Dr. Thomas Schreiner · The Master's Seminary · 35 minutes
Lecture by Dr. Thomas Schreiner, from The Master's Seminary's public channel. Study notes below from Medina Community Church.
Before entering the Twelve, Dr. Schreiner pauses to define the discipline itself: biblical theology traces the interpretive perspective of the authors along the Bible's own storyline, read finally in light of the whole canon. Then the minor prophets, which are anything but minor: lawsuit, locusts, vengeance, betrothal, Bethlehem. Listen for how judgment and salvation arrive on the same day.
Schreiner adopts Jim Hamilton's definition from his little book What Is Biblical Theology: it is the interpretive perspective of the biblical authors, found inductively by tracing what actually concerns each author. His example: riches and poverty is plainly a theme of Luke and Acts, with Luke's evident concern for the poor, for women, for the oppressed, yet you will hardly find it as a heading in a systematic theology. Systematic theology tends, tends, to be atemporal, gathering the whole Bible on a doctrine; biblical theology follows the historical timeline by which the story unfolds, as this course has done.
Two disciplines govern the work. First, antecedent theology: always ask what has already been revealed that feeds into the book at hand, as the Pentateuch feeds Joshua; try to imagine reading the prophets without knowing the covenants. Second, the canonical element: read each text in light of the whole, including what is still to come. Schreiner has done this freely all week, speaking of Jesus at the messianic promises and of the church at the new covenant, and he presses the point: if you are not reading Scripture in light of the whole canon, you are not reading Scripture as a Christian. The plainest proof is Leviticus 1 through 7, which no Christian finishes and then considers offering animal sacrifices; everyone instinctively reads it in light of the sacrifice of Christ. True biblical theology is canonical theology.
Approaches differ. Klink and Lockett's short survey lays out five types of biblical theology, from Carson's redemptive-historical emphasis to narrative, canonical, and historical approaches; Schreiner calls it a very good book. James Barr represents the historical school: once a traveling companion of Martyn Lloyd-Jones, he moved far left and wrote a still-interesting book against fundamentalism. Brevard Childs championed the canonical approach and wrote much worth learning from; his inconsistency, as one of Schreiner's professors put it, is that he rides the historical-critical slide halfway down, granting multiple Isaiahs and layered sources, and then calls a halt: now read the book as a whole. Schreiner's practice with Childs and with von Rad alike is to skip the critical scaffolding and mine the profound parts, which are sometimes very profound indeed. The method, summed: read in historical context, find the author's interpretive perspective, follow the storyline, weigh antecedent theology, and read in light of the whole canon.
How do biblical and systematic theology relate? Ideally, biblical theology is always reshaping and reconfiguring our systematics, the way exegesis should. Yet Schreiner rejects the blank-slate ideal: it is inevitable, and no bad thing, that everyone comes to the text with a theology, dispensationalist, covenantal, progressive covenantal; the question is whether we are willing to be reshaped by the text. And a reminder he thinks teachers need more than once in a while: these camps mainly agree. Disagreement is more fun to write about, so books and articles concentrate there and make the parties look farther apart than they are.
Given antecedent theology, no one is surprised that covenant dominates the Book of the Twelve: covenant lawsuits, the whoredom theme again, the curses of the covenant come due. Why such repetition in the canon? Because these themes matter and must be impressed on minds and hearts. Amos 3:2 is the lawsuit in one verse: you only have I known of all the families of the earth, therefore I will punish you for your iniquities. The sentence begins like a blessing and lands like a verdict: election grounds accountability. Yahweh stands as witness against the nation, the lawsuit sounds in Micah, and Malachi carries the same charge.
Habakkuk opens complaining that God is doing nothing about sin in the nation. God answers: I am doing something, I will use the Babylonians. Habakkuk protests: how can you, they are worse than we are. And God answers in effect: do not worry, their turn is coming. Chapter 3 closes the book with its great song: salvation is going to come through judgment. Schreiner passes on Ray Stedman's incentive for reading the book: one day you will meet Habakkuk, and he will ask how you liked it. The charge under the joke is serious: those who teach the Bible should have read all of it.
The day of the LORD, prominent already in Isaiah and Ezekiel, thunders through the Twelve. Joel, on Schreiner's reading, describes locusts in both chapters 1 and 2, though some take the second chapter as an army, and calls Israel to weep, wail, assemble, and repent, in language of great beauty. Schreiner turns the summons on the present: churches a mile wide and an inch deep, weak where they should be reforming, were Israel's condition in Joel's day too. Amos warns those who long for the day of the LORD that for them it will be darkness and not light, judgment and not salvation. Zephaniah makes the day a sacrifice at which Israel itself is the offering, a day of wrath more thorough than the flood, sweeping away even the fish of the sea; and with Joel he cries: gather together and seek the LORD.
Obadiah's single chapter, fixed in Schreiner's memory by an old survey-class mnemonic, Edom up, Obadiah, announces the judgment of Edom, and Edom begins its canonical career as the symbol of the ungodly world: what happened to Edom historically will happen to all the wicked. Nahum announces Assyria's judgment in language many churches never hear preached: the LORD is jealous and avenging, fierce in wrath against his foes, slow to anger and great in power, and he will never leave the guilty unpunished; his way is in whirlwind and storm, and none can withstand his indignation. And the same chapter says the LORD is good, a stronghold in the day of distress, who cares for those who take refuge in him. Schreiner reads Abraham Heschel on why wrath offends us: we are only dimly aware of the gravity of human evil; there is a cruelty that pardons as surely as a pity that punishes, and severity must tame those whom love cannot win. A god who would always pardon and never judge is the idol of our culture, and it is not the LORD. Jonah stands as the counterweight in the same collection: salvation belongs to the LORD, whose sovereign compassion reaches the nations.
The Twelve also promise salvation. Hosea hears the LORD say, I will betroth you to me in faithfulness; I will heal their apostasy; I will love them freely, and that healing of apostasy is the new covenant in Hosea's accent. Israel will live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without ephod or household gods; and afterward they will return and seek the LORD their God and David their king, coming in fear to the LORD and his goodness in the latter days. David was long dead, so this is his descendant; read canonically, the promise is fulfilled in the new covenant's Messiah.
Joel carries the great promise of the Spirit poured out, and salvation on the very day of the LORD: on Zion, the holy mountain, there will be deliverance. The holy mountain is the holy garden, a new Eden; Yahweh dwells in Zion, and the line runs forward to the New Jerusalem of Revelation 21 and 22, which comes down from heaven to earth. The mountains will drip sweet wine and the hills flow with milk: poetry for the lavishness and beauty of the new creation.
Amos, sparing with future promise, still gives it: the fallen booth of David will be repaired and raised up, and Israel will possess the remnant of Edom. At the Jerusalem council James reads exactly that passage as including the salvation of the Gentiles, settling that circumcision is not necessary for salvation, and thereby giving hermeneutical warrant for what the Old Testament itself began: Edom expands to stand for the world, and the nations will be saved. Obadiah adds that Mount Zion will escape and be holy, a remnant saved, the enemies' land possessed; and Romans 4:13 tells how far that land promise has grown: Abraham is heir of the world. The new creation comes on a new earth, this present universe renewed, purified, and restored, with resurrection bodies to inhabit it; and, as Obadiah ends, the kingdom shall be the LORD's.
Micah gathers the lame and the driven away, and names the town: Israel's ruler will come from Bethlehem, he will be great to the ends of the earth, and he shall be their peace. There is a new exodus here, Yahweh shepherding his people, and a line Schreiner savors: the LORD's enemies shall lick the dust like a serpent, Genesis 3:15 sounding again as the crawling things come trembling out of their strongholds. Then the gospel close of the book: he will again have compassion on us, he will tread our iniquities underfoot and cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. Schreiner tells of hearing Corrie ten Boom, survivor of Ravensbruck and famous for her joyful forgiveness, preach on that promise near the end of her life: God has thrown our sins into the deepest sea and posted a sign that says no fishing. Not quite exegesis, he grants with a smile, and exactly the point.
Habakkuk looks to the kingdom in its fullness: on the day of the LORD the offspring of the serpent are destroyed and the offspring of the woman vindicated, and the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea. How much beauty people miss by never reading these books. Judgment is not Habakkuk's last word: he resolves to rejoice in the LORD though the fig tree does not blossom, not resignation to ruin but confidence that through the judgment salvation is coming, and God will make him tread on the heights. Zephaniah closes the survey with salvation for the Gentiles: a pure speech given to all the peoples, the Tower of Babel reversed, the nations worshiping Yahweh together, a promise that set the classroom happily wondering about tongues in the new creation, down to a friend's cheerful word that Schreiner will get to learn Korean there.
Each opens the chapter in your ESV app or on esv.org.
Tap an answer. A wrong guess points you back to the outline; when all twelve are right, the lecture is marked complete on this device.
1. What is biblical theology, in the definition the lecture adopts?
2. What does the Leviticus 1 through 7 example prove?
3. What inconsistency does the lecture find in Childs' canonical approach?
4. What does the lecture say about coming to Scripture with a blank slate?
5. What is the logic of Amos 3:2?
6. How does God answer Habakkuk's protest that Babylon is worse than Judah?
7. What does Amos tell those who long for the day of the LORD?
8. How sweeping is the day of the LORD in Zephaniah?
9. How does Nahum hold God's vengeance and goodness together?
10. Who is the David whom Israel will seek in the latter days, per Hosea?
11. How does James use Amos 9 at the Jerusalem council?
12. What is the hope of Habakkuk 2:14?
All twelve correct. Lecture 20 is complete.
Amos says privilege deepens accountability: you only have I known, therefore. Where has God's particular kindness to you quietly become a ground for presumption rather than reverence?
Nahum's God is slow to anger and never clears the guilty, and the lecture says our culture's idol is a god who always pardons. Where have you traded the first for the second, and what would taking refuge in the true God look like?
Micah says God hurls the sins of his people into the depths of the sea. Which forgiven sin do you keep fishing back up, and what would it mean this week to leave it where God threw it?
Habakkuk 2:14, the horizon of history: the whole earth flooded with the knowledge of the LORD's glory, the way the waters fill the sea.
The lecture's own recommendations: Jim Hamilton's little book What Is Biblical Theology, whose definition it adopts, and the short survey of approaches by Edward Klink and Darian Lockett, Understanding Biblical Theology, which it calls very good.