David, explanations of literary techniques, and theories as to why the author took pains to distance David from wrongdoing are all important, but they aren’t (yet) theology. What did the portrayal of David convey about God? How did it showcase God’s character? Needless to say, I had some revisions to make after meeting with Dr. House.
The moral of the story is that Old Testament theology is first and foremost about God. Investigating ancient Near Eastern history and culture, evaluating Hebrew grammar and syntax, and analyzing archaeological or geographical data are not ends in themselves. They are the means by which we more faithfully understand God through his word. An Old Testament theology that does not finally offer a portrayal of God is incomplete because an Old Testament theology’s primary task is that “of presenting what the Old Testament says about God as a coherent whole.”1
Presenting this “coherent whole” requires those engaging in Old Testament theology to look at the Old and New Testaments as a whole book and to synthesize the various portrayals of God. This synthesis represents the synchronic dimension of Old Testament theology. Old Testament theology must attend to the manner in which specific books develop, expand on, and introduce new facets of God’s character. In other words, there is a diachronic element to Old Testament theology, which recognizes the progress of revelation through time.
In addition, Old Testament theology must not lean solely upon conceptualization, or on the abstraction of so-called universal principles. Such approaches rightly recognize that the Old Testament is the enduring word of God relevant and beneficial across all times, places, and cultures. Yet, focusing on principles alone can also distract God’s people from the inherently relational intent of the text, which seeks to lead us toward a greater knowledge of the God who creates, redeems, delivers, forebears, and supplies.2 Old Testament theology requires a constant movement between more particular depictions of God in Scripture and the combination of those biblical depictions to develop a broader canonical understanding of God.
To assert that Old Testament theology is first and foremost about God is not intended to deny theology the role as a means of articulating, or re-articulating, understandings of humankind, time, place, the world, or a host of other topics. Rather, the assertion that Old Testament theology is first and foremost about God suggests that these other topics may only be understood rightly in relation to or through the lens of a faithful rendering of God’s identity. As we view the various aspects of our world and our activity within it in relation to God as He is revealed in the Old Testament, we engage in the task of Old Testament theology. This task is an act of worship, a means of proclaiming God to the Church and the world, and a way of establishing the criteria for distinguishing true and false witness to the God of the Old Testament.3
While Old Testament theology surely begins in the Old Testament and its discrete witness of God, it does not end in the Old Testament. Rather, it is necessary to recognize that, with the coming of Christ, Old Testament theology constitutes one element within a reciprocal theological “loop” in which the New Testament reinforces and expands upon the theology of the Old Testament even as the Old Testament informs and provides a crucial framework for the New Testament.
Respecting and studying the discrete witness of the Old Testament cannot be separated from the canonical task of describing the Triune God as he is presented in both the Old and New Testaments. At the same time, it is important to recall that the Old Testament is a Christian Testament. As Barr notes, “Insofar as a position is Christian, it is related to the Old Testament from the beginning.”4 Striking the balance, then, between treatments of the Old Testament separate from the New Testament and the construction of more canonical readings, which look back upon the Old Testament from the standpoint of the New, is essential to the work of Old Testament theology. Ultimately, the Old Testament proclaims the gospel in harmony with the New Testament offering unique revelation of God’s plan for restoring his kingdom.
Old Testament Theology and the Gospel
The gospel encompasses far more than the salvation message though it is surely right for us to identify and celebrate the gospel message as communicating “what we must believe to be saved.”5 As John Goldingay notes, “‘Gospel’ does not come into being only with the coming of Jesus. In speaking of Jesus’ story as ‘gospel,’ the early Christians were thinking of his story in terms that had already been applied to Israel’s story.”6 The point is not to minimize the importance of Christ to the gospel, but to recognize that, as Kevin Vanhoozer suggests, that the gospel entails “a series of divine entrances and exits, especially as these pertain to what God has done in Jesus Christ.”7
The gospel, the “good news,” involves the transformation of social, political, economic, and ecological structures, systems, and relationships in the victory of Christ over sin on the cross. It is the good news that God’s order will be restored and the effects of sin will no longer plague God’s creation. The gospel entails the realignment of all aspects of the created order according to God’s wisdom. While this broader sense of the gospel is prominent within the New Testament, the Old Testament’s treatment of the gospel within the context of the nation of Israel and the nations with whom they come into contact offers a distinctive picture of the various intersecting areas of creation impacted by the gospel.
Issues, for instance, of politics, bureaucracy, corporate care of the disenfranchised, as well as the intersection of religious and national leadership, feature prominently in the Old Testament. This prominence should not suggest a sharp distinction between a “corporate” orientation in the Old Testament and an individual orientation in the New. Such characterizations deny the communal, political, and social aspects of the New Testament, as well as the individual spirituality developed within the Old Testament.8 In truth, even the separation of individual and communal is misleading in so much as it overshadows the interdependent relationship between individuals and the communities of which they are a part.
Another aspect of the Old Testament’s unique presentation of the gospel is related to the manner in which the gospel is articulated. Unique depictions of human suffering and emotion may be found in the wisdom, poetic, and prophetic literature of the Old Testament. Job’s debates in the midst of suffering, the imprecatory prayers of the Psalter, and the anguished cries voiced by Jeremiah represent raw, impassioned expressions of God’s people who struggle to reconcile their situation with their understanding of God. God’s faithfulness and single-minded desire to restore a right relation between himself, his people, and his creation demonstrates his worthiness, compassion, and empowering presence among those who believe in him.
Old Testament theology provides present-day believers with resources to align their lives with God’s character and to participate with Him as he transforms creation. The Old Testament serves as one of the resources available to present-day believers as they seek to live theologically in modern-day contexts by looking back and remembering the past acts of God amongst his people. Engaging in Old Testament theology is an act of memory in so much as “memory is the central faculty of our being in time . . . the negotiation of past and present through which we define our individual and collective selves.”9 In other words, as believers engage in Old Testament theology, they seek to understand themselves, the historical community of faith of which they are a part, and the whole of creation in light of and in relation to God.
Introduction to This Old Testament Theology
The manner in which an Old Testament theology is structured has
