10. Using the Bible in Theology Essays

Perhaps I have placed the caboose before the train here. While you are plunging into Barth and Horton and Augustine, have you forgotten to read the most vital and authoritative text of all for doing theology - especially as Protestants think about it?

Well, yes. I hoped you had already begun your investigation into what Scripture has to say on your topic in your brianstorming phase. And as you read the theologians, I hope you were keeping in mind that the bar against which you are to be measuring them as successful theologians is the word of God. What's more, their usefulness to you, remember, is not least in the way the great theologians of church history alert you to how to read the Bible well.

But your theology essay is essentially an exercise in reading Scripture as a whole. It's a response to God's revelation of himself in the gospel of Jesus Christ - and we learn about that exclusively in the pages of Scripture. It's 'exegetical reason', as theologian John Webster calls it in his book Holy Scripture - A Dogmatic Sketch.

Notice what this isn't. It isn't the imposition of a system of thought on top of Scripture. It isn't trying to squeeze square pegs into round holes. I know a lot of professional biblical scholars who suspect that that's exactly what theology is on about.

But it can be, sometimes. But it shouldn't be: good theology drawn from Scripture is systematic in the sense that it tries to see the connection between the various teachings of Scripture. That's your task.

And your task is to look at the whole of the canon of Scripture. Pitting one Scripture against another, and then selecting your favourite option is not ultimately a Christian way to read Scripture. Of course, a lot of contemporary biblical scholarship has read the Bible as if it were a cacophony of disagreeing voices. This is not the place to discuss this sort of claim. But while the Scripture is a diverse book, it is also a unified one. And that unity is disclosed in Christ.

This is a way of saying that you should have in your armoury a view of the Scripture as a whole and how you should interpret the parts of Scripture in the light of the whole if you are going to do theology biblically. And the place of Christ in it is going to be central.

And that conviction about what Holy Scripture is drives the way you use it. The habit you need to avoid is the habit of the collecting a series of isolated texts that then form great lists supposedly confirming your theological statements. But that's not a way to use Scripture that conforms to what Scripture actually is. You need to stand back and take a wide view of the grand sweep of the narrative of Scripture and ask: what is this grand story of God's interaction with the world telling me about the question? There will be texts that demand inclusion in your thinking of course - but these need to be read theologically: that is, with an awareness of their place in the narrative of the Bible. You can't read the prophetic writings, for example, without reading them in the light of the Christ they foreshadowed.

I thought I'd pull out a paragraph from one of my undergraduate essays to illustrate what you are looking for in terms of Scripture:

In the resurrection humanity receives both redemption and transformation. The broad scope of the resurrection is indicated by the analogy in the New Testament between God’s creation ex nihilo and his salvific action (John 1, Rom 4:17). It is not surprising that the two concepts should be so associated, for the resurrection is a demonstration of God’s absolute sovereignty over creation (as proclaimed in the Old Testament) and his appointment of Jesus as its ruler. The testimony of the apostles in Acts is to the Lordship of the resurrected Christ (2:32-36; 17:30-31 et al). The resurrection is, of course, key to Paul’s cosmic eschatology (cf 1 Cor 15:20-8). To confess the resurrection is parallel to a confession of Jesus’ Lordship (Rom 10:9).

Now, I have used Scripture in this paragraph in several ways - but I think consistently. My second sentence makes a rather sweeping claim, but grounds it on two texts - one a reference to a whole chapter, the other to a specific verse. In the third sentence I make statements about the resurrection and about what the Old Testament as a whole teaches. I do not cite a specific text, but I use Scripture certainly to ground my thinking on. The third, fourth and fifth sentences use texts which the quickly explain - so I say what Acts 2:32-36 and 17:30-31 say rather than merely cite them.

(to be continued)