rehearse briefly what i call a review of what you should have taken away from new testament one and that i assume that you have here or at least if you haven't take new testament one you can do the optional reading in garment and just kind of get a either refresher if you forgot or just kind of an overview but i'm going to give it overview anyway right here that i think you'll be helpful so new testament one is mostly about content but there is a particular skill set that you should have walked away with the new testament one and that's a particular way of of interpreting uh the biblical text uh it's what uh technically is called exegesis and historical critical method and gorman's optional chapter you don't have to read it but you want a refresher as well written kind of uh highlights what the components of biblical interpretation how scholars do it and how you as rising scholars whether pastoral scholars for the church think of yourself as pastor scholars of the church during your time at the seminary these kind of methods is what i would hope to see you employ in your interpretation of the biblical text so uh and um for those of you who don't know greek don't worry about this first one because there's a there's a uh a um helpful there's there's step e here that's gonna help you with with the if you don't know the greek language but if you know the greek language um exegesis or critical method in other words setting the text in its historical cultural context so that we hear the message as the author and intended to the best of our ability and we use history the grammar of the text uh literary criticism a multiplicity of tools to excavate the encyclopedia knowledge that the author assumes the reader ancient reader has that we might not be privy to uh the gospels don't really explain in great detail who the pharisees are because the gosp the gospel writers whether it's matthew mark luke and john and the the church that first received this gospel already knew who the pharisees were they they were living with them and among them um so they there's a certain knowledge that the author assumes the ancient reader already has that we don't so the importance of the stone critical methods of jesus is that that encyclopedia of knowledge that we don't have we still have access to by virtue of the fact that we um we we we have historical resources uh the dead sea scrolls um uh the uh the the midrash the targums uh greco-roman sources suetonius josephus a host of other authors who enlarge our panoramic view of the world and new testament allow us to reconstruct the encyclopedia of knowledge that is assumed between author and reader that's what you were doing in new testament one a lot so you invest so um and so part of the process is digging into the original language of the the biblical text and in the new testament it's greek for the old testament although uh this is not ultimate class but it would be hebrew and aramaic and so if you do know greek uh you might be that whenever you're interpreting a particular text you might be you might want to go to the original greek text and trans translate just kind of um walk through uh the the nuances and beauty of the greek text and then note that for example that not all very few times but nevertheless you always have to kind of guard against guard for this our new test greek text has very few text critical issues that affect the media text theologically now there there are text critical issues but it might be you know is it jesus christ or is it just christ that's in this text it you know it might be how do we punctuate the text is this and there or is is it is it uh is it is it not there uh some a lot of the the the plethora of quick critical issues sometimes have no theological bearing on what the text means but there are a few places where depending on the the variant or the text tradition that we we read it does affect the theological meaning of the text and so to just have that there as something that we're aware of um and there in case that there is a text critical issue that affects um how how to preach it uh a great one is what did jesus have compassion um for the uh the leprous person in mark or did he was he angry uh when when when the the person who was leprous said son of god or he said i asked the holy one uh have mercy on me and so i think it makes a difference whether jesus was angry because we if he was what was he who was he angry at what was he angry maybe it was a what or is this another place where in like in other other gospels he meets someone and he's moved by their condition of suffering and he has compassion for them i do think actually anger is probably what mark is there's other places in mark where jesus is angry and there's other places in the other synoptics where jesus has compassion so he is compassionate he's angry about something i think that makes the text more intriguing more provocative but also i think closer to what i think the original text was so these that's one example of issue to know the syntax and grammar um to know the idioms to know the words what the words mean sometimes a word study on what grace means as gift versus uh just translating theologically as grace sometimes it loses the import uh when we translate it as grace and not give that and then showing where else is car is used and looking at concordances sometimes sentence diagramming is really important to study the flow of the argument uh it helps when you're reading ephesians 1 whereby verse 18 you're still reading one sentence our new testament translations break up it in bite-sized sentences but technically it's one long sentence and you're still going so maybe diagramming that out helps the transit decide where if i were to make the break up this long sentence into smaller sentences where would be a good faithful way to to divide the text so that the reader would have an easier time um now here is that if you don't know the greek it's okay because uh steps a and d can be done indirectly by studying more than one english translation because usually if the english translations are strikingly different at a particular verse that means there's a there is a translation issue um that that the translator is not sure what's the best way to translate this a particular text and they're disagreeing and where there's pretty much um overwhelming um uh consensus on how to the text that means that the text is not a tran difficult translatable verse um you get you pick up that through commentaries so commentaries will discuss uh where difficulties of translation or um struggle and understanding uh the flow or argument of the text are are and then in this class you don't have to know the greek to know a few greek words everyone knows what agape means love although i think their understanding of love is not necessarily true to what the new testament understood that word to be but that's another day there are other words that i think are going to be important that will constantly pop up depending on what commentary you look at and will affect your preaching and teaching so the guy sunni that's the word for righteousness or justice and i think justice is a message and a christian justice not a secular form now what does it mean that god is just i know what the world thinks of justice is if they think of it as being fair but god has a different definition of what justice is and so knowing key words in greek and honing in on them and asking what they mean i'll give you that along the way without having to commit to knowing greek or have it under your belt i will give you key greek words and ask you to know what those mean and we'll talk about a class so that you'll remember so that's one big and important step i the the core though of new testament one and two has always been historical cultural studies and historical criticism uh historical cultural studies is the history in the text and that means if jesus encounters the pharisees and sadducees and the herodians all in one episode when they when he's asked who's uh when uh should we play taxes caesar or not they're all there um it the hit these characters are in the text it makes a difference to know who the pharisees are who the sadducees are who the herodians are how what different party lines that they drew that were religious and political and social and that the system of uh government governance in that time was not a democracy like it is today it's not left or right or democrat or republican it's how different jewish parties responded to empire because empire was the cis the political system that was in place and that and the dynamics between jewish parties in reaction to empire into each other would affect our understanding of how jesus answers the questions whether you should pay taxes caesar or not so this is knowing the jewish parties what they are know if knowing who the samaritans are and why there's a history about a hundred year hostility between the samaritans and the jews where the jews of the intestinal period did some pretty horrific war crimes against the samaritans including the burning of the samaritan temple and there's a reason why this american woman is afraid when a jewish man jesus starts talking to her and so these are some of the things so knowing uh what old testament texts are referred to in a description of a narrative event setting the narrative in its jewish or roman context that's all the history in the text but there's also the history behind the text this is where uh where this is history between the audience and the the author biblical author and the the setting in which uh they interact to produce the new testament document so does it matter that paul's in prison when he writes some of his letters it does because he identified itself as apostle and chains the most profound they all call the suffering for a christian comes from the letters where paul is in prison and so i do think that affects very much the way we understand how the letter was composed and how to interpret the letter um so there's a what happened at the church in galatia where paul had to stand up for peter we can we get some information in the text about their confrontation there's a lot also going going on behind the text and paul this and the ongoing tension that paul might still have had with the church in jerusalem so these were questions of authorship date um this nice german term sits in laban which is the life setting of of paul and and his his recipient audience the purpose of the document and other issues those were things that you covered in new testament one um so this really is at the heart of what new testament one is about but you also need to look at the literary context because it does matter whether you look at the individual verse you look at the verse minimally and what we call a pericope i'm sure you heard this term before in new testament one for the parikry is the smallest unit of context for any given verse this is the minimum uh context for the for the verse and then you might want to look at the whole chapter in which the the passage you're preaching and teaching from is embedded so literary context is important um but we don't want to stop there we want to after you do all this work it has a point to theologically interpret scripture so that the document we're reading is not a dead document and it's not something that is just written for the recipi first century recipients but the holy spirit is active in the word of scripture and by theologically reflecting on the message of how the matthews community or paul's churches received and read paul's letters or the or matthew's gospel that uh we can apply that message today the new testament has something to say to us today in church today and it doesn't under the agency of the spirit so we are so theological interpretation is also a huge part and this is where new testament one ends and this and this is where new testament 2 picks up so what is new about new testament 2 it's about systematizing the occasional teachings into overall theology or doctrine um it matters that we don't read just one text in isolation from the rest new testament canon or the old so if we talk about adoption of sin i mean you have to go to genesis 3 but and you you want to you and paul quotes genesis 3 or there's echoes of it in the book of romans but i think genesis 3 undergirds the entire new testament everyone's operating from a genesis 3 definition of sin and transgression whether it's matthew mark or luke and john and but they might not say it the same way the incarnation john says that the word became flesh and tabernacled among us but paul says it a different way that jesus though he was equal with god did not consider equality with god something that he could ransack like other kings do it wasn't that it wasn't he didn't keep it as a ploy for power instead he emptied himself and became nothing that's the incarnation the different metaphors different um symbolic uh language different uh uh illustrations and examples but they're speaking to the same conceptual reality how was jesus fully god and fully man and if i just study paul but i don't study john's john chapter 1 and i only look at philippians 2 in isolation i'm liable to get an incomplete picture of the incarnation and maybe worse if the information that the the other texts like uh john 1 or or hebrews 1 and 2 other texts that talk about christ's incarnation is essential to a proper understanding of jesus nature as divine and human and i leave that out then what happens is i might create heresy and you actually get that a lot of the christological heresies is what gave birth to for example the jehovah witnesses or the mormon church so systematizing um the new testament so that the occasion teachers occasion occasioned teachings on a particular theme doctrine or topic is is assembled together so we get a big picture of what the witness is of the church on this matter is essential to i think the pastoral task uh we will we'll just simply not be able to preach and teach well and we might water down the gospel along the way which we just want to want to avoid so um what i want to do is um by the way uh we in our time together there will be a 15-minute break and um i it might be at one hour in 15 minutes we have an hour and 15 left but i think for this class it'll be an hour 15 and 15 minutes and then a shorter hour in our time together to finish off at 9 30. so i'm just going to go a little bit into what his new testament theology is set up for some discussion but uh i i hope you're overwhelmed by this screen because i could have put uh three more on this they're all these are all books new testament theology why are there so many books new testament theology why is this such a hot topic um because there are uh scholars who are are committed to doing new testament theology but the big problem is how how do we do this well um because there's different roads to the same destination and not all roads are are are are good ones so um let me just kind of rehearse a little bit some highlights of problems and challenges to to kind of constructing any new testament theology from the reading of the new testament texts so that we can appreciate a little bit more what golem gate says and your reading of van hooser says about the task of new testament theology and biblical theology so in the history of new testament studies these have been some past approaches but each each approach has had their deficiencies um it wasn't sufficient to do new testament theology well so um the first one is word studies and i think a lot of pastors are in danger of of making this exegetical mistake um let's say i want to do a new testament theology on the power of god and i might even know a little greek under my belt so i might say wherever the word dunamis which is the greek word for power um and by the way this means power to do something versus power over something it's not a power of domination but the power to to do to to rescue to transform to uh to uh deliver what you know to heal whatever it is power to do something uh what if i look up every occasion uh where dunamis appears in new testament and i access this text i study it and i put together a theology of god's power wouldn't that be a great way to do a new testament theology in power and the answer is no the reason why is because dunamis is not the only word for power in the new testament there is a greek word called krattos which is might there's the greek word called iscs which is strength um there's the greek word bia which means force there's a mult there's more than one term or lexing for power you have to study them all and the text in which those lectures are vetted but you can't even stop there because there's metaphors and atomics of power the arm of the lord you see my arm right here although it's not impressive but the arm of the lord is a metaphor for god's power or the finger of god this is the big contra bails about controversy jesus says there's no way i can exercise this demon by the power of the alzheimer because a kingdom divided itself as fall would fall so if this bad is exercised it's done by the finger of god a symbol of god god's miraculous power where he uses ten plagues in exodus to bring the an egyptian empire to its knees so it's not adequate to do a single word study um and a man named james barr in his critique of uh kittles theological dictionary testament wrote a whole book on the semantics of biblical language arguing against doing biblical theology or new testament theology this way so well what about the what is it what's another way um the church historically has its doctrines uh especially the christological doctrines couldn't we just look at the new testament texts that these doctrines evoke uh so for example if we look at the nicene creed uh which is our earliest most important a text on the nature of jesus the divine and um and human identity the we we read the nice and q and you'll hear echoes and direct and words drawn from john 1 psalm 2 psalm philippians 2 uh hebrews 1 psalm actually 110 one and an other text so the early church did a lot of our it's worked for us it gave us doctrine and it showed us which text they're accessing to get that new testament theology or doctrine and i would like to say that i'm actually really quite sympathetic to this view i think the doctors the church are great pointers to how we might start but we wouldn't exhaust the process of new testament theology because i do think that every doctrine has its church controversy or its context in which the doctrine was needed to elaborate the position of the church a lot of times it was to fight off heresy and then and we're living in different times and the questions that we might ask of the same topic or doctrine are going to be different from the authors of the night scene council for example or dr council constantinople so i think this is i actually have been quite somebody i think listening to the doctrines of the church and seeing what texts they access is a great starting point for new testament theology but it might not be adequate well what about author-based approaches why don't i just study what the historical jesus does and then and then paul and uh john and then the author john and then maybe the writer of general hebrews see what each individual author says for the topic and then collaborate the author's viewpoints together to produce new testament theology um and that's a great idea but the problem is is people can't agree on the authorship sometimes now no are you gonna if you're talking about the historical jesus which one are you gonna do are you gonna do this so-called jesus that the more you look at him the more you realize he is the son of god or are you gonna look at the stoical jesus that is so stripped of of the miraculous that you you don't even get a full portrait of who this person is because too much of the gospel has been jettisoned by by scholars that say that anything supernatural can't possibly be true or historical so which historical jesus you're talking about are you going to limit yourself to the jesus the theological reading of jesus and the gospels without the history i don't think we should do that we talk about paul there is a con disagreement on which paul letters paul actually wrote versus what we call a deuteral paul um appalling disciple who might have and and what's the relation between the deuteropolis and paul did the jordan paul distort his mentor paul in writing like say ephesians or colossians or is ephesians colossians is written by dude or author a true distillation of paul's best ideas or do we even want to say that there's a dude or paul maybe there's some scholars that say that paul wrote all 13 letters that are attributed to him and we don't have to have it due to a paul what about john what did john write do you write the gospel only of john the gospel john or or the first three epistles uh first and third john or maybe just some of the pistols and not others what about the book of revelation is that by john uh john the son of zebedee apostle so you can see that there's there's problems identifying who if you're gonna take an author-based approach the theologies are gonna look different because people are going to disagree on which author what which document did paul write hebrews or not um should second peter be included in the can or not i mean it's in the canon it's a midpoint but second peter does look really different from first peter so lots of things um and then also whatever we do with new testament theology we have to have it in dialogue with the old testament that was the big mistake of martian martian so we don't want to do marxianism by jettisoning the old testament but we want to recognize the old testament as the first i know 10 chapters of a uh 15 chapter book in the old testament is much longer than our new testament can you imagine reading a book and throwing out the the two-thirds of it and only reading the last third you might get the end but you might not understand uh how we got there and so uh whatever we do with new testament theology has to include a dialogue with uh the um the old testament and where the new testament directly access the old testament to interpret life events and significance of jesus so these are some of the issues that um we struggle with and your reading today provides a way not the only way to resolve some of these tension points i'm in our class we're going to suggest a way to do this methodology i personally think it is a very good way both uh acceptable in the academic world but also has a it's a good way for pastors i had you read an article on the hermeneutics of trust and i think approaching the text with a a posture of trust trusting the text not not need trusting uh we we can't critically engage our our bible and we can ask questions that those in the hermeneutics suspicion camp ask this is all from your reading but we don't want to stay suspicious or in doubt and we don't want to deconstruct things and leave the pieces on the floor we want to reconstruct what we didn't constructive and come out even with a greater faith in the the canonical word of god as something that truly it bears witness to god is and what the church should and and the document by which church should live out his faith in his life so when we we're gonna um i i gave you that hermitage of trust article so that it it helps you understand basically that's the posture that we're taking for new testament theology as a whole and we'll discuss all this so now is a good time for a break so when we get back we're going to ask i'm going to um let's see i think we can break up in big groups i mean we have what one two three yes yeah so let's break up into we can have one group of three two group two groups of two i think it's all right and what i would like for you to do is discuss golden gays um work and also for kevin van hooser's work and we're gonna ask three simple questions golden gate has a very good description what biblical theology is um and and then and it's not the same as systematics uh in fact there's a danger when we jump to systematics without doing good biblical theological work van hooser also talks about the importance of systematic theology that without it uh the danger is that biblical interpreters work in silos we read these in text individually we don't make the connections between them and we might actually come out with an inconsistent witness to who god is and what the church should be like so uh so he he has a nice section on where biblical and cinematic theology don't have to be competitive but really need each other so that each can do their job well and then the third question is so what is biblical theology what is systematics and how what are the differences between the two but this leads us to the question where does new testament theology fit in all this so new testament theology is neither of those things but it in many ways if i if i were to give you the answer first but then you're going to pack it and you just when we discuss it when we get back um the answer is is that it's the bridge discipline between biblical theology and systematics so it's it it does the work it's it's the if it in in a way um the tensions between biblical theology and systematic theology is um i don't know how should i put it the stress is you know you let the air out of a of of of a tire that's about to burst because you put too much air in it so um nutrition theology would release some of the tension between these two disciplines it's the tension that bridges them and that's and that's what i want to get at so we're going to talk about that when we get back though so that's our preface i have 8 10 15 minutes from now means 8 25 so um so let's let's let's come back at 8 25 i'm going to grab my coffee so i don't worry about you i'm going to drink my coffee and i'll see you back at 8 25. identify uh oh my yeah my time so now so that means what that's 6.25 for you guys right 625 is that right i think okay this screen is just like some guiding questions so i'm gonna break up people into groups i think um two four six three groups would be good i think i'll i'll let the computer do the number uh numbering um so uh 10 minutes everyone and then give me three definitions what is biblical theology what is systematic theology and what do you think new testament theology is now um with biblical theology golden gate's work is is really important i mean he he's pretty vocal about what he thinks of a good biblical theology is and then what van houser does is uh just a little bit context for van hooser he's trying to push the close the gap between biblical studies and theo uh and theology some systematic theology is very possible to and you won't see one line of scripture one reference to scripture um some systematic theologies have no reference to scripture and uh but van hooser wants to reconnect systematics with uh biblical with uh biblical interpretation but in a way that is true to his discipline um and uh isn't just another biblical theology so he's trying what he does is he he's the one that he doesn't describe what system ideology is he tries to map out really carefully the differences between the two different disciplines so for a definition of biblical theology of golden gate and he doesn't want to look at systematics at all and then van hooser thinks the two disciplines don't have to compete but he will explain what he thinks are the differences between the two and then try it and then if you can get to it try to ask if what do you think new testament theology is how does it bridge the gap between the two disciplines so i'm gonna break people up right now uh into smaller breakout rooms all right it's great to have everyone back um so in terms of biblical theology you hit the nail on the head um a very concise way to put it in but and and you you nailed it biblical theology wants to live in the biblical world it wants to use the categories the language of biblical theology but and there's a pluses and negatives to that so um what john goldman says what biblical skull biblical theologians do is we don't modernize the text um if god's i this is an example i gave him one of the groups if god if the text says god repents as uncomfortable as reading that god repents is uh that's what it says in the hebrew that's what it says in the title so we can gloss over it we can skip it we can try to soften the language of the text by replacing the language repentance with something else but golden gate says let's put the brakes on let's not do that i think being comfortable with the text whether it's about the violence of god or the fact that god repents or how badly god's people stumble uh and there are some really gruesome episodes especially in the book of judges that sitting in the uncomfortableness is really important uh because from that we might gain a deeper insight into the nature and character of god and what he expects from his people than if we just simply softened it and diluted it or just ignored it so golden gate is very adamant that let's preserve how the bible speaks about god about creation about us our destiny and not remove the scandal of the language it uses repentance is not a user-friendly term in trinity's 21st century culture people don't like the word repent and i don't think we should be so quick to replace it with a language that is more easily acceptable to the culture because something about the word repentance does um evoke a a certain response from the reader or listener who hears the call of repentance and it and it is the language the bible uses and um we we talked about i think another example i gave was father where yes god is called father and that's not good news for some people because they might have had really horrible experiences with their fathers and so do we stay do we jettison the father language because of that or do we begin with what the bible celebrates in god's uh the metaphor father but also talk about god's being mother because there's a lot of eternal images and maybe perhaps what a person who hears the body language thinks about fathers and what the bible thinks or talks about fathers and mothers might be different they're not highlighting the same characteristics based on the the um one person is doing from their personal experience the other person is doing from the metaphoric use of god's care for us as a parent cares for a child and highlighting that excuse me highlighting that that episode but this is some of the things that for example um some theologians in if they don't like the father language and they don't want to connect that with patriarchy might try to jettison the father language and just use other images to talk about god's character and i i think golden gate would say no preserve the father language but maybe we can talk about what does thought the fatherhood of god look like without patriarchy can we even think about it that way and it's also celebrate the maternal images because god is mother throughout the prophets use the mother uh hood of god as a strong image of god's care for israel uh and um and so the prophetic literature is laden with that language jesus picks it up quotes from isaiah and old testament prophets like jeremiah when he says that i long to bring jerusalem under my wing like a mother hen with its chicks but jerusalem refuses and he's lamenting over that so um the biblical theology at its best describes yeah describes categories of god and and god's people et cetera but and preserves the language the bible uses describe those kind of those those uh realities i just had a question when you were talking about um like okay so choosing to describe to embrace the description of god as father yeah but then you're saying but let's try and conceptualize that as god as father you know outside and beyond patriarchy but within scripture fatherhood is patriarchal so it is isn't that kind of applying systematic theology to our biblical theology then it is it is and so that's where the tension comes in because i do think that um if if fatherhood in the ancient world is structured in patriarchy um does the bible's appropriation of fatherhood mean that it somehow endorses patriarchy actually i would say that a good biblical theology might press against that um and so because and i think it might that's where we want to look at the entire canon we might want to look at the fact that while fatherhood of god is an important image of god it's not the only one there's there and the collective of the other images helps us to inform how we should understand the fatherhood of god um so that's that's a that's a short response but um but the thing is is that um the we don't systematic is important systematic theology is important because as much as we were worried to dilute or remove the scandal of the way the bible describes god and and human human reality we don't want to not communicate the biblical witness well to our contemporary world and sometimes and we don't want to think theologically about the biblical text and say that it doesn't address certain issues because it doesn't speak specifically to it because the bible has something to say about addiction does the bible have something to say about video gaming that's just our theology of entertainment what does idle food have to do with anything today i think it has a lot to do with what understanding christian freedom is and and systematizing paul's discourse on idol food is going to help us take something that seems really distant from 21st century life and all of a sudden it becomes so relevant what is systematic theology one of the things that it does is modernize language makes it contemporary and relevant we need that otherwise we can't explain or bear witness to who god is to those who are bible literate or don't know the world of old testament we can introduce them to it but we have to not communicate with them the the theological import of what this uh what that world means for us today so this is what i these are the binaries that i saw van houser reference in his article so this is what you mentioned um the biblical theology is historical and it's temporal it's it's culturally contingent what do you systematiology what do you think and this is what um melvin talked about a little bit in his in his breakout room logical and hierarchical i mean we could have a systematic theology where god is good god is powerful god is omnipresent and also a mission he knows all things you can work top down by talking about the attributes of god and and we and what do what are the attributes of god you might not turn to the bible right away you might turn to aquinas or some other theologian that talks about the the passivity of god or the transcendence of god and you use their description of who god is to form that attribute that's one way to do systematic theology and i think those systematies that focus on the church fathers or different key figures throughout the history of the churches is a good way to do systematic theology because when you look at those figures they're reading from scripture directly all the time the scripture's informing the categories that they they access and that helps the contemporary reader to know what parts of the bible to include in that conversation as he accesses it through aquinas or through another treasure store uh church patriarch so that's one way biblical theology tends to work from the top down you look at the text and you go up so um but there's a danger because if you're if you silent yourself out then you might and don't look at the how all the parts connect together you could get heresy so you need systematic so let me give you an example um you have you have you heard the argument that the son is support eternally subordinate to the father i okay so the original argument is not about the contemporary uh contemplative economical debates to me that is so strange but actually uh this comes up with um the the argument between christianity and dos dostitism in the second century but even uh intervening that when we have in the turn of the 20th century and the beginning at the end of the 19th the emergence of the jehovah witnesses you know a lot of times the jehovah witnesses talked about eternal salvation the son of the son actually didn't start off divine but became divine because of the way they read the gospel of john okay if you read the gospel of john and you don't put in dialogue with any other part of the bible you could although you shouldn't because internally the gospel john presses against the idea but you could come up with the idea that the son is always subordinate to the father because the son doesn't do what the father does he didn't see the father doing first the father is the one who sends the son everything the son does he does for the glory of the father uh so it sounds like if you read the gospel of john the son is subordinate to the father but but depart and this is where systematics helps because if you look at the entire new testament and old testament you can't say that the son is eternally subordinate to the father because there's because in other it's not the gospels clearly the sun sits at the right hand of god at the resurrection so if at the incarnation the son relinquishes not his divine nature but his divine privilege and power that's what it means to empty himself though he has he could be equal with god he chose to live like a human being he emptied himself of a power but not his divine nature that whatever power that was relinquished was fully restored at the resurrection so that when god sits at jesus sits at god's right hand that means that he has been restored fully into the godhead of god all power has been returned to him he was always god from beginning to end there's not one point where jesus was not god but he divulged himself of the privilege and power of acting as god in human history uh uh to be fully human among us and even experience suffering so the subordination of jesus the son of the father is a very tiny blip in the panoramic of human history it only applies when jesus incarnate when he was in his earthly ministry and he was restored to what he was always equal with god they're not subordinate with god sharing the godhead of god within a reciprocity of functionality between the father son and the holy spirit he restored to that fully at the resurrection systematic theology presses against just reading the gospel of john as such a narrow way that you come out with the wrong conclusion that the son is eternally subordinate to the father so do you see how the disciplines might help one another the biblical theology is in danger because it doesn't see all the parts fitted together of distortion by focusing on just one part of the biblical witness systematics on the other hand also is in danger of distortion but in a different way what does it mean that it's for example logical and hierarchical it it's normative and prescriptive it's like a circle um versus a line of development so with biblical theology have chapters or acts and divine drama that begins with genesis one and it ends with the book of revelation but with uh with uh systematic theology it tries to put like a like put everything within a circle try to get a big picture of you a panoramic review of the sum of the christian witness um we biblical theology takes focuses on mid-sized holes and is in danger of not connecting the parts together but we have something much more comprehensive systematic theology tends to be deductive work from the top down god is good god is powerful god intervenes in human history you know where do we get descriptions of that what uh whereas inductive says we read the bible text and we learn from that who god might be so you you have these these tensions but you need both because um what is the most airtight systematic system that that that that is thoroughly consistent but i don't think it reflects very well the what the bible teaches about about the nature christian life can you think of some systems one student jokingly but that was that was kind of but and i and i we all laughed but i i actually stopped and said but but when you think about complementaritism it is absolutely systematized it's logically flawless there's no in the armor uh if you if you're it it has no inconsistency the system makes sense but this is where biblical theology helps but there's so many texts in the bible that press against the idea that women's roles are limited in the church what do you do about junior the apostle what do you do about uh prisca who who uh who exegetes the when it says he explained that she explained the gospel to apollos the greek word is the word we use the word we get the word exegete from he it's not just explaining it's interpreting the gospel in a way that apollos didn't know about and so uh it was it was hermeneutics he was she was preaching and teaching so what happens is that whenever you have a system it's very possible that the that there are texts in the bible that press against its consistency it's it says it points out its weak spots it says that yes it's consistent but it's not true to what a reality or the or the biblical witness because there's parts of the bible that speak against uh certain segments of it certain and the way they're tied together another example is calvinism the kind of hyper-caliberalism where we get the tulip t for total depravity u for for uh unconditional election l for limited atonement christ didn't die for all he died for for those who were redeemed um uh i for irresistible grace i think grace can be resisted i don't think it's irresistible i think god will will not give up on a person until that person's last breath but but human freedom means we can deny god that's what it means to be made in his image p means perseverance if you look at the calvinistic tulip it is systematic it is airtight but i don't think what do you do with paul when he says work out your salvation with fear and trembling i mean here you have an example of work that is good and human beings somehow participate in our salvation experience by working things out uh the tulip says everything is by divine agency to the point where it reduces human agency to almost nothing so do you see how each discipline has its blind spot but at the same time each discipline is so important because they can mutually form one another and help each other see the blind spot that is inherent in our disciplines individually we need systematics we need biblical theology we need both and now the hard question so where do you think new testament theology fits into all this [Music] so it's possible to have systematic theology let me let me let me give you an example another example but a hint or maybe the answer i don't know um the my goal is this if you take a christian theology class or class on doctrine and you hear a doctrine and nowhere is the bible referenced you will nevertheless know because of the concepts evoked in the doctrine exactly where to find the same concepts evoked in the new testament that's my goal so when you read the nicene creed he's all that that sounds like john 1. that sounds like philippians 2. it's not the exact same language uh did you know that um when for example nicene the nicene creed says that jesus um uh you know uh became a human being it turns what's a noun in john 1. so you literally have the verb become and and then beco and then become flesh so become and flesh are two separate words but the nice and creepy turns into one verb it creates its own compound word to describe it so it's not the exact same language but i'm thinking you must be thinking at first john that john 14 when the word became flesh and time were knocking among us so new testament theology it it it's it's its job is to bridge the disciplines so that practically if you were to read any if you were to read aquinas he if he aquinas mentions the bible a lot actually so he's a bad example if you read a modern theologian and that person has some reference to the christian biblical witness and there are some theologies that make no reference to it or selective in the biblical witness and fill in the gaps with other things says you have a broad panoramic but you should be able to read any theology and evaluate it concept based on its concepts and connect scripture to the theology even though scriptural texts and the language the the language the biblical authors uses might not be directly referenced in that it's all modernized does that make sense so new testament theology is supposed to be that skill that bridge discipline that allows you to connect biblical theology schematics okay let me um let me let me try to do it this this way this is to me this was the most interesting thing that that kevin van hooser brought up in this article so we already talked about this what is biblical theology it tends to time space in their civil context biblically we all said this already you know it talks about the original time-bound message systematics organized articulates the truth and gospel and in our present contest and modernizes the language so that we can it's so we can communicate better it also tries to see the big picture so that we don't uh focus on one thing and and jettison an important witness on others so we all talked about that already um but then and then there's this great line in van hooser that says that he points out that this approach so david kelsley he will he's um he's retired now he's at princeton theological seminary he's a brilliant theologian and what he wants to say what he was always guarding against he does not want systematic theology to be a translation of the bible into post modern terms and categories he says that's not what systematic theologies do they they they're it's not a translation of the bible um but that's what new testament theology does so this is where new testament yeah systematiology uh can take concepts and construct it in a way that that presents itself to um uh the modern reader or the post-modern reader uh a description of who god is the christian life etc um and it might not refer to the bible at all uh but so how do we connect the concepts that have no direct reference to the bible with the biblical theology where all everything is talked about is taken from the bible new testament theology provides the translation and it's not translation of greek words and hebrew words and terms it's a conceptual translation it's the bridge between so if if through biblical theology certain concepts about god or and and the and life life with god as god's people are evoked from the biblical texts old and new and you have a systematic theology that also talks about who god is and what god expects from his people and doesn't directly evoke the biblical witness in articulating that it might look you might just simply say that or when he talks about justification through faith it doesn't read paul it talks about the debate between luther and zwingli and the differences are their views on justification that's how they're going to talk about it biblical theology will connect the two because it'll recognize that the language of justification by faith or the imputation of christ's righteousness is attached to particular texts in paul and and paul when and it will be an example of paul says about it we'll be able to talk about and the concepts that are evoked and we'll see that those same con are evoked by luther and and zwingli and this modern uh theologian who is talking about uh justification by faith but not necessarily going to paul in that description he's going to other historical figures so david kelsey i think rightly says systematics does not have to necessarily be a tran conceptual translation of the bible in the post-modern terms um but new testament theology does do that so that's the bridge discipline new testament theology tries to bridge the way systematics articulates concepts and where the biblical theology articulates its concepts on with different language and its own terms and it connects the two together so um let me try to try to try to illustrate this so these are all things that i mean so i mean we might do things like notice in new testament the consistent pattern of god's action what it says about the character of god for example um so uh what i wanted to do and then this is a summary um discussion this is this i gave my own definition i gave a definition here but this is all things that we talked about so far what i thought is do i want to give you guys a fun exam fundamental example so um how do you address the problem of gaming in today's culture how would you systematize the christian witness uh on gaming where in the biblical text does it talk about video games the book of revelation because when john sees all these dragons secretly he's in his room with his xbox playing video games he's going pew pew pew pew he gets the the serpent no you don't you don't like my joke people are just kind of okay so anyway that's all right i tried um but no i mean so this is this is a great issue and i think pastorally it was important you know when i was uh doing college ministry i was a campus minister i can't tell you how many brilliant young lives were just ruined by gaming they were so addicted they just couldn't stay off of it uh they they flunked at a school at when i was when i was administering the university campus campus university of california berkeley on that campus some brilliant people people are discipling you know they they were struggling with the gaming world was just so immersive so i'm not talking about pacman or uh space invaders and i might be dating myself you might even know what those video games are um but i'm talking about the kind of games where it's online there's world building there's an epic story that you participate in and you get so caught up in it you might skip your class the next day and if you keep skipping classes like some of the people that i knew tragically they flunked out of berkeley if i felt out of school they just couldn't stop so there's the bible have witnessed to bear witnesses uh to to this reality it has something to say to it now so this is the punch line this is what's at stake to do new testament theology is to say that there's no area of human life the bible does not speak to there is no gaps you can't say well the bible didn't doesn't really talk about this explicitly so we're left to on our own to decide what to do no there's always a way if god's word is truly living and active and the holy spirit guides the church and interpreting the text to and applying it to new situations that the biblical authors never anticipated in then there's nothing that isn't relevant to what what what scripture can can bear witness to and so um so here's the example of gaming how what would i do to to address this issue so i'm i didn't do this but i uh but and if you have a chance this is a really undervalued book this is such a great book i really love so brett latham was a professor of theology at north park so he taught here but he um he's now at the echo medical uh institute at st mary's in in baltimore so he's teaching there he wrote a book called ipod youtube replay and this is the content of it theological engagement entertainment and one of the topics he talked about was gaming and he tied it to sacramentalism and why therefore it's so captivating so i'm going to use this example to talk about to illustrate the difference between biblical theology systematics and new testament theology and i hope this this becomes a little bit clearer so if you were to talk about the lord's supper and baptism you know what would you do i mean if your biblical theologian what do you think you do you look at jesus baptism maybe and then where where does also baptism show up anyone ethiopian correct good acts that's all over the place uh [Music] uh the jailers family good good acts and then romans six is about baptism where we died itself were raised in christ right he talks about the the separate import of going uh in the water it's like going being buried with jesus and then coming out of the waters rising up with jesus good and everyone the baptist and his call yeah what what's what's john's baptism how is it different from jesus's you know did you know that jews baptized gentiles when they became proselytes in jainism so how did christianity use baptism in a way that was different from judaism and and and rewrite the narrative not around the exodus event but the new exodus the new exercises or new salvation that jesus is bringing in this is all biblical theology and what you'll do then is um if you if you theologically reflect on the lord's supper and baptism those are the two protestant sacraments you can do you will actually come up with a system of systematic theology of sacramentalism and that's the systematic theology of sacramentalism run something like this so um the the what makes a sacramento sacrament at least within the protestant circles it has to rehearse or redramatize the passion event jesus death resurrection has to be dramatized in the ritual so baptism you're buried with christ you rise lord's supper the broken body and the blood of jesus is represented in the institution of of the eucharist or communion and so the story of christ is rehearsed and you participate in it now here's the punch line but the story is not about me the story is about jesus jesus is in center stage he's the main character he's the one that ushers in victory he's the one he's the person that is the the person that is part of that narrative so now marriage also reenacts jesus the passion of enemy jesus but it's not a sacrament in protestant circles it is in roman catholicism it's not sacrament and protestant circles because not everyone gets married uh some people live as singles and and there's a certain giftedness to singleness that i think people struggle with but it's nevertheless considered to uh in many ways to be a gift at least according to palm first corinthians seven and so uh the point of sacramentalism it has to be able to be experienced by all so that's why marriage is not it's almost a sacrament but not since everyone doesn't get married it's not a sacrament only lord baptism and lord's supper of baptism are so um the whole point about sacramentalism is it it places us into god's presence and we know that we are not the author of our own story it's it's christ now what's the problem with video gaming brent latham calls it a pelagian narrative you hear me it's a pelagian narrative i'm at center stage i'm the hero i have a quest to fulfill it's about me and myself and i or the community that i do the quest with and we do this on our own strength our own ingenuity our own power place was the one that said that we could buy our by by human age it pushed human agency to such an extreme that he believed that he could live the perfect life that jesus did whereas um most of us would take more of an augustinian stance that we're sinners and so no matter how much we try uh we live by grace but we we won't be able to live the kind of perfect life that jesus did uh because sin is just so real when we when you uh when you look at that's what you mean by play so brent like this whole thing is the problem with video game the reason why it has such a grip on people is that it's a faux or fake sacrament where instead of christ being center stage it's us and our entire entertainment industry is built on that reality and that's why it's addictive and that's why we find it so so powerful and and so and what my whole point is is here's biblical theology i'm sorry i'm my penmanship is bad with my mouse here's the the biblical theology here's the systematics how do we get there new testament theology bridges the concepts that are evoked here connects with the concepts of sacramentalism systematics package that those concepts into a coherent whole and that allows us then to apply it to something new like video gaming and and believe it or not we do this every all the time we preach and teach we might not do it well though and hopefully what this class will teach us is how to do it well