One of the most beloved book purchases I’ve made recently is the hard-to-find collection of essays put forward by the faculty of Westminster Seminary in Escondido, California, published in 2007 under the title Covenant, Justification, and Pastoral Ministry. Seeing as the book has since gone out of print, professor and theologian R. Scott Clark, who serves not only as a contributor to the book but also as its lead editor, has republished several full-length chapters on his website, The Heidelblog. But because I’m a stickler for reading physical copies of books, I was elated when I was finally able to track down this superb work, the benefits of which I am eager to share with you. For example, Julius J. Kim’s essay, “The Rise of Moralism in Seventeenth-Century Anglican Preaching: A Case Study,” offers, perhaps, one of the best and most comprehensive definitions of biblical theology I’ve read in a while.
I wrote a fairly lengthy treatment of biblical theology a while back, so I will do my best to refrain from parroting myself. However, it is critical to understand that biblical theology is primarily a homiletical and, therefore, a pastoral discipline, as much as it is an academic one. Scholarly overviews of Scripture’s metanarrative are useful insofar as they equip the preacher to bring to bear the sum and substance of Scripture, namely, the unfolding revelation of the Christ of God. Instead of discerning the Bible as some loosely compiled compendium of ancient texts and poems, biblical theology, at its core, is the conviction that “all Scripture must be seen as a testimony to the person and work of Christ,” as Kim puts it.1 As you might imagine, with a biblical-theological framework as one’s starting point, the endgame of biblical proclamation takes on an entirely different tenor.
This becomes apparent throughout Kim’s essay, as he traces the ascendant moralism and legalism in preaching in England during the late 1600s to early 1700s. Notably, he engages with two Latitudinarian preachers, Benjamin Whichcote (1609–83) and John Tillotson (1630–94), each of whom demonstrated a homiletical divergence from the Puritan establishment by bringing renewed emphasis on the ethical or virtuous nature of the Christian life. In so doing, though, as Kim shows, they effectively undermined the proclamation of the gospel itself, which centers all Christian life, hope, and faith on the unilateral gift of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. Whether implicit or explicit, Whichcote, Tillotson, and others promulgated a Christianity devoid of substitution, which is to say, divested of anything tending toward eternal assurance.
As Kim follows the history of these two homileticians, he exhibits their drift from the Reformational prerogatives of grace alone, faith alone, and Christ alone, to the shores of scrupulous sophistry and social civility. While no one should demur the ethical verve of Scripture, it is irresponsible to insinuate that ethical or moral reform is its inherent point. Christ’s ethical example, while pertinent and, indeed, critical to his Messianic self-revelation, was not ultimate. His ultimate endgame, of course, was the glorification of the Father through his willing self-sacrifice on the cross, which realized the reconciliation of all things to himself. This is the story that’s woven into Scripture, from cover to cover, which brings me (finally) to Kim’s definition of biblical theology:
From the beginning of Genesis to the close of the Revelation, God speaks and acts within time, space, and history to reveal his saving purposes for the world through his divine agent of salvation, his own Son, Jesus Christ. Thus, God’s word is the Creator’s divine, historical, redemptive revelation to his creatures so that they might know him and glorify him for what he has done through Christ.
This revelation of God’s redemptive plan, however, is also progressive. That is, God’s salvific plan in the Bible is not disclosed all at once, but rather in stages. The Bible unveils God’s redemptive revelation from the Old Testament to the New Testament. It moves from promise to fulfillment, from anticipation to realization. From Old Testament to New, God’s redemptive-historical story moves from the implicit to the explicit message that God ultimately saves his people from the bondage of sin and slavery in the life, death, and resurrection of the sinless God-man Jesus Christ. The study of Scripture through this redemptive-historical perspective is called biblical theology. It studies Scripture by showing the essential unity among all the seemingly disparate stories and poems, reaching a climax in the person and work of Jesus Christ.2
My favorite scene in all of Scripture is the Emmaus Road encounter, during which the risen Christ reveals to two unsuspecting disciples that all of Scripture is concerned with him (Luke 24:27; cf. John 5:38–39). This paradigmatic moment is the quintessential expression of the point of Scripture — namely, to unfold and unveil the source of all light and life: Christ alone. To be sure, this doesn’t preclude preachers and teachers from gleaning and conveying spiritual truth and wisdom that is not overly redemptive. It just means that such truth and wisdom, however practical, isn’t paramount. “From the very beginning of our exegesis to the application of Scripture’s truths to the hearts and lives of our hearers,” Kim concludes, “Christ [is] the alpha and the omega of our sermon preparation and delivery.”3 The church is fed only as its preachers decide, along with the apostle, to know nothing and proclaim nothing but the message of the Crucified One (1 Cor. 2:2).
Grace and peace to you.
Julius J. Kim, “The Rise of Moralism in Seventeenth-Century Anglican Preaching: A Case Study,” Covenant, Justification, and Pastoral Ministry: Essays by the Faculty of Westminster Seminary California, edited by R. Scott Clark (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2007), 394.
Kim, 392–93.
Kim, 391–92.