160 THE OLD TESTAMENT SINCE THE REFORMATION higher stage in the development of Judaism. Here one feels
W. Eichrodt, whose attempt is on the largest scale of the three, sees a constant element in the Old Testament religion
undergirding all its variations. r8 His purpose is to understand the structural unity of this Religion and interpret its deepest meaning both with consideration of its ancient environment and its connectedness with the New Testament. No extraneous scheme is thrust on the Old Testament material; the substance is developed out of the Old Testament consciousness of the God of Israel who shows Himself to be the God of the world and of the individual as well. The Covenant idea is made central-a point open to criticism. In presenting the materials the historical principle is utilized, and the book basically remains within the sphere of historicism.
A fourth major attempt to produce an Old Testament Theology-that of 0. Procksch-did not appear in print until 1950, but is of earlier origin. l@ His general approach has already been set forth (p. rg3 f.). He begins with a”Theology of History”, taking a Christocentric view of history and of the Old Testament in the spirit of von Hofmann, and in this way tries to make the Hebrew canon relevant for the Christian. In the systematized part of the book, which follows a historical sketch of the religious development, he attempts to group the materials on each topic as far as possible around the prophetic personality chiefly associated with it.
A novel treatment of the Old Testament material in conjunc- tion with and prefatory to New Testament concepts came from the pen of the American scholar M. Burr0ws.~0 The procedure necessitates selection, of course, and does not permit giving a compact and vital picture of the Old Testament religion such as can be hoped for from a book concentrating its attention on the earlier part of the canon. The attempt brings to mind the some- what related objective of a “theology of both Testaments”
suggested by G. Bertram. 2r This scholar has set forth the degree
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to which the Greek translation, the authoritative Old Testa- ment for the Church of the days when our canon was formed, had been influenced by Hellenic viewpoints. He finds that the unity of the two Testaments can best be established by a Christological interpretation of the Septuagint, linking it with the Passion of Christ, after the manner of the early Christians.
One book devoted to the theology of the Old Testament has appeared in America in recent years-that of 0. J. Baab.22 He sees a fundamental unity in the Old Testament religion and finds it provided by the religious experience of the Hebrew community which continued the same through all vicissi- tudes of history. This religion is unique, and its main tenets have an abiding significance for us. The author deals with the more important topics in the order familiar from dogmatic theology. 23
Turning once more from practice to theory we find another American, R. C. Dentan, discussing the history of Old Testa- ment theology and the principles according to which it has been and should be written up .= He gives a preliminary definition of the subject as “that Christian theological discipline which treats of the religious ideas of the Old Testament systematically, i.e., not from the point of view of historical development, but from that of structural unity of the Old Testament religion, and which gives due regard to the historical and ideological relation- ship of that religion to the religion of the New Testament.”
Later he revises this and holds that “the scope of the subject is the normative or distinctive religion thought or assumed by the canonical books of the Old Testament, all of which have their centre on a distinctive doctrine of God”; it should include ethics and cultus, and give a picture of Old Testament piety.
The first definition is more intellectualistic than the second, but it brings in the relation to the Christian order; the second could be subscribed to by a Jewish scholar. In any case Dentan remains in the sphere of the historical approach in the spirit of Eichrodt.
Soon afterward N. W. Porteous gave a discussion of the subject of Old Testament theology in a valuable British sym- posium.26 He leaves it uncertain just where the line should be drawn between Old Testament theology and Dogmatic theology, but he approves of the emphasis on a historical revelation “when
278 THE OLD TESTAMENT SINCE THE REFORMATION through the divine-human encounter, a word is spoken to which a response is made”. He holds that man’s response is what the Bible means by knowledge of God and that Old Testament theology is the critique of this knowledge. If this means that there must be an existential element in Old Testament theology we shall just have to bear the consequences of that. A treat- ment of that discipline, he declares, must keep close to life.
In seeking to understand the structure of the Old Testament, not as strangers but as heirs, we shall not lose sight of the fact that Christ is its fulfilment.
During the war years the problem of a Biblical theology of the Old Testament was discussed in Germany by G. von Rad.26 He finds the proper unifying principle in the idea of history to which that faith constantly has recourse. The Old Testa,ment, he maintains, shows the way that God went with Israel. If one takes its teachings out of the historical frame of reference the primary peculiarity is lost sight of. A theology of the Old Testament to qualify as heilsgeschichtlich will have the task of setting forth the correspondence of Word of God and History in the various ways in which the former reacts on the latter.
He notes that in the Old Testament the events are set in motion by a Word of God and are continuously fashioned and led to a goal by ever new Word of God. The Old Testament is thus a witness of God’s continuous action in History.
Von Rad thinks that even books that do not fit in with this principle (Job, Ecclesiastes!) must be given their niche in relationship to it. He assigns an important role to the prophecy and fulfilment idea and thinks it is one of the main tasks of Old Testament theology to sketch this dialectic interplay, though he urges that it be done without any leaning on philo- sophies of history of modern vintage. In this connection he would even permit the use of typology to a certain degree. He also stresses the importance of the kerygmu or the “message”
aspect of the Old Testament prophetic religion. The unity of the Testaments, he claims, is provided by the concept of the Word of God; for He speaks in both.
We may note in passing that von Rad in one of his recent historical studies has tried to set forth that the Hebrew “creed”
was a confession of the acts of God in past history, notably at the Exodus. The Old Testament faith is basically soteriological;
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the idea of God as Creator is taken by him as completely subordinate to the belief in Him as Redeemer.27
Close in some respects to this scholar’s viewpoint is the fresh approach undertaken by Wright. In his earlier book he had already stressed the idea that the Word behind the words of the Old Testament is one that is made concrete and vivid in historical events.28 But that Word behind the words is dis- cerned only by those who are willing to stand with the prophets at their point of vantage and experience the challenge and im- mediacy of God’s will for that particular moment of crisis which concerned them, and who at the same time are ready to stand in the history of the present and seek the Word of the Lord for us now. Apparently Wright at that time imagined the message of the Old Testament as best presented in the form of biblical exegesis or exposition, as also favoured by Weiser.
But in his new book,2g under the impact of von Rad’s idea of a Hebrew confessional declaration (heilsgeschichtliches Credo), Wright has gone beyond this. His announced purpose is “to describe the special and characteristic nature of the biblical presentation of faith and to use the word theology for it”.
Whatever one may think of the idea of reviving Biblical Dogmatics (which Wright seems to have in mind), one may concede that the Old Testament writers are governed by theologies; since they are members of the same religious group these theologies will certainly have a great deal in common;
ascending upwards in the scale of generalization to include the New Testament writers, one may perhaps describe an over- arching element of agreement as the biblical theology in the higher sense. The question can only be: what is this communis opinio ?
For Wright it is History, or “a God who acts” in History.
The biblical presentation of faith consists of a recital of the deity’s past acts. For the Old Testament these acts are the election of Israel, allegedly an inference from the Exodus deliverance, and the confirmation and clarification of it in the covenant ceremony at Sinai. He shows how this faith is made meaningful for Christians in the New Testament by typology and goes so far as to assert that it is impossible for us to discard typology without separating ourselves from biblical faith. Still, in view of the criticism incurred on that score by Vischer, he
280 T HE OLD TESTAMENT SINCE THE REFORMAT IO N dreads typological innovations and would not go beyond what is written in the New Testament in that particular. He then turns to the confessional element in the New Testament.
Following Dodd,3o he stresses the idea that acts of God were the primary content of the Faith of the early Christians also. He finds in Paul’s address at Antioch in Pisidia (Acts 13: 16 f.) a combination of the Old Testament and New Testament Creeds and presumably the sum-total then of the Biblical Faith.
In his opinion, therefore, the subject matter of Biblical theology and Dogmatic theology as well is the confessional recital of the unique events of biblical history, together with the inferences and interpretations which the Word in biblical faith by historian, prophet, psalmist or apostle and evangelist drew from them or associated with them. Wright is aware, of course, of the great variety of thought found in the Bible, but he maintains that it is never of such a nature as ta constitute a totally different series of theologies because the central and especial concern with the meaning of historical events and life within history holds the whole together.
Wright, who is fond of assailing the theology of ideas of Greek derivation, here himself resorts to the Greek concept of History and the religious-phenomenological category of a
“God who acts” (i.e., a voluntaristic divinity) to string together very dissimilar things in an external, unorganic manner. Some of his readers may feel that if a theology of the saving acts of God (another TheoEogie der Heilstutsuchen) is in order it would be preferable to limit those acts to the ones that spell salvation for the Christian-Christ’s Incarnation, Cross and Resurrec- tion-and to have the Old Testament development construed as prophetic of the redemption in Christ, after the example of von Hofmann, Delitzsch, Orelli, Briggs and others.
A unity of the Old Testament religion, yea of the Bible and biblical religion as such, but based rather on biblical thought than on divine acts has been emphasized recently by Rowley.31 His discussion seriously impairs the claims of those who since Kuenen and Wellhausen have been stressing the supposed anti- cultic or anti-sacrificial attitude of the prophets, and who have been finding the continuity between the New Testament and the Old in a progression from that alleged prophetic standpoint.
Rowley sees the prophets merely criticizing a cult that was
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made a mockery by evil men. He holds that the law and the prophets are not in conflict and that the use of the Psalms was designed to make the practices of the law the organ of the spirit the prophets called for. From Old Testament sacrifice he can pass over to the New Testament sacrifice of the Cross and its celebration in the Sacraments, and therein find an underlying unity of teaching as to the supreme observances of both Old and New Testament religion.
Perhaps the most significant contributions to the theological theme to come from post-war Germany are those of F. Baum- gPrtel.32 In his approach there is a resolute attempt to integrate the Old Testament heritage with that of the New (but with frank acceptance of all truth brought forward by historical research), and to focus it existentially on ourselves.
His presupposition-and he states it at the outset with com- mendable directness-is the Pauline Gospel of salvation: it is my being saved through Christ, my encounter with God through this Christian message, that matters. And the question for him is: do we also meet our God in the Old Testament? The affirmative to the latter question necessitates showing how this God of the Old Testament is related to the God of the New.
The Christian gospel, he holds, is the yardstick wherewith the contents of the Old Testament are to be judged. But the latter are not to be taken in any other sense than that arrived at by objective historical interpretation. Baumgartel is particularly concerned with finding some better formulation for the relation- ship of Old and New Testaments than that which the early Christian writings employ so prominently: the prophecy and fulfilment principle. He sees clearly that this was an ancient thought-pattern and that, however useful it may have been once, it can carry no persuasion to-day. He substitutes for it the special formulation of Eph. 3: 6, that the Christian is partaker of the promise through the gospel. Differentiating sharply between promise and prophecy he asserts that the Old Testament is promissory, not prophesying, in character. Its prophecies are not relevant for us, though they were to the contemporaries for whom they were intended. The basic thing in the Old Testament, he holds with others, is the divine assur- ance “I am the Lord thy God”. This puts the generations of Israel under the necessity of deciding for or against God and so
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experiencing either the implied promise by being loyal to Him or the threat and punishment connected with defiance. The consequences of this become ever clearer in the course of Old Testament history. The Christian finds the continuity with the old order in this: that the promissory aspect of that assurance is realized in Jesus Christ.
It is apparent, then, that for the subject of Theology of the Old Testament Baumgartel will wish to make use of the history of redemption principle (Heilsgeschichte), but not so much with an eye to external history as to inner development.33 This is indeed the nub of his project as recently set forth in a fresh methodical discussion of the discipline.34 It must be shown here, he says, that the Old Testament development is part of the self- revelation of God in Christ. For the forgiveness brought by Christ to sinful man presupposes the Old Testament judgments of God, without which that which Christ required would not have been comprehensible; and also God’s promise (see above), without which Christ’s appearance among this people as the One who fulfils would be incomprehensible. Repentance under the impact of the Word of God in the Old Testament order like- wise is to be viewed as in organic relation with the future coming of Christ. So for the Christian the Old Testament history is from God and leading to God in Christ. Running in the form of divine promise and human response, it brings humanity to a situation where the De profundis cry is answered and the fulfilling and redeeming Word, Jesus Christ, is given to it by God.
The Heilsgeschichte of the Old Testament is a thing of the past, but for Christian faith the historical fact of Christ is at the same time one of the present, and so the things concerning Him (the events leading to His coming) also share in this characteristic.
Like the witness concerning Christ, that of the Heilsgeschichte preceding Him awakens faith. In hearing it I realize that it concerns me both in its aspects of judgment and promise. It confronts me with the question whether I will join the true Israel in bowing before the divine majesty in confession of guilt, or remain amid the Israel that hardened its heart and go down into the judgment of God. To set this forth is a normative theological function, but unless it is undertaken one is forced to remain in the area of historicism. It is this existential approach alone, however, this present experience of the Old Testament
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witness, that makes the Old Testament development meaning- ful for me, instead of leaving it a mere historical development that may have touched the men of New Testament times but no longer need trouble me.
Heilsgeschichte as seen by us from the angle of faith in Christ, Baumgartel claims, is not identical with the self-understanding of the Old Testament. Only the Jew can read the Old Testament in disregard of the New. Jesus Christ shattered the Jewish understanding of this sacred literature for us, so that we have to see it in a new, a Christian light. But our understanding of the Old Testament cannot be that of the early Christians either.
While they no longer read their Old Testament as Jews read it, but as Christians, we are far removed from their place and situation. We cannot honestly avail ourselves, as these early Christians did, of typology to bring the Old Testament history to have direct relevance for us. We must from where we stand relate ourselves to Christ and so also to the Heilsgeschichte leading up to Him in a direct Christian approach. This pre- liminary normative manner of dealing with the Old Testament religion, however, Baumgartel would distinguish from Dogmatic theological discussion, since the former must leave out of con- sideration the light that the ecclesiastical kerygma and the history of Christian thought throw upon the subject. He gives the last word on the normative position to Dogmatic theology.
But how, he asks, shall the latter have the proper discernment in Old Testament matters unless the Old Testament scholar points the way and by normative statements of his own shows with what principles he operates in relating the Old Testament to his Christian standpoint?
Baumgartel’s programme thus tries to lead beyond the historicism in which all previous Old Testament theologies remain bound, and goes far toward realizing Eissfeldt’s ideal of the subject and the existential approach indicated by Vischer, Bultmann and Hirsch. The laudable purpose of all these men was to give the Old Testament a present meaning; Vischer does it in terms of a revival of the understanding of the Old Testa- ment writers by the New Testament writers-through their kind of Messianic prophecy and typology-and with the aid of a doctrine of a pre-existent Christ who was operative in the Old Testament period. Bultmann seeks the Old Testament under-