How to read Scripture theologically, (not just historically).

I’ve often considered the typical evangelical sermon or Bible study as containing a map or timeline in the overhead PowerPoint. It highlights one of evangelical Christianity’s chief concerns: the Bible is historically true. Introductions to Bible commentaries also usually contain historical information: who wrote it, when, and where. The motivation behind this information is to assert in various ways the Bible is reliable and trustworthy in all it says.  We read the Bible historically to respond to the challenge of liberal biblical scholarship and atheists who confidently deny the historicity of Jesus’s virgin birth or resurrection on the third day. And reading the bible historically is a great thing to do because there is no historical work more reliable and credible than the Scripture. For instance, see Peter Willam’s work on the Gospels.¹

However, it is equally legitimate to bring other interests and concerns to the text, such as literary interests or theological interests. We might want to read Scripture from the perspective of a particular theological concern, an approach sometimes called critical theory. Like liberalism, critical theory is often associated with being sceptical about the truth or morality of God’s word, but this doesn’t need to be the case at all.  An evangelical scholar with a high view of Scripture can bring her particular critical interests to her reading of the Bible just as well as someone who holds a low view of Scripture.²

For example, an evangelical feminist scholar might want to read the Bible for what it says about being a woman, taking for granted the historical reliability of Scripture.  In Lucy Peppiatt’s work Rediscovering Scripture’s Vision for Women she generates a biblical theology of womanhood.  For instance, she notes not only there are so many of the women mentioned in the New Testament but they are also mentioned independently of specific relationships to men.  “Christian writers were deviating from the norm and according the women a status of their own when recording their involvement in the church.”³  This was countercultural, and points to the theological power of Scripture to transform society.

Another area of theological interest might be the way the New Testament fulfils Old Testament expectations.

Sometimes this is framed as Jesus fulfilling specific prophecies (such as Matt 2:5–6 citing Jesus’ birth fulfilling a prophecy in Micah 5).  But often Scripture shows how Jesus fulfils theological types and patterns narrated in the Torah. For instance, in 1 Corinthians 5:7 Paul encourages the gentile church to emulate the Passover festival by getting rid of sin form their lives the same way Jews cleaned out everything made of yeast.  Paul justifies this analogy with another: Jesus is our Passover Lamb.  His theological reading of the Old Testament anticipates the Messiah as a lamb whose shed blood would protect believers from the angelic destroyer (Exod. 12:23). A great resource for reading Scripture in this theological way is the Bible Project.