Biblical Theology approaches the Bible as an organic drama of God’s unfolding revelation through history. In distinction from doctrinal or systematic theology, biblical theology follows the progressively unfolding revelation of God’s words and deeds through history. This linear aspect of revelation unites each revelatory event and proclamation both retrospectively and prospectively. Geerhardus Vos described the organic continuation of revelation in history as a flower expanding from bud to blossom. The blossom is retrospectively united to the bud; the bud is prospectively united to the blossom. One of the tasks/privileges of the interpreter of Scripture is to draw out these organic prospective and retrospective relationships. At the center of this organic unity is the person and work of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Even as our Risen Lord related all of Scripture retrospectively and prospectively to himself (Luke 24:27), so Reformed biblical theology is preeminently Christocentric.
Tag: Biblical Theology
There is a grand interconnection between the incarnation of Christ and his second coming. Graeme Goldsworthy gives a great summing up of the relation of the incarnation to eschatology or last things, when Christ returns in glory and brings to completion and finality all he has accomplished (inserts mine, to give context to the quote).
The structure of New Testament eschatology requires that we at least consider that [Christ’s return] is both fulfilled now in the incarnation and awaiting its consummation at Christ’s [second] return. That is, what happened in Jesus’ first advent as fulfiller of all God’s promises is the paradigm of what will happen at his parousia. Everything was fulfulled in him representatively at his first coming, and everything will be fulfilled in a universal consummation at his return.
Graeme Goldsworthy, Christ-Centered Biblical Theology, pgs. 184-185