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[B]iblical and Old Testament theology are marked by disagreement and debate. This should not surprise us. In the course of more than two centuries, disagreements are bound to emerge regarding the nature and task of any area of academic inquiry, as they have in our case. The reasons for disagreement are not only academic. According to one biblical theologian, “the current crisis in church and theology” could explain why biblical theolo...

Yesterday, I published a post called “Treier on Biblical Theology and the Theological Interpretation of Scripture.” There continues to be a discussion about the definitions of both “Biblical Theology” and “Theological Interpretation of Scripture” with some overlaps. Today, Scot McKnight posted his own definition of the Theological Interpretation of Scripture in his post “Ancient-Future Interpretation 1...

‘Biblical theology’ has long influenced modern theological method, especially Protestant, as both boon and bane. Its role has been seen as either pivotal or problematic in the attempt to construe the Christian Bible as scripture with unified teaching for the contemporary church. The attempt to unfold biblical teaching as having organic unity, related to an internal structure of theological concepts, is frequently perceived as a failure, a has...

Evangelical definitions [of Biblical Theology] incorporate the following elements: Biblical theology confines itself to the Bible. Thus, it is canonical in scope. Biblical theology seeks to trace the progressive unfolding of God’s revelation through time and space. Thus, it is descriptive and historical in method. Biblical theology seeks to summarize the basic teachings of the Bible in regard to its theological content (i.e., what it teach...

Biblical theology is something new, in the sense that it is searching for something that is not already known. Biblical theology is not, at least according to its implicit assumptions, something already laid down in a past or ancient tradition: in this sense it belongs to a different category from (say) Calvinist theology or Anglican theology. The theology of the Bible, as most modern biblical scholarship has envisaged it, is something that has s...

The name “biblical theology” is often misunderstood because it is not always appreciated that it is a technical term that refers to a particular way of doing theology. Thus some evangelicals will speak of biblical theology as that which contrasts with unbiblical or liberal theology. Therefore it needs to be stressed that we use the term formally to designate theology, not as a statement of what Christians believe now about any given t...

We have seen that the study of the New Testament involves three disciplines in particular: literature, history and theology. They are, as it were, among the armies that use the New Testament as a battleground. Many of the debates which have occupied scholars as they have crossed the terrain of gospels and epistles have not been so much the detailed exegesis of this or that passage, but the larger issues as to which view of history, or of theology...

[I]t should be clear that we cannot simply lump all the books of the New Testament together indiscriminately and use them as a quarry for the stones, which we shall use to build our edifice. It would be possible to create a compilation of theological statements from the New Testament that has nothing more than a harmonizing assembly of quotations taken at random from any of its books. Such an approach would wrench the statements out of their cont...

The question inevitably arises concerning how far we are to repeat what the New Testament writers have said and how far we are to interpret it. Is our primary concern with “what they meant” or with “what they mean”? There is no substitute for pursuing the former question. We must make a sincere attempt to find the meaning the authors conveyed when they wrote their books in their own historical situations. But, of course, a...

[O]ur New testament authors were not attempting to write a ‘theology’, but were engaged in apologetic and dialogue. The real problem with talking about ‘New Testament theology’, however, is that it suggests something static and complete, whereas what we have in the New Testament is a number of different people all ‘doing theology’ in different situations. We do not have an inanimate corpse, labelled ‘New ...