What is Biblical Theology?

Part 1

Think with me for a moment, in life we are continually meeting people and when we do we form opinions.  These opinions are formed from the impressions that were left on us. As time goes on though, these opinions change, they change because we have had time to ask and/or learn about their past or their personal history.  It is at this point we start to realize we didn’t have all the facts and that our initial impressions may have been misleading.  Well, the same goes for Christian Theology, we often form our initial beliefs based on the people we meet in the Bible.  We form an initial opinion based on their initial impression they have left on us or that we have derived from an initial action they might have been involved in. 

By diving deep into these biblical-theological studies, we can deepen our understanding by learning the history of the Bible from the beginning pages of Genesis all the way to the last pages of Revelation.  I would recommend staying sharp and taking notes.

We will now explore the discipline known as biblical theology.  Biblical theology is the branch of theology that explores how our faith grew throughout the history of the Bible.

Let’s ask ourselves this, what is biblical theology?  I want to break this question down into three parts so we can better understand its meaning.

1. Orientation – What does this terminology mean? And how can we understand it in a simpler form.
2. Developments – What directions have the development taken us throughout the course of history?
3. History and Exposure – We will explore how the history of the Bible has brought exposure to its truths that lie within.

Lets us start with Orientation.  A basic orientation is this: that theologians look at theology in 2 ways, one being in a broad sense and the other in a narrow sense.

Let’s break down the broad sense so we can come to an understanding that we can apply to our own individual thinking.  Looking at it from a broad sense is theology that stays true to the content of the Bible, any theology that accurately teaches the scriptures, being committed to the doctrine of “Sola Scriptura.” 

What “Sola Scriptura” means is the belief that the scriptures stand as the supreme final judge to all theological questions.

The second way theologians view scripture would be in a narrow sense, this method is usually looked at by contemporary theologians.  Looking at the theology from a narrow sense would be done in a more technical way; it validates the substance and main concerns of the scriptures.  Contemporary theologians don’t just look at what the Bible teaches, but they also look at how the Bible arranges its content or has organized its theology, which is the study of the nature of God.  This is the discipline of the contemporary theological way of theology.

There are many ways people look at scripture in a theological sense and contemporary theology is just one way.  I don’t want you to get stuck on just one way, seeing this may not be your preference.  I can assure you though by the end of this series you will have your method of choice.

There is one very popular form of biblical theology which is defined as such:

Biblical theology is the theological reflection drawn from the historical analysis of the acts of God reported in the scriptures.  We see three elements embedded in this definition.

1. Historical Analysis – based on the interpreted strategies in the scriptures
2. Acts of God – based on the historical analysis
3. Theological Reflection – based on the divine acts in the scriptures
4. In our orientation, we will explore the historical analysis. We will look at the acts of God and we will seek the divine acts of God, which will give us conclusions of theological reflection.

Throughout this series, we will make known some theological reflections that will come from exploring the scriptures.  But first in order for us to dive deep into the Mariana Trench of historical analysis let us learn the meaning of the Exegesis of Scriptures.

Exegesis means a critical explanation or the interpretation of the text, especially of scriptures.  So to learn the Exegesis of scripture we must do these three things:

1. We must do a Literary Analysis which is to look at the scriptures as a picture, we can look at a picture and literally analyze it.
2. We must do a Historical Analysis which is to look at the scriptures as if we were looking out a window to history, really see what it wants us to see.
3. We must look at it as Thematic which is looking at the scriptures as if we were looking in a mirror, what we literally have analyzed and learned from its history we know need to apply it to ourselves.

Thematic analysis is based on systematic theology and historical analysis is based on biblical theology.

Systematic theology: is a discipline of Christian theology that formulates an orderly, rational, and coherent account of the doctrines of the Christian faith.  It addresses issues such as what the Bible teaches about certain topics or what is true about God and His universe.  We use this to ultimately look at ourselves and apply the conclusive evidence we have derived from the Sola Scriptura.

Biblical theology is not concerned to state the final doctrines which go to make up the content of Christian belief, but rather to describe the process by which revelation unfolds and moves toward the goal which is God’s final revelation of His purposes in Jesus Christ.

These are two completely different methods of theology by contrast, but in the end, do complement one another by way of the truths and accuracies of their conclusions.