The Endangered and Reaffirmed Promises of God: A Fruitful Framework for Biblical Theology

Abstract

Traditional ways of understanding the relationship between the First and Second Testaments of the Christian Bible have proven untenable both theologically and historically. Theologically, they have had at their foundation a supersessionistic stance over against biblical Israel and Judaism, and have often proffered an unsustainable claim of triumph over evil and suffering. Historically, historical-critical interpretation has rendered a straightforward reading of the First Testament as pointing toward the coming of Jesus problematic. This article proposes that seeing the relationship between the Testaments in light of the literary and theological rubric of God's endangered and reaffirmed promises overcomes many of these problems. It yields a fruitful basis for a biblical theology that acknowledges that both the story of Jesus and the church and the story of Israel and Judaism involve a mix of faithful response to God's promises, fundamental struggle with their endangerment, and common hope for their reaffirmation.