Biblical versus Systematic Theology

I spent a little time these last few days reviewing the debates over biblical versus systematic theology that have taken place these last few hundred years. I remember studying some of this at Asbury but it didn't stick very well. I thought I'd outline the debate here this weekend. My main sources are George Eldon Ladd's A Theology of the New Testament, Frank Thielman's fairly recent Theology of the New Testament, and the volume Between Two Horizons that I believe was the pilot for a new commentary series, the Two Horizons series (Joel Green is one of the editors). Ladd's summary of the history of debate was the most helpful.

I've tried to simplify the debates by placing various positions on a spectrum, but I've had to use two spectra. One spectrum is that of whether the Bible or doctrine is seen as the final authority. The other is whether the Bible is taken literally or appropriated in some other way.

Here's the spectrum:

Medieval Period: Bible often not taken literally, authority subordinated to the theology of the Church.

Problem: the theology of the Church acquired a number of features in strong contrast to the Bible and the players of the Reformation found these objectionable.

Reformation: Bible taken literally, theology of the church subordinated to the Bible

Problem: The Reformers did not really know how to read the Bible literally. For example, Melanchthon thought of Romans as a compendium of Christian theology without recognizing its place in the flow of the first century church. John Calvin interpreted the OT prophets as if they had a Christian theology. Thus to a significant degree they also subordinated the Bible to their theology, although they at least tried to do the opposite.

J. P. Gabler (1787): the "father" of biblical theology. He strongly distinguished biblical theology from dogmatics. Biblical theology is only about what the Bible meant originally. Systematic theology is something completely different because it operates from an ideological structure that the Bible itself does not have. All biblical theology from here out at least aims to interpret the Bible literally in its original contexts.

Problem: This distinction has led to an "ugly ditch" (Lessing) between the Bible and theology so that never the twain will meet. On the one hand, we cannot simply dismiss the issue. The Biblical texts do indeed have distinguishable theologies. An Old or New Testament theology is not off base to divide itself into distinct sections, "Pauline Theology," "Johannine Theology." Sometimes the "unity" found in the "diversity" has not turned out to be extensive in some of these studies. In the end, we cannot wish away the distinctiveness of the biblical texts with a joke.

At its worst, however, the biblical theology approach led even beyond a complete atomism of individual biblical theologies to the programmes of William Wrede (early 1900's) and Heiki Raisanen, which don't even construct a biblical theology but rather try to place the biblical books within Christianity as a religion among other religions in the first century world.

However interesting such a study might be, it is not what Christianity really needs the Bible for. And Christianity does not most need a run down of the individual theologies in the Bible. We most need a theology of God, a theology of Christ, a theology of salvation, etc...

A number of approaches to this dilemma of Bible versus theology have surfaced over the years:

Gabler/Liberal Theology/Bultmann
What these three approaches have in common is that they find some core to the Bible that also applies to today. For Gabler, as a child of the 1700's Enlightenment, it was pure, core spiritual truth amidst the Bible's particularity. For liberal theologians like Ritschl, Harnack, etc. it was the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of humanity. For Bultmann, it was the existentialist possibility of authentic existence "rising from the dead" meaninglessness of the world.

Problem: These are not clearly Christian connections. They certainly do not give us anything close to the beliefs and practices of historic Christianity.

Evangelical Hermeneutics
Evangelical hermeneutics, in one version, looks for the timeless principles in time-bound biblical texts. As Duvall and Hays put it, we measure the width of the river between "their town" and "our town" and then cross the principalizing bridge.

Problem: The first problem is that the evangelical approach often seems to underestimate the diversity of the biblical texts. Ingenious interpretive moves are sometimes made to make the biblical texts come out in line with Christian orthodoxy. We have witnessed this same tendency across the years in everyone from Theodore Zahn to Martin Kahler to Donald Guthrie perhaps to Ladd and I. Howard Marshall.

The second problem at least begins to be addressed by individuals like Oscar Cullmann.

Heilsgeschichte (Salvation History)
A second problem with the evangelical approach as it is sometimes practiced is a failure to take into account the real development of thinking between the testaments and beyond. Oscar Cullmann's "salvation history" approach (he was not the first) manages diversity among the biblical texts by placing them within an overarching, God-directed developmental scheme.

Problem: This is not really progressive revelation. We do see real changes in understanding between the OT and NT that do not completely fit this model (e.g., on the afterlife).

Canonical Criticism
Brevard Childs is a name that stands at the border of the so called crisis in biblical theology at the end of the 60's. R. Grant suggested that biblical theology as it had been practiced could never reach theology and was thus dead.

Into this mix Brevard Childs pointed in a profitable direction when he began to formulate biblical theology in terms of the canon as a whole. Here is the clear acknowledgement that biblical theology is properly guided by Christian concerns. Christian concerns cannot change the original meaning of the Bible, but they can shape the questions we ask of the Bible.

So when Christians approach biblical theology, they do not aim at reconstructing Christianity as an ancient religion among others, as Wrede and Raisanen sought to. It is looking to the canon. Here we remember Barth's challenge at the beginning of his Dogmatics: "dogmatics does not ask what the apostles and prophets said but what we must say on the basis of the apostles and prophets" (I.1). Biblical theology is interested in what the apostles and prophets said, but in preparation for what we must say.

Fusing the Horizons
Joel Green and others, echoing I believe the notions of Hans Georg Gadamer, have suggested we take an organic approach to the topic. We don't deny the historical particulars of the biblical text but we recognize its theological particulars too and, more importantly, that we are theologians too. I will confess that I find the description of how this works vague in Between Two Horizons. I assume that this in part is because the fusing of the two worlds does not take place in accordance in any predictable way.

Thoughts
I do not find any of these attempts to join biblical theology with doctrine fully satisfying, although I like elements of all of them.

1. We can't change the original meanings of the texts. They meant what they meant. period.

2. Christian orthodoxy is also very stable and certain to varying degrees: dogmas are bedrock, doctrines are solid ground, then denominational distinctives are far more negotiable.

3. There is diversity within the biblical canon. It does not fit entirely into a planned developmental scheme. However, some form of progressive revelation seems necessary to account for it.

4. As Christians, our appropriation of the Bible's theology is not simply a matter of original meaning, but we approach and appropriate the text as Christians, as members of the universal Church of the ages. Thus we are interested in the books of the canon and we engage with them in believers in the dogmas and doctrines of Christendom.

5. We do meet God in these texts, but here we must bring in a strong sense of the Spirit. The fusings that count, the sacramental ones, are the ones guided by the Holy Spirit.