Chapter One
THE BASIS OF OLD TESTAMENT
THEOLOGY
The foundation [of the Christian religion] is admirable; it is
the most ancient book in the world and the most authentic
The heretical books in the beginning of the Church serve to
prove the canonical
Pascal, Pensées, 9.601; 8.569
I. INTRODUCTION
If we collected all the books and articles with the words Old Testament Theology
in their titles and looked for commonalities, we would have little to show for our
efforts. As Phyllis Trible explains, "Biblical theologians . have never agreed on the
definition, method, organization, subject matter, point of view, or purpose of their
enterprise." R.W.L. Moberly responds, "That does not leave much left out!" And
Ben C. Ollenburger adds further confirmation when he notes that the term biblical
theology can mean six quite different things. Yet, in one way or another, all biblical
theologians speak of a corpus of books that they denominate as the Old Testament,
or First Testament, or Hebrew Scriptures, or the like and of the God to whom it
bears witness, while emphasizing history as a central category in biblical faith
From the beginning of the discipline, biblical theologians have differed in their
understandings of an accredited basis, task, and method for doing biblical theology.
Nevertheless, biblical theologians aim to construct and formulate a theology
that accords in some sense with the Bible, while essentially agreeing with James
Barr's assertion: "What we are looking for is a `theology' that existed back there
and then." Though this sounds like a pedantic, antiquarian study that "locks the
Bible in to the past," it is nothing of the sort for the faithful. For them, what the
Bible meant it means. The Bible is the normative standard for faith and practice
in the church, and its "truth" demands a personal commitment and actualization
in every aspect of their lives. This is so because its writers were inspired by God to
give this revelation of his character, intentions, teachings, and commands to govern
volitional creatures.
Many biblical theologians, however, reject this orthodox understanding of the
Bible's inspiration and its canonical authority. Some profess a new dogma that the
Bible is only the product of Israel's experiences and human thoughts about God. In
effect, these theologians replace biblical theology with the history of Israel's religion
Nevertheless, their views are sometimes wrongly represented as belonging to the
discipline of biblical theology.
Recently, several excellent surveys have come out, giving us the lay of the land
in this discipline; hence, it would not be fruitful to duplicate those efforts in this
volume. Instead, I offer the following observation: Scholars commonly locate the
beginning of the discipline in 1787 when Johann Philipp Gabler, in his famous
inaugural address at the University of Altdorf, Switzerland, sharply distinguished
between biblical theology as a historical discipline and dogmatic theology as a didactic
discipline. Fortunately, his distinction creates the space for scholars to read the
Bible as a developing historical document; unfortunately, he steers the discipline
astray from the start. Cut off from the foundation of dogmatic theology, Gabler
seeks by the canon of reason to determine what is "true" in the Old Testament and
of abiding value for dogmatic theology. Postmodernists realize the impossibility
of grounding absolute truth on the finite human mind. Unfortunately, they do not
look to the spiritual virtue of faith in the God of the Bible to resolve the human
epistemological predicament.
Historically the church confesses that God reveals his nature and mind and
inspires human agents to present them in infallible Scriptures and that his Spirit
illuminates the meaning of the Scriptures to the faithful Brevard S . Childs adopts
and defends a self-consciously confessional approach: "The role of the Bible is not
being understoods imply as a cultural expression of ancient peoples, but as a testimony
pointing beyond itself to divine reality to which it bears witness Such an
approach to the Bible is obviously confessional. Yet the Enlightenment's alternative
proposal that was to confine the Bible solely to the arena of human experience is
just as much a philosophical commitment."
In other words, the discussion of Old Testament theology must begin with
Certain philosophical assumptions. In my view the church is best served when
Biblical theologians work in conversation with orthodox systematic theology regarding
the Bible (bibliology) as the foundation and boundary in matters of deciding
The basis, goal, and methodology for biblical theology. As Karl Llewellyn, a famous
Law professor, once said, "Technique [read exegesis, chapters 3-5] without ideals
[read theology, chapters 1-2] is a menace; ideals without technique are a mess."
Dogmatic (systematic) theologians serve the church best when they rely on orthodox
biblical theology for explications of Scripture from which they frame abstract universal
propositions in accordance with a coherent system appropriate to the church's
contemporary situation. Through this interpenetration of the two disciplines, we
will be better able to present the theological power and the religious appeal of biblical
concepts.
II. THE BASIS OF OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY
Resting on the logic that one does not need to prove the "rightness" of presuppositions
(or they would no longer constitute presuppositions), but only their "reasonableness,"
this chapter aims to establish an accredited understanding of the basis of
doing biblical theology on the Bible's claim to be God's word to his covenant/faithful
people.
A. The Theological Foundation
This book is built on the following confessions about the Bible
1. Revelation
Theologians typically distinguish between God's general revelation of himself
in creation, which is made known to all people, and his special revelation of himself
in the canon of Scriptures, which is not available by natural reason and cannot be
discovered by the scientific method.
Through the words and verbally interpreted acts recorded in the Bible and
through the incarnation of his Son to which the Bible bears witness, the God of
Israel has revealed his heart, mind, wisdom, program, and purpose to his elect community,
whom he regenerated to believe and understand that revelation by his Spirit.
This God is neither a watchmaker who set the world in motion and left it to move
in accord with inexorable laws built into its mechanism, nor an impersonal force
or universal (un-)consciousness incapable of will, speech, or action. Rather, God is
a person (i.e., having intellect, sensibility, and will) who chooses both to communicate
with people whom he creates in his image and to intervene in their lives, as
appropriate, according to their faith and ethical behavior. William Dyrness notes,
"Revelation in the Old Testament always leads to a personal relationship between
God and his people. If communion is to be possible, we must know the character
of God through his personal self-disclosure."
However, God accommodates his revelation to the human situation. We must
make the Scottish distinction between God "in himself" (in se) and "toward us"
(erga nos). Cribbing the medieval philosopher John Duns Scotus, Francis Junius,
a Reformed theologian in the late sixteenth century, maintains the distinction
between theology as God knows it (theologia archetypa) and theology as it is revealed
to and done by us (theologia ectypa). Theologians sometimes refer to the former as
"God hidden" (Deus absconditus) and the latter as "God revealed" (Deus revelatus)
(cf. Exod. 34:6; John 6:20; 1 Cor. 13:12). This distinction points to the critical
relationship between God's comprehensive knowledge of himself, which is hidden
and incomprehensible to humans, and human-restricted epistemological knowledge
of God. Although the latter is severely restricted, it is never the less true because it is
grounded in God's own ontological knowledge.
Moreover, in the Bible God progressively reveals himself with in the restrictions
of human history and human personality. In that developing context he climactically
revealed himself in a Son, not merely a prophet, in the God-Man, Jesus Christ
(Heb 1:1-3). However, as Jesus promised, God saved the very best for the revelation
authored by God and by the ascended Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit through
the medium of Christ's apostles and other writers of the New Testament. They
interpreted Jesus Christ's life, teachings, and work for the universal covenant people
of God (John 15:12-15; Gal. 1:1-20).
God's revelation in the Bible transcends his historical words and acts The Bible
records God's special revelations in words and acts at certain times and certain places
that were relevant to certain peoples such as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but the church
now has those revelations in biblical texts that transcend those historical and particular
revelations in two ways. First, the biblical narrators place those earlier revelations
within the context of their own messages or theologies, which were intended to be
relevant for a particular audience and for the universal audience of God's covenant
people (see chap. 4). Moreover, the particular revelations to the historical personages
of the Bible and universal revelations of the biblical writers find their full meaning in
Jesus Christ. In other words, it is wrong headed of the historicists to seek to penetrate
to the historical event beyond the biblical text, for the events cannot be known apart
from the texts that form the canon (see chap. 4). In short, God's revelation in Scriptures
individually and collectively constitutes the basis of this theology.
(Continues.)
