Five Hundred Years of NT Theology

From 1517 to 2017

New Testament Theology for Th.M (Master of Theology)
Edwin Don Paskin Ciriaco
November 2020
Theological Movements

 Scholastic Theology
 Reformation (1517)
 Pietism
 Modern Theology ‘Enlightenment’
 History-of-Religions School (Religionsgeschichte)
 Thematic Approach (e.g., covenant, salvation)
 Neo-Orthodox Movement
 Postmodernity
Scholasticism

 Scholasticism is a method of inquiry, influenced by

Aristotle, that developed in the schools and
universities of the Latin West between the 12th and
15th c., in relation both to the liberal arts and to
theology. Its foundations were laid by Boethius (c475–
c525) through his writings on logic and his brief
essays on theology. In the early Middle Ages, however,
there was only limited awareness of the peripatetic
tradition, the dominant philosophical system
Scholasticism

 being shaped by the Christian Neoplatonism of Augustine.

Scholasticism started to assert itself as a dominant movement in
the 12th-c. schools of Northern France (see Hugh of St. Victor).
Monks viewed some Scholastics as promoting a way of teaching
theology that emphasized logic and disputation rather than
meditation and silent reflection. In fact, Scholastics developed a
range of perspectives while adopting a common educational
method, which emphasized both argument and the critical study
of written authority, whether in the liberal arts or in theology.
 Constant J. Mews "Scholasticism." Cambridge Dictionary of
Christianity. 2010, 1132-1133
Reformation
Nailing of the Ninety Five Theses on October 31,
1517
Reformation

 German Reformation. Luther’s (1483–1546) biblical studies led

him to believe that righteousness before God is not a human
achievement but a free gift from God. Convinced that salvation is
not the goal of life but the foundation of life, Luther reversed
medieval piety: good works do not make the sinner acceptable to
God; rather, God’s acceptance of the sinner prompts good works.
Faith active in love energized innovative approaches to social
welfare, public education, and political authority. Rejection of
mandatory clerical celibacy enabled clergy to become citizens
with homes, families, and civic responsibilities.
 Carter Lindberg, “Reformation.” Cambridge Dictionary of
Christianity. 2010, 1058.
Reformation

 The principle of sola scriptura functions for Luther in a

twofold sense: (1) the distinction between Christ and
Scripture, and (2) the resulting distinction between
law and gospel. With these distinctions Luther has
cast a long shadow reaching into our own time in the
form of the questions concerning the unity of the Bible
(and the NT) as well as the issue of the 'canon within
the canon.’
 Gerhard Hasel, New Testament Theology: Basic Issues
on the Current Debate. 1993, 14.
Reformation

 The effect of this method was the gradual

independence of doctrine from the Bible and a
return to emphasizing doctrine over the Bible. The
work of systematization should not be
remembered merely for its proof-text methods or
as a time completely antithetical to the Bible’s
theological message.
Pietism
Interpretation based on experience and focused on
Christian living
Pietism

 Pietism began as a movement within German

Lutheranism in the 17th century that emphasized a
personal faith in God and Christ. Pietists opposed what
they saw as a sterile Lutheran Church, content with
mere verbal confessions of belief in Lutheran tenets
while tolerating a disregard for the Christian life
among the general population. Pastor Johann Arndt
(1555-1621) came to feel that the Christian life
involved right living and the union of the soul with
God. He influenced Philip Jacob Spener (1635-1705).
Pietism

 From the 1660s, Spener held informal meetings, called

Collegia Pietatis, in his home in Frankfurt, Germany, for
prayer, Bible study, and discussion of the previous week's
sermon. In In 1675, he published a new edition of Arndt’s
book with his own lengthy preface, later published
separately as the Pia Desiderata. Pia Desiderata laid out a
program for further reform of the church (including
changes in the education of ministers) that would help
members experience a personal faith and live an upright
and moral life.
 “Pietism.” Encyclopedia of Protestantism. EWR, 2005, 429.
Pietism

 Pietism emphasized personal experiential religion and stressed the

importance of prayer, Bible study, mutual edification, and the ascetic
standards of morality. It believes that religious certainty is based on
experience rather than on correct doctrine. Further, it presupposes that
everyone, not just the religious leaders, can understand Scripture. It uses
the experiential exposition of Scripture, also known today as “devotional
approach.” An antithesis [or divide] was made between “biblical
theology” and “scholastic theology.” The term “biblical” was used to refer
to the simplicity and “heartfelt passion” of biblical religion over complex
scholastic schemes and “dry” intellectualizations.
 Athena Gorospe, Lectures on Biblical Theology. ATS, 2007.
Modern Theology
Historical and Scientific Approaches to Scripture
Modern Theology

 In the age of Enlightenment a totally new

approach for the study of the Bible was
developed under several influences. First and
foremost was rationalism's reaction against
any form of supernaturalism. Human reason
was set up as the final criterion and chief
source of knowledge, which meant that the
authority of the Bible as the infallible record of
divine revelation was rejected.
Modern Theology

 The second major departure of the period of the

Enlightenment was the development of a new hermeneutic,
the historical-critical method which holds sway to the
present day in liberal scholarship and beyond, even though
it should not be overlooked that a new stage of criticism is
levelled against it and that it is caught up in a
methodological crisis... Rationalism by its very nature was
led to abandon the orthodox view of the inspiration of the
Bible so that ultimately the Bible became simply one of the
ancient documents, to be studied as any other ancient
document.
 Hasel, New Testament Theology, 18.
Modern Theology

 As early as 1745 “Biblical theology” is clearly separated

from dogmatic (systematic) theology and the former is
conceived of as being the foundation of the latter. This
means that Biblical theology is emancipated from a role
merely subsidiary to dogmatics that Biblical theology can
become the rival of dogmatics and turn into a completely
separate and independent discipline. These possibilities
realized themselves under the influence of rationalism in
the age of Enlightenment.
 Hasel, New Testament Theology, 18.
Johann Salomo Semler 1725-1791

 He was a rationalist who claimed that

the Word of God and Holy Scripture
are not at all identical. This implied
that not all parts of the Bible were
inspired and that the Bible is a purely
historical document which as any
other document is to be investigated
with a purely historical and thus
critical methodology.
 He was the first to reject the equal
value of the Old and New Testaments.
Johann Philipp Gabler 1753-1826

 In his inaugural lecture at the University of

Altdorf on March 30, 1787, he said:

 Biblical theology possesses a historical

character, transmitting what the sacred writers
thought about divine matters; dogmatic
theology, on the contrary, possesses a didactic
character, teaching what a particular
theologian philosophizes about divine matters
in accordance to his ability, time, age, place,
sect or school, and other similar things.
 Johann Philipp Gabler 1753-1826

DOGMATIC BIBLICAL
THEOLOGY THEOLOGY

The term is widely used by

modern Protestant
theologians to describe the
branch of theology that
concerns itself with setting
forth and explaining the
dogmas received by the
Protestant / Catholic faith.
Georg Lorenz Bauer (1755-1806)
Bauer has the credit, for better or for worse, for having separated Biblical theology
into OT and NT theology. He was convinced that the theology of the testaments must
be treated separately for several reasons.
 First, their vastly different historical contexts called for this separation. Since the
OT contained within it the development of religious ideas and institutions, one
could not simply compare theological ideas across the gulf created by different
languages, cultures and concepts.
 Second, as a rationalist thinker, Bauer always looked for the pure, universal truths
taught by the Bible, and he thus considered the NT teachings of Jesus and the
apostles to be superior to the Old Testament religion.
 Third, though perhaps less explicit, a unified treatment of the testaments was
associated with proof-text methods of Protestant scholasticism, while overlooking
the unique historical setting of the Bible’s different parts
 Georg Lorenz Bauer (1755-1806)

SCRIPTURE

OLD TESTAMENT NEW TESTAMENT

THEOLOGY THEOLOGY

Focused on the Focused on

religion of Israel’s Christianity which
Yahwistic faith was a religion which
evolved from Judaism
Bernard Duhm (1847-1928)

 the members of the History of Religion

School stressed the importance of the “spirit-
filled person,” rather than the scholastic
theologian (dogmatic theologians of the
Protestants) in the development of religion:
“We recognize God’s revelation in the great
persons of religion who experience the holy
mystery in their depths and speak in tongues
of fire.”
The Supernatural
rejected as unscientific

 To be discussed in the works of Ferdinand Christian

Baur and David Friedrich Strauss (Lesson 3).
The Quest of the
Historical Jesus
 Due to the dominance of the
Historical-Critical Analysis, scholars
of the late nineteenth century
separated the study of the Jesus of
History from the Christ of Faith.
(Lesson 4).
 The Quest of the
Historical Jesus
Jesus Christ

The Jesus of History The Christ of Faith

Focused on the life of Focused on Christ which

Jesus as told in was a belief proclaimed
history by his disciples after the
resurrection
The Salvation History
Approach
 Conservative scholars reacted against
the increasing gap between the church
and the academy. The theme of
salvation continues from the OT to
the NT.
Neo-Orthodox Movement
Return to the Authority of Scripture
Loss of Confidence on
the Historical Approach
In the period following World War I
several factors, including a changing
Zeitgeist ('spirit of the age’) brought about a new situation in the
theological world. R. C. Dentan points to the following factors:
1. a general loss of faith in evolutionary naturalism;
2. a reaction against the conviction that historical truth can be attained
by pure scientific "objectivity" or that such objectivity is indeed
attainable;
3. the trend of a return to the idea of revelation in dialectical (neo-
orthodox) theology.
The Neo-Orthodox
Movement
The historical-critical method of Biblical
investigation has its validity. It points to the
preparation for understanding that is never superfluous. But if I had to
choose between it and the old doctrine of inspiration, I would decidedly
lay hold of the latter. It has the greater, deeper, more important validity,
because it points to the work of understanding, without which all
preparation is worthless. I am happy not to choose between the two. But
my whole attention was directed to looking through the historical into
the Spirit of the Bible, which is the Eternal Spirit.” (Karl Barth)
Existential Theology

It was during these years of discussion with

Heidegger that Bultmann developed his own
theological position—namely, that Christian
faith is, and should be, comparatively uninterested in the
historical Jesus and centered instead on the transcendent
Christ. Christian faith, he asserted, is faith in the
kerygma (“proclamation”) of the church, into which Jesus
may be said to be risen (Bultmann’s understanding of the
Resurrection), and not faith in the historical Jesus.
Postwar Theologies
Literary Criticism and
Kingdom Theology

There is great richness in the variety of New

Testament theology that must not be sacrificed.
The teachings of the Kingdom of God in the
Synoptic Gospels, eternal life in John, justification and the life in
Christ in Paul, the heavenly High Priest in Hebrews, and the Lamb
who is a Lion and a conquering Son of Man in the Revelation are
diverse ways of describing various aspects and depths of meaning
embodied in the one great redemptive event — the person and work
of Jesus Christ. (George Eldon Ladd)
Canonical Theology

"His major contribution to the field

was his insistence on the
importance of the canonical shape and location
of all the biblical books. Taking this
perspective enabled him to recover the ways
in which scripture has been read as a larger
whole, with an integral witness to the God of
Israel and of Jesus Christ.
 Canonical Theology

Jewish Protestant Catholic

Canon Canon Canon
NT and OT NT and OT

Apocrypha
Postmodernity
Plurality of Interpretations in the Twenty First Century
Postmodernity
According to philosophers such as M. Heidegger (1889–1976), H.-
G. Gadamer (1900–2002), and J. Derrida (1935–2004), there is
no knowledge which is not always already prejudiced. This is
because our very perception of the world is conditioned by our
‘horizons’, and these horizons are relative to our particular socio-
cultural histories. As such, there can be no universal, neutral,
‘objective’ knowledge, but rather interpretations of the world
generated from within particular commitments. M. Foucault
(1926–84) intensified this critique by arguing that knowledge is
in fact conditioned by power – that our ‘prejudices’ stem from
interests of power and domination. (James Smith, Cambridge
Dictionary of Theology, 399)
Postmodernity
 Feminist Theology
 Liberation Theology
 Intertextuality
 Ideological Criticism
 Rhetorical Criticism
 Sociological Criticism
 Social Location Criticism