Topic Video: Critical vs. Evangelical Biblical Theology
Автор: Thirdmill
Загружено: 2025-06-17
Просмотров: 269
Can we trust the Bible’s history—or is it just religious reflection?
Learn how two approaches to biblical theology—critical and evangelical—differ in their view of Scripture’s authority and reliability.
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Biblical theology is theological reflection drawn from the historical analysis of acts of God reported in Scripture.
We’ll trace two major directions that have been taken in the discipline of biblical theology. First, “critical biblical theology”—forms of the discipline that have followed the spirit of modernity to the point of rejecting biblical authority.
It’s quite common to trace the origins of modern biblical theology to the inaugural address of Johann Gabler at the University of Altdorf in 1787.
In his view, the goal of biblical theology was to discover what ancient biblical writers and characters believed about God and the world in which they lived.
Now it’s important to realize that as a critical theologian, Gabler believed that the findings of biblical theology might be of some interest from time to time, but modern Christians should believe only those parts of the Bible that pass the standards of modern rational and scientific analysis.
One feature of critical biblical theology in recent centuries has been the growing conviction that the Bible’s historical claims are almost entirely unreliable. By and large, critical scholars have rejected many portions of the Scriptures as erroneous, pious fiction or even outright fraud. From this perspective, the crossing of the Red Sea was nothing more than a strong wind blowing through a marsh, or a small band of slaves escaping Egypt on rafts.
Even today, the majority of critical theologians who do not simply reject Scripture altogether treat the history of the Bible as Heilsgeschichte, “redemptive history,” confessional, history-like theological reflections. While rejecting the historical reliability of Scripture, they salvage Scripture somewhat for their theology by exploring how it reflects human religious sentiments.
Now, we should turn to a second stream of thought: evangelical biblical theology. Here we use the term “evangelical” simply to mean that these Christians continued to affirm the unquestionable authority of Scripture.
Charles Hodge lived from 1797 to 1878. In contrast with critical theologians, Hodge believed in the authority of Scripture.
Listen to the way that Hodge defined biblical theology in the introduction to his three-volume Systematic Theology:
“The office of [biblical theology] is to ascertain and state the facts of Scripture.”
A significant shift took place in evangelical biblical theology under the influence of one of his successors, Benjamin B. Warfield, who lived from 1851 to 1921.
From Warfield’s point of view, biblical theology deals with “various theologies of the Scriptures.” The human authors of biblical books expressed their theological views in different, though complementary ways.
Put simply, Warfield believed that biblical theology is to discern the various theological systems presented in Scripture.
Further developments have taken place more recently in evangelical biblical theology.
Without a doubt, one biblical theologian has had more influence than any other on contemporary evangelical biblical theology, Geerhardus Vos, who lived from 1862 to 1949.
Vos argued that the various theologies of Scripture had a common focus on the history of redemption. According to Vos, biblical theology discerns the Bible’s various perspectives on the great acts of God in history and the theological significance of those divine acts. In nearly every branch of evangelicalism, biblical theology continues to have this basic focus.
“Happily, there have been many Christians in many branches of the church throughout the world who have not followed the critical rejection of biblical authority. Without denying the value and importance of scientific research, these evangelicals continue to hold that the Scriptures are true in all that they claim, including what they claim about history.”
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