New Directions in Biblical Theology

Defining 'biblical theology''When 1 use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean-neither more nor less.' (L.Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, chapter 6) Students seeking to discover what is meant by 'biblical theology' may be pardoned for concluding that many scholars are as arbitrary as Humpty Dumpty in their use of the term.There appears to be no commonly agreed definition of what constitutes 'biblical theology'.They may well be surprised to find that some appear to hold that biblical theology did not exist before 1787, and equally surprised to discover that others believe that on a strict definition here can be no such thing as a biblical theology today. 1 What is the problem?Why cannot biblical theology just mean what it says (to come back to Alice)? 'Biblical' comes from the word 'Bible', which comes from the Greek to biblia ('the books'), via the Latin biblia ('the book'), and which in this context means the books of the OT and NT recognized as canonical Scripture by the Christian church.Theology deals with theos, meaning 'God', and by common consent this includes God's relation to the world and to humankind.The ending -logy, from the Greek logos, used in this way means the ordered, systematic, rational, scientific study of a subject.Biblical theology thus ought to mean something like the ordered study of what the Bible has to say about God and his relations to the world and humankind.The Christian church has always accepted the revelation of God in the Scriptures as in some sense normative for its faith and life.To us it seems obvious that the teaching of the Bible has to be appropriated and applied in each new age.The Bible was written over a one-thousandyear period in times in many ways very different from our own.Theology is the discipline which asks what the Bible has to say to us today.Some people have used the term 'biblical theology' to mean such a system of Christian doctrine based on the Bible, a 'theology that accords with the Bible' (Ebeling).2 Thus Karl Barth's theology could well be described as 'a biblical theology'.This use of the term is really redundant, however, for all forms of Christian theology claim to be in some way based on, or in accord with, the Bible.The theology which the church has to work out in each new age is better designated as 'dogmatic theology' (Barth called his work Church Dogmatics) or 'systematic theology'.Much more common is the use of 'biblical theology' to mean the theology of the Bible itself, 'the theology contained in the Bible' (Ebeling).What we may not realize, however, and what 1 On the history of biblical theology see