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Geerhardus Vos defined Biblical Theology as the subdiscipline of Exegetical Theology that focuses on the history of special revelation. But it is not simply rehearsing the historical events of sacred history in order; it is a theological discipline that seeks to understand the organism of special revelation in its historic continuity and multiformity. Here are seven principles that characterized the Reformed variety of Biblical Theology.
(1) Division
Reformed Biblical Theology makes a crucial distinction or division between pre-redemptive and redemptive revelation. Redemptive revelation is a concept we are more familiar with—the promises of the gospel, the prophecies of the Messiah to come, the ministry and teaching of Jesus as he reveals the will of God for our salvation.
However, pre-redemptive revelation is distinct from redemptive revelation. Pre-redemptive revelation has to do with the special relationship between God and Adam before the Fall, in which he placed Adam on probation and offered him the hope that, if he passed the test, he would be able to receive a higher life than he had at creation. Pre-redemptive revelation is before the Fall, and redemptive revelation is after the Fall. Adam failed to keep the probation and broke covenant with God, and as a result, God responded to that by making the first promise of the gospel in Genesis 3:15.
Now I just said “God responded,” but that is not technically correct. God is absolutely sovereign and above time. He is immutable and impassible, and does not “respond” to his creatures. And yet, from a biblical theological perspective, as we are looking at the history of special revelation, we see something that appears from our creaturely point of view to be a divine response. In response to the Fall, God makes the first promise of the gospel concerning the Messiah to come, the Seed of the woman who will crush the Serpent’s head.
So that is the distinction between pre-redemptive and redemptive revelation. And the boundary line is the Fall. Sometimes we biblical theologians wish we had a term to cover the entire organism of special revelation, and sometimes we use the term “redemptive history” to cover that. But that is not technically correct, because redemptive history begins at Genesis 3:15. Everything before that point—creation and Adam’s probation—is the pre-redemptive revelation, and cannot be included under the label “redemptive” revelation, because the Fall has not yet happened and redemption has not yet been put in motion. That is why we use the more cumbersome label “the history of special revelation.” Sometimes we use another label, “covenant history,” because that is broad enough to include both the covenant of works in the garden and the subsequent unfolding of the covenant of grace. Either phrase, “the history of special revelation” or “covenant history,” is suitable as the most comprehensive label that covers both pre-redemptive and redemptive special revelation.
The principle of division is very important, because if we don’t understand the distinction between pre-redemptive and redemptive, if we smoosh everything together, making it seem like redemptive revelation begins before the Fall, or that there is no difference between pre-redemptive and redemptive, then we end up with Pelagianism. Pelagius denied the Fall and said that when Adam sinned, he was just sinning as an individual. Adam sinned and broke covenant with God, but we come along after Adam as the sons of Adam and we are in the same position as Adam. We can choose to sin or not to sin. If we choose not to sin, we can obtain eternal life by our obedience. According to Pelagianism, there is no distinction or division between the pre-redemptive and the redemptive plan.
(2) Eschatology
Reformed Biblical Theology holds that redemptive special revelation can only be understood in light of the pre-redemptive revelation that was part of Adam’s probation before the Fall. Immediately after the Fall, God said, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall crush your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Gen 3:15). When we hear that first promise of the gospel, we must interpret it in light of the pre-redemptive revelation that was part of Adam’s probation. By making this promise, God was promising to do something—he is going to create enmity between these two seeds. He is going to bring in the Seed of the woman who is going to crush the Serpent’s head. What God is essentially promising is that he is going to bring about, through Christ, the original eschatology that was offered to Adam in the garden. At the very end of Genesis 3, as God is about to expel Adam and Eve from the garden, God made this a very important pronouncement: he said, Let us cast man out of the garden “lest he reach out his hand and take also of the Tree of Life and eat, and live forever” (Gen 3:22). In saying this, God is making clear that the Tree of Life held forth a promise to Adam that he would be able to advance from the life in which he was created, which was mortal, to immortality—that he would be able to achieve an eschatological advancement.
When you turn to the New Testament, at the very end of the Bible, in Revelation 22:2, the Tree of Life appears once again in the midst of the holy city, the New Jerusalem, and it is given for the healing of the nations so that the curse might be removed—the curse that came into the world because of Adam’s sin. So that connects the dots and shows us that the plan of redemption is that God is promising to bring about, through Christ, through a Redeemer, through a second Adam figure, the original eschatology that was offered to Adam in the garden.
This is connected to what I said in a previous episode, about how Biblical Theology focuses on the organism of special revelation. There is an organic connection between these things: the pre-Fall and the post-Fall, the pre-redemptive and the redemptive, are connected. Not that they are the same—the Fall changes everything, and the plan of redemption is different from the original promise of the eschatology that was offered to Adam on the basis of his obedience. But in spite of that, in spite of this major difference, in spite of the major structural division that occurs between pre-redemptive and redemptive, there is also a connection, because God is bringing about what he had originally offered to Adam in the garden. The plan of redemption, then, is a remedial plan, that is, it is intended to remediate the situation and to bring about that which was originally promised and that which was originally hoped for.
(3) Movement
The third principle is the principle of movement. Reformed Biblical Theology holds that redemptive revelation is characterized by an overarching movement, in the history of special revelation after the Fall, from promise to fulfillment. Redemptive revelation is not static. It is not simply that God is doing one thing the whole time. Rather, there is movement, there is progress, and that movement and that progress is essentially a movement of promise to fulfillment.
This is so clear when you turn to the New Testament. When Jesus comes on to the scene, we read in Mark 1:15: “Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand.’” He is saying, “Here it is; this is the time when all the promises that have been communicated to God’s people in the old covenant are going to come to fruition in me.” Paul said the same thing very clearly in 2 Corinthians 1:20: “All the promises of God find their Yes in Christ.” Are there any promises you can think of in the Old Testament? Indeed, there are many promises all over the place. Well, whatever promise you can think of, they all find their Yes in Christ. He is the fulfillment of all the promises of God.
(4) Continuity
The fourth principle is the principle of continuity. Reformed Biblical Theology is absolutely committed, as one of its key distinctives, to affirming the continuity of the one people of God throughout redemptive history. It is not as though there are two different peoples of God—the descendants of Abraham which become Israel, and then the church which includes the Gentiles. No, there are not two different peoples of God but one. Yes, they undergo change. Yes, there is process of development from the Old to the New Covenant. But it is one people of God. In Romans 11, Paul makes this doctrine absolutely crystal clear by saying that there is only one olive tree. There are not two olive trees, one for Israel and one for the church. There is only one olive tree, and although it is true that some of the branches in that olive tree had to be removed from the tree because of their unbelief (Paul is referring there to Jewish people who rejected Jesus as the Messiah and did not believe in him), yet in spite of that seeming failure, God is grafting in the wild branches, that is, the Gentiles who believe in Jesus, into that one olive tree. And so together, both Jewish believers and Gentiles who have come to faith in Christ form together one olive tree.
(5) Multiformity
The fifth principle is the principle of multiformity. Reformed Biblical Theology balances the emphasis on continuity with a simultaneous recognition of the multiformity of the organism. Remember Vos’s longer definition of Biblical Theology: “The exhibition of the organic progress of supernatural revelation in its historic continuity and multiformity.” He didn’t just say “historic continuity.” Yes, there is continuity and organic progress in supernatural revelation, but this supernatural revelation manifests both continuity and multiformity. There is sameness and also difference. There is one olive tree, but that tree goes through a lot of different changes. The way in which God administers his Kingdom varies from epoch to epoch.
In his book The Structure of Biblical Authority, Meredith Kline said, “The covenant order [is] not static but correlated to historical movement and change” (SBA 95). So there is continuity, one people of God, but there is also historical movement and change. In the context, Kline is talking about the Ancient Near Eastern suzerainty treaties. In the Ancient Near East, you had a suzerain and vassal, and Kline is using that as a model to understand God’s covenant relationship with his people. Just as the ancient suzerain had the authority as the sovereign to change the terms of the covenant as he saw fit and the vassal simply had to submit, so also in God’s relationship with his people as he administers his Kingdom from one epoch to the next, he can sovereignly make changes. God can redefine how things should be set up and how God’s people are to interact with the world around them.
Continuing in that same section of The Structure of Biblical Authority, Kline writes that God “directs and forwards redemption’s eschatological development by decisive interventions, initiating distinctive new eras and authoritatively redefining the mode of his kingdom” (SBA 96).The Kingdom is the same, the people of God are the same. But God has the authority to redefine the mode of that Kingdom from one epoch to the next. God himself intervenes. When God came at Mount Sinai and intervened and brought in the covenant order that would lead to the establishment of the Israelite theocracy in the land, that was something unique, something distinct from what had gone before. When he intervened again in sending his Son in the fullness of time, that again brought about a change in the mode of the Kingdom of God.
You see this very clearly for example in the contrast between the way God’s people related to the world in the time of the patriarchs versus in the time of the conquest of Canaan under Joshua and beyond. In the time of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were pilgrims and sojourners. Yes, the land was theirs by promise; God promised, “To your seed I will give this land,” and yet they didn’t possess it. They made treaties with the Canaanite inhabitants of the land. Abraham even purchased a plot of ground from one of the Canaanite tribes in order to have a plot of ground to bury his wife. That was pilgrim politics.
Notice how different that is from conquest politics. In the time of Joshua and beyond, the people of Israel are not allowed to make treaties with the Canaanites. In fact, they are to go in and wipe them out. This is like an intrusion of the day of judgment. It is holy war. They are bringing to bear the principles and powers of the age to come into this plot of ground that they are now going to inherit as a possession not as sojourners.
(6) Covenants
The sixth principle is very closely connected to multiformity, and that is the principle of covenants. This is one of the most distinctive elements of Reformed Biblical Theology that sets it apart from other varieties of biblical theology. Reformed Biblical Theology sees covenants as the key instruments by which God shapes the organism of special revelation.
One of the most important things to observe here is that not all covenants are the same. There are different types of covenants in Scripture. There are unconditional covenants like the covenant of common grace in Genesis 9, which is made with all of creation, with both believers and unbelievers. There is no condition in this covenant. If mankind is more or less rebellious against God, it is not going to change the nature of this covenant, which is that God is promising to delay the day of judgment and to provide a common background or context for both the seed of the woman in the seed of the serpent to live together and to cooperate and to exist in this fallen world prior to the day of judgment.
But there are other covenants in the Bible, like the Adamic Covenant (the Covenant of Works) and the Mosaic Covenant, also called the Old Covenant. These are both legal covenants in which there is a condition—blessings are conditioned upon obedience, and curses are conditioned or threatened upon disobedience. That is a very different type of covenant from the unconditional covenant of common grace. Adam and Israel have to obey and if they don’t, they are going to receive the curses of the covenant.
And then there are yet again other types of covenants—there are promissory covenants. This type of covenant is most clearly seen in the Abrahamic Covenant in the New Covenant, which are just two administrations of the Covenant of Grace. Promissory covenants do have a condition in the sense that they require faith, but that requirement is not a legal requirement. It is not like you have to provide faith and then God provides the reward or the blessing of the covenant in return. The “condition” of faith is simply a receptive condition that rests upon the promise. It is the empty hand that receives the promise and receives it by faith alone.
So there are unconditional covenants, legal covenants, and promissory covenants. These are different instruments that God uses to do different things that are needed to shape the organism of special revelation as it unfolds from one stage to the next.
(7) Christocentrism
The seventh principle is the most glorious of all and that is Christocentrism. Reformed Biblical Theology holds that all redemptive special revelation from Genesis 3:15 on is Christocentric. It is all preparing the way for and leading us to the revelation of the Seed who was promised in Genesis 3:15. He shall crush the Serpent’s head. He will obey where Adam disobeyed. He will bring in the eschatology that Adam failed to achieve. He will bring us to the Tree of Life—in fact, he is the Tree of Life, and if we feed upon him we receive that higher state that immortality that was promised to Adam in the garden. So Christocentrism is the point of the whole thing. Of course, we don’t want to be Christomonists and say Christocentrism applies to the pre-redemptive revelation as well. That is not correct. We want to say Christocentrism is the point of the redemptive plan from Genesis 3:15 on.
I love that verse in Galatians, where Paul says, “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law” (Gal 4:4-5). It is as if all of the time that was leading up to Christ was this promise phase in which we are just waiting for and groaning and longing for Christ, and then when the fullness of time had come, Christ appears.
Another analogy I like to use is the analogy of a play. You have different acts in the play—Act I, Act II, Act III, and so on. The final act in the play is the revelation of the hero. It is Christ himself. He steps out onto the stage in his incarnation and resurrection from the dead, and all the spotlights of the theater are shining upon him alone. Everyone is looking to him. The point of Reformed Biblical Theology is to see the Christocentric focus of redemptive special revelation.
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