This November: Greg Beale's Magnum Opus

In 1993 Greg Beale gave his inaugural lecture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He argued that Jesus Christ's, life, death, and resurrection by the Spirit launched the new creation kingship for God's glory that was longed for ever since the fracturing of the first creation. We are therefore now in the latter days, the end-times: every point of NT theology is thus inherently eschatological.

A few years later he was invited to give the Tyndale Fellowship paper in Cambridge. He reworked the material and presented it again.

That lecture was later published as the essay 'The Eschatological Conception of New Testament Theology' in this book. It is the most significant chapter-length piece on the Bible I have yet read.

That essay became the macro-structure of his New Testament theology courses at Wheaton College Grad School this past decade.

Finally, it is all coming together in this 1,000-page work. When Greg gave me his one-sentence summary of the Bible he told me it was in fact a one-sentence summary of this book.

Most 1,000-page books, if they're worth buying at all, belong on your shelf as a reference work for occasional consultation. This is one of the few that, in my opinion, would benefit readers all out of proportion to the labor required to work carefully through it, page by page. You will not agree with every jot and tittle. But you will see how the Bible holds together in far deeper and more wonderful ways than ever before. Join me in giving careful consideration to how many books you will leave un-read when you die, and which ones belong on that painfully short list of books you will be able to give thoughtful attention to before glory. Pastor or layperson, old or young, reformed or not, this book demands your attention.

Here's an (unrelated) little glimpse into why I love Greg Beale, from the end of a brief interview discussing his course on Acts and Paul at Westminster.