part of the interpreter and is “eminently a process in which God speaks and man listens.”20 Similarly, Schlatter called for a “hermeneutic of perception” that consists first and foremost in “seeing what is there.”21 Rather than focusing on what is “behind the text” or even “in front of the text,” faithful biblical interpreters and biblical theologians ought to fix their minds on what is actually “in the text,” and, I might add, this would be a good rule of thumb for preachers as well! In this textually-grounded approach to interpretation and biblical theology, we can see Vos’s deep-seated commitment to the authority of Scripture. Indeed, his commitment to proper exegesis as being foundational to solid and accurate Biblical Theology is vital. Exegetical theology, in turn, according to Vos, consists in the study of the contents of Scripture, as well as the science of introduction, the study of the canon (which he calls “canonics”), and Biblical Theology.22 Thus Vos defines Biblical Theology as “that branch of Exegetical Theology which deals with the process of the self-revelation of God deposited in the Bible.”23

Third, therefore, and this follows seamlessly from some of the things I have said above, we observe in Vos’s work a strong a priori conviction that in Scripture we encounter progressive divine revelation. In his first chapter on “The Nature of Method of Biblical Theology,” Vos states explicitly that, as the science concerning God, theology is concerned with divine revelation, citing Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians 2:11 that no one knows God except for the Spirit of God.24 Yet while creation made revelation possible, sin complicated it. Ever since the Fall, therefore, “every step towards rectifying this abnormality must spring from God’s sovereign initiative.”25 The progress of revelation—its organic growth—is from seed to fullness; in a qualitative sense, the seed is no less perfect than the tree.26 The organic character of revelation also explains its “multiformity” (i.e., diversity).27 Thus, interestingly, Vos grounds both Scripture’s unity and diversity in the God who disclosed himself to his people over the course of redemptive history. What is more, for Vos, God is not merely an abstract concept, or even a literary theme; as he is careful to note, “knowing” God, in the Semitic sense, is not merely intellectual assent but entails “to love” or “to single out in love.”28 God does not merely want to be known: He wants to be loved; hence the backbone of Old Testament revelation is no mere “school” but a series of covenants.29 According to Vos, God’s purpose for humanity involves much more than mere education; it is bound up with love.30 In my own Biblical Theology, I similarly (albeit independently) have chosen to focus on the revelation of God’s love for humanity in Scripture, coupled with God’s desire that the objects of his love reciprocate this love and express it in devoted service and worship of God as well as in love toward one another (Jesus’s “new commandment”).31 In conjunction with his belief that Scripture consists in divine progressive revelation, then, Vos invokes what he calls the “principle of historic progression.”32 In tracing the history of God’s self-disclosure through Scripture, Vos is convinced, the interpreter and biblical theologian can detect a division into discrete periods along the “lines of cleavage drawn by revelation itself,” manifested foremost in a series of covenants.33 Peter Gentry and Stephen Wellum have recently embarked on a similar project in their work Kingdom through Covenant.34

To summarize what we have seen so far, Vos’s biblical-theological method is characterized by grounding his study in God; by maintaining a textual focus; and by a strong conviction that in Scripture we encounter a progressive unfolding of divine revelation in human history. A fourth distinctive priority in Vos’s biblical-theological method is its historical orientation. As Vos insists, “Biblical Theology, rightly defined, is nothing else than the exhibition of the organic process of supernatural revelation in its historic continuity and multiformity.”35 Vos traces the beginning of Biblical Theology in the modern period to Johann Philipp Gabler (1753–1826) and his distinction between Dogmatic and Biblical Theology, commending Gabler for affirming the historical nature of Biblical Theology in the context of the prevailing rationalism and widespread disparagement of history in Gabler’s day.36 In his critique of rationalism, Vos asserts that “Reception of truth on the authority of God is an eminently religious act.”37 He writes that “in religion the sinful mind of man comes … face to face with the claims of an independent, superior authority”; yet at closer scrutiny, rationalism’s “protest against tradition is a protest against God as the source of tradition.”38 For Gabler, not just any historical work will do: “Tracing the truth historically” but “with a lack of fundamental piety,” so-called theology “lost the right of calling itself theology.”39 The problem, as Vos sees it (and I could not agree with him more), is not the use of reason, but irreverence and rebellion against revelation and ultimately against God himself. Accordingly, in my own hermeneutical approach, I postulate a “hermeneutical triad” consisting of history, literature, and theology, which calls for an exploration of the biblical text that does justice to its historical, literary, and theological dimensions in proper balance. In this way, Biblical Theology is enabled to be both historical and theological (as well as literary), without unduly tilting the balance in one direction or the other, with the result that a so-called “historical” approach submerges any meaningful engagement of the text’s theological message and nature as divine revelation or vice versa. We see this irreverence toward, and rebellion against, divine revelation of which Vos speaks nowhere more clearly in Scripture than in Paul’s momentous declaration in Romans 1:18–23:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

These are convicting words. I will return to this passage shortly when moving on to a theology of gender.

Fifth and finally, I conclude my preliminary discussion of Vos’s biblical-theological method by drawing your attention to his extremely useful and perceptive discussion of the practical utility of Biblical Theology.40 Biblical Theology is not merely an arid academic exercise; it is of great value for the church. Vos notes the following benefits: (1) Biblical Theology exhibits the organic growth of revelation. He writes, “A leaf is not of the same importance as a twig, nor a twig as a branch, nor a branch as the trunk of the tree.”41 By exhibiting the organic unfolding of revelation, Biblical Theology supplies a “special argument from design for the reality of Supernaturalism.”42 (2) By its careful attention to the pressive divine revelation in Scripture, Biblical Theology also demonstrates its apologetic value in that it “supplies us with a useful antidote against … rationalistic criticism.”43 (3) Biblical Theology is spiritually nurturing: “Biblical Theology imparts new life and freshness to the truth by showing it to us in its original historic setting. The Bible is not a dogmatic handbook but a historical book full of dramatic interest.”44 In this, Vos anticipates the more recent emphasis on Scripture as theo-drama espoused by scholars such as Kevin Vanhoozer in his work The Drama of Doctrine and other publications.45 (4) Biblical Theology shows the indispensable nature of the “doctrinal groundwork” of our beliefs. As Vos observes, God has taken great care “to supply His people with a new world of ideas.”46 Doctrine matters, and Biblical Theology, properly conceived and engaged in, underscores the importance of right beliefs in keeping with God’s own self-disclosure throughout Scripture. As such, (5) Biblical Theology helps us to move beyond isolated proof texts to an organic system.47 Not only does Biblical Theology engage in a study of biblical texts in their original historical setting, it pays attention to important interconnections along the spectrum of divine revelation in salvation history. Finally, (6) Vos asserts that the “supreme end” of Biblical Theology is “the glory of God.”48 He points out that Biblical Theology gives us “a new view of God as displaying a particular aspect of His nature in connection with His historical approach to and intercourse with man”49—as I point out in my Biblical Theology, that is, supremely, the love of God. Again, Vos cites Thomas Aquinas’s assertion that theology is a Deo docetur, Deum docet, ad Deum ducit: It “is taught by God, teaches God, [and] leads to God” and to a special appreciation of his manifold attributes including his redemptive love for the people he created.

2. Vos’s Biblical Theology and a Biblical Theology of Gender

With this, I move on to my primary assignment and purpose for this essay: reconstructing a biblical theology of gender from Vos’s Biblical Theology. In so doing, I encounter several limitations. First, as mentioned, Vos himself did not write a biblical theology of gender. Not only this, second, he did not consistently trace this theme in this work. In fact, the primary entry point is his overall biblical-theological approach which conceives of biblical theology in terms of a history of special revelation grounded in the self-disclosing God. This history of special revelation, in turn, according to Vos, proceeded in two primary stages, revelation in the Mosaic and Prophetic periods, the latter of which includes Jesus’s teaching on the kingdom of God. Third, while he did not write a biblical theology of gender as such, Vos has given us a skeleton, a framework within which we can flesh out a more robust biblical theology of gender as he might have developed it. In particular, we find in Vos’s work a very helpful treatment of the Fall narrative in Genesis 3 from which we can glean his views on the way in which the Fall affected humanity specifically as male and female. I have already quoted Paul’s indictment of sinful humanity in his letter to the Romans in Romans 1:18–23 above. In these remarks, Paul makes clear that the problem with humanity is not the lack of divine revelation but rather the fact that humans sinfully suppress the knowledge of God that is, or at least should be, evident to them. God has made his invisible attributes—his divine power and nature—plain to his creatures in the universe he has made; in this way, we can speak of God’s creation as his natural revelation. Thus, humanity’s problem is not ignorance of God but rather the fact that they have suppressed the God they knew, or at least should have known—the God who has revealed himself to them in nature.

2.1. Creation

Building on this foundational insight regarding the human predicament—the fact that it is not ignorance concerning God but the unrighteous suppression of the knowledge of God that erects a barrier between God and humans—Paul proceeds to elaborate in greater detail on the way in which unrighteous humanity suppresses their knowledge of God in Romans 1:24–32:

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.… Though they know God’s decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

What we see here is that the preeminent example Paul gives has to do with people’s “dishonoring of their bodies among themselves” in form of “dishonorable passions,” which Paul describes as women exchanging “natural relations” with unnatural ones—namely, being “consumed with [sexual] passion” for other women and “men committing shameless acts with [other] men” (vv. 26–27). Paul attributes this unnatural way of relating to “a debased mind” resulting in “shameless acts.” He notes, first, that people who do such things receive “in themselves the due penalty for their error” (v. 27). Second, as a result of their rejection of divine revelation—more broadly speaking, their knowledge of God, and more specifically, his design of them as male and female—“God gave them up” to “the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies,” “to dishonorable passions,” and “to a debased mind.” Three times, Paul asserts, in a constant refrain in this passage, that God “gave [sinful humanity] up” to their own devices since they rejected him (vv. 24, 26, and 28). As Vos puts it, while creation in God’s image has supplied humans with both religious consciousness and a moral conscience, sin has led to a condition in which humanity’s religious and moral sense of God has become “blunted and blinded.”50 Third, by engaging in unnatural relations, these people who have suppressed divine revelation have done “what ought not to be done,” that is, they have acted contrary to God’s righteous and holy purpose for them as men and women. In large part, one surmises this is so because such same-sex acts cannot naturally lead to the procreation of children; also, Paul describes these acts as being motivated by lust (v. 24).51

What is more, fourth, such acts are “dishonorable” and “shameless.” They dishonor God and withhold from him the respect and glory he rightly deserves. In addition, these acts are carried out with impunity and without shame—they are both shameful and shameless. What is more, not only do such individuals engage in these shameless acts that dishonor the Creator and rob him of his glory, they also heartily approve of others who do the same (v. 32). This underscores the importance of denying such individuals the acceptance they so desperately crave.52 It is not enough for them to engage in shameless acts and to dishonor their own bodies; they seek the approval of others so as to draw them into their own rebellion against the Creator. In this way, we see that Scripture grounds the biblical teaching on gender identities and roles in God’s revelation in and through creation. While Vos does not explicitly draw this connection in his Biblical Theology, it seems appropriate to note that it is entirely reasonable to infer that he would have connected Paul’s affirmations in Romans 1:18–32 regarding God’s revelation of his character in creation with the human rejection of God’s creational design for man and woman resulting in blameworthy unnatural acts. And similar to Paul, Vos would have doubtless grounded special revelation regarding God’s design for man and woman profoundly in natural revelation.

2.2. The Fall

While Vos does not elaborate explicitly on humanity’s rejection of the Creator’s design as revealed in the creation narrative, he does provide a rather thorough discussion of humanity’s plight resulting from the fall in a chapter called, “The Content of Pre-redemptive Special Revelation.”53 He picks up the biblical storyline by speaking of divine pre-redemptive revelation consisting of four elements: (1) life (represented by the “tree of life”); (2) probation (represented by the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil”); (3) temptation (which entered the Garden in form of a serpent); and (4) death (resulting in the dissolution of the body; Gen 2:17; cf. 3:3). In the Garden, which is in the first place God’s domain and abode, man enters into fellowship with God (cf. Pss 46:4–5; 65:9); later, the man and the woman are expelled from God’s presence (Gen 3:22; cf. Rev 2:7).54 Probation consisted in the challenge of obeying God’s command out of sheer obedience simply because of the nature of God, which Adam and Eve failed to do.55 Temptation entered in form of a real serpent and a real evil spirit.56 In this regard, Vos rejects the notion that the serpent approached the woman in the Garden because she was “more open to temptation and prone to sin”; rather, he believes the reason may have been that “the woman had not personally received the prohibition from God, as Adam had” (cf. Gen 2:16, 27).57 One might infer from this that direct reception of the command from God bestows on the man a certain kind of preeminence and greater, ultimate responsibility as Paul teaches in both 1 Corinthians 11:8–9 and 1 Timothy 2:13–14. The temptation itself, according to Vos, took place in two stages: first, an “injection of [an innocent kind of] doubt into the woman’s mind”; and second, a “serious form of doubt” that has “cast off all disguise” and directly challenges the veracity of God’s command.58 Vos sees here in the biblical text a hint that the woman, while seeking to defend God, had already entertained the thought that the prohibition was too severe, especially in the fact that she adds the bit about not even “touching” the tree. Vos proceeds to argue from the Hebrew fronted position of the negative pronoun that special emphasis falls on God’s alleged selfish motives for issuing the command. He adds that it was not merely the aesthetic appeal of the forbidden fruit that induced the woman to eat; rather, by yielding to the serpent, the woman, in effect, put the serpent in the place of God: she trusted that the serpent had her best interests at heart while God did not. This is assuredly a profound insight: Sin, in effect, puts Satan in the place of the Creator by giving him and his reasoning first place and first priority.59

2.3. Redemption

With this, we move on to the third movement in the biblical storyline—redemption—starting with the immediate aftermath of the fall.

a. The Immediate Aftermath of the Fall. In his chapter on “The Content of the First Redemptive Special Revelation,” Vos observes that, while the term “redemption” is not used in Mosaic period, in the aftermath of the Fall, God’s characteristic saving disposition is at once evident: There is both justice and grace. Justice is manifested in the three curses on the serpent, the woman, and Adam (though it should be noted that, technically, only the ground is cursed, not the man or the woman), while grace is implied in the curse on the Tempter and the promise that the woman’s offspring will crush the serpent’s head. Both the man and the woman hide from God’s presence; God’s interrogation leads them to the realization that their fear and shame are ultimately rooted in sin.60 The promise of victory over the serpent, for its part, reveals God’s sovereign initiative in deliverance; signals a reversal of attitude by which humanity is realigned with the Creator; accentuates the continuity of the work of deliverance by perennially pitting the woman’s against the serpent’s “seed”; and foretells ongoing enmity between sinful humanity that stands in need of future redemption and personal evil supernatural forces.61 In this regard, Vos aptly notes that the effects of the Fall are not merely generic—universal human death—but gender-specific. Under the heading “Human Suffering,” he observes that “the woman is condemned to suffer in what constitutes her nature as woman”; the effects of the Fall extend particularly to her role as the man’s companion and as the mother of children.62 Her relationship with her husband will now be characterized by a continual struggle for control—her “desire” will be to control her husband (Gen 3:16; cf. 4:7)—while giving birth to children will be accompanied by labor pains.63 With regard to Adam, Vos notes that “the punishment of man consists in toil unto death”; the curse consists in the fact that, objectively, “the productivity of nature is impaired” by the presence of thorns and thistles. And yet, “as the woman is enabled to bring new life into the world, so the man will be enabled to support life by his toil.”64 Both the woman and the man will experience labor and pain in their own world and primary domain: the woman in relation to the man from whom and for whom God made her, the man in relation to the ground from which he was made.

In his ensuing discussion of the patriarchal and Mosaic periods, Vos does not explicitly address the way in which God’s subsequent revelation in Scripture addresses the redemption and restoration of the male-female relationship in Christ. However, he does provide a broad, general framework for such a discussion. We will therefore first set the overall framework flowing from Vos’s discussion before providing additional reflections on what such an additional teasing out of Vos’s biblical-theological method and content applied to a biblical theology of gender might look like. In chapter 7, “Revelation in the Patriarchal Period,” Vos discusses the historicity of the patriarchs and Abraham’s faith which involved trust in God’s saving grace (cf. Gen 15:6). Such faith involved renunciation of “all his own purely human resources” while expecting “everything from the supernatural” intervention of God.65 At the same time, Vos acknowledges that it would be anachronistic to equate Old and New Testament faith. Abraham did not trust in Christ’s resurrection; he trusted in God’s supernatural intervention in the case of Isaac, which required a similar disposition of faith.66 In chapter 8, Vos discusses “Revelation in the Mosaic Period.” In Israel’s experience of redemption from Egypt, Vos finds a typical discussion of deliverance from sin conceived as “enslavement to an alien power” (cf. John 8:33–36; Rom 8:20–21); the display of divine omnipotence in form of the miraculous signs performed by Moses (e.g., Exod 9:16); and the manifestation of sovereign grace at the Passover.67

b. The Prophetic Period. In his discussion of “The Prophetic Epoch of Revelation,” Vos discusses the revelation of God’s holiness (e.g., 1 Sam 2:2; Hos 11:9) and righteousness.68 Of particular interest for our topic is Vos’s discussion of Hosea’s teaching on the spiritual marriage bond between God and Israel.69 Vos observes that Yahweh initiated the union (Hos 13:5; cf. Amos 3:2), which had a definite historical beginning at the exodus (Hos 13:4; cf. 11:1; Amos 2:10). Israel freely entered the union, which at the root was spiritual in nature. In the beginning, Yahweh is depicted as wooing Israel for her affection (Hos 2:14); later, Yahweh, despite Israel’s sin, continues to furnish proofs of his love to draw her back to himself (6:4). At the same time, the spiritual union between God and Israel is not merely a matter of love and affection; it is a legally defined relationship: Israel is not merely deficient in love and affection; she has broken covenant with her God. Vos also notes that the covenant is a national covenant. Nevertheless, there are important individual implications: If Yahweh is Israel’s “husband” and she is his “wife,” then, by implication, individual Israelites are God’s children (Hos 2:1; 11:3–4; cf. 14:9). Vos also notes that the future salvation of a believing remnant will be rooted in divine election (4:3).

2.4. Consummation

Vos does not directly address the fourth and final redemptive movement in Scripture—consummation—and its implications for a biblical theology of gender, though he includes a brief section entitled “Glimpses of Consummation.” According to Vos, the eschatological teaching in the Prophets signals future redemption and even consummation. This is evident particularly in the depiction of future “glory” in the book of Isaiah (11:6–9; 65:17–25). In this regard, it is only a small step of “transition from a restored Canaan to restored paradise” (Amos 9:13; Hos. 2:21–22; 14:5–7); Isaiah even speaks of a “new heavens and a new earth” (65:17; 66:22). In conjunction with the expectation of future deliverance and eternal glory, Vos also discusses the concept of a personal Messiah in passages such as Isaiah 9:1–7 as well as the figure of the “Servant of Yahweh” in Isaiah 53. He remarks that in chapter 9, Isaiah moves “his vision along from the dark scene of the deportation of a part of Northern Israel by Tiglath-Pileser to the scene of light, characteristic of the Messianic glory” and draws attention to the Isaianic conception of the Messiah as “the gift of God” in the striking announcement, “A son is given.”70 This, I might add, finds a likely New Testament echo in John’s declaration in John 3:16 that “God so loved the world that the gave his one and only Son” (note that the word used here is “gave” rather than the more characteristically Johannine term “sent”).

With this, we conclude our brief survey of the relevant portions in Vos’s Biblical Theology regarding a biblical theology of gender. Before we proceed to put some further flesh on the bones, there is one more important broader topic we must address, namely Vos’s discussion of the structure of New Testament revelation. This will have an important bearing on how we construe the relationship between divine revelation in the Old Testament, through Jesus, and through Paul and the other apostles and New Testament writers.

When it comes to the structure of New Testament revelation, Vos identifies three primary ways of discerning its internal organization: (1) From indications in the Old Testament: The Old Testament is forward-looking, featuring eschatological and messianic prophecy. In fact, as Vos observes, “The Old Testament, through its prophetic attitude, postulates the New Testament” (see esp. the use of the word “new” in passages such as Isa 65:17; Ezek 11:19; Matt 13:52; 2 Cor 5:17; and Rev 2:17; but esp. Jer 31:31–34).71 (2) From the teachings of Jesus: At the establishment of the Lord’s Supper, Jesus spoke of “my blood of the covenant” (τὸ αἷμά μου τῆς διαθήκης; Matthew 26:28; Mark 14:24) or “the new covenant in my blood” (ἡ καινὴ διαθήκη ἐν τῷ αἵματί μου; cf. Luke 22:20; 1 Cor 11:25), as a climax of the series of covenants God had made with Israel. (3) From the teachings of Paul and the other apostles: According to Vos, “Paul is in the New Testament the great exponent of the fundamental bisection in the history of redemption and of revelation” in that he distinguishes between the “new” and the “old διαθήκη” (2 Cor 3:6, 14; cf. Hebrews, esp. 1:1–2; 9:15).72

Vos notes that when looking at the teaching of the prophets, Jesus, and the apostles, one finds that “the New Testament revelation is one organic, and in itself completed, whole”; the apostles, for their part, are “witnesses and interpreters of the Christ.”73 In this regard, Vos speaks out against the notion of “going back” from the apostles (and here particularly Paul) to Jesus; rather, Christ himself is “the centre of a movement of revelation organized around Him.”74 At the same time, Jesus nowhere presents himself as “the exhaustive expounder of truth”; rather, he “is the great fact to be expounded”; rather than cutting himself off from his followers, to the contrary, Jesus bound them to himself (Luke 24:44; John 16:12–15). In this way, Jesus “interweaves and accompanies the creation of the facts with a preliminary illumination of them, for by the side of His work stands His teaching”; thus Jesus’s teaching is the embryo which in “indistinct fashion, yet truly contains the structure, which the full-grown organism will clearly exhibit.”75 God’s revelation in the Old Testament period is the “overture” to the New Testament; Christ is the “Consummator” of God’s salvation promises; and a third epoch of revelation is still future—the Apocalypse.76

3. Toward a Biblical Theology of Gender

In the remainder of this study, I would like to sketch briefly what a theology of gender within the general parameters established by Geerhardus Vos in his Biblical Theology would look like. I have already cited Vos’s proposal regarding what he calls “pre-redemptive general revelation” (i.e., creation) and “pre-redemptive special revelation” (i.e., the Fall). My wife and I have written a volume titled God’s Design for Man and Woman: A Biblical-Theological Survey, in which we discuss the biblical teaching on gender in four movements: creation, the fall, redemption, and consummation.77 We propose that at creation, God’s design for man and woman was revealed; at the fall, God’s design was corrupted; through redemption in Christ, God’s design is being restored; and at the final consummation, God’s design will be completed.

3.1. Creation

To elaborate a bit further on the first of these four movements—creation—God’s design for man and woman revealed at creation entails God’s creation of the man first, from the ground (Gen 2:7–8), and then his creation of the woman, second, from the man, as his suitable helper or counterpart to provide him with companionship and to partner with him in filling the earth and exercising dominion over it (2:18, 20; cf. 1:28). Thus we see in the scriptural creation narrative a harmonious picture of the man and the woman partnering in ruling the earth as God’s representatives, with the man serving as the God-appointed head.

3.2. Fall

The second movement, the fall, as mentioned, witnesses the corruption (though by no means obliteration) of God’s design. As Vos has ably demonstrated, sin struck the man and the woman each in their respective primary domains, indicated by the source from which God created them. Sin introduced friction between the man and the ground from which he was made, and he will experience “labor pains” in his work. Sin also introduced friction between the woman and the man from whom she was made, resulting in relational tension and a struggle for control, as well as “labor pains” in the childbearing realm which God uniquely assigned to the woman. In this way, sin did not merely have generic consequences such as universal death (both physical and spiritual) but also had gender-specific consequences that accentuate that God made the man and the woman to inhabit different primary spheres in and of themselves and in relation to each other. This is clear both before and after the fall: Already before the fall, God had assigned the cultivation of the Garden to the man, not to mention naming the animals, and had issued to the man the command not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 2:15–17); the fact that the punishment for sin affects the man most centrally in the area of his work merely reinforces that this was the primary domain he was originally assigned by God, along with the responsibility to provide for and to protect the woman and eventually his entire family as well. Similarly, the woman was meant from the very beginning to complement the man and to partner with him in ruling the earth, in part, by procreation, conceiving and giving birth to children, and nurturing and caring for them in conjunction with her husband (1:28). Again, the punishment for sin only accentuated (but did not create) this primary domain of responsibility and fruitfulness.

3.3. Redemption

Moving on to the third, redemptive, movement in the biblical metanarrative, we have seen that Vos subsumes the coming of Jesus the Messiah under the prophetic period of divine revelation, which moves beyond the Mosaic period. Interestingly, as mentioned, his Biblical Theology concludes, not with Revelation or even the New Testament letters, but with Jesus’s proclamation of God’s kingdom.78 This is in keeping with John’s declaration that “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known” (John 1:18); and also with the momentous opening assertion by the writer of the epistle of Hebrews that “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” (Heb 1:1–2a). At the same time, as we have seen, Vos acknowledges that the structure of New Testament revelation can be discerned from indications in the Old Testament, the teachings of Jesus, and the teachings of Paul and the other apostles, so that Jesus provides the climax of the precedent Old Testament revelation and is followed by that mediated through the apostles, who, in turn, are intricately connected to Jesus’s teaching. Applied to a biblical theology of gender, this would seem to imply that we ought to give pride of place to the divine revelation in and through Jesus’s teaching and actions, while Paul and the other apostles should be seen, not as providing new or different revelation, but as applying the revelation mediated through Jesus to life in the apostolic era—the age of the church and of the Holy Spirit.

Here, then, are seven observations that flow from both Jesus’s words and actions, including ways in which Paul and other later New Testament writers applied those principles.

To begin with, Jesus was incarnated as male, corresponding to the first man, Adam, a fact that implies male headship, as we have already seen in our discussion of God’s design established at creation. The apostle Paul reiterates this connection at some length in Romans 5:12–21, which proves that Jesus’s incarnation as male was essential rather than arbitrary. On the basis of the principle of federal headship, God made Jesus the sinless head of a new humanity, just like Adam was the head of original humanity which succumbed to sin at the fall, resulting in universal depravity (cf. 1 Cor 15:20–28).

Second, Jesus addressed his proclamation of God’s kingdom to both men and women, recounting anecdotes or using illustrations relevant to both (e.g., Luke 2:25–38; 15:1–10). Paul teases out the implications of this principle when he writes that “in Christ, there is neither male nor female, but all are one in Christ” (Gal 3:28).

Third, in the Sermon on the Mount, in relation to the Mosaic revelation in the Law, and specifically the sixth of the Ten Commandments, Jesus deepened the prohibition against adultery by including lust in a man’s heart as constituting adultery (Matt 5:27–30; cf. Exod 20:14; Deut 5:18).

Fourth, in the same body of teaching, Jesus similarly reaffirmed God’s original prohibition of divorce (Matt 5:31–32). When later asked about divorce, Jesus reaffirmed God’s original design of monogamous, lifelong marriage—implicitly rejecting same-sex marriage—adducing God’s original design laid out in the creation narrative (Matt 19:5–6; cf. Gen 1:28; 2:24). He went on to declare Mosaic divorce legislation in the book of Deuteronomy as only temporary, rejecting all divorce except in cases of adultery (πορνεία; Matt 19:9; cf. 5:32; Deut 24:1). Again, we see Paul reiterate Jesus’s teaching in the first letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 7:10–11: “Not I, but the Lord”); and then build on it by adding a clause regarding the abandonment of marriage by the unbelieving spouse (1 Cor 7:12–16: “I, not the Lord”). In the same context, Paul reaffirms Jesus’s teaching on singleness, noting, by way of “concession, not command,” that some may remain unmarried for the sake of the kingdom, a calling that Paul refers to as a “gift from God” (χάρισμα; 1 Cor 7:6–9; cf. Matt 19:11–12).

Fifth, Jesus taught throughout his ministry that discipleship takes precedence over family ties; in this way, spiritual brotherhood and sisterhood transcend natural flesh-and-blood ties—though Jesus, of course, still honored his parents and related to his half-brothers and half-sisters in a loving and even redemptive manner (Luke 2:41–52; John 2:1–11; 7:1–10). An example of this is Jesus’s declaration that no one who loves father and mother more than him is fit for the kingdom (Matt 10:37; Luke 14:26), as well as his statement that a would-be follower who asked if he could first go home and bury his father before following Jesus should “let the dead bury the dead” (Luke 9:59–60). Jesus also said that he did not come to bring peace but a sword and that he would set the members of a household against one another, in fulfillment of Micah’s prophecy (Matt 10:34, 36; cf. Mic 7:6).

Sixth, Jesus continued the pattern of male leadership by calling twelve men as his apostles, his new messianic community patterned after the twelve tribes of Israel, which likewise had men serve in a headship capacity (Matt 10:3–4 pars.). This pattern continues in the church leadership of male elders (1 Tim 3:1–7; Titus 1:6–9) and is symbolized by the twenty-four elders in Revelation (e.g., Rev 4:4).

Last but not least, seventh, Jesus affirmed women as disciples and as witnesses of the resurrection. He insisted that Mary chose the right place when sitting at his feet to learn from him as his disciple (Luke 10:38–42); he was followed and even financially supported by a group of women who are first mentioned at the midway point of Jesus’s ministry and shown to follow Jesus all the way to the cross and the empty tomb (Luke 8:2–3; 23:49); and following his resurrection, Jesus first appeared to Mary Magdalene, a woman who brought the message of the risen Jesus to Peter and John in a day when the witness of women was not recognized as valid in a Jewish court of law (Luke 24:1–11; John 20:1–18).

In all these and other ways, we see Jesus reiterate and reaffirm God’s original design for man and woman, deepen and even transcend Mosaic revelation, and enunciate God’s revelation with regard to gender identities and roles for his generation and for all time.

As mentioned, the apostle Paul, then, in keeping with Vos’s overall conception of the history of divine revelation in Scripture, should primarily be viewed from the vantage point, not of providing new revelation, but of making application and engaging in contextualization of God’s original design as reiterated and applied in the definitive divine revelation provided through Jesus, the incarnate Word-become-flesh. Thus, as mentioned, Paul applied Jesus’s universal proclamation of God’s kingdom to both men and women to the gospel, which went out equally to both Jews and Gentiles, and men and women (Gal 3:28, with a likely echo of Gen 1:28; cf. 1 Cor 12:13). Also, he applied the biblical teaching regarding God’s design to the church, in particular with regard to women’s participation in the life of the church under male leadership. He does so with regard to prophecy in 1 Corinthians 11:2–16, and with regard to teaching and church leadership in 1 Timothy 2:9–15 (cf. 3:2), where Paul cites from both the Genesis creation and Fall narratives (cf. vv. 13, 14). Paul also aligned himself with Jesus’s reaffirmation of God’s original design for marriage, fleshing it out in terms of Christ’s relationship to the church (Eph 5:21–32; cf. Col 3:18). He even reaffirmed Jesus’s teaching with regard to those who remained unmarried for the sake of God’s kingdom (1 Cor 7:6–9). What is more, he reaffirmed Jesus’s overall prohibition of divorce and at the same time added a second exception in cases where an unbelieving spouse abandons the marriage (1 Cor 7:10–16). I could give other examples. Suffice it to say that what we find in Paul’s teaching regarding gender is essentially an application and occasionally an extension of Jesus’s teaching (which, in turn, often consists in a reaffirmation of the Genesis creation narrative) to the Christian gospel and the new entity of the church made of up believing Jews and Gentiles.

3.4. Consummation

Finally, let me say a word about the fourth movement in Scripture, consummation. Recall that Vos only provided general glimpses of consummation but did not specifically address implications for a biblical theology of gender. One of the most important data in this regard comes from Jesus himself. When asked about marriage in heaven by his opponents—who, ironically, did not believe in the resurrection in the first place—Jesus declared that there will be no marriage in heaven but all will be like the angels (Matt 22:30). This has an important bearing on how we are to understand the fourth movement in the biblical story as it pertains to gender. In the eternal state, God’s spiritual relationship with his people—which, as we have seen, has been compared to a human marriage in prophetic books such as Hosea—will culminate in the spiritual marriage of Jesus to his bride, the church, which Revelation depicts symbolically as the wedding supper of the Lamb (Rev 19:6–10).

Thus God’s people will be corporately united with Christ for all eternity. As the seer writes, “And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God’” (Rev 21:2–3). Soon thereafter, John receives a vision of “the Bride, the wife of the Lamb” (21:9–22:5). Revelation ends with the Spirit’s and the Bride’s longing plea for Jesus to come soon, and his promise that will indeed do so. Thus, Jesus will forever be the church’s loving spiritual husband who sacrificially laid down his life for her, while she will be responsive to him and joyfully yield to his lordship in complete trust and blessedness.

4. Conclusion

I close this all-too-brief sketch “toward a biblical theology of manhood and womanhood” within a Vosian framework with a few concluding observations. First, we saw that God’s original design for man and woman revealed and established at creation is foundational for life on this earth, even for sinful men and women subsequent to the Fall—though the eternal state will transcend the earthly arrangement and witness a spiritual “marriage” between Christ, the “bridegroom,” and redeemed humanity, the church, as his spiritual “bride.”

Second, we saw that the biblical teaching on gender emphatically substantiates Vos’s illustration of divine redemption in which there is no qualitative difference between revelation in “seed” form and revelation in its full-orbed “tree” form as seen in the teachings of Jesus and the apostles. This is clearly evident in the fact that both Jesus and Paul reiterate God’s original design and apply it to various ministry and ecclesiastical contexts. In fact, Paul declares that the spiritual union of two becoming one in marriage can serve to illustrate the spiritual union between Christ and the church as head and body (Eph 5:32).79 This continuity from seed to full-grown tree speaks decisively against any proposals that claim that there is a qualitative difference between God’s design for man and woman at creation and his design revealed at later stages of human history, whether in the Mosaic or prophetic periods including even Jesus and the apostles.

Third, Vos’s proposal that Jesus is the climax of Scripture’s prophetic divine revelation, when applied to a biblical theology of gender, elevates Jesus above later New Testament voices, suggesting that the role of Paul and the other apostles and New Testament writers was primarily in the area of application rather than revelation. This insight is highly relevant in tracing a biblical theology of gender in that it suggests that one should not expect Paul to add any qualitatively new or different element to the teaching already enunciated and exemplified by Jesus, who, in turn, as we have seen, essentially sought redemptively to restore, by the power of the Spirit, God’s original design revealed and established at creation.

Finally, with regard to the “progressive principle” enunciated by Vos, we observe that, as mentioned, such a progression should be understood within the context of Vos’s seed-to-tree analogy. This, it should be noted, is very different than the redemptive-movement trajectory hermeneutic advocated by William Webb, which stipulates a kind of progression that extrapolates from movements within redemptive history and proceeds to forecasting eventual endpoints not spelled out in Scripture itself. This procedure, however, sets a very dangerous precedent by advocating that the church move “beyond the Bible” where such is allegedly warranted in light of later developments. This is not the place to provide a full-fledged critique of Webb’s proposal; others have ably done so already.80 As my wife and I have argued in God’s Design for Man and Woman, rather than leaving Scripture open-ended, as Webb urges, the progression in Scripture “has as its endpoint, at least as far as the church today is concerned, a restoration of the male pattern of leadership rather than unfettered egalitarianism.”81 As we hasten to add, however, “the type of male leadership in the church (and in the home) that is propagated in the New Testament is that of loving, self-sacrificial service.”82

With this, I conclude my exploration of a biblical theology of gender within a Vosian biblical-theological framework. I trust that this exercise has been faithful to both Vos and, even more importantly, Scripture itself. God’s design for man and woman is an important test case for biblical theology, and biblical fidelity, in our day when many in our culture, and even some in the church, believe they can safely ignore God’s good, wise, and beautiful design or improve on it. The assertion that God created humanity male and female, which until recently could be all but taken for granted, has become highly controversial—even offensive—in the last few years. It is my hope that these brief reflections may contribute in small measure to greater clarity in understanding the divine revelation of God’s design for man and woman, in keeping with sound biblical-theological methodology and as undergirded by reverence for God’s holy, inspired, and inerrant Word.

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[1] Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments, reprint ed. (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2017). The present essay adapts my J. G. Vos lecture delivered at Geneva College, 22 February 2023.

[2] Andreas J. Köstenberger and Gregory Goswell, Biblical Theology: A Canonical, Thematic, and Ethical Approach (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2023).

[3] Geerhardus Vos, “The Idea of Biblical Theology as a Science and as a Theological Discipline,” in Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation: The Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos, ed. Richard B. Gaffin Jr. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2001).

[4] Adolf Schlatter, The History of the Christ: The Foundation of New Testament Theology, trans. Andreas J. Köstenberger (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1997); Schlatter, The Theology of the Apostles: The Development of New Testament Theology, trans. Andreas J. Köstenberger (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1999).

[5] For purposes of this present essay, I adopt Andrew Walker’s definitions of sexuality and gender. He defines sexuality as “God’s anthropological design and pattern for the procreative relationship between male and female and to the experience of erotic desire within that design”; and gender as “biological differences in male and female embodiment and the different cultural ways in which the creational distinctions between male and female are manifested.” Andrew T. Walker, “Gender and Sexuality,” TGC, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/gender-and-sexuality.

[6] See esp. Michael Allen, “Systematic Theology and Biblical Theology: Part One,” Journal of Reformed Theology 14 (2020): 53–61. Note that I drafted the present essay originally in 2019 prior to the publication of Allen’s article. For Allen’s overall assessment of Vos, as well as Richard Gaffin and John Murray, see Allen, “Systematic Theology and Biblical Theology: Part One,” 71–72; for his further reflections, see “Systematic Theology and Biblical Theology: Part Two,” Journal of Reformed Theology 14 (2020): 344–57.

[7] Vos, “Biblical Theology,” 5.

[8] D. A. Carson, “Theological Interpretation of Scripture: Yes, But …,” in Theological Commentary: Evangelical Perspectives, ed. R. Michael Allen (London: T&T Clark, 2011), 187–207. For a more positive assessment, see Allen, “Systematic Theology and Biblical Theology: Part Two,” 349–51. Allen remarks, “TIS … has … been helpful in reconstructing the task of reading scripture as both wholistic … and as spiritual …. TIS has also helped in drawing attention to the canonical and scriptural implications of a Christian doctrine of scripture for the exegesis of the Bible” (p. 350). See also the discussion in Köstenberger and Goswell, Biblical Theology, 45–48.

[9] Vos, “Preface,” in Biblical Theology, v. The maxim recurs on p. 18.

[10] Vos, Biblical Theology, 14 (and elsewhere).

[11] Vos, Biblical Theology, v–vi.

[12] J. P. Gabler, De justo discrimine theologiae biblicae et dogmaticae regundisque recte utriusque finibus (March 31, 1787); the English translation of Gabler’s title is “On the Proper Distinction between Biblical and Dogmatic Theology and the Specific Objectives of Each”; see J. Sandys-Wunsch and L. Eldredge, “J. P. Gabler and the Distinction between Biblical and Dogmatic Theology: Translation, Commentary, and Discussion of His Originality,” SJT 33 (1980): 133–58; cf. Vos’s discussion of Gabler (Biblical Theology, 9). See also the discussion in William Baird, History of New Testament Research, Vol. 1: From Deism to Tübingen (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1992), 184–87.

[13] See Vos, “Idea of Biblical Theology,” 23; he observes that in the case of Systematic Theology, the “constructive principle is systematic and logical,” whereas in the case of Biblical Theology, it is “purely historical.”

[14] Vos, “Idea of Biblical Theology,” 9.

[15] Vos, “Idea of Biblical Theology,” 7.

[16] For a survey of approaches, see my essay “The Present and Future of Biblical Theology,” Themelios 37.3 (2012): 45–64.

[17] D. A. Carson, “The Bible and Theology,” in NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, ed. D. A. Carson (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2018), 2633–36 (see esp. the chart “Feedback Loop” on p. 2636); cf. Carson, “Unity and Diversity in the New Testament: The Possibility of Systematic Theology,” in Scripture and Truth, ed. D. A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1983); and Carson, “The Role of Exegesis in Systematic Theology,” in Doing Theology in Today’s World: Essays in Honor of Kenneth S. Kantzer, ed. John D. Woodbridge and Thomas E. McComiskey (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994). See also “Biblical and Systematic Theology,” in Andreas J. Köstenberger with Richard D. Patterson, Invitation to Biblical Interpretation: Exploring the Hermeneutical Triad of History, Literature, and Theology, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2020), 585–89.

[18] Vos, Biblical Theology, 16.

[19] Allen notes the text-focused nature of Vos’s approach in “Systematic Theology and Biblical Theology: Part One,” 55.

[20] Vos, Biblical Theology, 4.

[21] Cf. Schlatter, History of the Christ, 18.

[22] Vos comments, therefore, that “as a rule Introduction has to precede” Biblical Theology, except where “no sufficient external evidence exists for dating a document” (Biblical Theology, 15). For a brief history of New Testament introductions, see “A Brief History of New Testament Introduction,” in Andreas J. Köstenberger, L. Scott Kellum, and Charles L. Quarles, The Cradle, the Cross, the Crown: An Introduction to the New Testament (2^nd ed.; Nashville: B&H Academic, 2016), xviii–xix.

[23] Vos, Biblical Theology, 4; similarly, Vos, “Idea of Biblical Theology,” 6.

[24] Vos, Biblical Theology, 3.

[25] Vos, Biblical Theology, 4.

[26] Vos, Biblical Theology, 7.

[27] Vos, Biblical Theology, 7.

[28] Vos, Biblical Theology, 8.

[29] Vos, Biblical Theology, 8.

[30] Vos, Biblical Theology, 8–9.

[31] See John 13:34–35. See Köstenberger and Goswell, Biblical Theology.

[32] Vos, Biblical Theology, 16. See the discussion in Allen, “Systematic Theology and Biblical Theology: Part One,” 57–58.

[33] Vos, Biblical Theology, 16.

[34] Peter Gentry and Stephen Wellum, Kingdom through Covenant: A Biblical-Theological Understanding of the Covenants, 2nd ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018).

[35] Vos, “Idea of Biblical Theology,” 15, cited in Allen, “Systematic Theology and Biblical Theology: Part One,” 59.

[36] Vos, Biblical Theology, 9.

[37] Vos, Biblical Theology, 9.

[38] Vos, Biblical Theology, 10.

[39] Vos, Biblical Theology, 10.

[40] See the discussion in Allen, “Systematic Theology and Biblical Theology: Part One,” 59–61.

[41] Vos, Biblical Theology, 17.

[42] Vos, Biblical Theology, 17.

[43] Vos, Biblical Theology, 17.

[44] Vos, Biblical Theology, 17.

[45] Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005).

[46] Vos, Biblical Theology, 17.

[47] Vos, Biblical Theology, 17–18.

[48] Echoes of the affirmation in the Westminster Catechism that “the chief end of man is the glory of God.” Vos, Biblical Theology, 18.

[49] Vos, Biblical Theology, 18.

[50] Vos, Biblical Theology, 19–20.

[51] See on this Andreas J. Köstenberger with David W. Jones, God, Marriage, and Family: Rebuilding the Biblical Foundation, 2nd ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010), ch. 10.

[52] On right and wrong notions of tolerance, see D. A. Carson, The Intolerance of Tolerance (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012).

[53] See “Three: The Content of Pre-redemptive Special Revelation,” in Vos, Biblical Theology, 27–40.

[54] Vos, Biblical Theology, 27.

[55] Vos, Biblical Theology, 32.

[56] Vos, Biblical Theology, 34; Vos cites Wisdom 11:24: “By the envy of Satan death entered the world”; cf. Matt 13:38; John 8:44 (where Vos recognizes an allusion to Gen 3:15); Rom 16:20; 1 John 3:8; Rev 12:9. On the connection between John’s writings (John 8:44; 1 John 3:8; and Rev 12:9) and Gen 3:15, see my essay “The Cosmic Drama and the Seed of the Serpent: An Exploration of the Connection between Gen 3:15 and Johannine Theology,” in The Seed of Promise: The Sufferings and Glory of the Messiah; Essays in Honor of T. Desmond Alexander, ed. Paul Williamson and Rita Cefalu (Wilmore, KY: GlossaHouse, 2020), 265–85.

[57] Vos, Biblical Theology, 34–35. See the discussion of this issue in Andreas J. Köstenberger and Thomas R. Schreiner, eds., Women in the Church: An Interpretation and Application of 1 Timothy 2:9–15, 3rd ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2016), chap. 4.

[58] Vos, Biblical Theology, 35.

[59] Vos, Biblical Theology, 36.

[60] Vos, Biblical Theology, 41.

[61] Vos here discusses the use of the Hebrew word שׁוף; cf. Job 9:17; Ps 139:11; Rom 16:20.

[62] Vos, Biblical Theology, 44, with reference to August Dillmann, Genesis Critically and Exegetically Expounded, trans. Wm. R. Stevenson (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1897).

[63] The Hebrew simply reads, “Your desire will be for your husband,” though in view of the close parallel Genesis 4:7 it seems reasonable to infer that the woman’s desire will be to control her husband. This interpretation was given classic expression by Susan T. Foh, “What Is the Woman’s Desire?,” WTJ 37 (1975): 376–83. The most recent translation of this verse in the ESV, “Your desire shall be contrary to your husband,” carves a new path but is subject to further scholarly scrutiny.

[64] Vos, Biblical Theology, 44.

[65] Vos, Biblical Theology, 85.

[66] Vos, Biblical Theology, 85.

[67] Vos, Biblical Theology, 110–13.

[68] Vos, Biblical Theology, 245–55.

[69] Vos, Biblical Theology, 259–63.

[70] Vos, Biblical Theology, 295.

[71] Vos, Biblical Theology, 299.

[72] Vos, Biblical Theology, 301. Cf. Geerhardus Vos, “Hebrews, the Epistle of the Diatheke,” Princeton Theological Review 13 (1915): 587–632; Princeton Theological Review 14 (1916): 1–61; see also Vos, The Teaching of the Epistle of the Hebrews, ed. and re-written by Johannes G. Vos (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1956).

[73] Vos, Biblical Theology, 302.

[74] Vos, Biblical Theology, 302.

[75] Vos, Biblical Theology, 303. See Köstenberger with Patterson, Invitation to Biblical Interpretation, ch. 4.

[76] Vos, Biblical Theology, 303–4.

[77] Andreas J. Köstenberger and Margaret E. Köstenberger, God’s Design for Man and Woman: A Biblical-Theological Survey (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2014).

[78] Further relevant writings by Vos include The Teaching of Jesus concerning the Kingdom of God and the Church, reprint ed. (Nutley, NJ: P&R Publishing); and The Pauline Eschatology, reprint ed. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1986). See also the recent English translation of Vos’s Reformed Dogmatics: A System of Christian Theology, trans. Richard B. Gaffin (Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2020).

[79] See my article, “The Mystery of Christ and the Church: Head and Body, ‘One Flesh,’” TJ 12 NS (1991): 79–94.

[80] See William J. Webb, Slaves, Women and Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001); Webb, “A Redemptive-Movement Hermeneutic: Encouraging Dialogue among Four Evangelical Views,” JETS 46 (2005): 331–49. For critiques, see Benjamin Reaoch, Women, Slaves, and the Gender Debate: A Complementarian Response to the Redemptive-Movement Hermeneutic (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2012); Thomas R. Schreiner, “William J. Webb’s Slaves, Women and Homosexuals: A Review Article,” SBJT 6/1 (2002): 46–65; Wayne Grudem. “Review Article: Should We Move Beyond the New Testament to a Better Ethic? An Analysis of William J. Webb, Slaves, Women and Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis,” JETS 47 (2004): 299–346; Köstenberger and Köstenberger, God’s Design for Man and Woman, 351–53.

[81] Köstenberger and Köstenberger, God’s Design for Man and Woman, 353.

[82] Köstenberger and Köstenberger, God’s Design for Man and Woman, 353.