Review: The Doctrine of the Word of God by John Frame

John Frame. The Doctrine of the Word of God.  Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, November 1st 2010. 684 pp.

5 out of 5

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This is the final volume in John Frame’s “A Theology of Lordship” series.  I recommend all four volumes.  In this volume theologian John Frame focus on a theology of the Bible. Readers who are familiar with his other works would appreciate the same rigor and clarity in the way Frame argues that is both sound and creative.  Frame is truly one of the most sophisticated and philosophical defender of the classical Protestant Conservative view of the Bible.

The main section of the book is divided into four parts which contain several chapters in each parts.  Part one lays the foundation down with a chapter on the Personal-Word Model and another chapter on the Lordship of God and the Word of God.  Part two looks at God’s Word in modern theology specifically with the Bible being God’s revelation.  Part three examines the nature of God’s Word by asking what is the Word of God and then using Frame’s Tri-perspectivalism explores God’s Word with the triade of control, authority and presence.  The bulk of the main section of the book is found in part four in which John Frame looks at the topic of how God’s Word comes to us.  Here John Frame talks about things that typically most books on systematic theology rarely talks about when they present a bibliology: Frame discusses about the media of God’s Word, the “phenomena” of Scripture, translations and editions of the ible and textual criticism.  I think this is a big plus for this work if you are looking for a work that is a systematic theological presentation on the Word of God while interacting with these important topics.

Like other works in this series John Frame has an appendix section that feature multiple appendixes in which some are rather lengthy.  I have always found John Frame’s appendixes as theological gold.  These appendixes provide clarifications, reviews of books, etc.  However unlike the other three volume half of The Doctrine of the Word of God are appendixes (about 350 pages with the main section of the book and another 350 pages or so of appendixes).  One might even say that really there are two books: One being The Doctrine of the Word of God and the second being a collection of Frame’s shorter writings on the Word of God.  After I finished the book I realized that I had a better time remembering the appendixes more than I did the main chapters in the book.  In particular I enjoyed appendix D in which Frame critiques Dooyeweerd’s movement concerning their view of the Word of God, appendix J in which Frame critiques Peter Enns and also appendix O concerning Frame’s defense of something close to Biblicalism.  For those who have previously read other works by Frame would immediately realize that this book has far less footnotes than previous works by John Frame.  The reason for this is because John Frame has already explain so much of his methodology in other books and here Frame wants to write freely his thoughts.

Overall a good book and I recommend it for others.  I would also suggest that readers read this book slowly over time.  I typically read about 5-10 pages a day.