We\u2019re in finals week here at Eastern University, so I am in testing\/grading mode. So here you go (all answers must be completed in the space provided):<\/p>\n
What do all of the following words have in common?<\/em><\/p>\n If you said, \u201cThey are all words that occur in the New Testament,\u201d I will give you partial credit (though I am largely still disappointed in you as a person). The full answer is:<\/p>\n The New Testament isn\u2019t simply \u201cpart 2\u201d of the Bible. Simply paying close attention to the Old will not lead you nicely to the New. Nor,\u00a0conversely, will the New Testament simply connect effortlessly to the Old.<\/p>\n These common New Testament words alert us that we have stepped into a world that is not simply a later version of the Old Testament world, but a different setting, with different sets of assumptions\u2014a different worldview.<\/p>\n The pressing theological challenge for Christian interpreters of such a diverse Bible is: \u201cWhat does it mean for this Bible to \u2018cohere\u2019 and what does \u2018coherence\u2019 even mean?\u201d By putting it that way, I have just described much of the diverse history of the Christian thinking about the Bible.<\/p>\n In an article written several years ago, Larry Helyer (following David Hubbard)\u00a0said:<\/p>\n . . . the train of revelation, at the end of the Old Testament period, enters an intertestamental tunnel. Upon reemerging in the New Testament period, it obviously carries additional cargo.<\/em>\u00a0(\u201cThe Necessity, Problems, and Promise of Second Temple Judaism,<\/a>\u201d JETS <\/em>47 [2004] 597).<\/p>\n I love that quote. It nails the problem of the\u00a0Bible pretty well.<\/p>\n What we read in the New Testament<\/a> is not simply a \u201ccontinuation\u201d of\u00a0the Old Testament<\/a>, as if we are bicycling through the Old Testament and into\u00a0the New without much of a change of scenery. Rather, we find ourselves in a very different land\u2014politically, culturally, religiously\u2014accompanied by an Old Testament that itself had been engaged and interpreted for several centuries\u00a0amid varying, changing, and tumultuous historical contexts\u2014thus taking on \u201cadditional cargo.\u201d<\/p>\n The New Testament authors, to put it differently, had an \u201cinterpreted Bible\u201d\u2014a Bible that had been subject to creative interpretive handling. \u00a0And that<\/em> Bible\u2014not a neutral one accessed through objective exegesis but passed on to them within the vagaries of human history\u2014formed the basis of their theological\u00a0reflections.<\/p>\n One example is Paul\u2019s \u201calready\/not yet\u201d eschatology\u2014i.e., the last days, the end (Greek eschaton<\/em>) was inaugurated<\/em> when Jesus died and rose from the dead but is not\u00a0consummated<\/em> until the Second Coming.<\/p>\n What exactly Paul meant by that is a debated\u00a0issue, to be sure, but my main\u00a0point here is that this \u201ctwo-stage eschatology\u201d was\u00a0not an innovation\u00a0in Paul\u2019s theology, nor did it drop out of heaven as some new piece of information<\/em>. Rather it is\u00a0dependent<\/em> to a significant degree on earlier Jewish thinking, most notably as found in the Dead Sea Scrolls.<\/p>\n Even\u00a0Geerhardus Vos<\/a> There is no escape from the conclusion that a piece of Jewish eschatology has been here by Revelation incorporated into the Apostle\u2019s teaching. Paul had none less than Jesus Himself as a predecessor in this. The main structure of the Jewish Apocalyptic is embodied in our Lord\u2019s teaching as well as in Paul\u2019s<\/strong>.<\/em>\u00a0<\/b>(The Pauline Eschatology<\/a> Paul and<\/em>\u00a0Jesus himself \u201cembody\u201d a Jewish eschatology that is strictly speaking not \u201cbiblical.\u201d (Side note: I\u2019ve always considered\u00a0Vos\u2019s unusual [for his conservative setting] sensitivity to historical context to be a byproduct of his doctoral training in \u201cArabic Studies,\u201d which is what they called \u201cOld Testament and ancient Near Eastern Studies\u201d back in the 19th c.)<\/p>\n Our theologically diverse Bible is a product of diverse historical settings. Getting our arms around all that\u2014developing a \u201cunified field theory\u201d of theology, where disparate factors can be synthesized somehow, continues to be a pressing project for Christian theology.<\/p>\n Failure to address the Bible\u2019s diverse witness amid diverse historical consequences quickly devolves to biblicism, to proof-texting.<\/p>\n The Bible demands\u2014and deserves\u2014better.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
These are words that all occur in the New Testament and either not at all or with significantly different meanings in the Old.<\/h2>\n
A key element of Paul\u2019s thinking is \u201cadditional cargo\u201d on the train as it emerged from the \u201cintertestamental tunnel.\u201d<\/h2>\n
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