Review: The City of God and the Goal of Creation

Desmond Alexander. The City of God and the Goal of Creation. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, January 31st 2018.  190 pp.

5 out of 5

Purchase: Westminster | Amazon

This is the third book I read from the “Short Studies in Biblical Theology” series published by Crossway.  I have immensely enjoyed the other two volumes that I read from this series (see Review: Work and Our Labor in the Lord and Review: Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel) and this work is no different.  This present work explores the theme of “the city of God” in the Bible, namely Jerusalem but it also explores the city of God in light of its antithesis: The City of Man, namely Babylon.  This is an excellent work on a biblical theology that gives us a biblical “tale of two cities” stretching from Genesis to Revelation that is at once exciting, edifying and relevant since these two cities are capitals of two groups of people in this world with one under God and the other in rebellion against God.  If you think you know the Word of God and yet you are unable to see a unifying theme from Genesis to Revelation in the Bible you would find this book very helpful.  Even for readers who have a deeper grasp of biblical theology would enjoy this work.

The author T. Desmond Alexander have written a lengthier treatment of the topic found in this book in an earlier work he wrote titled From Eden to the New Jerusalem.  What I love about this particular recent work The City of God and the Goal of Creation is its brevity compared to the first book and also for its easy access for the general Christian reading audience.  Yet its accessibility for the general Christian reading public does not mean it is not biblically deep.  On the contrary there is a lot that even older Christians familiar with their Bibles will learn from what the author presents.

The book is divided up into eight chapters.  The first chapter is on Babel/Babylon and is titled “The Godless City.”  Transitioning to the City of God the second chapter is on “The Temple-City” while chapter three is “The Holy Mountain City” followed by chapters titled “The Royal City,” “Envisaging a Transformed Jerusalem,” “Hope for Jerusalem Beyond Divine Judgement” and “Seeking the City That is to Come.”  Chapters one through seven is focused on the Old Testament while chapter 8 as the last chapter in the book is focused on the New Testament data of both the City of Man and the City of God.  Chapter eight is divided into four parts with the first being on the church as God’s Spiritual Temple, the second part on the New Testament negative portrayal of Jerusalem, the third part on Christians as citizens of a heavenly city and finally the fourth part is on how the bodily resurrection of Christians is necessary to live in the New Jerusalem.

Personally there were so many things that I learned from the book that I won’t be able to share them all in this review.  Though the book comes in at 190 pages it seems the insights, amazing truths and facts are highly concentrated with the book’s pages.  Some of the things I learned include:

• The similarities between the Garden of Eden and God’s sacred Sanctuaries.  It is isn’t just that Eden is like God’s sanctuaries which I have picked up from reading other works of theology but as the author pointed out the tabernacle itself also mimic Eden such as the Menorah resembling the hape of a tree, like the Tree of Life in Genesis.
• Babel in the Hebrew appears over two hundred times in the Old Testament and is always translated as “Babylon” in the English except for the narrative in Genesis 11 of the Tower of Babel.  There are biblically strong reasons to understand the Tower of Babel as being Babylon.  This truth is amazing to consider when one think that Babylon as the city of Man stretches so far back.
• The author T. Desmond Alexander convincingly argues that the reason why the Hebrews did not treat Mount Sinai as an important location of worship for the Hebrews is because God’s design of the Tabernacle was meant to be a “mobile Sinai.”  The parallels Alexander noted is far too much to be merely coincidental.
• The book explore the multifaceted aspect to the “City of God” with how the themes of God’s “Holy Mountain”/Zion, a Royal Davidic City, the Temple and the Tabernacle overlaps biblically and “bleed” into each aspects.
• Both the pre-exilic and post-exilic Prophets in the Bible predicts a future transformed Jerusalem.
• The conflict between Babylon and Jerusalem would climax in the New Testament with the book of Revelation.  I thought the author did a good job noting the contrasts between the two cities.  For instance both cities are portrayed as women but whereas Babylon is described as a great prostitute in Revelation 17:1-5 Jerusalem on the other hand is described as the Bride of the Lamb in Revelation 21:9-10.  As a prostitute Babylon has jewelry according to Revelation 17:4 which functions as a foil to Jerusalem who is dressed in bright and clean linen in Revelation 19:8 symbolizing purity.

Obviously there are more things one will learn than what is summarized above.  As a constructive criticism I do think the author in dealing with the New Testament data falsely operate under the hermeneutical principle that expansion of fuller details with Jerusalem somehow man there is no longer a role of literal Jerusalem.  For instance in seeing the Bible’s teaching that the Church is now a Holy Temple of God according to Ephesians 2:19-22 that does not mean there is no role of a literal Jerusalem in the future.  Also I wished the author could have spent more time with the passages in Revelation concerning the two different cities.  Overall though the constructive criticism does not take away the 5 out of 5 rating this book deserves.

NOTE: This book was provided to me free by Crossway and Net Galley without any obligation for a positive review. All opinions offered above are mine unless otherwise stated or implied.