What Is Biblical Theology? And Do We Need It?

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - For the next three days,

00:00:06.000 | we welcome to the Ask Pastor John podcast,

00:00:08.280 | a guest, Dr. Don Carson.

00:00:10.720 | He was with us at the end of June

00:00:12.760 | with a valuable perspective on the SCOTUS decision

00:00:15.480 | to legalize same-sex marriage in all 50 states.

00:00:18.520 | You can find that special episode in the Ask Pastor John app

00:00:21.680 | and Dr. Carson, thank you for coming back.

00:00:23.520 | I want to shift gears from recent events

00:00:26.360 | to ancient trajectories and for the next few days,

00:00:29.680 | I want to talk about biblical theology,

00:00:31.280 | one of your specialties.

00:00:33.040 | Let's start with a definition.

00:00:35.160 | What is biblical theology

00:00:37.280 | and why does it matter for us as Christians today?

00:00:41.400 | - The term biblical theology is used differently

00:00:43.700 | by different people, but as I use it,

00:00:45.600 | it has two or three different foci.

00:00:48.920 | In one focus, you work really carefully

00:00:51.960 | with each biblical book or corpus, by corpus,

00:00:55.160 | I mean something like the John corpus,

00:00:57.000 | John for second, third John revelation,

00:00:58.900 | or the synoptic corpus, or the Pauline corpus,

00:01:01.520 | or something like this.

00:01:02.400 | You work carefully with each particular book or corpus

00:01:06.160 | to make sure you understand what God is saying

00:01:09.880 | through that corpus at that time in history

00:01:13.240 | with what words, vocabulary, and so on,

00:01:16.180 | before you ask what contribution

00:01:18.440 | it's making to the entire canon.

00:01:20.120 | In other words, biblical theology is interested

00:01:22.600 | in the careful exegesis of individual books and corpora

00:01:27.720 | within the canon and their place

00:01:30.220 | in the progress of redemption,

00:01:32.300 | not because it wants to despise systematic theology

00:01:36.780 | or canonical theology or big picture stuff,

00:01:39.580 | but it insists that if you don't ask

00:01:41.900 | those kinds of questions, you can sometimes blur over

00:01:45.440 | distinctions that God himself has placed in scripture

00:01:47.980 | and miss things that are a bit different.

00:01:52.500 | Even the most casual reader of scripture

00:01:54.420 | knows that John's vocabulary is not the same as Matthew's.

00:01:57.760 | And Paul's vocabulary is not the same as Peter's

00:02:00.120 | in 1 Peter.

00:02:01.360 | And their emphases are a bit different and so on.

00:02:03.840 | They're mutually complementary, they tie together,

00:02:06.160 | but if you work only at the canonical or systematic level,

00:02:10.900 | then there tends to be a very important set of inferences

00:02:15.300 | about what the whole Bible teaches, that's right,

00:02:17.520 | but sometimes at the expense of listening carefully

00:02:19.820 | to the particular emphases of particular biblical books.

00:02:22.380 | And ideally, a good preacher will not only handle

00:02:26.480 | the individual text at hand, but show how this text at hand,

00:02:30.680 | not in every sermon, but in some sermons,

00:02:33.060 | is tied to the book or corpus in question,

00:02:35.220 | and then it's tied to the whole

00:02:36.280 | Christian confessional stance.

00:02:38.020 | Now that's one form of biblical theology.

00:02:40.640 | And from this comes New Testament theology

00:02:42.760 | and Old Testament theology and so on.

00:02:45.480 | The other form of biblical theology tracks themes

00:02:49.640 | that run right through the whole Bible.

00:02:52.000 | There are about 20 biggies, give or take,

00:02:54.800 | and 50, 60, 70 small ones that aren't quite so prominent

00:02:59.800 | or don't touch quite so many books.

00:03:02.400 | But the biggies include things like Jerusalem

00:03:04.720 | and temple and atonement and sacrifice and priesthood

00:03:09.720 | and covenant and kingdom and so on and so on and so on.

00:03:14.720 | And they really do run right through much of Scripture

00:03:19.720 | and tie it together.

00:03:21.840 | And biblical theology makes you alert to those trajectories,

00:03:26.840 | those lines, those ligaments that tie together

00:03:30.440 | the whole of canon.

00:03:32.000 | And it's helpful for the ordinary Bible reader

00:03:34.340 | to be reading, let's say, Ezekiel,

00:03:37.320 | and to knowing where you are on the trajectory

00:03:40.260 | of what the Bible says about temple

00:03:42.420 | to figure out where you are on the storyline.

00:03:44.800 | It's part of what ties things together.

00:03:47.440 | And so even when it comes to things like

00:03:51.160 | preaching Christ in all the Scriptures

00:03:52.920 | and Christocentric preaching and things like that,

00:03:55.640 | the way you get there is not by some imaginative,

00:03:59.120 | topical imposition of later material,

00:04:02.180 | but it's by following the trajectories

00:04:03.960 | that are actually in Scripture

00:04:05.680 | and that do trace the way through Scripture

00:04:08.760 | to bring you to Jesus Christ.

00:04:10.780 | And to understand how those work, I think,

00:04:14.400 | is hugely helpful.

00:04:17.600 | It increases our faith.

00:04:18.680 | It makes us see the wisdom of God

00:04:21.120 | in unfolding Scripture in these ways.

00:04:23.440 | And we sometimes, as we see these things

00:04:28.040 | unpacked before our eyes, bow in worship

00:04:31.040 | as we begin to glimpse something of the mind of God

00:04:35.360 | and putting these things together.

00:04:36.960 | When individual writers along the line

00:04:39.920 | themselves could not see all that they were contributing to,

00:04:44.480 | even if they could see the current bit

00:04:46.760 | where God was using their words to speak to us

00:04:50.880 | with infallible truth.

00:04:52.560 | - Yes, and amen, it's beautiful.

00:04:54.080 | And this is a burden that you feel,

00:04:56.080 | and it led you to edit the NIV Zondervan Study Bible,

00:05:00.060 | which releases next month.

00:05:02.360 | The major contribution that this Bible seems to make

00:05:05.040 | is that it focuses on a whole Bible, biblical theology

00:05:08.880 | for personal Bible reading.

00:05:11.000 | And as I look at it, the Bible closes

00:05:13.080 | with a wonderful collection of essays to this end.

00:05:15.920 | So why is a study Bible that focuses

00:05:18.220 | on a whole Bible, biblical theology, as you've explained,

00:05:21.760 | why is that so important for lay readers?

00:05:23.860 | - Well, it really is important to see

00:05:26.600 | that the best study Bibles,

00:05:28.320 | even when they're written from slightly different

00:05:30.360 | vantage points, have more in common

00:05:31.920 | than they have in difference, in contradistinction.

00:05:35.240 | A good study Bible devotes its notes

00:05:38.500 | to explaining difficult things in the text,

00:05:40.200 | explaining what's going on,

00:05:41.660 | and trying to keep the language simple

00:05:43.160 | and avoiding too many technicalities.

00:05:44.760 | And so that as you read the Bible,

00:05:46.480 | there is enough introduction to explain

00:05:48.120 | when the book was written and so on.

00:05:49.480 | All study Bibles do that.

00:05:51.680 | And there are some very good study Bibles out there.

00:05:55.120 | So there's no way I want to push this study Bible

00:05:58.020 | as if it's the be all and the end all in study Bibles,

00:06:00.440 | but it does emphasize biblical theology.

00:06:03.360 | That is to say, not only in the notes,

00:06:06.160 | but in, as you mentioned, 28 or 30 essays at the end,

00:06:09.400 | we are trying to track out

00:06:12.720 | how certain dominant themes

00:06:15.840 | run right through the whole Bible

00:06:17.280 | to enable readers to see where they are in the Bible

00:06:20.700 | at any particular point, and thus put it all together.

00:06:23.560 | Now, another study Bible might use the final pages

00:06:27.260 | to build a whole systematic theology,

00:06:29.280 | and I won't criticize that.

00:06:30.720 | That too needs to be done.

00:06:32.580 | And so they rush, as it were,

00:06:34.560 | immediately to creating a whole confessional stance

00:06:37.060 | out of the Bible.

00:06:37.900 | And it is good to read the Bible in such a way

00:06:40.060 | as to see how the various parts

00:06:41.680 | contribute to the big picture theology.

00:06:45.360 | But on the other hand,

00:06:46.200 | sometimes Christians find it hard to see

00:06:48.580 | how you move from exegesis of particular chapters

00:06:52.960 | all the way to big picture theology

00:06:55.280 | without seeing how you get there.

00:06:58.120 | And the way you get there is through the tracking out

00:07:01.880 | of these particular emphases in biblical books

00:07:04.840 | and then in these trajectories or these typologies,

00:07:07.040 | these ligaments, these tendons

00:07:09.680 | that tie the whole Bible together

00:07:11.240 | until you see how the big picture

00:07:13.000 | is actually coming together.

00:07:14.480 | And that's what this NIV study Bible is trying to do.

00:07:19.180 | - Yeah, well, it's a noble goal,

00:07:20.640 | and I don't think anyone is better qualified

00:07:22.320 | to lead a team to this end.

00:07:23.720 | Thank you, Dr. Carson, for your work on the study Bible.

00:07:26.480 | It's officially titled the NIV Zondervan Study Bible,

00:07:30.280 | edited by T.A. Carson,

00:07:32.200 | not to be confused with the NIV study Bible.

00:07:35.000 | It's the NIV Zondervan Study Bible.

00:07:38.160 | And the Bible traces out themes

00:07:39.560 | throughout the comments and the text,

00:07:41.020 | and then ends with 28 essays

00:07:42.800 | on the most important biblical theological themes,

00:07:45.620 | including the temple.

00:07:47.140 | And we have run out of time,

00:07:48.560 | but I want Dr. Carson and you to come back tomorrow

00:07:50.720 | and show us how biblical theology works.

00:07:53.200 | We know how it's defined.

00:07:54.440 | Now we want you to show us

00:07:55.640 | how it actually works in the text.

00:07:57.960 | And I want you to show us specifically

00:08:00.360 | from the example of the temple as one theme

00:08:02.920 | and why it's so central to the Bible

00:08:05.120 | and how it develops throughout the Bible.

00:08:07.360 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:08:08.560 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast

00:08:11.060 | with guest Don Carson.

00:08:12.620 | (soft music)

00:08:15.040 | (soft music)

00:08:17.460 | (soft music)

00:08:19.880 | you

What Is Biblical Theology? And Do We Need It?

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