Alas. TEAR fund will have to look for donations from elsewhere, Dannii. Anyway, back to your discussion, everyone.

Mark S I too was a bit surprised by your take on Calvin/Goldsworthy. The two approaches are different in some details, but not radically so, I would have thought. Would be interested to hear more from you.

Gordon and Chris,

I should say that I am not saying Calvin is superior to Goldsworthy or vice versa, nor that the two approaches aren’t complementary.  However, the differences while subtle in some sense do make a difference when it comes to exposition.  I don’t have any of Calvin’s OT sermons to hand, but to give a sense of that difference I’’ll quote from Calvin’s commentary on Psalm 3 via THL Parker Calvin’s Old Testament Commentaries, p203:

“David being driven from his kingdom, although utter despair of all things weighed him down, calls notwithstanding upon God, and supports himself with His promise against his great terrors, and against the workings and cruel assaults of his enemies; yea, and aginst even death itself, which then thrusts itself before his eyes.  In the end he rejoices on behalf of himself and the whole Church for the happy issue of all.”

Interestingly, Parker sees this interpreation as non-Christological since Calvin doesn’t make explicit reference to Gethsemane, the Cross and the Resurrection.  However, I would argue that the interpretation is Christological precisely because Calvin is able to allude to Christ in the way he expounds the Psalm. 

An interesting exercise (which I don’t have time for, not least six days before Christmas!) would be to compare a representative sample of Calvin’s OT sermons with a reprresentative sample of ‘Sydney Anglican’ OT sermons.  My sense is that there would be a difference, not so much in what is said but how it is said.

Mark.

I really like and appreciate Goldsworthy’s Biblical Theology. It certainly helps christians approach the Bible in a better, more-informed way, allowing them to engage with the text in a way that makes sense to the over-arching story. Basically, it gives us tools to see the Bible as one story and therefore makes the average christian (who learns about BibTheo) a much better exegete and probably better at applying the material.

However, I do think that Biblical Theology, certainly of the Goldsworthy/SydAng kind has a few problems.

1.- The Illusion of Biblical-hermeneutical objectivity. “It’s all fulfilled in Jesus”. This is great, good and true but it hardly solves all the problems when it comes to a lot of key issues.

How much continuity is there with the OT Law in the NT? The Goldsworthy Biblical-theology method doesn’t neccesarily solve this question.
Do we presuppose that all commandments not explicitly reaffirmed in the NT are not carried over? Or do we suppose the contrary?
i.e.- Is Sunday the new Sabbath or not? Do we tithe or don’t we? Do we baptize children or don’t we?

2.- The place of the theme of “covenant”. Its basically absent from Goldsworthy (though not from many other BibTheo authors). This is a serious problem, because it isn’t clear how to draw a line in terms continuity between testaments (as I’ve already said). Some Syd Angs have even doubted that subject of “covenant” is even a big deal in the NT. (Often the reason is lack of the appearance of the “word” in the NT text).

3.- An over-reliance on word studies. Yes they are helpful. But they are not enough. Related to what I said above, does the WORD “covenant” have to appear in a NT text for it to be talking about the subject? If YHWH’s covenant with Israel shaped her life and worship, habits and language, is it conceivable that NT writers like Paul may be talking about covenant-subjects even if they don’t use the exact word?

For example, is the hebrew term “hesed” (steadfast love in ESV), used in many texts, such as the Psalms and Isaiah, expressed in relation to God’s Love to Israel in faithfulness to His own covenant commitments?

What about His “righteousness” in these same places? Is it “merely” His moral purity? Or can it also be “His faithful commitment to His covenant promises (Wright) or Creational intention (Dumbrell)? How does this affect our exegesis of passages in the NT such as Romans 1.17 (this is an important subject in the whole NPP debate).

4.- Teaching the same lesson with very different texts. “Its all fulfilled in Jesus” That’s great. We still want to know how Proverbs relates to us in ways DIFFERENT from, say, Paul’s Epistles.

That being said, I find Biblical Theology to be actually quite exciting and challenging.