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- Category: Recommended Reading Recommended Reading
- Published: 31 August 2009 31 August 2009
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I am currently reading and reviewing Mark Elliott's The Reality of Biblical Theology (Peter Lang, 2007). . .
About 1/3 of the way in, the volume is a provocative and wide-ranging explication of the state of Biblical Theology today. What is refreshing is that Elliott is not trying to be coy or overly guarded in terms of hiding his own confessional committments. He writes the following in the introduction:
"It need not be the case that the all-sufficiency of Christ as the principle which unites all forms of Christian experience obviates any need to see unity in the scriptural canon which points, directly or indirectly to him. It need not be the case that the text is identified as referring or deferring to a faceless Other, i.e.,a God who does not gie himself to be known, leaving the content of our books of biblical interpretation to be filled by local flavours adn contextual colours, to the point that one would be better reading a book on world religions, cultures and societies than one which pretended to have anything to do with the Bible. The Bible is not only about the criticism, correction and demolition of the reader's self so that they become ethically better and more humble people. (In such postmodern accounts all the virtues are passive ones.) The Bible points to a God who cares and who would intervene in his own subtle way, and prescribes the way to him. It is this belief--that the Bible gives a coherent and content-filled account of God's self-revelation and the appropriate response--that drives the account that follows."
This is a good start to a book on Biblical Theology. Elliott surveys a wide terrain in this volume, including a number of German scholars who may not be as well-know to American theologs.