The Heartbeat of Old Testament Theology (Acadia Studies in Bible and Theology)

Three Creedal Expressions

Mark J. Boda, Evans, Craig A., Craig A. Evans

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780801030895
• eBook ISBN: 9781493406722
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

This volume explores the theological heartbeat of the Old Testament by examining three big ideas that communicate the Old Testament's redemptive theology. Highly respected scholar Mark Boda shows how three creedal expressions--the narrative, character, and relational creeds--recur throughout the Old Testament and express its core redemptive theology, in turn revealing how the redemptive pulse of God expands to all of creation. He also traces these redemptive and creational pulses into the New Testament and shows their relevance for today's Christian community.

1
Taking the Pulse of Old Testament Theology

Past and Present

I am a person who likes to track progress, and in no place is that more important to me than at my local gym, where two or three times a week I mount an elliptical trainer for a thirty-minute workout. This machine is a high-tech wonder, tracking my steps, distance, and most important of all, my heartbeat. By my grasping two handles this elliptical trainer reads the speed of my heartbeat. At the end of my workout a summary report shows how long I trained within the optimum pulse rate for my size and age. In the normal pace of life I don’t even notice my heartbeat, but through the miracle of technology I am able to take my pulse. My elliptical trainer identifies my heartbeat as a single rhythm, but more sophisticated instruments, such as a stethoscope or an EKG monitor, reveal that multiple rhythms compose my heartbeat.

I invite you to don your theological stethoscope and listen for the heartbeat that represents the very core of the theology of the OT. We are not the first to practice biblical cardiology. The OT and NT themselves provide evidence that the writers of the Scriptures were interested in taking the heartbeat of the biblical witness, whether that was Zechariah identifying the heartbeat of the prophets (Zech. 1:3–4) or Jesus the heartbeat of the law and the prophets (Matt. 7:12). Even the history of scholarship in the twentieth century provides a helpful case study as we begin to take the pulse of OT theology.

The past century of biblical scholarship bears witness to the rising and falling, revising and fracturing of the discipline of OT theology, sometimes foreshadowing, oftentimes paralleling, the dominant hermeneutical agenda of the times. With the supremacy of diachronic presuppositions and methodologies at the beginning of the twentieth century, it is not surprising that OT theology had in large part been silenced across the OT guild in favor of the study of the history of religion. Taking their lead from Wellhausen’s work in the late nineteenth century, OT scholars used the biblical text mainly as a source for accessing the religious ideology of the ancient Hebrew people as it evolved from nature religion to its heights in prophetic monotheism before its demise in priestly legalism.1

A loosening of the diachronic stranglehold on the study of the OT in the period between the World Wars prompted the revival of OT theology. Although the historical study of the Hebrew people, religion, and literature had laid bare the historical context of the OT, it was time to allow the ancient texts once again to speak theologically. In a way, this shift from the history of religion to OT theology foreshadowed the mid-twentieth-century shift from diachronic to synchronic hermeneutical paradigms, represented in New Criticism and Structuralism.2

There are examples in the second half of the twentieth century of an approach to OT theology more akin to classic Christian systematic theology, focusing on categories such as theology (God), anthropology (humanity), soteriology (salvation), and eschatology (future state).3 At the same time there are others who continued to approach OT theology through the lens of history of religions.4 However, these approaches have been overshadowed by four key figures who dominated the discipline in the second half of the twentieth century: Walther Eichrodt, Gerhard von Rad, Brevard Childs, and Phyllis Trible.5 Eichrodt focused on covenant as the central theme of OT theology. Von Rad leveraged the development of traditions in the OT to trace key streams in OT theology. Childs attended to the canon of the OT to identify the shape of OT theology. Trible sought to shift focus from text to reader and the hermeneutical framework for reflection on OT theology.

Eichrodt is representative of a series of thematic approaches that emerged in the second half of the twentieth century and beyond. His approach is best described as a cross-section thematic approach, one that structures OT theology around a theme or topic that lays bare “the inner structure of religion.”6 This entails selectivity, as the OT theologian is searching for (a) prominent idea(s). Others have adopted a thematic approach without limiting themselves to a single theme. Terrien’s presence versus absence, Hanson’s teleological versus cosmic, and Westermann’s deliverance versus blessing are representative of many who have used two contrastive themes to structure OT theology.7 At the core of Brueggemann’s courtroom approach to OT theology lies the dialectic of core testimony versus countertestimony, which produces a “tension” that “belongs to the very character and substance of OT faith” and that “precludes and resists resolution.”8 Many, however, have adopted a multiplex thematic approach along the lines advocated by Gerhard Hasel.9 This approach eschews any limitations on themes traced through the OT, encouraging reflection on any and all themes that arise from OT exegesis.10

Von Rad’s approach is representative of a series of approaches that have been called diachronic. Von Rad focused on the development of the historical traditions (including the premonarchial traditions of Genesis–Joshua and the monarchial traditions that follow) and the prophetic traditions of Israel.11 In tracing the historical traditions, von Rad showcases not only his diachronic approach to interpreting the text (sensitive to the development of the text over time) but also the diachronic dimension of the content of the text (sensitive to the presentation of a salvation history).12 This attention to diachronic development for writing OT theology can also be discerned in the work of Christoph Barth, although he focuses on the presentation of a salvation history with little interest in the development of the text over time.13 Geerhardus Vos also fits within this approach even though he focuses more on the presentation of revelatory history, which he identifies as inseparable from redemptive history.14 His revelatory history is twofold: the Mosaic epoch and the prophetic epoch, with the first focused on revelation and events associated with the era of Moses and the second on events associated with the era of the prophets, understood particularly as guardians of the theocratic kingdom ruled by the monarch.

Brevard Childs structures his OT theology according to the canonical identity of the text.15 Those who have followed Childs’s lead have adopted one of the thematic approaches articulated above, usually a multiplex approach. Childs focused on the final form of the text with attention to the unique witness of the OT before bringing it into conversation with NT theology to produce a Biblical Theology. Elmer Martens has suggested an intertextual approach that focuses on the many intertextual links (allusions to characters, episodes, vocabulary) between canonical texts in the OT.16 Paul House and Waltke and Yu also focus on the final form of the text, but they focus attention particularly on the theological witness of the individual books within the OT.17 Others have given attention to the theological witness within specific sections of the OT canon and/or according to the overall shape of the OT canon.18

In recent years, however, one can discern a significant shift toward ideological approaches to OT theology. Phyllis Trible signaled this shift long ago when she called biblical theologians to take biblical hermeneutics more seriously.19 Ideological approaches abandon the façade of objective description of OT theology and embrace contemporary identities that provide a lens through which to view the text. The scholarship traced by Leo Perdue in his helpful volume highlights the diversity of approaches that have emerged from this hermeneutical shift, including liberation, ethnic, feminist, mujerista, womanist, Jewish, postmodern, and postcolonial biblical interpretation and theology.20

Whereas the diachronic focus of biblical studies at the beginning of the century, with its emphasis on the evolution of religion in Israel, left little room for expressing a unified theology in the OT, the synchronic methods of the middle part of the century that began with great intentions of a synthetic unity increasingly contributed to the disunity of the OT as a corpus, first through tracing multiple tradition streams, later through investigating multiple themes, and ultimately through consideration of the unique perspectives of the various books. The geometric expansion of themes and claims resulted in the hermeneutical fatigue of postfoundational OT theology and the conclusion that OT theology wa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Preface
• 1. Taking the Pulse of Old Testament Theology
• 2. The Narrative Rhythm
• 3. The Character Rhythm
• 4. The Relational Rhythm
• 5. Integrating the Creedal Rhythms
• 6. Creation and the Creedal Rhythms
• 7. Taking the Old Testament Pulse in the New Testament
• 8. Taking the Old Testament Pulse in the Christian Life
• 9. Postscript
• Appendix
• Works Cited
• Index of Modern Authors
• Index of Scripture
• Index of Subjects
• Back Cover