What is biblical theology?

Our goal here at Faith Seeking Understanding is to equip Christians to build a biblical worldview, grounded in the Bible as a whole and integrated with knowledge from God’s creation, to know and serve him better. It should come as no surprise, then, that our first module would be on biblical theology, since developing the tools to study God’s word as a whole is a crucially important skill.

The term “biblical theology” is very broad, and Christians can mean quite different things by it. DA Carson once said that, “like apple pie, biblical theology is something most people find difficult to oppose… unlike apple pie, biblical theology is rather difficult to define.” We might take it to be about simply doing an overview of the story of the bible, or about the theology of the particular biblical authors, but in the sense we’re using it here biblical theology is about doing theology in the way the Bible as a whole does theology. In order to better understand what that means, we should start with a more basic question: is the Bible one thing, or many things? Well, it depends.

diversity, progression, unity

From one point of view, the Bible is an anthology of diverse literature, made up of more than 60 works, written or composed by different people, using different sources, at different times, with different purposes, and different audiences. When we treat the different books like this, and we try to understand what each author is trying to convey in their particular work, then we’re engaging in what is called exegetical theology — “exegesis” being the task of reading out the meaning of a text. When doing exegetical theology our primary question is, “what is the author doing here, in this work and this passage?”

Moving up a level, we recognize that all of these works are “windows” into an overarching story, about God’s plans and purposes in history, culminating in Jesus Christ. And like any story it is a progression, which is a mixture of unity and diversity: unity because it’s one story, and diversity because it is made up of different stages, one after the other. When we treat the Bible as one overarching story, and we try to understand this story in the way that the texts of the Bible are trying to convey it, then we’re engaging in biblical theology. In other words, when doing biblical theology our primary question is, “what is the whole Bible doing in this part of it?”

And finally, at the highest level, we have an absolute unity, where there is no progression but rather eternal truths about God and humanity that are equally true at all times. This is where systematic theology comes in — our aim is to combine what we know from the Bible with anything we can know from creation, to build a system of thinking about God and humanity as they are in themselves, not as they progress in a story. When doing systematic theology, our primary question is, “what is God revealing about himself, his actions, or the nature of creation?”

Based on history, but not exhausted by it

Even for those who are interested in biblical theology in this sense, there is still some debate over what exactly this means, rooted in a debate over how exactly the Bible reveals God’s plans. Generally speaking, the different views can be placed on a spectrum. On the one side, the Bible is seen as simply a means for conveying historical information, and biblical theology is therefore about reconstruction a complete historical description of events. On the other side, the Bible is seen as a purely theological work that has little or no concern for underlying historical events. We think the best approach is somewhere in the middle between these two extremes: the Bible speaks about God’s dealings with humanity in history, but it seeks to present those dealings in a certain light in order to teach and guide us as God’s people. A story, even when historical, is not merely a collection of facts, but a telling of those facts from a certain perspective for a particular purpose. Biblical theology is about developing tools to dig into the Bible’s perspective in order to understand what it seeks to communicate to us about God’s plans and purposes as they are revealed progressively in his dealings with humanity.

If that’s all too abstract for you, consider a simple example. In Leviticus, God lays out the fundamental categories of the Levitical system that’s designed to enable him live his people. Speaking to Aaron and the priests, he says: “You are to distinguish between the holy and the common, and between the unclean and the clean, and you are to teach the people of Israel all the statutes that the Lord has spoken to them by Moses.” (Leviticus 10:10) If you went back in time and looked at the nation with your eyes, you wouldn’t “see” these terms anywhere — you would see a bunch of people in tents moving back and forth from the tabernacle at the center of the nation, but unless you asked someone you wouldn’t know these categories existed or how they relate to one another. This is because they are technical vocabulary that the authors of the Bible use to describe the special situation in the nation of Israel. So later in the biblical story, when Israel have repeatedly rejected God, he is able to describe their rejection in these terms. Again, you wouldn’t have “seen” these terms if you were just looking at the events — you would just see God’s people repeatedly disobeying him. But when God describes Israel’s disobedience through Ezekiel, look at what he says: “Her priests have done violence to my law and have profaned my holy things. They have made no distinction between the holy and the common, neither have they taught the difference between the unclean and the clean, and they have disregarded my Sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them.” (Ezekiel 22:26b) Because of this callback, we’re able to understand that the disobedience of Israel amounts to a rejection of the life God had made possible with them back in Leviticus, and that this is the reason for their upcoming judgement.

We would miss this if we were only concerned with describing historical events, or if we were only interested in the theological picture of the Bible. In order to see this progression in the relationship between God and his people, we need to appreciate the way that relationship is presented in the story of the Bible itself. More generally, we need to see biblical theology as something based on history, but not exhausted by it.

Structures of biblical theology

It’s one thing to say that we should study the biblical story as a whole, and quite another thing to actually do it. The Bible is very large, made up of many interconnected themes and ideas, and it’s difficult to know how to make sense of it all. So, how do we proceed?

Any good structure needs to be built upon a solid foundation, and this is no less true of biblical theology. Before we can start engaging in biblical theology, we need first some tools for interpreting scripture, and second a working knowledge of what actually happens in the bible. Once we have these in place, the general strategy for biblical theology is to isolate and trace various themes throughout the Bible. Each theme will give us an incomplete picture of how the biblical story develops, but if we collect enough of these contours together we can begin to get a better grasp of the underlying story that connects them all together.

Now, not all themes look the same, but there are some common structures that a theme might exhibit. In our Intro to Biblical Theology module, we looked at three such structures: snapshots, cycles, and convergences.

The goal of a snapshot biblical theology is to pause at various points in the biblical story and notice how an idea develops between these “snapshots.” Using this we can piece together the progression of the themes connected to it.

The goal in a cyclic biblical theology is to notice a high-level cycle in the biblical story, and pay attention to how the two iterations of the cycle are similar and different.

The goal of a convergent biblical theology is to trace the development of two or more ideas in the bible, which start out as separate and loosely connected, and over the course of the story become intertwined with one another.

Interested in seeing how these work out? Then head on over to the module page and see for yourself!