Against the Flow: The Inspiration of Daniel in an Age of
Relativism
September 30, 2015
How’s this for academic credentials: John C. Lennox holds
MA, MMath, and PhD degrees from Cambridge University. Want more? He
also has a DSc (Doctor of Science) degree from the Mathematics Institute
at the University of Wales. Still more? How about additional MA and
DPhil degrees from Oxford University, along with an MA in bioethics
from the University of Surrey? More? Lennox was a Humboldt Fellow at the
Universities of Würzburg and Freiburg in Germany and has lectured all over
North America, Europe, and Australia. He currently holds a professorship in
Mathematics at the University of Oxford and is an associate fellow of Oxford’s
famous Said Business School. A prolific author, Lennox has published more
than 70 scholarly
papers and co-authored two research-level texts in
mathematics.
And oh yes, don’t forget his new commentary on the book of
Daniel.
Ardent
Defender of the Faith
A commentary on Daniel? We might be excused for thinking
this a misprint, but it’s not. Against the Flow: The Inspiration of Daniel in an Age of Relativism
may not be a typical Bible commentary, but it’s a typical book by
Lennox: thoughtful, wide-ranging, readable, and full of relevance to the world
in which contemporary Christians live.
In addition to his outsized academic credentials, Lennox is an
ardent Christian who unapologetically maintains a high view of the authority
and trustworthiness of Scripture. Unintimidated by the academic culture he
inhabits, he’s also an outspoken critic of today’s well-known atheists and the
scientific materialism they espouse. In fact, Lennox has publicly debated some
of these atheists around the globe and has taken them on in a series of books: God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? (2009);
God and Stephen Hawking (2011); Gunning for God (2011); and Seven Days that Divide the World (2011), a
treatment of the early chapters of Genesis. In Against the Flow, Lennox
makes no pretense of being a technical Bible scholar, and his treatment shows
it. On the other hand, maybe a world-class mathematician is just what you need
when it comes to counting down the 70 weeks of Daniel 9!
Faithful Living in Our Own Babylon
Lennox covers the book of Daniel, if not
verse-by-verse at least chapter-by-chapter, from the introduction of the
four young Hebrews in chapter 1 to the final vision of chapter 12. But this
isn’t a discussion calculated to impress professional academics. He opts for an
early dating of Daniel but appears to lack the original languages and addresses
only superficially the critical issues that an early dating raises. His
knowledge of the technical literature on Daniel appears scanty and what sources
he does cite are mostly dated. In other words, Lennox isn’t playing by the
club’s rules. Members of the professional guild of Old Testament scholars are
unlikely to be drawn to this volume.
But then, that guild isn’t Lennox’s target audience. Against
the Flow is written for practicing Christians. It’s designed to draw
insights from the book of Daniel for how we may live faithfully in
our own Babylonian times. For such an audience, the technical and critical
issues scarcely register. These readers are convinced of the authority and
reliability of the Bible; they’re after a fuller understanding of its
wisdom and insight when it comes to living in an increasingly hostile
environment. And this is what Lennox delivers. Despite its somewhat
misleading subtitle, Against the Flow isn’t an apologetic work in the
sense of defending the book of Daniel (and hence the Bible) against its
critics; but it is apologetic in the sense of drawing on Daniel’s
teaching to help believers understand and live wisely in their secular,
materialistic world.
Theological and Philosophical Focus
The book of Daniel is—if we may use the term—a profoundly worldviewish
book. From its early narrative chapters through the various visions, it’s about
the contrast between a sovereign God’s (and therefore Daniel’s) view of things,
and the human race’s mutinous quest for autonomy. The lessons to be drawn from
these chapters are thus as timeless—and just as timely—as Romans 1. These are
the lessons Lennox seeks to explore with his readers.
As one who understands our cultural moment—the features of
which stand on stilts in his academic environment—Lennox works to show his
readers the deep-seated parallels between both a strutting Nebuchadnezzar
surveying his empire (“Is not this the great Babylon I have built as the royal
residence, by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty?”)
and the Nietzschean techno-arrogance of our own times over against the
humble, faithful, God-centered focus of Daniel. Ranging through history,
philosophy (especially epistemology), art, and science, Lennox follows repeated
rabbit trails into areas of contemporary relevance. These tangents will often
prove valuable for preachers looking for illustrative material.
As to the book’s prophetic sections, Lennox treads lightly.
He treats the text of Daniel as fully reliable and does not shy away from its
predictive elements. Yet he also begs off on some of the more sensational
aspects of the prophetic passages dealing with the end times, leaving these to
others better equipped to deal with the complexities involved. For Lennox,
it’s the underlying theological and philosophical issues that interest
him.
Bible
Commentator Worth Reading
’m not sure what I expected from this volume, but I must
testify that it repeatedly surprised me. I’m not a fan of avoiding the
technical and critical aspects of biblical study—serious interpreters must
engage these issues, even if they don’t burden readers with the details—but I
still profited from Against the Flow. It’s the work of a committed
Christian with a first-rate mind, wide experience, and a deep commitment
to the inscripturated Word of God.
Against the Flow may not be your standard biblical
commentary, but its author is definitely a Bible commentator worth
reading.
John C. Lennox. Against the Flow: the Inspiration of Daniel in an Age of
Relativism. Oxford, UK: Monarch Books, 2015. 440 pp.
$19.99.
Duane Litfin (PhD, Purdue University; DPhil, Oxford
University) is the former seventh president of Wheaton College,
serving seventeen years, from 1993 to 2010. He came to Wheaton from
Memphis, Tennessee, where he served the First Evangelical Church as senior
pastor. Prior to that, he was an associate professor at the Dallas Theological
Seminary. He is author of Conceiving the Christian College (Eerdmans, 2004)
and Paul's Theology of Preaching: The Apostle's Challenge to
the Art of Persuasion in Ancient Corinth (IVP Academic, 2015).
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