Imperishable Inheritance

The Bible is laid out in such a way that we should inter­pret every pas­sage in its place along the scheme of redemp­tive his­tory. For instance, the sac­ri­fi­cial com­mands of the Mosaic Covenant were at one time piv­otal to God’s peo­ple, but with the advent of Christ they have been ful­filled (Heb 10:1–21). We see that God gave them as a les­son to His peo­ple at one point along the line of his­tory. When we tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion these fac­tors we are using the redemptive-historical hermenuetic.

The Redemptive-Historical Hermeneu­tic and Bib­li­cal Theology

Unnec­es­sary jar­gon aside, this refers to a method­ol­ogy of inter­pret­ing the Scrip­tures (which is what the study of hermeneu­tics is). It seeks to uncover the “big pic­ture” in God’s work­ing in time and space with His cre­ation. The redemp­tive aspect focuses on the truth that God, since the fall, has engaged His peo­ple in a redemp­tive con­text. The his­tor­i­cal aspect focuses on the truth that this plan does take place in time and space and is open to mod­i­fi­ca­tion (or fur­ther expansion/fulfillment) in later revelation.

This method­ol­ogy is most aptly used in Bib­li­cal The­ol­ogy. This is one branch of the­ol­ogy along­side prac­ti­cal, sys­tem­atic, and his­tor­i­cal the­ol­ogy. It strives to focus on uni­fy­ing themes through­out the Scrip­tures. A lot of con­fu­sion exists between the prac­tices of sys­tem­atic and bib­li­cal the­ol­ogy; they are organ­i­cally related but seek to under­stand dif­fer­ent things. I real­ized that, by start­ing with sys­tem­atic the­ol­ogy, that I was learn­ing the­ol­ogy backwards.

I tend to think that bib­li­cal the­ol­ogy (BT) should pre­cede sys­tem­atic the­ol­ogy (ST) inso­far as it attempts to let each book, author, etc. speak on its own terms. One of the great dan­gers of ST is the pos­si­bil­ity of flat­ten­ing out dis­tinc­tive con­tri­bu­tions for the sake of a clean way of orga­niz­ing the “data,” not to men­tion the dan­ger of ignor­ing the nar­ra­tive shape of God’s rev­e­la­tion of him­self in Scrip­ture. This is not to say that God does not reveal him­self in “propo­si­tional” truth, but rather to acknowl­edge that he reveals him­self in other ways as well in Scripture.

On the other hand, one of the dan­gers of BT is the ten­dency of some to so empha­size the dis­tinc­tive con­tri­bu­tions of each part of the canon that they fail to pur­sue its larger coher­ence. Also, there are some the­o­log­i­cal con­clu­sions that BT prob­a­bly can­not achieve with­out ST, such as the Trin­ity. (Source)

That quote does a good job at illus­trat­ing that there is a bal­ance to be main­tained. I can tell you that study­ing bib­li­cal the­ol­ogy is one of the most reward­ing, stim­u­lat­ing, and spir­i­tual exer­cises I believe any human can engage. Learn­ing how the Bible fits together organ­i­cally helped me under­stand in par­tic­u­lar the Gospels and Jesus’ teachings.

Redemp­tive His­tor­i­cal Themes

This is a list that I hope to expand upon at a later point, but I wanted to list them and maybe get feed­back on any that I may be miss­ing. If you have ques­tions, please ask.

• The King­dom of God (Gar­den — Canaan — Heaven)
• The Peo­ple of God (Eth­nic Peo­ple — Spir­i­tual People)
• The Pres­ence of God (Tabernacle/Temple — Mes­siah — Church)
• Rest (Sab­bath — Mes­sianic Rest)
• Cre­ation (Orig­i­nal Cre­ation — New Creation)
• Exo­dus (Phys­i­cal Exo­dus — Spir­i­tual Exodus)
• Atone­ment (Typo­log­i­cal Atone­ment — Final Atonement)
• Abra­hamic Blessing
• Fed­eral Head­ship (Adam — Christ)
• Prophet, Priest, King
• Covenant
• Glory of God
• Law (Nat­ural Law — Mosaic Law — Law of Christ)

Any oth­ers?