The endangered and reaffirmed promises of God: a fruitful framework for biblical theology

Finally, not only does the rubric work well within the present canonical form of the Christian Bible, but its outline corresponds to some of the most important historical forces that shaped the canon. Large sections of the Bible received decisive shape from crises that clearly endangered the promises (the exile, the destruction of the Second Temple), and the canon was in some sense a way of reaffirming God's promises in the midst of these crises.

Problems and Questions

There are obviously aspects of this framework that call for further attention and clarification. Two come immediately to mind, which I can explore only briefly here: the potential pitfalls of any "thematic" approach to biblical theology, and, most important, how to formulate the "newness" of the Christian gospel.

The most basic objection to a thematic approach to biblical theology is that it cannot but be either reductionistic or, on the other hand, too broad to be of use. Eichrodt's Covenant model and von Rad's salvation history are two monumental examples of modern attempts to view the entire Christian canon through a single lens, and both, it is generally agreed, have come up short (Reventlow). Not surprisingly, Jewish interpreters fault such attempts for their failure to account for the centrality of the Mosaic Law in the structure and theology of the Hebrew Scriptures (Levenson 1993b). Even Brueggemann's recent Theology of the Old Testament, in which he tries to account for the full range of Israel's "testimony" concerning its God, and indeed concludes that Yahweh as giver of commands is Israel's "most pervasive testimony" (181), has been criticized for missing the centrality of the close relationship between ethics and ritual (Kaminsky).

What speaks for the present proposal in this respect is that while it has a thematic aspect, it is really more of a framework than a theme. At the same time, it comprises enough content to identify a principal concern of Scripture in a meaningful way. That is, while it certainly cannot encompass every aspect of the Christian Bible, I do not think it forces major pieces artificially under its umbrella. One cannot, for example, read the First Testament through this framework without giving a central place to the role of the law, which is, after all, the central means by which God seeks to bring about what God has promised to Israel and through it to all creation (Levenson 1985: 138-48). The life brought about by observance to God itself forms a narrative, one in which God's promises are both endangered and reaffirmed. Moreover, Israel's--and present-day Judaism's--struggle to be a faithful covenant partner parallels and can inform the church's own struggles to be faithful to its calling.

This leads us directly to the final, and, as noted, certainly the most difficult consideration. Just what, precisely, is the relationship between the stories of God's promises (including their endangerment and reaffirmation) in the life of Israel and "the" Christian story, the story of Christ and the church? Is the latter simply a continuation of the pattern? Or has God indeed acted in some new and decisive way? The twin dangers to avoid here are, on the one side, relegating the First Testament again to the background, as a prelude to or preparation for God's climactic act, and, on the other, emptying the Christian confession of its content. There are clearly discontinuities as well as continuities between the Second Testament and the First, as between the Christian reading of Israel's Scriptures and the Jewish reading. The first Christians who "created" the Second Testament did so in response to their conviction that God had vindicated Jesus, the crucified Messiah, and that in so doing, God's promises found their "yes." This will, and should, inevitably shape the way the church reads its Scriptures, and will inevitably inhibit the capacity of Jews to read the story with Christians. As Jon Levenson puts it, "[I]f the Bible ... is to be seen as having coherence and theological integrity, there will come a moment in which Jewish-Christian consensus becomes existentially impossible" (1985: 143).