Introducing Old Testament Theology

Creation, Covenant, and Prophecy in the Divine-Human Relationship

W. H. Bellinger

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781540961471
• eBook ISBN: 9781493420551
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

A senior scholar and teacher with four decades of classroom experience offers a concise, student-level theology of the entire Old Testament. W. H. Bellinger Jr. uses ancient Israel's confession of faith, the Psalms, to introduce the sweep of Old Testament theology: creation, covenant, and prophecy. He shows how these three theological dimensions each entail a portrayal of God and invite a human response to God. Bellinger also discusses how to appropriate Old Testament theology for contemporary life.

1
Beginnings

For many people, the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible is a terribly neglected, even lost, source of faith. Brent Strawn has suggested that the Old Testament is dying, much like a language might, and he proposes ways to reinvigorate it as an authority for life and faith.1 This volume likewise seeks to provide a basis for reading this Hebrew text as a powerful document and for studying it from theological perspectives.

The theological study of the Older Testament has a long tradition in the history of Christian theology and, differently, in Judaism. This history is a gift, and from it contemporary readers and students can learn a great deal about approaches used in the theological study of these texts and about the theological import of particular texts. There is a sense in which this history of scholarship forms a narrative that contemporary readers can enter and participate in as part of the story of Old Testament theology. It is important to recount that narrative so that all of us, author and readers alike, can take our place in that story. Our current entry into the story comes at a time of fraught opportunity for readers of these texts. While a number of publications have recently contributed to the theological study of the Older Testament, the judgment of Walter Brueggemann from 1985 still holds true: “The organization of an Old Testament theology is clearly now a quite open and unresolved question. The comprehensive designs of Walther Eichrodt and Gerhard von Rad are now found wanting and we must find a new shape.”2 Finding a way forward is important for a number of reasons.

The Bible relates to theological matters in a variety of ways, and the Older Testament is most of the Bible. Most Christian and Jewish readers come to these texts primarily for reasons related to faith or theology. The organization chosen for such theological reflection is no small matter and requires the use of all the resources at hand. A central resource is the story of the discipline of Old Testament theology.

The story has its beginnings even in the canonical texts themselves.3 For example, Psalm 8 reflects on the creation account in Genesis 1, and Job 3 and 7 reflect on Genesis 1 and Psalm 8, respectively. The Hebrew prophetic corpus also often reflects on theological traditions in ancient Israel. Rabbis did the same in ways central to the shaping of rabbinic Judaism. Turning to the New Testament, Matthew begins by putting the story of Jesus in the context of narratives from the Older Testament. Speeches in Acts often quote Psalms, and Paul frequently refers to texts from the Jewish Scriptures. The task of theological reflection on the Hebrew Scriptures has been part of the Judeo-Christian tradition for millennia. Today’s readers can learn much from that story.

The story continues in the early centuries of the Christian church with theologians using texts from the Older Testament to support the practices of the church in Rome. By contrast, theologians such as Martin Luther and John Calvin often used the same texts to attack the practices of the church in Rome. Such prooftexting has been a common approach to the Older Testament throughout the history of the church.

The Move to Modernity

Interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures has a long history, but biblical theology as an area of academic study developed after the various reformations of the sixteenth century and so was an invention of modernity.4 With the coming of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century and its emphases on reason and history, theologians began to move more explicitly toward questions of hermeneutics, the art of interpretation, and clarity about the differences between the Older Testament and the New Testament. J. S. Semler, for example, emphasized the historical-critical approach to biblical texts, arguing that the canon is a historical volume and should be investigated as such.5 Shortly afterwards came an important beginning point of the discipline: Johann Philipp Gabler’s 1787 lecture “A Discourse on the Proper Distinction between Biblical and Dogmatic Theology and the Correct Delimitation of Their Boundaries.”6 As indicated above, the Bible had been studied for centuries as part of the Christian church. That is, the Bible was studied in an ecclesial framework: “The purpose of biblical study was to support doctrines of the church, i.e., dogmatic theology. Gabler asserts the independence of biblical theology from dogmatics. His approach is an historical one seeking what the various biblical authors said in their historical setting. Once the tenets of biblical theology were in place, one could apply them to church doctrine.”7

Childs notes that “the emancipation of the discipline from its dependency on ecclesiastical doctrine” has continued as a central tenet of Old Testament theology.8 Additional works in the area continued to appear with various approaches. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, however, the trend to separate Old Testament theology and New Testament theology had come to the fore.9 The traditional organization of Old Testament theology into divisions of theology, anthropology, and Christology also appeared in Bauer’s work. In line with broader intellectual movements, the emphasis on the history of religions came to dominate in the nineteenth century. The interest was not in theological reflection on the Hebrew Scriptures but in the evolutionary, historical development of ancient Israel’s religion. The works of Julius Wellhausen provide the most familiar example.10 The history of religions approach is an important part of the background of the flowering of Old Testament theology.

The Era of Eichrodt and von Rad

Every story has its heroes, and the first major character in the story of Old Testament theology is the Swiss theologian Walther Eichrodt.11 His volumes appeared in German in the 1930s. Eichrodt reasserted the importance of the theological perspective of the text while taking into account the historical contribution that was so important in the work of those who studied the Older Testament. He also gave space to questions of the Hebrew Scriptures’ relationship to the New Testament and the church. Questions of method were also central to Eichrodt’s work. He suggests a way forward in which readers take a “cross-section” of the dynamic faith developed in the Older Testament “in order to explore the Old Testament’s structure of belief.”12 The analogy of a cross-section is that of a logger who removes a core sample from a tree to obtain a small cross-section showing the rings of the tree and the development of its growth. Just so, a scholar can take a cross-section of the Old Testament at some point and learn the shape and development of the faith of ancient Israel. Eichrodt thus asserts that there is a unity to the faith of this ancient community in its various eras. His approach, then, is a synchronic one—that is, he understands the faith the Old Testament commends as structurally consistent through time. He goes a step further in arguing that when readers look at the cross-section of Old Testament faith, the structure that is consistently visible is a covenant structure emphasizing the relationship between God and people. The two crucial proposals from Eichrodt thus are that one ought to begin by taking a cross-section of Hebrew faith and that when one examines the cross-section, one finds the center of that faith in covenant. He then organizes his theological work systematically in three parts: God and Israel, God and the world, and God and humanity. He is clear that he is selecting and organizing this theological work but seeks to do so from the inside of the faith the Old Testament asserts. His work began a major effort to find the center of Old Testament faith—in German, die Mitte.

Eichrodt’s massive work brought a rebirth to the academic study of Old Testament theology. To the fore of this study came questions of method tied to the question of whether Old Testament faith has a center and whether proposed centers adequately account for the considerable diversity in the Older Testament. Eichrodt’s proposal of covenant as the center raised the same issue. Questions of the relationship between particularism and universalism became important in this conversation. The rich diversity of theological perspectives in the Hebrew Scriptures and whether there is a unifying theme for them continue to raise significant questions for Old Testament theologians.

Eichrodt’s formative work initiated what has been called the golden age of Old Testament theology.13 Method was central to this work, and scholars proposed various centers for Old Testament faith. It will be helpful to note some representative works to see the variety of approaches, methods, and proposals. Ludwig Köhler’s 1936 Old Testament Theology proposed the lordship of God as the center and organized the theology around God, anthropology, and judgment and salvation. Köhler emphasized that the Old Testament does not synthesize its theological reflection; the scholar does that. He understood the task to be to articulate the thought of the Old Testament. Theodorus Vriezen in 1949 offered another relational proposal, communion, as die Mitte for Old Testament faith.14 His attempt was also confessional, expositing the normative faith of ancient Israel. Edmond Jacob’s 1955 volume proposed a descriptive approach, viewing the task as historical in nature.15 His helpful volume represents the systematized style of presentation which was co...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. Beginnings
• 2. A Shape for Old Testament Theology
• 3. Pentateuch
• 4. Historical Books
• 5. Psalms
• 6. Wisdom
• 7. Prophecy
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Subject Index
• Scripture Index
• Back Cover