Types and other tools

Now that we know what biblical theology is as well as how it relates to other forms of theology, the next question is how we actually go about doing it. In this lesson we go through a number of tools that can help us analyze the connections between parts of the biblical story, and thereby start piecing together a picture of the biblical portrait of a particular theme.

The Temple

After two lessons of introduction, we finally start with our first worked example of biblical theology: the temple. In this “snapshot” biblical theology we see how the temple is a theme that starts right at the beginning in the garden of Eden, and finishes right at the end in the new creation where God’s have no need for a temple. Along the way we see how the picture of the temple is unpacked as God’s people meditate more on what it means for the God of the universe to live among them.

Sanctification

You’ve probably heard of sanctification before, and been told it is all about our moral progress as God’s people. In this lesson we see that the biblical authors have something much deeper in mind, and that throughout the biblical story sanctification has to do with the presence of the holy God among his people. We see that the entire biblical story is a “cyclic” biblical theology of the sanctification of God’s people, and how Jesus drastically changed the shape of our sanctification.

God’s Spirit among his people

In our last lesson we study a “convergent” biblical theology, by looking at how God’s people and God’s Spirit start out as completely separate ideas, and as the biblical story unfolds we see how they converge on to one another. What does this mean for us now, as we wait for the day when God’s Holy Spirit will constitute our bodies?