Biblical and Systematic Theology

Having come through the Anglican Church in Sydney and the EU at Sydney University, Biblical Theology feels like the air that I breath. The impact of Graeme Goldsworthy's books (such as Gospel and Kingdom or According to Plan) has been massive, so that the phrase "God's people, in God's place under God's rule" can rightly be described as well known and widespread in Sydney. And although there are other types of Biblical Theology out there, such as those developed by Vos, Brevard Childs, or even N.T. Wright, it is the three-stage epoch of Don Robinson, further developed by the likes of Goldsworthy, Bill Dumbrell, Barry Webb etc. that holds sway in Sydney.

Put simply, Biblical Theology is concerned with the movement of Scripture's narrative across time from Creation to New Creation, with Christ standing not only at the centre of this narrative, but also the key to understanding the parts and the whole of Scripture. The IVP New Dictionary of Biblical Theology identifies the following features as being distinctive to Biblical Theology:

• Exegesis. At the heart of Biblical Theology is exegesis. Biblical Theology is concerned with a slow, careful reading of the text within its context. At the centre of this exegesis is Jesus, through whom Biblical Theology makes understanding of both the past and the future.
• Pace. Biblical Theology is a slow, methodical meditation on scripture.
• Unity. Biblical Theology is determind to uphold the unity of Scripture when it exegetes a text whilst also being sensitive to the particularities and complexity of the Bible.
• Time. Biblical Theology is concerned about time, such as when things happened, and unfolding progressive self-revelation of God.
• Genre. Related to all of this, Biblical Theology seeks to exegete texts in a way that makes sense of it's literary genre. Biblical Theology seeks appreciate and understand speech/act.
• Narrative. Biblical Theology traces the story, and not just certain themes within the narrative. At the same time Biblical Theology is interested not only how words are used from across the Bible, but also in following the development of themes throughout Scripture.

However, it has been observed that to be intelligble to society, Biblical Theology often requires the services of Systematic Theology. Biblical Theology, though it can’t escape the cultural influence, attempts first and foremost to be inductive and descriptive. Systematic Theology looks to rearticulate what the Bible says with regards to engagement with culture. Systematic Theology is a logical, topical, hierarchical (of ideas) and synchronic organisation of Scripture.  Biblical Theology traces out the history of redemption, and is profoundly inductive, comparative and diachronic. In organising the data that Biblical Theology has collected, Systematic Theology is then able to intelligble engage with culture.


Most of this summary comes from separate chapters of Brian Rosner and Don Carson, in the IVP New Dictionary of Biblical Theology. 

For further reading: Graeme Goldsworthy, Christ-Centred Biblical Theology.

40 Years worth of Education

Having commenced a formal theological study this year, I sometimes wonder what I've signed up for. Four years can feel like a long time, especially right now when I'm learning Hebrew verb paradigms:

קָֹטַל
קָטְלָה

קָטַלְתָּ

Anyway, I stumbled across a magazine in the college library today that was honouring the ministry of Oliver O'Donovan (he's retiring later in the year). There was a quote from a 2008 report on an Anglican catechism by the Global South Anglican Theological Formation and Education Task Force (which O'Donovan was apart of) that drove home one of the reasons why theological college is and should be a long and thoughtful process:

"The clergy must be ready to think theologically for themselves, and not only say just what their congregations (or bishops!) are expecting. All of them have to be able to go on thinking and preaching, faithfully to the Gospel, for perhaps forty years after they leave college. Some of them will have to take the lead in criticizing and interpreting movements of thought that have not yet even come on the horizon. And they have to be able to resource the theological needs of tomorrow’s church." - Anglican Catechism in Outline: A Common Home Between Us

Again, like Barth's advice for novice theologians, it is humbling to read this.

Advice for Rookie Theologians

"The theological beginner should concentrate on his study in its own right during his few years at the seminary or university, for these years will not return. It is no doubt unwise, if not dangerous, when, instead of such concentration, the beginner flings himself beforehand into all sorts of Christian activities and ruminates on them, or even stands with one foot already in an office of the Church, as is customary in certain countries.

Nevertheless, this admonition does not alter the fact that the service of God and the service of man are the meaning, horizon, and goal of theological work." - Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology, pp. 186-87.

The Elizabethan Divines

This is just a theory of mine, but it feels like this second Elizabethan reign has been a golden age for British theology. Not that a British Institutes or Church Dogmatics has been written during this time - don't would be totally un-British. But over the past few decades, they has been an amazing group of theologians lecturing, publishing and serving the church in the UK and around the world. They are all theologians born during or in the period immediately after WWII: Rowan Williams, NT Wright, Oliver O'Donovan, Richard Bauckham, Colin Gunton, John Webster, Jeremy Begbie, Alister McGrath and so on. Building on the work of the like of Moule, Caird, Torrance and Chadwick, they've all contributed to the growth of the church in their own unique way.

As they start to retire, it will be interesting to see who replaces them in the church and the academy.

Church and the Word

"The community is confronted and created by the Word of God. It is the communion of the saints because it is the gathering of the faithful [believing]. As such it is the confederation of witnesses, who may and must speak because they believe.

The community does not speak with words alone. It speaks by the very fact of its existence in the world; by its characteristic attitude to world problems; and moreover and especially, by its silent service to all the handicapped, weak and needy in the world. It speaks, finally, by the simple fact that it prays for the world.

The community does all this because this is the purpose of its summons [into existence] by the Word of God. It cannot avoid doing these things, since it believes." - Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology

The Mediator of Faith

Here Marilynne Robinson talks about the role of theology in forming peoples minds and lives.

"Theology has been the mediator of the primary literature of faith since antiquity. The writers of the psalms, the prophets, the Apostle Paul all interpret core belief--that God is One, the Creator of heaven and earth, and that he has made humankind in his image. Augustine, Chrysostom, Aquinas, Luther and Calvin each gave intellectual, social and artistic form to modes of Christian life which without them are hardly to be imagined. Lately the practice of this ancient tradition has receded into the academy and learned the idiom of specialization, leaving religion increasingly vulnerable to the charge, and the fact, of vacuousness." - Marilynne Robinson

Why Karl Barth?

So my box set of Church Dogmatics arrived this week - appropriately on my birthday.

There is a lot to admire about Karl Barth and his massive, unfinished project. I recently had the joyful experience of explaining who Barth was to someone in Manning Bar who had never heard of him. He was a theologian who called his readers to focus on Jesus. His opposition to liberalism, Nazism, and Cold War's partianship was because of what Barth knew God had done in and through Jesus Christ. When asked by a reporter how he would summarise his work after all his years of study, Barth replied "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so."

Maybe I should have shown them this video:

The impact of Barth's scholarship during and after his life time has been far reaching. Yet far more influential than the volumes of his writing was his commitment to the gospel. After Barth died in 1968, the translators of Church Dogmatics into English - TF Torrance and GW Bromiley - made reference to this in their preface to CD IV.4:

"When the proofs of this book were still in our hands, new came in that Karl Barth was dead. God took him to his rest in the early hours of December 10, 1968, the great Church Father of Evangelical Christendom, the one genuine Doctor of the universal Church the modern era has known. It is in the Church Dogmatics above all that we must look for the grandeur of this humble servant of Jesus Christ, for the work he was given to accomplish in it will endure to bless the word for many centuries to come. Only Athanasius, Augustine, Aquinas and Calvin have performed comparable service in the past, in the search for a unified and comprehensive basis for all theology in the grace of God.

The Church Dogmatics represents an immense struggle for the understanding of the eternal Word of God and its rational articulation in the modern world in which the thought-forms of man are obediently and pliantly yielded to the self-revelation of God in Jesus Christ according to the Holy Scriptures."

If this has whet your appetite, you might like to check out the highlight package of Church Dogmatics at Faith and Theology: Church Dogmatics in a Week. And remember to love God and keep your pipe lit.

Jeremy Begbie on Theology and the Arts

He's a flipping genius!

How to Think About Politics

"Political authority, if it recognises itself to be a response to man's fallen nature with a limited non-redemptive task, can serve to contain the threat of chaos and the power of sin. It cannot, however, eliminate these. Once those seeking and holding political power try to use that power to achieve more than politics' ordained and limited end of restraining sin through upholding justice in society and serving the common good, political life soon becomes a new idol. Like all idols it feeds off people's devotion, but instead of meeting their real needs, simply creates more chaos. Christians, who know the true place of political authority in God's purposes, are devoted to serving the crucified Christ as Lord and are praying for the coming of God's own kingdom, must therefore encourage those engaged in political life to acknowledge its limited role and significance. They must warn any society when they discern its political life falling prey to the real dangers of idolatry leading to chaos." - Andrew Goddard, Thinking Christianly about Politics.

A Vision For Christian Theology and Life

"...a faith that is bigger and deeper than "Jesus saves": trinitarian in basis, christological in focus, cosmic in scope, graciously ethical in direction, generous in difference and with a resurrection hope." - Byron Smith

I find this to be a quite apt and exciting description of how my theology and life should be shaped.

Good Books: A Meme

In an effort to help further the Christian blogging community, I'm starting a meme. I'm going to give you a list of theological book categories. Here are the AMENDED rules: 

i. List a helpful book you've read in this category; 

ii. Describe why you found it helpful; and 

iii. Tag five more friends and spread the meme love.

Here are the categories (in no paricular order):

1. Theology
2. Biblical Theology
3. God
4. Jesus
5. Old Testament
6. New Testament
7. Morals
8. (Church) History
9. Biography
10. Evangelism
11. Prayer

I'm going to go and think about my answers, but in the mean time I'll tag Steve, Duncan, Chris, Byron, Michael and you.

Standing or Falling

Any of my readers who are married may know the painfully slow process of working out who to invite to the wedding. If we invite this X, then we have to invite several other people from the same circle of friends, and so on. Of course, the most angst and emotion comes from discerning which family members to invite. Do we invite great uncle Fred who I haven't seen in ten years? Yes? No? My parents had a nasty habit of doing this - which was a rather drawn out process because they kept changing their mind every few weeks.

But it is an important issue - who do we invite to our wedding celebration? And I would suggest that it is an important issue in the bible as well. Who would God invite to his feast? OR if you say it more theologically, who is part of the covenant family (and how can you tell)? It is an issue that we see Israel's prophets wrestling with (cf. Habakkuk, Isaiah 1-12). It is an issue that the early church struggled with (cf. Acts 15, Galatians, Romans, Ephesians, etc.).

This is still an issue that the church in the 21st century is still grappling with. The lack of resolution to the current (and ever-continuing) crisis in the Anglican Communion can be traced back to a failure to tackle this crucial issue.

Crucial? It is only the doctrine which, to paraphrase Luther, the Church stands or falls. Luther's quote has been troubling me for some months. It is often thrown around to support the idea that Justification by Faith (JBF) is the Christian gospel. I don't agree with that anymore. Which is say that I would want to refine the statement and say that JBF is the major implication of the gospel, taking the gospel to mean that Jesus Christ is Lord.

However, I realized last week on the train (which is were I do all my thinking) that JBF is the doctrine by which the church really does stand or fall because is the great ecumenical doctrine. It is JBF that determines the character of the church - what it is to look like. It is JBF that says "If you're saved by grace, then you need to church by grace too" (cf. Romans 15.7) If you get JBF wrong, then your church may indeed just fall over.

If this is true, then church unity is not something to be thrown away lightly. We are united together through the faithfulness of Christ. We are united together in Jesus, who loved us so much that he died for each and every one of us. Upon this does the church stand or fall.

There is more to come...

Theological loving

Some of you may remember this little incident from last month. I received a fair bit of feed back, both on and off the blog. I've done some thinking, read a bit, thought and talked about it, felt like crying, laughed with my friend at Moore when he repeated the story of being told he goes to an emerging church by a college lecturer, and even reached an epiphany on a train trip with Alison (which I'm starting to forget).

What I've been thinking through is that: a. Jesus Christ is Lord, and everything that statement means is true; b. my basis for identity is in Christ; c. as is everyone else who confesses with their mouth that Jesus is Lord and believes God raised him from the dead (Romans 10); d. the basis for our relationships within the church (and indeed to the world) is grace - welcome one another just as Christ welcomed you. Given all this one should: i. make sure you tongue is always seasoned with salt (Matt. 5, Col. 4); ii beware of reducing people in "us" and "them"; iii avoid using labels. They can scar people for life, and are a cheap tactic for winning arguments; and iv be wise and make sure you know what the current labels are. It is useful to know what the present "doggiest" theology is when you deny it, or on the odd occasion, affirm it.

Anyway, here is a small quote from Gunton I found yesterday (when speaking on the method of historical and systematic theology):

"Our doctrinal past is best understood if its representatives are taken seriously as living voices with whom we enter into theological conversation. We shall sometimes agree and sometimes disagree with what they say, and that is what it means to take them seriously. In his Church Dogmatics Karl Barth is able to treat even opponents of the Christian faith as theological partners in conversation. Accordingly it can be argued that historical theology should be a theological discipline not because we have decided in advance what to find, but because we approach our predecessors as theologians who have something to teach us."

Colin Gunton, "Historical and systematic theology", The Cambridge Companion to Christian Theology, pp. 6-7. Words in red originally italic.

PS. I start a new job this coming Monday, working for CMS NSW in mission education.

10 points for the picture. Hint: Think Benelux.