Andreas J. Köstenberger (PhD, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) is the director of the Center for Biblical Studies and research professor of New Testament and biblical theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is a prolific author, distinguished evangelical scholar, and editor of the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society. He is the founder of Biblical Foundations, a ministry devoted to restoring the biblical foundations of the home and the church. Köstenberger and his wife have four children.

Andreas J. Köstenberger (PhD, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) is the theologian in residence at Fellowship Raleigh, a cofounder of Biblical Foundations, and the author, editor, or translator of over sixty books. He and his wife, Marny, have four grown children and live in North Carolina.

Excellence

The Character of God and the Pursuit of Scholarly Virtue

By Andreas J. Köstenberger

Good News Publishers

Copyright © 2011 Andreas J. Köstenberger
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-58134-910-8

Contents

List of Abbreviations, 11,
Preface, 13,
Introduction: Called to Excellence, 17,
PART 1: FOUNDATIONS FOR EXCELLENCE,
1 The Excellence of God, 33,
2 The Pursuit of Excellence, 43,
3 Holiness, 55,
4 Spirituality, 67,
PART 2: VOCATIONAL EXCELLENCE,
5 Diligence, 87,
6 Courage, 103,
7 Passion, 117,
8 Restraint, 127,
9 Creativity, 137,
10 Eloquence, 147,
PART 3: MORAL EXCELLENCE,
11 Integrity, 159,
12 Fidelity, 167,
13 Wisdom, 177,
PART 4: RELATIONAL EXCELLENCE,
14 Grace, 189,
15 Humility, 199,
16 Interdependence, 209,
17 Love, 223,
Conclusion: Pursuing Excellence, 231,
Selected Annotated Bibliography, 233,
Notes, 239,

CHAPTER 1

The Excellence of God

The character of God is the grounds of all human excellence.

Why pursue excellence? Many young seminarians or doctoral students who are considering a career in the academic world find themselves pulled in a thousand different directions. They must find a way to support their spouse and children while still having enough money for tuition and books. They have exams for which to study, papers to research and write, sermons to prepare, and the yard to mow. Wouldn't a book on simply surviving the process of becoming a scholar be more appropriate? Why focus on excellence when it is nearly impossible to keep your head above water from one assignment and deadline to the next?

Why Excellence?

Excellence is particularly important in such a context where the pressures toward sheer survival and mediocrity are particularly intense. Why? The primary reason for this is bound up with the nature and character of God. God is the grounds of all true excellence. He is the one who fills any definition of excellence with meaning, and he is the reason why we cannot be content with lackluster mediocrity, halfhearted effort, or substandard scholarship. Excellence starts and ends with God and is first and foremost a hallmark and attribute of God. Without God as our starting point and continual frame of reference, our discussion of excellence would be hopelessly inadequate.

Systematic theologies generally do not list "excellence" as one of God's attributes. For this reason it may appear at first glance that excellence is not all that important. This conclusion would be premature, however, for excellence can be viewed as an overarching divine attribute that encompasses all the others. Everything God is and does is marked by excellence. Wayne Grudem discusses God's summary attributes of perfection, blessedness, beauty, and glory as "attributes that summarize his excellence." Perfection indicates that "God lacks nothing in his excellence." Blessedness points to the fact that "God takes pleasure in everything in creation that mirrors his own excellence." Beauty is a reflection of God's excellence, and "God's glory is something that belongs to him alone and is the appropriate outward expression of his own excellence." Understanding excellence as an all-encompassing attribute of God also means that the concept is not exhausted by the word "excellence." Other descriptions of the uniqueness, greatness, glory, or perfection of God are pertinent as well.

On a basic level, we may think of excellence as the quality of standing out or towering above the rest, being eminent or superior (though not feeling superior, which is the essence of pride), and distinguishing oneself in some extraordinary or special way. As mentioned, God's excellence is the ultimate point of reference for all true human excellence. Perhaps God's attribute of perfection is most closely related to his excellence. God excels and is so far superior to all other beings in every way that perfection becomes the appropriate word to describe his excellence. In the book of Isaiah, God declares his own excellence, superiority, and preeminence as follows:

Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel
and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts:
"I am the first and I am the last;
besides me there is no god.
Who is like me? Let him proclaim it.
Let him declare and set it before me,
since I appointed an ancient people.
Let them declare what is to come, and what will happen.
Fear not, nor be afraid;
have I not told you from of old and declared it?
And you are my witnesses!
Is there a God besides me?
There is no Rock; I know not any." (Isa. 44:6–8)

God lodges a similar claim concerning himself in the book of Jeremiah: "I will appoint over her whomever I choose. For who is like me? Who will summon me? What shepherd can stand before me?" (Jer. 49:19). God embodies true, unmatched excellence.

God's perfect excellence, then, sets his communicable attributes apart from humanity's possession and exercise of them. Humans, in their character and dealings with one another, may be marked by holiness, justice, love, mercy, and goodness to varying degrees, but God alone excels in all of these and does so to a perfect degree. Complete excellence characterizes everything God is and does. He is holiness, justice, and love, and he is holy, just, and loving in all that he does. This excellence of God rightly and frequently becomes the grounds of praise for God in Scripture. Peter, in his first epistle, notes how our change in status — the fact that we are now God's own people — should result in praise, "that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light" (1 Pet. 2:9). We praise God, in part, because he is excellent, and the declaration of his excellent characteristics forms the content of our praise.

Apart from offering God praise, how should we respond to God's excellence? In short, we should seek to imitate and emulate it. In his letter to the Ephesians, the apostle Paul issues a simple command that encapsulates the logic undergirding much of the exhortation found in Scripture: "Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children" (Eph. 5:1). As God's redeemed children, we are to strive to be like God. This, it appears, includes striving for excellence. As Millard Erickson writes:

God's perfection is the standard for our moral character and the motivation for religious practice. The whole moral code follows from his holiness. ... Because of God's flawlessness, a similar quality is expected of those objects or persons set apart unto him.

Also, many of the exhortations in the Sermon on the Mount are built on Jesus's statement, "You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matt. 5:48). We are called to emulate our perfect heavenly Father. In no way am I trying to blur the line between the divine and the human elements here. There is a clear sense in which God is God and we are not. We are not called to emulate what scholars call God's "incommunicable attributes" — yet we are to strive to emulate those qualities that are communicable. To be sure, we will never become completely like God in his eternal, infinite excellence and perfection, but we must make every effort to grow in the virtues we are called to share. In the following pages, we will look at several of these attributes one by one and ponder how we can pursue various dimensions of excellence in our lives and...