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

On the other hand, the historical-critical paradigm has raised at least as many questions as it has addressed. For one thing, as most recently Jon Levenson has argued, it has been practiced largely by Protestant Christians who were anything but neutral, interest-free observers of the data; their historical reconstructions of ancient Israel were saturated with latent (and sometimes overt) anti-Jewish sentiments, and their "historical" work presented a picture of Judaism in decay and primed for the renewal by a (largely de-Judaized) Jesus (1993b: 10-28).

The other interesting piece of the puzzle is that historical study of the Bible has had, as Dahl puts it, "a double, apparently self-contradictory result" (71). We have seen already how it is precisely historical study that makes it clear that one cannot read the Second Testament apart from the Scriptures of Israel as they were interpreted in the first century (Dahl; Juel; van Buren). As Dahl puts it, "Reminiscences and interpretations of these Scriptures are woven into the passion narratives and the entire New Testament testimony to Christ in such a way that one cannot untangle the threads without destroying the design and the whole fabric" (71). But on the other hand, historical-critical study of the First Testament has revealed that the authors wrote to address issues in their own time and place, thus rendering problematic the traditional prophecy-fulfillment scheme (Seitz: 35; Matthew's use of Isaiah 7 as a prophecy of the virgin birth is a famous example).

In short, the depth and seriousness of the problems involved in the question of the unity of the Christian canon seem clear enough to warrant a rethinking of the question. The traditional reading is untenable for both external and internal theological reasons, and the historical-critical approach has brought with it as many questions as it has answered. Biblical theology still is, thirty years after Brevard Childs' famous book, in crisis. And it is in the midst of this crisis that we address the questions posed at the outset: If God's covenant with the Jews is eternal, if God's promises to the Jews are irrevocable, as Christian theology must, for reasons cited above, acknowledge in the present context, by what right and in what sense do Christians claim the Scriptures of Israel as "their own"? As Seitz puts it, what is the "point of connection" between the First Testament and the church (69)? And second, if the traditional narrative is untenable, and the predominant approaches of the last couple of centuries have failed, how should Christians do so?

A New Canonical Narrative

In a brief essay entitled The Crucified Messiah and the Endangered Promises, Nils Dahl put forth a proposal for how to view the relationship between the two Testaments of the Christian Bible in light of these challenges to traditional understandings of the unity of the canon. Dahl recognized the impasse that historical--critical study formed, as well as the danger of the triumphalistic aspects of more traditional approaches, and suggested that a link be sought in the rubric of "the endangered and reaffirmed promises of God." In what follows, I will attempt to demonstrate the fruitfulness of this idea and suggest ways in which it might be developed.