Probably the most popularised framework these days is Goldsworthian Biblical Theology (GBT). But GBT depends very heavily on Covenant Theology (CT) (though that doesn’t seem to be explicitly explained much that I’ve seen.) The key, and controversial, point of CT is the Covenant of Grace, an ahistorical “covenant” between God and all his people. It means that there can be only one group of God’s people, so it makes no sense to talk about both the Jews and the Church as God’s people now, hence the illogicalness of premillennialism.
But amillennialism is equally nonsensical to dispensationalists, who believe that God has related to people in up to 8 essentially unrelated ways over history. I don’t really know much about hardcore dispensationalism, but to deny the millennium would be seen as denying God’s faithfulness, as they sincerely believe he has unfinished business with the Jews.
There are people who reject both CT and Dispensationalism. Probably the most well known would be New Covenant Theology. I’m not sure if I agree completely with it, as it really is very American and deals more with American versions of CT, rather than the Australian versions that I’m familiar with (like GBT.)
Here’s what I currently believe. Understand that it’s a hermeneutic still in its infancy ;)
CT is very old, and came about long before Meredith Kline’s work on Suzerain–Vassal treaties. Kline himself believed CT and his work provided a lot of depth to the study. But I think that he, and other CTs, haven’t let their beliefs be reformed enough by his research. Understanding Deuteronomy and the other covenants in the Ancient Near East context is so foundational, but from that understanding, I don’t think the Covenant of Grace should be considered anything like a covenant. It’s ahistorical, there were no witnesses, the parties are vague, the requirements on each party are vague. I believe that all the benefit of the Covenant of Grace can be kept by simply saying that God’s Modus Operandi is grace.
This then frees us from saying that there must be one homogeneous group called God’s People. I believe that each covenant should be approached on it’s own terms: God makes the covenant of Genesis 9 with all land life, including animals. Many of the other covenants include all of the Hebrew people, but some (Phinehas, David) involve just one subsection of that. Some covenants are unconditional, others are very very conditional. You’re a part of some covenants genetically, but other covenants you must deliberately join. CT flattens all of this out, but I think we should embrace these differences.
What this means is rather than just looking at a Bible passage and asking “People? Place? Rule?” we can ask more nuanced questions. Sometimes it might be more work to study passages, but I think it’s worth it. All of the Bible after Gen 9 involves people under Noah’s covenant… which probably isn’t relevant, but it’s still worth considering. More important is Abraham's and the Sinai/Deuteronomy covenants. Rather than flattening them to one set of promises we ask how does a Bible passage (perhaps something about the exile for example) relate to God’s unconditional and eternal promise of Abraham’s descendants occupying the promised land? But how does it also relate to God’s conditional promises of blessing and curses in Deuteronomy, conditional on their behaviour?
I think all eschatological positions would agree that the solution to these kinds of questions lie in the “remnant”, for within the conditional covenant of Deuteronomy, God made the unconditional promise that he would always preserve a remnant. The differences in understanding come with the identification of the remnant. The Covenant of Grace requires there to be only one people of God, and so the remnant must be identified with the church. Dispensationalism says the remnant must be some portion of the original biological descendants of Abraham. I think it’s neither and yet both...
God acts in more wonderful, and more complex, ways than simply through one overarching Covenant of Grace. It is to his credit and glory that he fulfils the many different promises he made to different people through history, especially when to a human they would seem impossibly contradictory at times.
Goldsworthy is heavily relied upon by many in NCT and most would not make a direct link to GBT and "his CT". NCT is not particularly American deconstructionism of CT. Although there are a few different approaches to the hermeneutic of NCT, which is not new but is coming into a fuller presence as a Christ Centered approach to Scripture. We have taught an NCT conference in Australia in 2008. http://treasuringchrist.com/eTreasure/blog.html. This site is hosted by an Aussie, Shane Becker. A list of current work can be found here www.fbceny.org/blog. Scroll down to the NCT conference list entry.
ReplyDeleteHere are some question related to Goldsworthy taught at a bible class by Chad Bresson, (a speaker at the John Bunyan Conference next year and a member of our yearly NCT Think Tank in Buffalo, NY) a church that is committed to NCT.
Goldsworthy: Towards a Biblical Theology of Interpretation II
Discussion:
1. What does it mean that there is an ethical dimension to hermeneutics? Why is this an important presupposition?
2. Redemptive revelation begins with what assumption?
3. What is the relationship between Genesis 3:15, hermeneutics, and human history?
4. What is the hermeneutical significance of the law?
5. Goldsworthy says, "The law itself is historically conditioned so that it cannot be extrapolated from the specific context of the acts of God and the experiences of Israel". What does he mean by that?
6. What is the relationship between the wisdom of Israel and salvation history? Why is this important?
7. Goldsworthy says, "the fear of the Lord is the Old Testament equivalent of a gospel-centered hermeneutic." Do you agree or disagree? Explain.
8. What does Goldsworthy mean by "baptism" of pagan wisdom? What does this mean for his hermeneutics? Do you think this is an inconsistency with Goldsworthy? Why or why not?
9. What is the two-pronged role of the prophets in salvation history? What does this have to do with hermeneutics?
10. Goldsworthy says, "Eschatology is the major biblical denial of all forms of relativism." What does he mean by that?
Joe
Hi Joe, thanks for your comments!
ReplyDeleteMy exposure to NCT is mostly limited to Wells and Zaspel's book, and a few random articles on the net which I can't remember clearly. My understanding is that NCT is largely the same as CT but without the extra-biblical covenants (Covenant of Works and Grace. Maybe redemption too?)
But from that my impression is that NCT is very much focussed on the arguing against the continued binding nature of the law. To me this feels American, as most of the CTs here in Australia would agree that the law isn't binding, or, at least, few emphasise and discuss it to the extent that non-CTs focus on correcting it. Instead I think the flaw with Australian CT is that it results in overly simplistic understandings of the Bible due to everything being subsumed into the CoG. (To be fair the amount of reform I advocate is pretty minimal compared with how good BT is over those who don't have a BT, see my post before on Nondeliberate metanarratives. But just because it's good doesn't mean we shouldn't try to make it better.)
I think GBT is mostly compatible with NCT because it's dependence on the CoG isn't explicit. While entirely compatible with the CoG, the People/Place/Rule methodology doesn't require it. But neither does it take advantage of the greater explanatory power which not equating all the covenants allows. We are not restricted to look for one people and one rule at each stage in history.
Those are some good questions, but out of context I don't think I could answer many of them!