A brief history of the development of Biblical theology from Gabler to the present.

 

The past decade and a half have witnessed a tremendous amount of progress in evangelical scholarship on Biblical theology. Gabler claimed that a Biblical theology conceived along these lines would provide the historical and rational scientific framework enabling systematic theology to relate Biblical truths to contemporary life and thought. At its core, Gabler’s distinction between Biblical and systematic theology marks an important foundation stone to this day.

Biblical theology is an essentially historical discipline calling for an inductive and descriptive method. A distinction between Biblical and systematic theology needs to be maintained carefully if we are to provide an accurate description of the theology of the Biblical writers themselves. Some of us may find this to be a truism hardly worth stating. But as a survey of the last decade of Biblical theological research can show, the need to ground Biblical theology in careful historical work; to conceive of the discipline as essentially inductive and descriptive; and to distinguish Biblical from systematic theology continues to be relevant, even urgent, if the discipline is to continue its viability.

Also, works such as G. K. Beale’s New Testament Biblical Theology bear witness to the considerable degree of sophistication to which at least some of the evangelical practitioners of Biblical theology have attained. At the same time, there remains a need for scholars to be precise in defining what they mean when they claim to engage in Biblical-theological work and to distinguish carefully between Biblical and systematic theology. The notion of the Biblical metanarrative, in particular, holds considerable promise in anchoring the future of Biblical theology. At the same time, it will be important not to lose sight of the contribution of individual books of the Bible and of the variety of interrelated major and minor scriptural motifs. Biblical theology should remain a discipline where we would rather leave some loose ends untied than forcing them into a straitjacket and where interpreters are willing to heed the motto attributed to Albert Einstein, one of the most famous scientists of the past century: “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.”