The Growth of New Testament Theology

Abstract

The Old Testament is, from one point of view, primarily the X record of the growth of religious ideas among the Hebrews. Yet, despite the variety of the religious ideas of the Old Testament at different stages in Hebrew history, it is possible to speak of the theology of the Old Testament without the word ‘theology’ being just another name for religious development. This is because there are certain beliefs about God and man and their relationship one to the other as saviour and saved which characterise the Old Testament as a finished and complete whole, as an entity. From another point of view the Old Testament is the record of the divine revelation in salvation vouchsafed to Israel by her God. If God speaks now through Moses, now through Isaiah of Jerusalem, now through the nameless exilic prophet, at different times ‘by divers portions and in divers manners’, yet His revelation is basically ever the same. The essential unity of outlook and faith in the Old Testament, transcending its diversities, is a pointer to the genuineness of the revelation and a guarantee of its substantially correct though inevitably imperfect apprehension by those to whom it was granted.The differences within the Old Testament are, nevertheless, often more obvious than this basic theological unity. The opposite might be said of the New Testament. This is just what we should expect, because while the Old Testament spans many centuries, the New was completed within a matter of decades.