All Systems Are Go

The first official chapter in Piper’s book is a caution against a facile adoption of biblical theology over systematic theology as though it were necessarily more “biblical.” A systematic theology can be biblical or unbiblical, depending. And biblical theology can also be biblical or unbiblical, depending.

“Most scholars are aware that methods and categories of thought taken from historical and systematic theology may control and distort the way one reads the Bible. But we don’t hear as often the caution that the methods and categories of biblical theology can do the same” (p. 33).

This is really just another way of saying (although Piper doesn’t put it this way) that biblical theologies are systematic theologies, simply organized according to a different system. Traditional systematics go through the topics of God, man, sin, salvation, and so on. This does not make it bad, but it does create limitations — limitations that ought to recognized by every practicioner. Biblical theology opts for a different set of themes, organized in a different way. But the point is that the organization is from the theologian, and not directly from the revelation itself.

Biblical theology is named from the high ground. I am into biblical theology. What kind are you into? But it is really just looking at another facet of the jewel of revelation from another angle. This is quite appropriate, nothing wrong with it, but at the end of the day, the practicioner should recognize that he is working the revelation God has given through the grid of another system. This is appropriate, so long as we recognize that all our different systems and approaches have to balance one another, with the central check coming from the Bible as it was given to us. And more is involved in this balancing act than what is called systematic theology and biblical theology. There are also demands from historical theology, ethical theology, and creedal theology. And what about typological theology?

There are also important differences between various approaches to biblical theology. Piper’s cautions in this chapter are directed at those who want to place a great deal of weight on the extra-biblical context of the biblical writings. But we should be able to see at a glance that this insistence is not necessary to what we call a biblical theology. A biblical theologian could be a strict biblicist, largely limiting himself to what is revealed, and spending all his energy developing the redemptive/historical themes within the canon only. This could easily lead to other problems, but the only point being made here is that heavy dependence on extra-biblical context — which is what Wright is doing –is not necessary to biblical theology.

Piper offers three cautions with regard to this dependence on extra-biblical sources. The first is that the extra-biblical sources can be misread and misunderstood. The second is that of assuming that a particular source found in the first century is representative in ways that it is not representative. The third is the error of misapplying the meaning of a source. In other words, to use Piper’s example, “Paul may agree that one important meaning for gospel (euangelion) is the announcement that God is king over all the universe (Isa. 52:7) but not intend for this meaning to govern or dominate what he means by the gospel in every context” (p. 36).

All these cautions (and more, in my view) are most necessary. One of the besetting sins of scholarship to that of assuming the limited material at hand (which is the only thing the scholar has to work with) is sufficient to work with. This is why paleontologists with a fist full of bone fragments can presume to tell us what east Africa was like three million years ago. This is why the Dead Sea scroll community is made so much of. But how would we like it if scholars three thousand years from now made sweeping statements about the state of evangelical theology in our generation because someone dug up the library of the Watchtower Society?

But because the task of scholarship is necessarily limited to what he has to work with, there can be no objection to him working with it. What is necessary is a scholarly humility that recognizes that what we have in hand is a tiny fraction of the actual first century context. Take for example, the New Testament uses of nomos. Compare them to the uses of nomos in the Septuagint. Then take all recorded uses of that word which we still have in our possession somehow — and which uses are therefore recorded in our lexicons. Now what percentage of the actual contextual use of that word do we have? How many people spoke or wrote that word between the years 100 B.C.E. (Before Christ’s Empire) and 50 A.D.? In short, we plainly are in possession of a fraction of one percent of the real context, which is another way of saying that we don’t really have the context. This is another way of saying that we cannot get the broader context really, and work from that broad context to a proper understanding of the New Testament. It is a task beyond our competence. God has structured things in such a way that we have to start with the meanings of such things in Scripture, and supplement our understanding as appropriate from the outside context, to the extent we might have it.

Think of it this way. What would happen to New Testament scholarship if we discovered three more “Qumran” libraries, representing different sects entirely? And let us assume that two of these groups were groups we had never even heard of before. So we not only have the JW library, but a Scientology one, a Mormon one, and Gamaliel’s personal library. Now what? What does this do to our ability to read the book of Romans? Well, maybe it shouldn’t do anything. I’m just saying.