Transcript
I should like to begin our study together by turning with you to a passage in the New Testament, namely Paul's epistle to the church at Rome, chapter 15, beginning at verse 4, Romans 15:4. Paul writes these words in the context of his concern for upbuilding the whole Christian community in faith and hope and love. He says, for all the ancient scriptures, that refers to the Old Testament, for all the ancient scriptures were written for our
own instruction in order that through the encouragement they give us, we may maintain our hope with fortitude. And may God, the source of all fortitude and all encouragement, grant you that you may agree with one another after the manner of Jesus Christ, so that with one mind and one voice you may praise the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let that be our prayer as we begin the course. Amen. Let me begin by welcoming
you informally to a study in Old Testament theology, which in the grace of God will enrich your ministry and perhaps lead all of us to a deeper understanding of the scriptural tradition in which we stand. I am delighted at the numerical evidence that I behold today that the Old Testament is still in the canon and that perhaps in this seminary, the ghost of Marcion, that great heretic of the second century, will be put to flight. I
have been speculating about the reason for this extraordinary interest in the Old Testament and have come up with several reasons. For instance, students at Princeton Theological Seminary are different because of OT01 and all that. Perhaps there are a number of you who have survived OT01 today. And then I am reminded of the fact that this is a Presbyterian seminary, a la Calvin, and Calvin is concerned not just with the New Testament, but with the
totality of Scripture. And of course there is the rumor that this is an eschatological course. That is to say, my last course at Princeton Theological Seminary. That rumor was current, indeed, last year, a year ago this time, and that we thought we were in an eschatological situation then, but somehow, thanks to the ingenuity of President McCord, the eschaton was postponed one year. Actually, I suspect that word has gotten around about a reputation I achieved some years
ago when I was just beginning my teaching career. I was teaching at Colgate University, perhaps some of you have heard this story before, in the Department of Philosophy and Religion. And at that time was working on a very minor assignment for a series of tomes called the Interpreter's Bible. You've probably seen that series, maybe it adorns your shelf. Well, anyway, I was working on a very peripheral book in the Old Testament, so peripheral that Martin Luther
wished it had never been included in the Christian canon, the Book of Esther. And the word got around on the campus that I was working on some literary project, and so I was interviewed by representatives of the campus newspaper. I told them, yes, I was working on a small project for the Interpreter's Bible, and the next day came out a news story on that subject with the arresting headline, Professor Anderson, Co-Author of Bible. Well, whatever
the reasons for our being here, here we are together, and I hope that this will indeed be an exciting and illuminating study as we open the scriptures of Israel together. I should like to postpone our exegesis of the syllabus. You've all received a copy of the syllabus and bibliographical matters I trust, but I'd like to get down to business as soon as possible, and therefore we're going to postpone matters of that sort, housekeeping matters as we
call them, until the Friday session. You can read the syllabus over in the meantime, and I think you will find it sufficiently clear, and then we'll have an opportunity on Friday for part of the hour to discuss the course outline and the course procedure. That time I'll also introduce my teaching assistants. So without any further ado, let's begin our work together. I should like to start with a few remarks on the subject of biblical theology in
historical perspective, not just today, but in perspective of the years that lie behind us. The interpretation of scripture is inevitably conditioned by the ground on which the Interpreter stands, the ground on which I stand as an Interpreter, and the ground on which you all stand individually. Wasn't it the Greek physicist of the third century B.C., Archimedes, the discoverer of the principle of the lever, who said that if he were only to find the right fixed
point, he could lift the whole universe? If indeed there were such a fixed point, an absolute piece of ground, then perhaps we could gain control over the whole of scripture, and there would be unanimity within the whole Christian community. But alas, there is no such Archimedean point. The times are changing, and we find that all of us are in a situation of relativism. And that's not just because of the discoveries of Einstein and others. This is
the very nature of our historical condition, to be situated at this time rather than some other time. And therefore, we as interpreters have no other ground on which to stand than this particular moment in the twentieth century. Now in the twentieth century, we are all dominated, whether we realize it or not, by the spirit of the times, the zeitgeist. We live and breathe, for instance, in an atmosphere of pluralism. In fact, we glory in pluralism, especially
in the United States, De Pluribus. And I suspect that we are suspicious of a scriptural E Pluribus Unum. That is to say, out of much diversity, unity. Except perhaps in some of the most orthodox circles in the country. Insofar as we breathe the zeitgeist of the twentieth century, then, we are very concerned with pluralism, perhaps even more so than with unity. So that's one of the characteristics of our situation, our given situation. Moreover, the biblical theology
movement is now a burned out meteor. It was a movement which began indeed in this very theological seminary years ago, approximately the time of the founding of the magazine Theology Today. If you look over the early pages, the early editorials in Theology Today, you will discover that there were powerful voices that were calling for a new understanding of the unity of scripture. And at the same time, an understanding of scripture which takes into account the appropriate
modes of historical criticism. But the consensus that once prevailed has now broken up. That is the evidence which confronts us, especially in the professional societies, the society of biblical literature, the American Academy of Religion, and so forth. So, in this situation today, we find that no longer is there a theological consensus. Indeed, in many circles, there is not even a theological interest. In fact, there are many people who find it far easier to talk about the
religion of Israel than about the theology of the Old Testament. And if it is not the religion of Israel, then it is the anthropology, the view of human nature, which is presupposed in various ways in the Old Testament, or the religion of Israel, as part and parcel of the phenomenon of religion generally. So, this is another characteristic of our situation. That the theological consensus of the past has broken up. And we find ourselves in a time
when it is very difficult even to undertake the theological task with respect to the Bible. And what I am saying is true not only with regard to the Old Testament, but to the New as well. So, in this time of ferment and flux, when the ground beneath us is shifting very rapidly, it seems almost foolhardy for a teacher to get up and propose at least a modest introduction to Old Testament theology. But we are going to
have that courage, at least for this semester. And I am given some support by the realization that in the Old Testament field, and this is somewhat different from the New Testament field, there has been in recent years an abundance of Old Testament theologies. Turn to your syllabus, the Basic Bibliography, which is on page five. And you will find there listed not only the foundational works, which we are going to concentrate on in this course, but other
important works, older volumes. I have listed five in that connection, only five of ones that could be selected out of a larger number, and then fairly recent works in Old Testament theology by Walter Kaiser, Samuel Terrien, Professor Emeritus of Union Theological Seminary, Claus Westermann. I am in the course of reading that book now in English for a review. So, you see, right up to the moment, as it were, Old Testament theologies have been introduced in the
Old Testament field. So there is no Archimedean point which gives us control over Scripture. And we have to be honest, honest with God even, about the ground on which we stand and the times in which we live. I do believe, however, that we can gain some perspective on our situation by considering where we stand in the context of the history of the Church. I wished at this point that we had our Church historians here as allies,
but in any case, I find it very helpful to look back over our shoulders, at least to the time of the Reformation, and see what has happened to the discipline of Biblical theology in that long sweep of the centuries. As I look back over the period, the history of Biblical theology seems to fall into three major stages. I am somewhat oversimplifying the picture and adducing devices of memory which will help you perhaps, but as I look
back over the period to the time of the Reformation, I see that there are three stages. One was the stage of marriage between Biblical theology and dogmatic theology, systematic theology we would call it. And the second was the stage of estrangement when Biblical theology and dogmatic theology went their separate ways. And finally, and perhaps we stand in the dawn of this period, a time of reconciliation when Biblical theology and dogmatic theology will work together as allies
and as comrades. Let's look back briefly over these three periods, giving a kind of a thumbnail sketch of each period. The first periods, the stage of marriage between dogmatic theology and Biblical theology, was one in which there was such a close union between those two disciplines that there was hardly any distinction between them. Biblical theology and dogmatic theology were absolutely inseparable. And the reason for that was, at least in the worst sense, that Biblical theology was
regarded as the source of the proof texts which support dogmatic theology. The dicta probantia, the proof texts of scripture, taken as isolated snippets from here and there throughout the whole Bible became the supporting evidence for the establishment of the doctrines of the church. And perhaps there are still circles in this country where that is the way the Bible is used, the so-called proof text method. Well, at the best in that period, the Bible, though viewed
systematically, that is in terms of the doctrines of the church, was viewed as a history of some sort, a history of divine covenants. And here the great leader was a Calvinist, Cocceius, Johannes Cocceius. He died in the year 1669. Cocceius wrote a famous work called Summa Doctrinae de Foedere. That would be translated as the Sum of the Doctrines of the Covenant. And in this work he insisted that people should stop looking at the Bible as isolated
texts and began to study the dramatic structure of the whole. That is to say, the movement which is found in the Bible, the movement of divine redemption from creation to consummation. I wish we had time to explore this theologian, this early Calvinistic theologian of the post Reformation period. He believed that the whole show started when God established a covenant of works with the first human couple. A covenant of works, mind you, that's where it all started.
And therefore this first human couple were promised eternal life in exchange for obedience, but that didn't work. That covenant was broken. And so said Cocceius, this covenant of works was superseded by a covenant of grace, a covenant of grace which belongs within the whole structure of the Trinity itself. And that covenant of grace is anticipated in the Old Testament period as early as Genesis 4. It's anticipated in the Old Testament period and it is realized in
the New Testament when the Mediator, Jesus Christ, appears. Well, as I say, Cocceius was a Calvinist and he had the problem, I don't suppose you Presbyterians wrestle with this problem any longer, as to how to reconcile the eternal and immutable decrees of God. You see, decrees which were made from the very foundation of the world, the election of the damned, the election of the saved, how to reconcile those eternal and immutable decrees with the freedom and
the responsibility of human beings so that there's some kind of a response to the covenant of God, even though there is the supervening grace of God which controls the whole movement of salvation. Well, this is an illustration, a couple of illustrations then representing the first period when biblical theology and dogmatic theology belonged very, very closely together. And then that period was superseded by a stage of estrangement when biblical theology and dogmatic theology went their separate ways.
The seminal figure, the leading figure in this second period was a man named J.P. Gabler who in the year 1787 gave an inaugural address at the University of Alsdorf in Germany in which he attempted to draw a sharp distinction between biblical theology and dogmatic theology. He said it is not right for the dogmatic theologians to intrude upon the scriptures and thus, you see, to revise the scriptures as it were in terms of doctrinal interests. No,
the proper place to begin, said Gabler, is with biblical theology, but biblical theology is a historical discipline. It is a discipline in which we must recognize the individuality of the various writers and portions of scripture. We must recognize the times in which these people wrote about the things of God, as he called it. So the first thing to do then is to be a historian, as it were, and that is to understand the individuality of the
biblical texts and somehow then put them all together into a great compendium which will provide the foundation for the dogmatic theologian, the dogmatic theologian who then is free to package this material as it were and to interpret it in terms of the currents of thought that prevail in the time. So a distinction was drawn between biblical theology and systematic theology. But alas, that divorce, that estrangement was fatal for the discipline of biblical theology. Four, biblical theologians
increasingly came under the influence of philosophies of history. You see, once you separate the Bible from the protective framework of dogmatic theology, then it is vulnerable to the various philosophies of history of a particular time. Gobbler himself was a child of the Enlightenment, and therefore he understood history in terms of rationalism. That is, the task of the historian is to extract from the husks of scripture those eternal truths which are the same yesterday, today, and forever.
And then after the Enlightenment, biblical theology fell under the influence of the great philosopher Hegel. In fact, the father of Old Testament theology is usually designated as Vatke, the German thinker named Vatke who in the year 1835 wrote an Old Testament theology in Hegelian terms. And then beyond Hegel, we find ourselves moving into the 20th century when biblical studies came under the influence of evolutionism or existentialism. So you see, this was the fate of biblical theology
that having separated itself from the protective embrace of dogmatic theology, it fell victim to various philosophies of history. And so at the end of the 1920s, that brings us not too far from the time when I began to study in theological seminary. By the end of the 1920s, there was such a sharp chasm established between biblical theology and dogmatic theology that there were many who were saying that biblical theology is a matter of the history of
religion, a purely scientific discipline. Whereas we have to make a transition into another realm completely if we were to move into the realm of faith, into the realm where the church lives and worships. So much for that second period of estrangement. And I think that that estrangement persists into the present insofar as there are many interpreters certainly out in the academies who want to understand the Bible in terms of the history of religions or in terms
of some general phenomenology of religion and thus to lose the distinctive theological witness of scripture. Maybe some of you have come out of universities which are dominated by the history of religion's emphasis or perhaps the phenomenology of religion. So we come to the time which I hope is the dawning of a new day, a time of reconciliation in which each of these disciplines will maintain its identity through creative relationship. The first period, certainly before Coqueus, the
period of proof texting was a period of marriage of subjection. That is to say the two partners were not equal. The Bible was subjected to the dogmatic interests of the church. And the second period of course a period of estrangement but perhaps we are now coming into a time when both disciplines will work together in creative interrelationship in which neither is the master or the ruler. I'm not going to indicate at this moment some of the
signs that I see on the horizon that perhaps that reconciliation is taking place. Suffice it to say that there are many dogmatic theologians, systematic theologians who are very interested these days in certain aspects of biblical theology such as so-called story telling theology. The Bible as story, the story of our life, to use the expression of H. Richard Niebuhr. So this is the situation of our time and let us hope that together we may be able
to create an atmosphere in our own preaching, in our worship life in the church, and in our total study of scripture in which this kind of reconciliation will take place and which the Holy Spirit will be active in the church through both of these modes of study. Now having looked back over our shoulders a bit, I should like now to shift gears just a bit and move directly into the subject of the nature of biblical theology.
What is this discipline all about? Whether it's in a time of estrangement or a time of reconciliation, what do we mean by biblical theology? And here I should like to propose a definition. Normally I don't like to give definitions which are so succinct and precise that they have to be taken down, but this is one of those definitions that I'm going to issue and try to stand by throughout the whole semester. Biblical theology is the explication
and the elaboration of the faith of the believing and worshiping community as indicated explicitly or implicitly in biblical literature. There are three dimensions in that and I'm going to go over that definition once again. Biblical theology is the explication and elaboration of the faith of the believing and worshiping community. You see, it is the explaining, the explication, it is the elaboration of the faith of the believing and worshiping community as indicated either explicitly or implicitly in
biblical literature. Now, of course, there are other ways to give an explication and elaboration of the faith of the believing and worshiping community, perhaps through the study of doctrines or whatnot, but you see, this is the kind of explication and elaboration of the faith of the believing and worshiping community which is limited to the scriptures which we call the Old and the New Testament. Now, this statement immediately indicates one dimension of the difficulty of our task,
namely the element of logos, for that is the element which is found in the word theology. It has this element theos in Greek and logos. Logos, which refers to rational discourse. So theology means rational discourse about theos, about God. And that provides us with a real difficulty which we ought to get right out on the carpet to begin with. The Bible, with few exceptions, does not provide us with rational reflection, at least in a very systematic
and abstract sense. Perhaps I might make some exceptions here with regard to the wisdom literature, or at least portions of the wisdom literature. Still, it is true to say that biblical language by and large is not detached and reflective. It is very confessional. It is even existential. As Gerhard von Rad, the Old Testament theologian, puts it, event has priority over logos. Event has priority over logos. And even the word which we would have to translate, I
suppose, for logos in the Old Testament, davar, davar, word, that is the kind of word which is really an event, an event, as it were, that transpires between two people and thus a mode of communication and relationship. So we move into a somewhat different thought world when we move into scripture, and one wonders then whether it's even possible to produce a theology of the Bible, a theology of the Old Testament, in this sharply defined sense of
logos. More and more we're coming to realize that the literature of the Old Testament and the New Testament is specifically related to liturgical or confessional interests. That is to say, this literature is grounded in the life of a people at worship. And thus it is related to certain confessional summaries, even hymns or laments or thanksgivings which have their specific setting in worship. That's true not only of hymns and prayers and liturgies scattered throughout the scripture, but
the whole scriptural story as we're going to discover, whether we find that scriptural story in the Pentateuch or in the Gospels, is an elaboration of confessional statements which belong fundamentally to worship. So we're going to have to emphasize...