scholarly journals The Future of New Testament Theology, or, What Should Devout Modern Bible Scholarship Look Like?

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 1072
Author(s):  
Douglas A. Campbell

Consideration of the nature of New Testament Theology (NTT) necessitates an account of theology or “God-talk”. Karl Barth grasped that all valid God-talk begins with God’s self-disclosure through Jesus and the Spirit, which people acknowledge and reflect on. Abandoning this starting point by way of “Foundationalism”—that is, resorting to any alternative basis for God-talk—leads to multiple destructive epistemological and cultural consequences. The self-disclosure of the triune God informs the use of the Bible by the church. The Bible then functions in terms of ethics and witness. It grounds the church’s ethical language game. Creative readings here are legitimate. The New Testament (NT) also mediates a witness to Jesus, which implies an historical dimension. However, it is legitimate to affirm that Jesus was resurrected (see 1 Cor 15:1–9), which liberates the devout modern Bible scholar in relation to history. The historical readings generated by such scholars have value because the self-disclosing God is deeply involved with particularity. These readings can be added to the archive of scriptural readings used by the church formationally. Ultimately, then, all reading of the NT is theological (or should be) and in multiple modes. NTT focuses our attention on the accuracy of the God-talk operative within any historical reconstruction, and on its possible subversion, which are critical matters.

Author(s):  
Gerald O’Collins, SJ

This chapter spells out the complex interrelationship between the divine self-revelation, the tradition that transmits the prophetic and apostolic experience of that revelation, and the writing of the inspired Scriptures. Primarily, revelation involves the self-disclosure of the previously and mysteriously unknown God. Secondarily, it brings the communication of hitherto unknown truths about God. Revelation is a past, foundational reality (completed with the missions of the Son and Holy Spirit), a present experience, and a future hope. Responding with faith to divine revelation, the Old Testament (prophetic) and then New Testament (apostolic) witnesses initiated the living tradition from which came the inspired Scriptures. Tradition continues to transmit, interpret, and apply the Scriptures in the life of the Church.


1948 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-73
Author(s):  
R. Stuart Louden

We can trace a revival of theology in the Reformed Churches in the last quarter of a century. The new theological interest merits being called a revival of theology, for there has been a fresh and more thorough attention given to certain realities, either ignored or treated with scant notice for a considerable time previously.First among such realities now receiving more of the attention which their relevance and authority deserve, is the Bible, the record of the Word of God. There is an invigorating and convincing quality about theology which is Biblical throughout, being based on the witness of the Scriptures as a whole. The valuable results of careful Biblical scholarship had had an adverse effect on theology in so far as theologians had completely separated the Old Testament from the New in their treatment of Biblical doctrine, or in expanding Christian doctrine, had spoken of the theological teaching of the Synoptic Gospels, the Pauline Epistles, the Johannine writings, and so on, as if there were no such thing as one common New Testament witness. It is being seen anew that the Holy Scriptures contain a complete history of God's saving action. The presence of the complete Bible open at the heart of the Church, recalls each succeeding Christian generation to that one history of God's saving action, to which the Church is the living witness. The New Testament is one, for its Lord is one, and Christian theology must stand four-square on the foundation of its whole teaching.


1992 ◽  
Vol 48 (1/2) ◽  
Author(s):  
J. J. Engelbrecht

S P J J van Rensburg, professor 1963-1972 The aim of this article is to take a look at Van Rensburg as a theologian. He was a conservative theologian in the sense that he wanted to serve the church of Christ by his scientific study of the Bible. He was greatly influenced by ‘Continental Theology’, especially as practiced by renowned German scholars. He was neither a fundamentalist nor over-enthusiastic about Bultmann’s idea of demythologising the New Testament.


1925 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Rendel Harris

Vogels, in his new “Handbook to New Testament Criticism,” has started some interesting and important enquiries, by a consideration of the changes that can be marked in the copies and versions of the New Testament by an investigator who understands not only how to register various readings but also how to detect the causes of such differences. The evangelical stream is demonstrably discolored by the media through which it passes. The Bible of any given church becomes affected by the church in which it circulates. The people who handle the text leave their finger-prints on the pages, and the trained detective can identify the criminal who made the marks.


This Handbook is a comprehensive resource for the scholarly study of the self-understanding of the church through the centuries—its theological identity. Nearly thirty expert contributions describe the continuities and discontinuities in the changing understanding of the church. The scope of ecclesiology is defined by the manifold self-understanding and action of the church in relation to a number of research fields, including its historical origins, structures of authority, doctrine, ministry and sacraments, unity and diversity, and mission, as well as its relation to the state, to civil society, and to culture. The book covers the main sources of such ecclesiological research and reflection, namely the Bible, church history from the apostolic age to the present, the wealth of the Christian theological traditions, the experience and practice of the churches today, together with the information and insights that emerge from other relevant academic disciplines. Ecclesiology has also been the main focus of the intense ecumenical engagement, study, and dialogue of the past century and is the area where the most intractable differences remain to be resolved. In particular, generous space is allocated to the New Testament sources of ecclesiology and to some of the most influential shapers of modern ecclesiology.


1990 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-55
Author(s):  
Richard B. Hays

Reason and experience can hardly serve as warrants sufficient for the self-sacrificial service to which the New Testament calls the church; the commonsense counsels they dispense must be disciplined by the divine foolishness of Scripture.


1973 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 235-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernst Käsemann

In the Protestant tradition the Bible has long been regarded as the sole norm for the Church. It was from this root that, in the seventeenth century, there sprang first of all ‘biblical theology’, from which New Testament theology later branched off at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Radical historical criticism too kept closely to this tradition, and F. C. Baur made such a theology the goal of all his efforts in the study of the New Testament. Since that time the question how the problem thus posed is to be tackled and solved has remained a living issue in Germany. On the other hand, the problem for a long time held no interest for other church traditions, although here too the position has changed within the last two decades. In 1950 Meinertz wrote the first Catholic exposition, while the theme was taken up in France by Bonsirven in 1951, and by Richardson in England in 1958. Popular developments along these lines were to follow.


Slovene ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 191-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander G. Kravetsky

The first translations of the New Testament into the Russian language, which were carried out at the beginning of the 19th century, are usually regarded as a missionary project. But the language of these translations may prove that they were addressed to a rather narrow audience. As is known, the Russian Bible Society established in 1812 began its activities not with translations into Russian but with the mass edition of the Church Slavonic text of the Bible. In other words, it was the Church Slavonic Bible that was initially taken as the “Russian” Bible. Such a perception correlated with the sociolinguistic situation of that period, when, among the literate country and town dwellers, people learned grammar according to practices dating back to Medieval Rus’, which meant learning by heart the Church Slavonic alphabet, the Book of Hours, and the Book of Psalms; these readers were in the majority, and they could understand the Church Slavonic Bible much better than they could a Russian-language version. That is why the main audience for the “Russian” Bible was the educated classes who read the Bible in European languages, not in Russian. The numbers of targeted readers for the Russian-language translation of the Bible were significantly lower than those for the Church Slavonic version. The ideas of the “language innovators” (who favored using Russian as a basis for a new national language) thus appeared to be closer to the approach taken by the Bible translators than the ideas of “the upholders of the archaic tradition” (who favored using the vocabulary and forms of Church Slavonic as their basis). The language into which the New Testament was translated moved ahead of the literary standard of that period, and that was one of the reasons why the work on the translation of the Bible into the Russian language was halted.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adi Putra

This article explains that persecution is not only happening or experienced by the general public, but it is also experienced by the Lord's Church. This opinion is evidenced by evidence of information obtained from the Bible, especially the New Testament and also in the Church's historical literature. Then discussed further with the church because the church fellowship is different from the world or does not come from the world. Because the Church has been chosen and set apart by God to live differently from the world or live like Christ. And because Christ had already experienced it, then the later Church which is a follower of Christ also experiences similar things. And this writing is endowed with perspectives that have many benefits for the Church. As described above, there are at least five benefits. Such as: the empowerment of the Church may imitate the suffering that Christ has undergone or rather the Church has done the will of Jesus; persuasion helps spread the gospel in the world, persecution of the church can be a means of God to filter and filter out which true believers and non-believers, the quality of the church's faith will be further enhanced through persecution, and persecution of the church can help the church to bear fruit.


Author(s):  
Anna Rebecca Solevåg

The profound and complicated marriage symbolism pervading the medieval West has its roots in the Bible, and particularly a set of images in the New Testament. In Ephesians 5 it is argued that ‘the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church’ (Eph 5:23). Further, both the gospels and the Apocalypse metaphorically describe Christ as a bridegroom (e.g. Matt 22:2–14; Luke 12:36–38; Rev 19:7–9). This chapter seeks to disentangle the two rather distinct images of (1) patriarchal marriage mapped onto the organizational structure of early Christ-believing communities and (2) bridegroom at wedding feast mapped onto the second coming of Christ. These two images mix and merge even in some of the New Testament texts, whereas other texts treat them separately, and with different emphases. The chapter presents the most relevant passages and discusses the various uses and contexts.


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