The Limits of Biblical Theology

Abstract

WHAT usually spoken of as revival of Theology in our day might perhaps be described more correctly as a reappraisal of relation between two disciplines, Theology and Systematic Theology. We might indeed speak of a third phase in their relation. The first was that of old orthodoxy, for which two were virtually identical. Calvin's Institutes a clear instance of this. For him, justification of a theological statement to be found in exegesis of texts and only there. To present a systematic account of content of Scripture and to set forth Christian faith as it to be believed in writer's day,-these for him are one and same task. The Westminster Confession supports its doctrinal assertions by means of proof-texts chosen, with but little discrimination, from any and every book in Bible. The glory of Protestant dogmatics was that it was and not speculative; nor was it based on authority of Church, like that of Roman Catholicism. Where such presuppositions reigned, a moral issue like slavery was fought out within Church by appeal to passages. The second phase was work of Enlightenment, and it was introduced definitively by Johann Philipp Gabler in his inaugural address at Altdorf in 1787. Biblical he said, is historical in character and sets forth what sacred writers thought about divine matters; dogmatic theology, on contrary, didactic in character, and teaches what a particular theologian philosophically and rationally decides about divine matters, in accordance with his character, time, age, place, sect or school, and other similar influences. Here we have a clear discrimination between what said in Bible and what to be believed by Christian today. They are not necessarily opposed, they may even agree in fact, but exegesis of a book one thing and confession of personal faith another. Of course, once that standpoint had been adopted, further division of Theology into two disciplines, one dealing with Old Testament and other with New, became inevitable. Finally, exact determination of what the sacred writers thought about divine matters was held to require a Pauline, a Johannine Theology, and so on.1