Jonathan Moo in Creation Care: A Biblical Theology of the Natural World (chapter 5) argues that Israel’s relationship with the land teaches us how to approach God’s good creation.

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” Gen. 1:28

The command to fill, subdue and rule is not a call to consume abundantly, as though the world is our private playground. Rather it is a call to act as stewards, respecting both life and land, being mindful of our place in the world.

The relationship between God, humans, animals and land runs through the Old Testament, and especially the redemption of Israel from Egypt as related in Exodus to Deuteronomy. Ultimately God controls both abundance and lack, prosperity and want. As Moses told the people (Deut. 28):

If you fully obey the Lord your God … The Lord will grant you abundant prosperity—in the fruit of your womb, the young of your livestock and the crops of your ground—in the land he swore to your ancestors to give you. The Lord will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands. You will lend to many nations but will borrow from none. (v. 11-12)

However, if you do not obey the Lord your God …The Lord will strike you with wasting disease, with fever and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, with blight and mildew, which will plague you until you perish. The sky over your head will be bronze, the ground beneath you iron. The Lord will turn the rain of your country into dust and powder; it will come down from the skies until you are destroyed. (v. 22-24)

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus reminds his listeners:

But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. (Mt. 5:44-45)

There is a covenant of care, but no promise of abundance apart from the providence of God – who is responsible for sun and rain for all.

Moo argues that  sacrificial system itself is a testament to the connections and value of all life. The animals must have intrinsic value to serve as an atonement for human sin. Their lifeblood is to be treated with respect, buried and not consumed (a prohibition retained in the Gentile church Acts 15: 19-20,29)

Our point here is simply that the respect that the Israelites were to afford to the life of the animals they killed for food and sacrifice served in part to remind them of their kinship with other creatures and of the gift of life and breath that they shared with them. (p. 93)

The laws of Sabbath and Jubilee years in Leviticus 25 establish a precedent

‘When you enter the land I am going to give you, the land itself must observe a sabbath to the Lord. For six years sow your fields, and for six years prune your vineyards and gather their crops. But in the seventh year the land is to have a year of sabbath rest, a sabbath to the Lord. Do not sow your fields or prune your vineyards. Do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the grapes of your untended vines. The land is to have a year of rest.
…
Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; each of you is to return to your family property and to your own clan. The fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you; do not sow and do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the untended vines. For it is a jubilee and is to be holy for you; eat only what is taken directly from the fields. In this Year of Jubilee everyone is to return to their own property.
…
The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you reside in my land as foreigners and strangers. Throughout the land that you hold as a possession, you must provide for the redemption of the land.

Moo summarizes:

The land belongs to God, and it is only by his grace and goodness that Israel resides there. The Israelite farmer is thus a tenant farmer whose life is finally in the service of God himself as owner and Lord. (p. 96)

Israel’s relationship to the land must reflect God’s purposes for it, as he is its true owner and ruler. God’s people are to live in ongoing awareness of their dependence upon God to treat the land as a gift, to exercise restraint in their use of the land’s resources and in their treatment of other living creatures, and to honor the land and its life as of value to God. … Above all it is in the practice of Sabbath rest and Jubilee that Israelites are called to entrust themselves to God’s good keeping and to reveal by their actions the reality of what they claim to believe about their Creator and Redeemer God. (p. 97)

While Sabbath and Jubilee years are not a continuing command for the church, the reality that we are but ‘tenant farmers’ remains. Everything we have and use belongs to God.

What ways can and should we today acknowledge that we are but ‘tenant farmers?’

What does this mean for the way we live in the world?

If you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net

If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.

The link to the book above is a paid link. Go with this one if you prefer: Creation Care: A Biblical Theology of the Natural World.

By Carey Newman

Larry W. Hurtado

(1943-2019)

Scholarship, Friendship, A Good Sense of Humor, Scottish Irrigation

Early in 1988 John Hollar at Fortress Press published Larry W. Hurtado’s One God, One Lord – or what Shannon, Larry’s beloved wife, fondly and irreverently calls “Oney God.”  That book became an instant “must-read” for anyone trying to retrace the development of early Christianity.  Alan Segal and Martin Hengel graced the book’s back with their estimations.  Segal said Larry had written “one of the most interesting Christologies of the decade.”  Hengel declared that Larry’s book signaled the formation of a new “Religionsgeschichtliche Schule.”  Hengel was right; Segal was wrong.  Larry had written a book that wound up lasting far longer than a mere decade, and Oney God was indeed the harbinger of a new approach.

I met Larry that fall. I had read his book, cover to cover, several times.  I wrote him a letter asking all sorts of foolish graduate student questions and, typically patient Larry, he proposed to meet for coffee and a chat at the next SBL.  Little did I know.

Elfin, bearded, bespectacled.  Smart, serious, disciplined.  Kind, generous, faithful.  That morning in Chicago not only did I meet Larry and Alan, but they introduced me to Don Juel, Paula Fredriksen, Jarl Fossum, and several others at Larry’s insistence.  Larry treated me like I was a new kid in school who needed to know everyone on day one.  Looking back, 31 years later, 28 of which were spent rooming with Larry at the SBL, the features of Larry’s relentless scholarship, his love of his friends, and his penchant for mirth can be seen clearly, for they were all present, right there, brewed into that first cup of joe.

Larry’s beginnings, like most of ours who practice our peculiar craft, were humble and unimpressive.  He received his first degree from an un-accredited Bible college.  But it wasn’t where Larry started that mattered.  It was where he ended up that counted–-an emeritus Professor at New College, University of Edinburgh, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the author of countless books and articles in a dozen or more languages, invited named lectures galore, and the recipient of high esteem from all of his colleagues on six continents.  True, Larry did get an early leg up from the legendary Gordon Fee and, then, benefit from the exacting tutelage of the great Eldon Epp.  These two not only instilled in Larry the love of the strange world of text criticism, but both Fee and Epp, and later Hengel, also modeled the sober, careful, and ridiculously thorough historical reconstruction that was to characterize Larry’s most important contributions.  Larry effectively translated what he learned about the genealogy of ancient texts to investigate the evolution of early communities of Jesus followers.

Larry was a debater, and when I would complain about some scholar’s work, he would say, “change the question” and “ask the better question.”  And change the question he did.  No longer could people study Christology through the alchemy of titles attributed to Jesus or the endlessly exasperating “can it be proved that Jesus claimed something unique?”  No.  Larry changed the question from what was claimed by and about Jesus to a far more meaningful way to measure Christology.  Larry changed the question to “what sort of devotion was publicly and repeatedly rendered to Jesus?”

Quite a lot, as it turns out. Larry demonstrated how prayers to and in the name of Jesus, baptism in the name of Jesus, preaching in the name of Jesus, holy meals and holy acts in the name of Jesus, and scriptures originally offered to/about God redirected to include Jesus—how all this and more—bore the freight of what early Jesus followers believed and, moreover, that these acts were the true measure of “Christ devotion.” For Larry, Christology was not early Jewish exegetical math which simply solved for x or a Christian chess match between masters of philosophical ontology.  It was on the ground behavior.  It was what early Jesus followers did—they worshiped Jesus while also worshiping God.  Let the Christological chips fall as they may.

For Larry, this meant that early Jesus followers cannot be adequately described as just overly apocalyptically juiced Jews.  No, early Jesus followers practiced their faith far differently than their ancestral co-religionists did.   Nor can early Jesus followers be dismissed as simply mixing an exotic cocktail of Jewish messianic hope and Greco-Roman mystery religions or Emperor worship.  No.  No.  For Larry, early Jesus followers were different from their ancestral co-religionist and from their pagan neighbors.

But to repeat the questions Larry asked (and recite the answers he gave) points to his most important work of scholarship, Lord Jesus Christ.  Lord Jesus Christ was Larry’s Lebenswerk. In it, Larry set for himself one great task: to put the record straight.  He took the full measure of Bousset’s Kyrios Christos, the book which had poured the footings and laid the foundation for the study of early Christianity for almost a century, and piece by piece, chunk by chunk, Larry broke it apart and then laid a new foundation.  Lord Jesus Christ is the culmination and extension—and not simply the repetition—of scads of technical studies.  Larry left no stone unturned in his quest to undo and redo Bousset.  Simply put, Lord Jesus Christ is a big book.  No, not just measured in girth.  It is a big book because it has proven to be a field changing book.  No one, for a good while to come, can begin (or end, for that matter) anywhere else but with Hurtado.

Early on, a year or two into our friendship, I was complaining that my paper proposal for a program unit had been turned down.  Larry, trenchantly, devoid of pastoral care, simply said, “do better work.”  I think I swore at him in response.  But that’s what Larry did. From his humble beginnings to his last breath, he did better work—and more of it.  He once told me he was flying to Germany for a lecture, but that he was going to stop over in London for three or four days.  I asked why.  He said, “oh, there’s several Oxford Phd theses I need to read.”  I thought to myself, “who does that?”  Well, Larry did.

Larry was as persistent in building community as he was relentless in his scholarship.  From my first meeting on, Larry was always introducing me to someone else.  He organized the Lightfoot reading group.  He gathered people around a table at a pub.  He was inclusive, generous, warm.  He counted Bart Ehrman and Paula Fredriksen among his most cherished friends, even if what the three of them could actually agree upon would barely fill a thimble.  He was a mentor, as his many students can attest, but he was also a sponsor.  He discovered good scholars and he then worked on their behalf.  He was curious.  Always curious. He was a practiced listener – even if he himself could get on a roll (and stand aside when he did).  He created community wherever he went.  He remembered names of children, important events in the lives of others, he asked intelligent, thoughtful, and caring questions.  If you were in Edinburgh, you were always welcome at the Hurtados.  Shannon, to whom Larry was absolutely devoted, proved his equal in every way.  Larry was a good cook.  He loved his friends.

There was always a glimmer in Larry’s eye.  He enjoyed a good joke and he was quick with a hearty laugh.  The Program Unit Chair’s meeting in Nashville was marked by angst and anger.  Seems no one had liked the venue, the prices, the isolation.  Peter Richardson, who was slated to referee this rabble, was worried.  Larry, right before the meeting told Peter simply to call on him first and he would break the ice.  Peter did, and Larry did—by riffing a Cheech and Chong line that sent the whole room into several minutes of laughter.  That was Larry.

For many years, a highlight of SBL was the annual meeting of the Early High Christology Club.   A half -serious, half-social, half-scholarly, but fully raucous affair that included ample and equal amounts of laughter and single malt.  At some high, holy moment, Larry would recite the founding myth of the club.  There would be laughter, snickers, and each year the telling of the myth became more elaborate and ornate.  Pauses.  Side jokes.  Larry held court.  At the end of the sacred recital, he raised a wee dram to an Early High Christology and to departed friends.  Alas.  It is now time to raise one to Larry.

I called Larry the Saturday before he died on Monday.  We talked for an hour.  His voice was frail, halting, un-syncopated.  He started talking about a book he was reading.  He became animated.  He fell back into that voice I had heard a thousand times.  Confident, magisterial, commanding.  Incisive.  Rapid, agile, surefooted.

Down towards the end of the conversation I asked him about an email exchange from the previous week.   I had commented that his faith was pig iron.  He had been battling his health for two years, and he knew the end was near.  He had responded that he was just playing craps.

I only partially understood his response (not uncommon, as Larry moved the pieces around on the board quickly) so I asked him about the reference to craps.  He then told me the story of earlier in his career, at his lowest moment, without hope, and without any tangible future, in scholarship or any other livelihood, he had offered a prayer to God in which he questioned God’s purposes, and received what he said was an audible response, “I know what I’m doing, but I’m not going to tell you.”  Larry laughed on the other end of the phone.  “Isn’t that just like God?  If you want to play craps, you have to play God’s game, because it’s the only game on offer.”

On Monday, Larry saw Death coming for him.  With that same grit he had shown all his life, Larry stared Death right in the eye and asked, “Is that all you got?”

Scholarship, Friendship, A good sense of humor, Scottish irrigation—indeed.  Here’s to you Larry.

Carey C. Newman

Luke Timothy Johnson concludes his recent book Miracles: God’s Presence and Power in Creation, with some pastoral advice – for pastors in particular. There are some great insights and ideas in this chapter.  The problem is a serious one. It goes beyond a belief in Scripture to accept divine agency as a very personal reality.

The challenge facing contemporary Christians in the matter of miracles is daunting. … Incarnation and resurrection alike evade strictly evade strictly historical categories. Because they speak of divine agency in the empirical realm, they demand the language of myth. The same believers, especially pastors and preachers, are profoundly shaped by the worldview of modernity. Secularism has no place for the miraculous. For many calling themselves Christians today are more than difficult: they are intellectually embarrassing. (p. 277)

The answer isn’t intellectual assent to a literal reading of Scripture. As though miraculous activity and divine agency was merely an ancient fact to be believed … on faith. The answer is a re-focused approach to the whole topic of our faith in God’s divine agency in the world. Johnson suggests “four places in the church’s life, or four ecclesial practices, that can work together to shape such a symbolic world, within which believers can expect, perceive, and celebrate the manifestations of God’s presence and power in creation:  teaching …, preaching, prayer, and pastoral care.” (p. 278) In these he speaks especially to those in leadership positions, with the responsibility to shape life together as a church.

Teaching should shape and form people – and this requires an immersion in the world of Scripture. “Through whatever specific avenue of approach, we want Christians to learn how to imagine the world that Scripture imagines, how to cultivate a robust theology of creation, how to hear and honor personal experience, and how to appreciate the truth-telling qualities of myth.” (p. 279)  Myth is not a synonym for fiction or falsehood – as though something is either historical or mythical. Rather myth is “language that seek to express what cannot be otherwise adequately expressed.“(p. 286)  Neither science nor simple reporting of facts are adequate to describe and convey the full range of human experience. We need stories – the personal stories of fellow Christians and the ancient stories contained in Scripture. Stories that must be more than matter-of-fact reports.

When was the last time someone shared their testimony in your church?

Or the last time there was corporate prayer for specific needs?

When was the last community sing, taking requests from the congregation?

Is worship a sterile performance or a community experience of life together?

Johnson argues that sterilized Christianity, divorced from the real world lives of the people in the congregation, will never fully appreciate the truth of miracles, or of God’s agency in the world.  “If the church, then, is to learn how to hear and appreciate the miracles in Scripture, it must learn how to hear and appreciate the miracles that occur in the lives of ordinary human beings both within and outside the church. … The church needs to recover the distinctive importance of personal witness, above all the witness to God’s working in human lives.” (p. 284)

Preaching and teaching are not the same – but they serve similar purposes in different ways. In a sermon he preached on the transfiguration and includes in this book, Johnson digs into the resonances between the experiences of Moses on Sinai and Jesus on Tabor. “The Gospel account of the transfiguration participates in revelation rather than simply reports it. The transfiguration story uses symbols of God’s presence and power to disclose deeper dimensions of the humanity of Christ.” (p. 291) The way we approach miraculous events in Scripture – as one-offs deep in the past, separated from the fuller story, and divorced from God’s agency in our world today – makes it hard to appreciate miracles for what they are, then and now.

My more important point is that God continues to reveal his presence and power just as truly in our world today. God is the ever-living God. The same God who created “in the beginning” continues to create at every moment and discloses his presence and power through what he brings into being. The same God who spoke through Moses also speaks through prophets and witnesses today. The same God who acted in Jesus Christ to heal and drive out demons continues to act in our world today to liberate and restore. (p. 292)

Prayer is an implicit and explicit acknowledgement of God’s divine agency today as in the past. “Prayer is more than a form of cognition: it is the activation of a relationship, moving the human person to the most explicit and naked stance possible before the mystery of existence, and calling out to the heart of that mystery, “God our Father!” (p. 296) Prayer makes it real … “Without the practice of prayer, the world imagined by Scripture is at best a fascinating construction of ancient minds; but with the practice of prayer, that world becomes an actual world in which to live.” (p. 298)

Pastoral care and counseling … getting into the messy lives of others when they need it most. When the preacher does not also participate in such pastoral care, the church is impoverished. Or so Johnson argues. Why? Because preaching isn’t simply a performance art and a preacher who is not engaged with the congregation cannot be fully aware of the power of God at work among the people. Miracles become extraordinary (past) events rather than the continuing reality of God at work today.

Miracles, as the title of Johnson’s book proclaims, are God’s presence and power in creation.

The church’s greatest gift and its mightiest challenge is to declare God’s self-revelation within the world that God brings into being, the One from whom creation derives, and the One to whom creation is ordered. Failure at this is utter failure. (p. 300)

Miracles, signs, and wonders are not just revelations in the deep past. God remains active today if we know where to look (and take the time and effort to do so). In our secular age we either discount miracles or attempt to explain them rationally. Ice floes in the Sea of Galilee might permit walking on water? Many Christian demand intellectual assent to the literal words of Scripture, but undervalue the power of God revealed in the story – and what it means for us today.

Johnson’s book is well worth reading. Miracles are a hard sell in our modern secular age. We know better – or so we are told. The approach of the fundamentalist – making assent to miraculous events in the deep past a litmus test for faith – doesn’t help matters. God’s divine agency is the heart and soul of Scripture. We need to tell the Story, not defend every detail. The incarnation is the pinnacle, the culmination of the Story in Scripture, but it isn’t the end of the story of God’s agency in the world. God continues to be active in his people. If we lose this, we’ve lost everything.

If you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net

If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.

The link to the book above is a paid link. Go with this one if you prefer: Miracles: God’s Presence and Power in Creation.

If the Gospels, our four Gospels in the NT canon, are biographies in genre what does that mean for history? Craig Keener in what will become a major milestone Christobiography: Memory, History, and the Reliability of the Gospels (#ad), addresses this question with circumspect analysis and cautious conclusions.

I have now worked through this 500 pager  and think his conclusions are worth posting here as I encourage every theological library to purchase a copy of this book:

Traditional skeptical and fundamentalist approaches to the Gospels have generally committed the same error: judging the Gospels by standards foreign to their original genre.

Keener’s argument is rooted in the conclusion that the Gospels are to be set in the “biography” genre and I agree, in the main, with that, though the Gospels themselves begin with them as “gospels” (telling the redemptive story of Jesus). Keener finesses the meaning of biography precisely in that direction but his interest — as always — is whether the Gospels are historically reliable. His conclusions:

1. They are full biographies of a publicly known figure, rather than brief lives of poets.
2. They are from the most information-based period in the development of ancient biography, namely, the period of the early empire. Biographies in this period are generally developed beyond less historically minded earlier encomia, yet they also predate later hagiography. Comparing different biographies from this period about the same figure illustrates these biographies’ anchoring in information.
3. The Gospels were composed within living memory of their subject, making substantive accurate information likely.
4. The most respected leaders in the traditioning community were eyewitnesses.
5. Not only were the most respected leaders in the traditioning community eyewitnesses; they were also disciples, who of all people would work hardest from the start to preserve their mentor’s legacy and teaching.
6. Something not explored in this volume, but easily confirmed by perusing a synopsis of the Gospels, is the significant overlap of material in the Synoptics. This overlap confirms that these works are information-based rather than novelistic and that their authors regarded their own sources as sufficiently trustworthy for information-based composition.
7. Information-based first-century Gospels that used sources cannot have been significantly (more than a few decades) later than those sources that they used, and they likely had good reason to assess the reliability of their sources the way that they did.
8. Logic suggests a further conclusion. More sources circulated in their day (Luke 1:1) than remain, and the Gospel authors could not know what information would remain extant in subsequent eras. Therefore, we should expect them to adapt their sources where we cannot test them in ways comparable to where we can. When Matthew and Luke (on the standard view) follow Mark so closely, sometimes nearly word for word, it seems incredible to suppose that they often simply invent entire stories from whole cloth wherever we cannot test them, any more than we would expect such invention from other ancient writers who follow their sources where we can test them. In short: it is not fair to simply say, “For such-and-such a point, we have no evidence outside the Gospels, and therefore we lack evidence” The Gospel narratives are themselves evidence.

Other summary points:

In any case, I believe that my two most essential primary points are difficult to dispute: in the early empire, normal biographers writing full works about recent figures attempted to recount or reconstruct what they believed to be historical information (or perhaps in some cases, traditions that were at least possibly historical), normally for edifying purposes; and biographers could exercise a degree of flexibility in how they recounted that information.

More precisely, audiences from the Gospels’ era did not expect biographers to freely invent events, but they did allow them to flesh out scenes and discourse for the purpose of what they considered narrative verisimilitude. Biographers were not supposed to invent a teacher’s message, but they could interpret and communicate it from their own perspectives. I

In Michael Gorman’s wonderful new collection of his studies about participation in Christ (Participating in Christ: Explorations in Paul’s Theology and Spirituality (#ad)), he proposes a translation of Philippians 2:5 that starts off that famous song about Jesus in 2:6-11, and I will provide here the NIV’s translation:

2:5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

6    Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

Gorman, with finesse and nuance, sorts out three options: the imitative view (NIV above), the locative view (ESV: “have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus”), and the community or narratival view (Gorman). He pushes us away from a moral ethical individual view into a more communitarian view of what Paul is saying here.

Here is his conclusion, so read carefully:

I have argued that Philippians 2:5 is best translated as “Cultivate this mindset — this way of thinking, acting, and feeling—in your community, which is in fact a community in the Messiah Jesus.” This interpretation means that what is “in” Christ is not a disposition that is to be adopted or imitated, but a community that is to be shaped by the person the community inhabits, the person whose story is narrated in 2:6-11. Thus, while 2:5 is not imitative, it is also not merely locative. The location is inseparable from the story; the Messiah is inhabited only as his story is continued in analogous ways in the community. This is a theology and spirituality of participation, as Paul had already hinted in 1:8. Paul presumes a continuity between the self-emptying and self-humbling Messiah Jesus and the reigning Lord Jesus in whom the church exists.

Paul’s mode of exhortation, then, is not simply to present Christ as an xample of the correct inner attitude, nor even of correct actions. Rather, Paul emphasizes the “in the Messiah Jesus” dimension of the church’s existence, grounding his exhortation in that dimension: those who live in the Messiah are to be conformed to the pattern of his self-humbling and self-emptying, not merely as imitators of a model, but as persons whose fundamental identity is to participate in him and thus in his story. Paul may speak of “obedience” (Phil. 2:12), but it is an obedience to the Obedient One (2:7) and enabled by participation in him.

OK, I’m tired of the term “evangelical” but let’s get over it and just (for the moment) drop the discussion and ask What would an evangelical theology look like? Many would say “biblical” and that, like forgiveness said C.S. Lewis of forgiveness, is a lovely idea until someone has to choose which “biblical” body of literature would take as the set of categories.

Try as one might one has to choose when it comes to “biblical.” The most influential evangelical biblical theology of the last 50 years is GE Ladd’s A New Testament Theology and, truth be told, he used the eschatological vision of Jesus’ teaching on the kingdom and in some ways imposed that on the rest of the NT — and provided insight. But his overall form of NT theology was virtually unusable in catechisms, in church theological statements, and in anything close to a pastoral theology. (I cut my teeth on Ladd so this is not a criticism.)

To be fully biblical one has to sort through each author of the Bible — Old and New Testaments — and let each say things as they say them. Long ago GB Caird did a nice job in his New Testament Theology, asking each author of the New Testament come to a conference table and answer questions about salvation, etc.. This is how to do it, but it would take three volumes and, in most cases, there are both lots of loose ends and not enough synthesis.

So, what to do?

One approach has been the so-called loci: God, humans, Christ, sin, salvation, ecclesiology and eschatology. This has been the approach of many if not most Protestant systematic theologies. One volume after another, from Hodge to Strong to whichever modern theologian one is assigned and has on the shelf, has sought to rehearse, repeat and reframe the loci. This approach has been eminently useful to many. It answers questions, it organizes topics, it often provides biblical support.

But, another approach has been even deeper in the history of the church. The big bonus here is that it fits with church worship. I’ll say it then: the loci approach is for a classrooms and the other approach is for church theology.

Enter Daniel J. Treier’s wonderful new Introducing Evangelical Theology. (Thank God Dan avoids an argument about the meaning of “evangelical.”) What is this approach? The credal approach. What does it look like? The Three Articles of our Creed. Here theology is not forced into one biblical author that mutes the voice of other biblical authors, but instead it is shaped by the fundamental categories of the great tradition that forms the Apostles’ Creed and the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed. Yes, Bible. And Yes, the church’s formation of its basic ideas. There’s no claim here to be the biblical theology.

Perhaps best, it turns “evangelical” away from some of its petty theological debates and pushes it back to the origins of Christian theologizing in the Creed.

So, here is how Treier organizes his theology:

1. Knowing the Triune God: creed, ten commandments, Lord’s prayer
2. The Father, the Almighty Lord: triune name of God, providence, goodness of creation, human beings.
3. The Son, the Mediating Logos: identity, reconciliation, sin and salvation, the gospel
4. The Holy Spirit, the Life Giver: God’s empowering presence, scripture, church, all things new.

I’d put church prior to scripture in this ordering, but I really like this ordering: it’s sorted by God as Trinity instead of simply soteriology.

If I were teaching “theology” in a seminary or college, this would be my text and one big reason is that it draws us to the creed, the faith common to all Christians. I do think there are other approaches to doing theology — narrative, systematic loci, biblical, or even running a category (kingdom, salvation) through the whole Bible — but this is one that could bring a lot of unity between Christians.

Join me as I go through this book — or sample its chapters.

Glenn Kreider is professor of theological studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. He also serves as the editor of Bibliotheca Sacra. Among other things, he has written God with Us. Michael Svigel is the chair and professor of theological studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. Svigel has authored Retro Christianity.

The following interview revolves around A Practical Primer on Theological Method which Kreider and Svigel co-authored.

The interview was conducted by David George Moore. Some of Dave’s interviews and teaching videos can be accessed at www.mooreengaging.com.

Full Disclosure: Glenn and Michael asked for my input on their book. I was glad to offer it and obviously commend their work, thus this interview!

Moore: There are various books available on theological method. Why write another one?

Kreider and Svigel: In the past couple of decades, there has been increasing interest in theological method by evangelicals. But in our years of teaching systematic and historical theology we’ve noticed that our students need some specific and concrete discussion of how to do theology. They need a primer—something written at an introductory level that anybody could pick up and put to use right away. We also wanted to present what we call an “integrative theological method in the classic Christian tradition.” We didn’t want to just say in simpler words what others have been saying in more complicated jargon. While our primary concern was to introduce “newbies” to the task of theology, we also wanted to make a real contribution to the guild. So, even advanced students and professional theologians will get a lot out of this introduction.

Moore: When one hears “theological” and “method” juxtaposed it is easy to conclude it must be boring, irrelevant, and so who in the world should care? So, why should we care about theological method?

Kreider and Svigel: Theological method is not like the methods in so many other disciplines. We expect our medical practitioners to know what they are doing when the remove our wisdom teeth, prescribe medicine to treat an infection, or perform surgery, for example. But theology—discourse concerning God, his works, and his ways—is the purview of all Christians. In short, we believe everyone is a theologian; everyone thinks about God and responds in some way. Those whose lives have been changed by the gospel are drawn to know the God who saved us: faith seeking understanding. We envision a method where theology is done in community, illustrated in the book as a diverse group of people sitting around a table interacting with each other from their unique perspectives, focusing on the ways God has revealed himself. According to the Scripture, he has revealed himself in words, especially Scripture, the world created and sustained by the triune God, and supremely in the person and work of Jesus Christ. We call these three cords of revelation the Word to the World, the World of the Word, and the Word in the World.

Moore: I don’t want to suggest that co-authorship is like marriage, so I’ll say it is marriage-esque. Were there any particular challenges you found in doing this book together?

Kreider and Svigel: We wrote the book together, by which we mean that each of us worked on a single document, adding content, deleting some, editing each other’s words. When we read the final product, it’s sometimes hard for us to tell who wrote which words. In many cases, we literally completed each other’s sentences. After an initial first draft (which was completed very early in the life of the project), we sent it out for feedback from colleagues—men and women from various disciplines and theological traditions. Then we actually made substantive changes to the manuscript based on the invaluable input of over two dozen people. We’ve never done a book project quite like this. It wasn’t easy, but it was fun. The process of writing and revising the book was itself an exercise in the integrative, dialogical theological method we describe.

Moore: Would you give us an idea of how “theological method” finds differences across the three Christian traditions: Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox?

Kreider and Svigel: One key difference is the role of Scripture and authority. The Protestant doctrine of sola Scriptura affirms that Scripture is the only inerrant, verbally inspired revelation that exists today. It is the norming norm, no external authority stands in judgment over it. Thus, neither the decrees of a magisterium nor the writings of the Fathers have final authority. Scripture does. While classic Protestant theological method certainly draws on a variety of sources and resources in the believer’s discourse concerning God, his works, and his ways, as conservative Protestants, we confess the centrality of Scripture in theological method. Scripture isn’t the only means God has chosen to graciously reveal himself to humanity. However, most doctrinal and practical questions that concern Christian theology are most directly addressed in Scripture. We believe this Protestant attention to the words of Scripture prevents harmful theological innovation and doctrinal deviation.

Moore: Should local churches be talking about and equipping folks on theological method or is this something that only finds its rightful domain in the seminary?

Kreider and Svigel: We are convinced that churches should not merely be more intentional about teaching biblical content, they should be teaching people how to read the Bible, how to understand the insights of the Christian tradition, how to respond and interact with the cultural concerns of the day, and to recognize the insights of other disciplines. Biblical and theology teaching has often been separated and isolated from the arts, ministry, science, history, life experience, etc. When faced with questions or quandaries not directly addressed in Scripture, many average church-going Christians lack the tools to engage in a careful, critical integration of the various sources of truth available to believers who want to submit to the Lordship of Christ in the twenty-first century. This means learning from Scripture itself how to think theologically. And it means drawing on 2000 years of believers who have engaged in the same pursuit. To face the challenges of the present day, we desperately need to know how to faithfully draw on the truth revealed in what God has said, what God has created, and what God has done—and continues to do—through the Lord Jesus Christ. This primer was written as a very simple, practical, and readable handbook for the church, not just the “theologian.”

Moore: Would you guys each share an unlikely figure that has taught you some significant things about theological method? Since “all truths are God’s truths,” I’m thinking of non-theological figures like Freud and Nietzsche or theological figures like Tillich and Schleiermacher.

Kreider and Svigel: Some of my (Kreider) most influential figures, which some might think unlikely, have been artists, especially songwriters. I love when reading the Bible changes the way I view God or his work in the world. That happens regularly. And also love when a songwriter helps me to see in the Scripture what I had not seen, or to see God’s activity in the world in a new way, or to find ways to express the truth in a metaphor I had not considered previously. Students have heard me say often, a good lyricist can say in a few words what it takes me paragraphs to say. My list of such songwriters is long but it includes Andrew Peterson, Derek Webb, Jon Foreman, Brandi Carlile, and Bono.

And I (Svigel) have been deeply influenced by figures from church history—particularly Irenaeus of Lyons, Athanasius of Alexandria, Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, and John Calvin. Of course, these are all low-hanging fruit for theologians. It may surprise people that I’ve also been provoked and inspired by several non-theologians like the British Catholic novelist Graham Greene, the Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winning artist Bob Dylan, and even secular sci-fi authors like Asimov, Heinlein, Herbert, and Bradbury. But you asked for just one figure, so I’ll have to say Glenn Kreider probably provoked my thinking on theological method more than anybody else.

Moore: What are two or three things you hope your readers will take away from your book?

Kreider and Svigel: A renewed and growing love for Jesus Christ—that’s number one. Second, a confidence that they can join the conversation at the table of theological discourse concerning God, his works, and his ways, even if they begin by simply sitting and listening. Third, we want to ignite a passion to know God better, to serve him more faithfully, and to love others as Christ loves us.

Most everyone claims to be “biblical” when it comes to Christian convictions. If one listens carefully, however, one will grow weary with the confusion created by the term “biblical.” Complementarians say their view is biblical while egalitarians clap back with the same claim and the complementarians then go to social media to announce the egalitarians have a false hermeneutic. We could use the same illustration for all sorts of biblical claims: politics, church and state, soteriology, theologies of the atonement, and you know what I mean.

My long time friend and prolific writer, Ben Witherington III, sets out to ask and answer this question about a “Biblical theology” in his newest and big book, Biblical Theology: The Convergence of the Canon. For the length of the thing, and it’s long in pages and a bit small in print, the ppb price is nothing less than a steal.

He thinks of biblical theology as a discipline of examining and describing the Bible’s unified message about God and God’s redemptive work as it unfolds throughout the pages of the Bible and comes to fulfillment in the revelation of God in Christ — Father, Son, and Spirit. Thus, “biblical” is what the Bible says and “theology” is about the theological content of what the Bible says.

Ben’s major optics are these:

He examines God as the subject
He cares deeply about the symbolic narrative world of the Bible
He examines the sufficiency of “covenant”
He probes the value of the Reformation (and where it went wrong)
He knows its about theology, ethics and praxis

He’s well qualified to write a book like this. Very few are, fewer are willing.

He draws together some major conclusions and I will simply quote him:

What are some of the positive major insights or conclusions of this study? We may list the following:

(1) without a deep concern for careful contextual interpretation and the historical givenness of the text, much can go wrong when one attempts to do biblical theology. In particular, the OT must be allowed to have its own say, its own contribution to biblical theology, which is chiefly to provide us with a portrait of Yahweh, the creator God, and how he called and formed a people which came to be called Israel.

(2) Biblical theology also requires a commitment to a theology of progressive revelation. Really, protoTrinitarian and then Trinitarian thinking does not begin before the Christ event, and then only gradually does it become clear that even Binitarian thinking (a Godhead involving the Father and the Son) will not be adequate. The NT canon is progressively more Trinitarian the further one goes in the canon. This is not simply an evolutionary or chronological development, because some of the highest Christology is some of the earliest – for instance in Paul’s letters and perhaps in Hebrews as well.

(3) While covenantal theology is a very important part of biblical theology, it is critical to realize that with the exception of the New Covenant, none of those covenants were everlasting or permanent covenants, and it is incorrect to say that there has just been one covenant between God and his people, in many administrations. Furthermore, there are no unilateral or unconditional covenants in the Bible, either. Furthermore, HESED means mercy, not God’s tenacious loyalty to a particular covenant, say the Mosaic covenant. God is faithful to his character, and to his promises based on his character, but covenants come and go, are fulfilled or become obsolete until the new Christ-inaugurated and Christ-centered covenant appears.

(4) God’s grace, like God’s love, is not given with no thought of return. On the contrary it is intended to start an ongoing relationship and the recipient is expected to love God with his or her whole heart. Nor is grace, even in the NT, “perfected” in such a way that it becomes totally ‘perfected” in such a way that it becomes totally irresistible, such that we can deny there actually are apostasy texts in the Bible. This is not  even true of Pauline or Johannine theology, never mind biblical theology.

(5) Election and salvation, though interrelated matters, are not identical matters. For example, Christ is God’s chosen one, his anointed Elect One, but he does not need to be saved. Furthermore, in both the OT and the NT one can be among or a part of the elect people, and in the end not be saved. Furthermore, as we noted repeatedly, salvation in the OT does not refer to “salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.” Indeed, it often refers simply to God rescuing, redeeming from bondage, or healing some OT figure or group. One has to have an understanding of how the concept of salvation grew and developed as time went on and the canon grew larger.

(6) While covenantal nomism is an adequate way to speak about the Mosaic covenant, which was indeed inaugurated and sustained by God s grace, the New Covenant does not lack commandments or law, called the Law of Christ, so the old Protestant contrast between a law covenant and a grace covenant, or worse a God of law and judgment in the OT pitted over against a God of grace and redemption in the New Covenant, does no justice to either the OT or the NT, to either the Mosaic or the New Covenant.

(7) Finally, we used the word “convergence” in the subtitle precisely because all the pieces of a necessary full-fledged biblical theology do not emerge until all the lines of development about the Father, Son, and Spirit and redemption converge in the NT, and in particular from about the Gospel of John on in the NT, reading progressively through the canonical witness rather than just chronologically.