CHAPTER 24 Biblical Studies

Were the early Christians to hear of ‘systematic theology’, they would probably be astonished to find that it is something different from ‘biblical studies’, to discover that in contemporary theological education one usually encounters systematic theology and biblical studies as two separately conceived disciplines, each with its own rules of inquiry and corresponding community of discourse. In the postmodern period, we may experience the opposite surprise upon finding a biblical studies article in a handbook of systematic theology. Are these not two different disciplines?

This article will analyse the relationship between biblical studies and systematic theology by surveying the history of their original unity and subsequent separation. It is impossible to trace every detail of this complex development, but a strategic selection of crucial figures and critical moments will provide the background for reflection about the relation between the two disciplines today.

In the earliest period of Christianity, theology was essentially reflection upon the significance of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ in connection with scripture. In one of the oldest fragments of Christian tradition, Paul states explicitly that he passed on what he had received, namely that ‘Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures’ (1 Cor. 15: 3–4). This basic conviction—that of the inseparability of Jesus Christ from Israel's scripture—is not peculiar to Paul, or to the tradition that he preserves, but is indigenous to the New Testament as a whole. In the Gospel of Matthew, for example, one encounters again and again the formula citation, ‘this took place to fulfil what had been spoken’ (Matt. 1: 22, etc.). Likewise, the Gospel of Luke, long considered by modern scholars to be the most ‘Gentile’ of the four canonical Gospels, begins its narrative with a seamless transition from the tone and atmosphere of the Old Testament to ‘the events that have been fulfilled’ (Luke 1: 1) and ends the story with two successive scenes in which Jesus himself instructs his followers in how to interpret the scriptures Christologically (Luke 24: 13–35, 36–48). Even in the Letter to the Hebrews, where the ‘law’ is regarded as only ‘a shadow of the good things to come’ (Heb. 10: 1), the imagery used for Christological construction is itself derived from the Old Testament and Jewish tradition; the Christology of Hebrews is unintelligible—indeed, inconceivable—apart from the deep theological well of the Old Testament.

This basic unity between theological reflection and the interpretation of scripture continued through the patristic period, though with the substantial difference that the writings of the New Testament itself were now placed alongside Israel's scripture to form a two-testament hermeneutical matrix. Even so, the integration of theological reflection and scriptural interpretation remained. Irenaeus' regula fidei, for example, is not simply identical with scripture. Yet, neither is it a deposit of doctrine logically independent of scripture; instead, the rule of faith is the very content of scripture itself as understood in the apostolic tradition. Only so can it function as the criterion of correct interpretation (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1. 9. 4, in Roberts and Donaldson 1990: i. 330).

[T]he quest which Irenaeus accomplishes is basically the discovery of a principle of interpretation in the apostolic Rule of faith. At the same time…it is in another sense scripture itself that supplies the categories in which the principle of interpretation is expressed. Text and interpretation are like twin brothers; one can scarcely tell the one from the other. (Greer 1986: 157)

 Similarly, in his Adversus Marcionem, Tertullian does not attempt to refute Marcion first on a philosophical or theological level and then draw out the implications of his argument regarding the accurate interpretation of scripture. Rather, his overall polemic is inextricably bound to both the Old and the New Testament. To separate Tertullian's use of scripture from his ‘systematic’ theological argument is to dismantle the argument altogether.

One might object that, in light of his De principiis, we ought to consider Origen an early exception. On this construal of the evidence, De principiis would be read as a systematic or philosophical theology, while Origen's commentaries and homilies would be taken as his biblical, exegetical work. Yet such a view is inaccurate, for Origen's treatment of ‘first principles’ is not a general systematic construction but rather a hermeneutical defence of the proper (i.e., Christian) understanding of scripture. Moreover, the treatments of the theological topics of Books I–III are unthinkable without the manner of exegesis described in Book IV. De principiis thus attempts to justify established, if controversial, exegetical practice and in this way both arises out of and is written for the interpretation of scripture (Young 2003: esp. 335–8).

So, too, as his preface to the work makes clear, Augustine's De doctrina christiana is not a systematic treatment of Christian doctrine articulated independently of scripture: ‘There are certain rules for the interpretation of Scripture which I think might with great advantage be taught to earnest students of the word.…These rules I propose to teach’ (De doctrina christiana, preface 1, in Schaff 1980: ii. 519). Indeed, for Augustine, Christian doctrine is itself derived from scripture taken as a whole—the ‘sense’ of its ‘wording’—even as the ‘doctrinal tradition provides the principal criterion’ for correct exegesis and understanding (Young 2005: 130–1).

To highlight the unity of exegesis and theology is not to say that reflective theology was only exegetical commentary. That would be an exaggeration. Yet Greer's point that ‘for the church fathers the true meaning of scripture was a theological one’ can hardly be overstressed (Greer 1986: 177). As Robert Wilken notes, in the patristic period

biblical exegesis was not a specialized discipline carried on independently of theology; it was theology. The church thought about the mysteries of the faith by expounding the text of the Bible. In the church fathers one will seldom find arguments that stand on logical or philosophical grounds alone. Behind most theological discussions was a biblical text or texts, and it was on the basis of these texts that the church's first teachers gave expression to the central truths of faith and morals. (Wilken 2000: x)

As Henri de Lubac has demonstrated, this interdependence of theology and exegesis continued throughout the medieval period. This is not to imply that the theological ratiocinations of Anselm, Abelard, and Aquinas are, to those who read with modern eyes, recognizably biblical. Nonetheless, the Bible and ecclesial theology were still assumed to exist in a complementary relationship, if not one of synonymity.

We may take Aquinas's Summa Theologiae as an example. Aquinas's metaphysical articulations of sacra doctrina are intimately intertwined with his reading of scripture. If we focus, for example, upon questions of ‘being’ in relation to God's identity, it would be a gross misunderstanding of Aquinas to view his theology as simply a kind of Christianized Aristotelian metaphysics. As Matthew Levering has argued, the name YHWH ‘does not on Aquinas' interpretation trap Israel's God within the limitations of Aristotle's (idolatrous) prime mover. Rather, the name belongs to the history of Israel's and the church's striving against idolatrous conceptions of the divine being’ (Levering 2004: 65). Aquinas does not, in other words, contemplate God ‘generically, but specifically as revealed through Moses to Israel’ (Levering 2004: 53).¹ The God about whom Aquinas speaks metaphysically is at every point—to the properly trained eye—the God of the Bible.

Despite the considerable ecclesial upheaval engendered by the Reformation, the essential unity between biblical interpretation and theological reflection remained unbroken. It is true, of course, that cries of sola scriptura and ad fontes were employed in an effort to reform and simplify the church's practices. Yet, this corrective effort took place essentially within the parameters given by the early church's theological canon. Reformation exegesis was not interested, for example, in overturning the Christological claims made at Nicaea. Nor, despite certain criticisms of ‘allegory’, were the authorities of the patristic period spurned. Augustine is cited frequently not only in Aquinas's Summa but also by Calvin; indeed, in Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion, Augustine is cited more often than any source except scripture itself.

For Calvin, moreover, systematic theology was itself derived from scripture. Thus conceived, it was not a separate field in which deliberation could take place apart from scripture. Rather, the telos of systematic theology was in fact hermeneutical; it existed for the sake of biblical interpretation:

[I]t has been my purpose in this labor [writing the Institutes] to prepare and instruct candidates in sacred theology for the reading of the divine Word…. For I believe I have so embraced the sum of religion in all its parts, and have arranged it in such an order, that if anyone rightly grasps it, it will not be difficult for him to determine what he ought especially to seek in scripture and to what end he ought to relate its contents. (John Calvin to the Reader, in Calvin 1960: 4)

The unity envisioned by Calvin between doctrine and exegesis—the ‘sum of religion’ and the ‘divine Word’—was not a simple hermeneutical circle of biblical proof-texts employed in the service of already-known doctrine. Nor was theology arranged in ‘order’ merely to underwrite a particular mode of Reformed exegesis. Instead, the unity described here was in practice deeply dialogical: there was a mutually interactive relationship between the biblical text and the systematizing or ordering of theology. On the one hand, Calvin's theology was in effect biblical theology, and, on the other, his exegesis operated under the guidance of systematic theology. This dialogical unity allowed Calvin to attend concurrently to the shape and particularities of the biblical texts themselves and to the larger attempt to relate his exegetical findings (‘contents’) to the ‘sum of religion’.

There was, however, a crucial point at which the exegesis of the Reformation did prefigure modern developments: the notion of Sachkritik in relation to the biblical canon. Sachkritik is a type of criticism that exposes theological inconsistencies within a text and criticizes an author's contingent formulations in light of the allegedly more fundamental truth (or subject matter) to which the text points. Clear indications of such an approach are found in Luther, though Sachkritik is hardly the sum of his hermeneutics.

To be sure, the earlier history of exegesis amply demonstrates interpreters' uneasiness with a wide range of biblical problems. Yet, before Luther, the tradition's characteristic strategy for dealing with intracanonical tensions was harmonization (e.g., the Gospel harmonies of Tatian, the Diatessaron, and Augustine, De consensu evangelistarum). No hermeneutical move had been made from within the Christian tradition that entailed a plain theological rejection of parts of scripture that were long considered canonical. In his preface to the Epistle of James, however, Luther made just such a move.²

Luther criticizes James on the grounds that (1) ‘it is flatly against St Paul and all the rest of scripture in ascribing justification to works’, and (2) ‘in all this long teaching it does not once does mention the Passion, the resurrection, or the Spirit of Christ. He names Christ several times; however he teaches nothing about him’ (Luther 1957–86: xxxv. 395–7). It is well known that for Luther the central doctrine of the Christian faith is justification by faith (not works) and that the centre of scripture is Christ: ‘all the genuine sacred books…preach and inculcate Christ’ (Luther 1957–86: xxxv. 396). Thus, in Luther's reading, James ‘mangles the scripture, and there by ture, and thereby opposes Paul and all scripture’. In this light Luther concludes: ‘Therefore, I will not have him in my Bible to be numbered among the true chief books.…How should this single man alone avail against Paul and all the rest of scripture?’ (Luther 1957–86: xxxv. 397 nn. 54–5).

Thus, even though Luther does not regard biblical interpretation and theology as different disciplines, his doctrine of justification and his conviction that ‘all the genuine sacred books…preach and inculcate Christ’ are separated from explicit exegetical engagement and are worked out on a reflective level with considerable sophistication. At least in the preface to James, Luther approaches the exegetical task with a pre-understanding that is construed systematically. In light of this pre-understanding, he then moves to criticize a portion of scripture as theologically deficient.

Still, the theological position that leads Luther to criticize James is conceivable only on the basis of a prior unity between biblical exegesis and constructive theology. Luther's hermeneutical process moves from his exegesis of Paul to his view of justification, which he then develops systematically into a doctrinal criterion for right reading of the Bible. Subsequently, he returns to (canonical) scripture with this systematic structure in place. Even if Luther's particular interpretation of Paul would not find wide support among New Testament scholars today (at least outside Germany: cf. Harink 2004: 13–65), Luther himself evidently endeavours to speak theologically with the voice of the biblical Paul. Thus, if we may say that Luther operates under the guidance of a systematically developed Sachkritik, we must also say that this is for him emphatically biblical.

In his willingness to criticize canonical texts in light of doctrinal criteria, Luther differed from other Reformation leaders (e.g., Calvin). But, in that his criteria were biblically funded, he also differed widely from many scholars in the so-called ‘post-Reformation’ period for whom—to oversimplify the matter—theology overran exegesis: the Bible functioned largely as a set of proof-texts (the dicta classica or collegia biblica) or a springboard for established doctrine.³ This insertion of biblical texts into doctrinal schemata and discussions did not amount to a strict disciplinary separation between biblical studies and systematic theology. Viewed retrospectively, however, it allowed systematics to swallow up exegesis: no longer did the biblical narratives decisively impart their shape to dogmatic constructions (Frei 1974; cf. Blowers 1997). Thus, in the midst of the burgeoning philosophies of the Enlightenment, when the early historical critics (e.g., Reimarus) returned to the Bible, it is no great surprise that what they found there bore scant resemblance to the systematic theology of the post-Reformation period.

The beginnings of a fundamental separation between biblical exegesis and theology are notoriously difficult to determine with any precision. What is clear in general is that in light of certain philosophical-theological developments in Britain (especially deism) and the subsequent bloom of the Enlightenment in Germany, two interrelated possibilities arose: a historical, biblical exegesis set in conscious opposition to established ecclesial theology and of a ‘systematic’ theology whose content was distinguished from that of the Bible. The unity between the Bible as a whole and the theological content prescribed by the regula fidei was dissolved. This is not to say that historical exegesis was devoid of ecclesial elements, or that constructive theology had entirely rid itself of biblical content. In practice, many of the emerging historical critics saw their biblical work as theologically significant and, conversely, theologians even in the speculative Hegelian tradition continued to grapple with at least parts of the Bible. Yet, biblical exegesis and systematic-theological reflection increasingly became two different disciplines.

Johann Philipp Gabler's famous inaugural address (1787) is often treated as the starting point for modern, descriptive biblical study. This perception doubtlessly oversimplifies the matter but is not without foundation. Gabler's address does evidence a particularly clear collocation of convictions and presuppositions that led to the erection of a wall between biblical studies and systematic and dogmatic theology. If the materials for this dividing wall were shaped earlier during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it was here at the end of the eighteenth century that the wall itself began to be built.

In his address Gabler argued for the necessity of three crucial distinctions. First, he distinguished between ‘religion’ and ‘theology’. Religion is ‘every-day, transparently clear knowledge’, whereas theology is ‘subtle, learned knowledge, surrounded by a retinue of many disciplines’ (Gabler 1980: 136). The Bible was the former rather than the latter, though scripture could furnish dogmatics with the material to be explained. Second, Gabler distinguished between historically conditioned statements and timeless, universal truths, and he affirmed that the Bible contained both. Finally, Gabler distinguished between ‘true’ and ‘pure’ biblical theology. The task of ‘true’ biblical theology was carefully ‘to collect and classify’ the ‘sacred ideas’ of the biblical authors (Gabler 1980: 139–40). In other words, it was conceived as a historically descriptive discipline—although the ‘history’ in question was strictly a history of ideas. On the basis of this classification, ‘pure’ biblical theology would then differentiate the historically conditioned (‘true’) material from the (‘pure’) timeless, ‘universal ideas’. As a result of this final differentiation, which ‘peel[ed] off everything local and temporal, everything individual and particular’ (Bultmann 1951–5: ii. 243), dogmatics was provided with a secure foundation upon which to build: ‘[A]fter we have separated those things which in the sacred books refer most immediately to their own times from those pure notions which divine providence wished to be characteristic of all times and places, let us then construct the foundation of our philosophy [i.e., systematic theology] upon religion’ (Gabler 1980: 138).

Although later scholars were not necessarily seeking to work out Gabler's programme, his crisp delineations exemplify a certain way of conceptualizing the larger theological task that framed the ensuing history of discussion through the early twentieth century. Gabler's distinctions (1) split cleanly the discipline of historical exegesis of the Bible from dogmatic and systematic theology; (2) assigned a proper order to the relationship of the two disciplines that consisted of stages: first historical exegesis, then systematic reflection on the basis of the results; and (3) designated the contents of the Bible as ‘religion’ in explicit contrast to reflective theology.

Taking these matters together, it becomes apparent that Gabler's model of the theological enterprise mandates a wall between historical exegesis and systematic reflection, since systematic theology in itself is in principle incapable of inquiring into the biblical text. It is the wrong tool for the task—like trying to eat soup with a fork—for the Bible is not theology but religion. Systematic theology is thus removed from the Bible and placed in a separate sphere of inquiry. Systematic theology, if it seeks to be ‘biblical’, will have to wait for the completed results of historical exegesis.

The corollary, furthermore, to the notion that historical exegesis is the science proper to biblical interpretation is that the biblical texts are situated first of all not in the immediate life of the church but in the past. A sense of the vast chronological distance between the genesis of the texts and present theological reflection thus became a constitutive feature of biblical interpretation. In that the Bible could no longer speak directly from its time to ours—it needed mediation through historical research—the space was opened for the (now perennial) question of ‘development’ to arise: how did we get from there to here? It was but a short step from this question to the inference that truly historical interpretation—that which attends to phenomena in their proper chronological sequence—not only entails the bracketing out of later ecclesial doctrine and systematic theology but also potentially undermines it.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, the separation between biblical studies and systematic theology had become firmly institutionalized in the disciplinary structure of European universities. This is not to say that theologians entirely shied away from interpreting the Bible (Schleiermacher, for example, wrote on source-critical questions in his essay on Luke) or that biblical scholars were unaware of the theological implications of their research (Strauss was acutely aware of the impact of his 1835 Life of Jesus). Nonetheless, both systematicians and exegetes, many of whom differed widely in the particulars of their theological perspective, agreed that accurate historical examination of the biblical texts divided these texts, in their original meaning, from later Christian systematics. In The Christian Faith, for example, Schleiermacher assumes historical distance between the Gospel of John and later systematic theology. By focusing on the Gospel prologue, he elucidates the noetic difference between the Gospel's author and those who fashioned the doctrine of the Trinity:

If the Trinity had been in the Apostle's mind, his exposition would very easily have lent itself to a similar introduction of the Holy Spirit, whose name occurs so often in…John; nor would John have lacked opportunity…to speak here of the Spirit as that which was ‘in the beginning with God and was God’. Assuming, however, that John here declares that the dual nature of Christ existed in God in distinct form from all eternity, it would still not follow by any means that this was meant in the sense of the doctrine of the Trinity, and that that doctrine is therefore the true and the only natural completion of the Johannine statements.…John was not on the way to the doctrine of the Trinity as we have it. (Schleiermacher 1928: 740; cf. 2003: ii. 517)

 Even where there was a push to see the roots of doctrinal development in the New Testament itself, such as in the work of Ferdinand Christian Baur, the distance between the biblical texts and later systematic theology was assumed, and thoroughgoing historical study was considered the method appropriate to biblical interpretation. In practice, of course, Baur's Hegelian philosophy functioned as the unifying factor for the various pieces of the historical puzzle, but in principle Baur knew no method other than radical historical criticism by which to interpret the New Testament texts. Speaking of biblical theology, Baur wrote that ‘one calls this branch of theological science “theology” in order to distinguish it with this general and non-specific name from “dogmatics,” i.e., systematic theology. As distinct from dogmatics and other similar modes of inquiry, biblical theology should be a purely historical discipline’ (Baur 1973: 1, emphasis added).

By the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, the disciplinary divisions were taken for granted to the point that the New Testament scholar William Wrede could declare to a group of German pastors that historical study of the New Testament should be ‘totally indifferent to all dogma and systematic theology’ (Wrede 1973: 69). Reading the Bible in light of later dogmatic or systematic theology perverted the truth of historical conditioning and development and therefore was a hindrance to historical study of the biblical documents. On this latter point, if not on others, Albert Schweitzer agreed with Wrede:

Chalcedon…cut off the last possibility of a return to the historical Jesus.…This dogma had first to be shattered before men could once more go out in quest of the historical Jesus.…That the historical Jesus is something different from the Jesus Christ of the doctrine of the Two Natures seems to us now self-evident. (Schweitzer 1998: 3)

Later ecclesial theology, he wrote in a memorable phrase, binds the historical Jesus ‘like Lazarus of old…[in] the grave-clothes of the dogma of the Dual Nature’ (Schweitzer 1998: 3). Thus was Gabler's programmatic distinction carried forward, as doctrinal theology was taken to be the wrong instrument for investigation of the Bible.

The conviction that later theological categories were inappropriate for biblical exegesis found sophisticated systematic expression in the work of Ernst Troeltsch, the recognized ‘dogmatician’ of the history-of-religions school. In an essay designed to introduce American theology to ‘a dogmatics working with the presuppositions and in the spirit of this school’, Troeltsch argued forcefully for the historical determination of theology: ‘Jesus’ life and teaching must be interpreted not by reference to later Christology and metaphysics but exclusively in the light of prophetism and late eschatological Judaism' (Troeltsch 1991: 93). Troeltsch's point was that all knowledge is fundamentally historical in character; theological knowledge (dogmatic theology), therefore, was dependent upon historical reality. For Troeltsch, the ‘history’ in question was of course that which could be reconstructed by the historical-biblical scholars. In this sense, in principle if not in practice, the historical determination of dogmatic theology conformed to Gabler's two-stage process in which the task of the dogmatician followed and was dependent upon that of the historian. The obvious effect was to remove dogmatic concerns further from the mind of the historians. As Wrede put it, ‘[h]ow the systematic theologian gets on with the results [of historical criticism] and deals with them—that is his own affair’ (Wrede 1973: 69).

Around the turn of the century, there was, of course, considerable debate about these matters within wider academic theology, and one can sense, looking back through Karl Barth, an almost prophetic tone in the dissenting voices of Martin Kähler (1896) and Adolf Schlatter (1909). Yet, the conviction that historical exegesis and systematic theology were independent and separate disciplines—each with its own primary sources of knowledge and rules of inquiry—dominated across the larger theological spectrum.

Despite the virtual consensus in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the relation of biblical studies to systematic theology underwent profound change later in the twentieth century. The complexity involved in this change can best be seen by concentrating on the way in which Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann attempted to reintegrate theology with exegesis, the subsequent reaction to Barth and Bultmann, and finally, in this light, the more recent and competing tendencies within the field of biblical studies.

Karl Barth's break with the liberal Protestantism of his day changed decisively the course of both biblical studies and theology for the twentieth century. This shift, however, was arguably not a new direction as such. Indeed, on Barth's own terms, it was more of a return to a well-worn ecclesial path, walked first by the biblical writers themselves and subsequently by certain doctors of the church. Barth's was a return, to switch the metaphor, to an ‘ancestral line which runs back through Kierkegaard to Luther and Calvin, and so to Paul and Jeremiah’ (Barth 1957: 195).

The crucial difference between the historians in the exegetical disciplines and himself, so Barth maintained, was that the former attempted mainly to think about Paul whereas Barth's attempt was to think with Paul. ‘The reigning biblical science saw [Paul] as an object of interest in his own right; Barth saw him as witness’ (McCormack 1991: 327). Historical-critical interpretation as practised in the early twentieth century concentrated upon matters anthropological—human religious experience as reflected by the biblical texts. This concentration, in Barth's view, neglected the true subject matter (die Sache) of scripture, that to which Paul and Jeremiah witnessed and with which Calvin and Luther had attempted to grapple actively in their exegesis. Barth insisted that, in its character as witness to God, the Bible itself called for explicitly theological exegesis. In this way, Barth reversed Gabler and maintained that dogmatic theology was in principle required for the interpretation of scripture. To eliminate the theology of the church from biblical exegesis was to ignore the subject matter of scripture and, hence, not to interpret scripture at all.

Yet, dogmatic or systematic theology was not itself an independent discipline in which a preconceived system was forced upon the biblical texts with a heavy hand. Despite charges to the contrary, Barth himself claimed never to have called for the abandonment of historical exegesis.

The demand that the Bible should be read and understood and expounded historically is, therefore, obviously justified and can never be taken too seriously. The Bible itself posits this demand: even where it appeals expressly to divine commissionings and promptings, in its actual composition it is everywhere a human word, and this human word is obviously intended to be taken seriously and read and understood as such. To do anything else would be to miss the reality of the Bible and therefore the Bible itself as the witness of revelation. (Barth 1998: 464)

His protests were ‘not directed against historical research as such but against the historicism of the historians who sought to reduce…explanation of the biblical texts to historical explanation and that alone’ (McCormack 2002: viii–ix). In point of fact, as Bruce McCormack has argued, Barth can be understood to view historical exegesis as both a starting point for and a ‘relative control’ over the interpretative proposals of theological exegesis (McCormack 1991: 333–4).

Moreover, the ‘science’ of dogmatics was itself to be biblical, both in the sense that it was dependent upon the pointing of the biblical witness for its view of the subject matter and in the sense captured by the old ecclesial notion of the relation between the norma normans (scripture) and the norma normata (dogmatic and systematic theology): systematic or dogmatic theology was subject to the formative and corrective witness of scripture. As opposed to ‘modern biblicism’—a proof-texting application of ‘what one thinks one has already heard from [the Bible] simply by repeating its words’—truly theological exegesis displays a ‘posture’, or ‘a way of human thinking shaped by the Bible…in which those cultivated by its “rule of thought” learn to think its thoughts and hear its message again and again’ (Burnett 2004: 58). Thus did Barth return to an earlier ecclesial mode of interpretation (e.g., Calvin's) in which there was a unity of biblical exegesis and theological reflection that derived ultimately from the unity of the subject matter itself: even within the distinction between normans and normata, the Bible and dogmatic theology were part of one dialectical theological conversation.

Rudolf Bultmann, probably Barth's only rival in influence, also interpreted scripture in light of its perceived subject matter and also believed that authentic interpretation was impossible apart from direct theological engagement with the witness of the Bible. In this way, Bultmann, too, returned to an earlier mode of interpretation in which biblical exegesis was believed to have ‘something to say to the present’ (Bultmann 1951–5: ii. 251).

In particular, Bultmann's reading of scripture in light of its subject matter resembled Luther's, in the sense that both interpreters moved to criticize portions of scripture as theologically deficient in light of their understanding of scripture's subject matter (Sachkritik). As Barth warned, ‘Those who throw stones at Bultmann should be careful lest they accidentally hit Luther, who is also hovering somewhere in the background’ (Barth 1962: 123). For Bultmann, as for Luther, there was a deeply unified interpretation in which exegesis and theological reflection were brought into a synthetic relationship. On the basis of his exegesis of certain parts of the Bible (notably Paul and John)—and with considerable help from the early Heidegger—Bultmann developed a theological criterion (authentic believing self-understanding) with which he then returned to perform the exegetical task. If in reality Heidegger's existentialism provided the essential link between Bultmann's exegesis and his theology, in theory at least, Bultmann's highly sophisticated theology was exegetically shaped, even as his exegesis received its direction from his theological reflection.

(In this respect there is a strong, though rarely recognized, family resemblance between Bultmann's theology and the theologies of many feminist and liberationist theologians today who likewise discover within the Bible an anthropologically oriented theological criterion—whether a principle such as justice or freedom, or the divinely given dignity of marginalized groups—and then employ this criterion in critically interrogating the biblical texts. The work of Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (1983) is a particularly clear example of this method: a theologically grounded critical hermeneutics that thoroughly engages the historical exegetical task.)

Yet, the conceptualization of the interface between exegesis and theology in Bultmann's interpretative vision was substantively different from Karl Barth's. Where Barth challenged the primacy of historical critical investigation, Bultmann could write that ‘the one presupposition that cannot be dismissed is the historical method of interrogating the text. Indeed, exegesis as the interpretation of historical texts is a part of the science of history’ (Bultmann 1960  a: 291). And though he could agree with Barth against Troeltsch that Christian faith is not a phenomenon of the history of religion, Bultmann could also characterize his Theology of the New Testament as one which stood within the history-of-religions tradition of investigation (Bultmann 1951–5: ii. 250).

Furthermore, where Bultmann differed from the history-of-religions school, he also differed from Barth in a way that drew significant criticism from the latter (Barth 1962). Bultmann accused the history-of-religions approach of tearing apart ‘the act of thinking’ and ‘the act of living’, by which he meant that Bousset, Wrede, and others failed to understand the theological thoughts in the New Testament as expressions of ‘believing self-understanding’, i.e., the explication of ‘man's understanding of himself’ from the perspective given by faith (Bultmann 1951–5: ii. 249–51). For Barth, however, to read the biblical texts as witnesses to human self-understanding—even if the change in one's self-understanding could be attributed to God—was to return to an anthropologically centred exegesis and, hence, to forfeit criticism of the history-of-religions paradigm at the place where it was most needed.

It is important to stress, however, that Barth and Bultmann were united in a common endeavour to read the Bible theologically in the face of a legacy which, in large part, maintained the inappropriateness of such an endeavour. Despite the far-reaching differences between these two giants, in both Barth and Bultmann biblical studies and systematic theology were once again brought into dialogue. Though it is an oversimplification, it may not be too much to suggest that most, if not all, subsequent attempts to deal with the relationship between biblical studies and systematic theology swim with, or against, the wakes generated by Barth and Bultmann.

Despite its real differences from the theological scene in Germany, for example, the emphasis on the theological content of the Bible in the so-called ‘biblical theology movement’ in America is practically inconceivable apart from Barth and Bultmann (Childs 1970: 18–22). Further, when in 1962 Krister Stendahl famously advocated the necessity of a clear distinction in exegesis between ‘what it meant’ and ‘what it means’, Barth and Bultmann were the primary targets of his attack:⁴

[It] appears that the tension between ‘what it meant’ and ‘what it means’ is of a competitive nature, and that when the biblical theologian becomes primarily concerned with the present meaning, he implicitly (Barth) or explicitly (Bultmann) loses his enthusiasm or his ultimate respect for the descriptive task. (Stendahl 1962: 421)

In its overall shape, Stendahl's own position was hardly a new one, even in North America (Cadbury 1949). Indeed, the sharp divide between ‘meant’ and ‘means’ was in essence a return through Wrede to Gabler, though Stendahl recognized in a way the others did not the difficulty in moving from the past to the present. He thus called for an intermediate stage in which attention would be given to the hermeneutical principles involved in rendering the past relevant for the present: ‘With the original in hand, and after due clarification of the hermeneutic principles involved, we may proceed toward tentative answers to the question of the meaning here and now’ (Stendahl 1962: 422). Nonetheless, in conceptualizing the exegetical and systematic tasks as different modes of inquiry, sequentially ordered so that interpretation runs in one direction only—from the ‘original’ to the ‘here and now’—Stendahl's programme was Gabler's programme redivivus.

The influence of Stendahl's proposals was such that almost twenty-five years later, in a critique of the meant/means division, Ben Ollenburger could write that ‘the distinctions for which Stendahl pleaded have come to be seen as virtually axiomatic, and self-evidently so, particularly for distinguishing biblical from systematic theology’ (Ollenburger 1986: 61). There was of course the occasional appreciation of Barth from a biblical scholar (Minear 1974), and, methodologically speaking, the historical-critical aspect of Bultmannian exegesis had legions of followers among New Testament scholars (in contrast to the theological or existential dimension of Bultmann's work). But Ollenburger's statement was not unfair: well into the 1980s biblical studies and systematic theology were thought of as two different disciplines. The former worked on a strictly ‘descriptive’ level and dealt with the historical problems and literary diversity encountered in the exegesis of a text in its original context (‘meant’). The latter worked on a ‘normative’ level with the abstract conceptual and philosophical issues that arise in the attempt to reflect theologically upon the content of the Christian faith in its connection to contemporary life (‘means’).

In more recent years, Stendahl's programmatic suggestions have lost the virtually universal, if subconscious, acceptance within biblical studies they once enjoyed. The learned publications of Old Testament scholar Brevard Childs, for example, have displayed sophistication in both biblical exegesis and systematic theology and relentlessly called into question the necessity of their separation, as have those of his former Old Testament colleague Christopher Seitz (1998). In New Testament studies, Richard Hays's book on New Testament ethics (1996) exhibits wide-ranging theological analysis and construction, while Francis Watson has in two successive works (1994; 1997) mounted extensive arguments for ‘biblical interpretation in theological perspective’. Stephen Fowl's book, Engaging Scripture: A Model for Theological Interpretation (1998), found its way to a panel review session at the Society of Biblical Literature's 1999 Annual Meeting. Perhaps most impressive in its scale is the ongoing, multi-volume work of N. T. Wright on ‘Christian Origins and the Question of God’ (1992; 1996; 2003). As the overall title of the series suggests, Wright is pursuing historical exegesis of the New Testament with explicitly theological ends in view. The Roman Catholic New Testament scholars Luke Timothy Johnson and William S. Kurz, SJ have called for biblical scholarship to ‘imagine the world that scripture imagines’ in ongoing conversation with the Catholic Church's rich tradition of theological interpretation (Johnson 2002: 119). Moreover, an ecumenical and interdisciplinary consultation of scholars, under the name The Scripture Project, has likewise offered a programmatic summons to the practice of biblical interpretation as a seamlessly integrated theological activity that speaks directly to the needs of the church (Davis and Hays 2003). The appetite for such work is evidently considerable: two new commentary series have of late been launched with the express purpose of bringing biblical exegesis and theological reflection into close relation.⁵ Finally, from the side of systematic theology, it is significant that one of the most important contemporary systematic theologies claims that its success should be measured by its achievement or failure ‘as a hermeneutical principle for scripture taken as a whole’ (Jenson 1997–9: i. 33).

A particularly noteworthy development within this resurgence of theological integration has been a newly intensified interest, among both systematic theologians and biblical scholars, in narrative as the distinctive medium for the articulation of the Christian message. As Robert Jenson explains:

The message of Jesus' resurrection, the gospel, is a message about an event and so itself has the form of a narrative. Therefore, when the church sets out to read scripture as a whole, the kind of unity by which she construes this whole is narrative unity. The church reads her scripture as a single plotted succession of events, stretching from creation to consummation, plotted around exodus and resurrection. (Jenson 2003: 29)

This approach to biblical interpretation, obviously consonant with ancient patristic tradition, received new impetus through the work of Karl Barth and the theologians influenced by him. Especially significant for more recent theology have been the contributions of Hans Frei (1974; 1975) and George Lindbeck (1984). These theologians have advocated an understanding of theology as what Lindbeck calls an ‘intratextual’ enterprise, through which the community of faith retells and interprets its foundational story.

So long as ‘theology’ was conceived in terms of systematically ordered propositions, whether by Protestant scholasticism or by scholars pursuing the Enlightenment's ideal of pure, generalizable universal truth, the biblical narratives appeared as limited and limiting texts, inconvenient in their crude particularity. Even Paul's letters, perhaps the most apparently theological writings in the Bible, were in fact, as read by historical criticism, contingent pastoral advice for ancient readers, not systematically constructed theological treatises. Theology had to be somehow distilled from the raw material of these texts, and the relation between descriptive biblical study and systematic-theological discourse was a fairly distant one.

If, however, the task of theology is understood in the post-liberal mode as the reflective renarration of the community's identity-defining story within a particular historical moment, then not only Paul but also the canonical evangelists were practising ‘theology’ in a way that is exemplary for theologians in the church at any time, including ours. Consequently, the gap between the biblical scholar's close descriptive reading of the text and the theologian's constructive reflection about the text becomes indistinct; both are engaged in imaginative construal of one and the same story.

In other circles, however, the basic disciplinary divide promoted by Gabler, Wrede, and Stendahl continues strongly in force, as some erudite biblical scholars insist—in the face of postmodernism's erosion of ‘objectivity’ in the doing of history—on the independence and priority of descriptive, historical exegesis in opposition to ‘dogmatic abstractions’ (e.g., Meeks 2005). ‘Gabler’, as Räisänen put it, ‘was basically right’ (Räisänen 1990: 137). Exegesis and dogmatics ‘are to be kept apart’. There is room, of course, within today's Gablerian approach, for broadly theological concerns—e.g., the use to which historical exegesis of the Bible is put—but systematic theology itself is, at best, seen to be of little help for exegesis.

At the present moment, then, with respect to the question of the relation between biblical studies and systematic theology, there are competing tendencies within the field of biblical studies that arise naturally out of the history of this field's unity with and separation from systematic theology. On one side, there is a conscious push toward theologically interdisciplinary work, in which biblical exegesis is related positively to systematic or dogmatic theology and in which systematic theology is considered an indispensable tool for the exegetical task. This tendency corresponds to the hermeneutically integrated interpretation of earlier ecclesial exegesis and, in more recent history, to the Barthian endeavour as well as to certain aspects of the Bultmannian theological programme. The rapprochement between biblical exegesis and theology has been aided particularly by systematic theology's renewed interest in the narrative character of Christian convictions. On the other side, however, there is a rueful memory of the long history of dogmatic proof-texting in the modern period, a recognition of the reality of the historical situatedness and diversity of the biblical texts, and a resultant desire to steer exegesis clear of the threatening systematic rocks. This tendency corresponds to the rise of a particular form of academic historiography in the Enlightenment, to the efforts of Gabler, Wrede, and Stendahl to achieve methodological distinction and clarity, as well as to the history-of-religions tradition in Bultmannian exegesis.

In light of the tension in the present situation, we offer some concluding reflections on the basis of the foregoing history. First, it would greatly aid discussion to dispense with the idea that exegesis can be done without dogmatic interests. On this point at least, biblical scholars should—with help from postmodern criticism if necessary—be ready to grant Barth his point: every exegete has dogmatic interests and presuppositions. Or, as Adolf Schlatter put it: ‘The connection between historical science and dogmatics…cannot be set aside until historical work is complete.…The relationship between the two functions is there right from the beginning of historical work.…It does not simply come in at the end, but permeates the whole course of historical work’ (Schlatter 1973: 126). The task, then, is to acknowledge and probe the theological (or anti-theological) interests involved in exegetical work and, hence, to ask whether some interests are more fruitful for biblical interpretation than others.

Second, to speak of various texts together as the ‘Bible’ or ‘New Testament’ is in fact to make a dogmatic judgement. As Heinrich Schlier once wrote with respect to New Testament theology, ‘from a purely “historical” stand-point…there is no justification for restricting it to the collection of books in the New Testament. Such a restriction is already a piece of theology’ (Schlier 1968: 5). Inherent in the name ‘biblical studies’, in other words, is the theological decision that the particular documents that constitute the Bible are in some way related to one another, as distinct from their relation to other pieces of literature, and are therefore to be treated together. ‘[O]utside the church, no such entity as the Christian Bible has any reason to exist’ (Jenson 2003: 27). This does not so much settle as raise the question of how the documents relate to one another, but to read at least sixty-six texts together is to make a dogmatic theological judgement.

Third, such a judgement is not merely ideational abstraction; rather, it locates us socially in a community of interpretation. Indeed, as Wrede saw clearly, to interpret the ‘Bible’ is to situate oneself within a specific set of ecclesial decisions: ‘Anyone who accepts…the idea of the canon places himself under the authority of the bishops and theologians of [the second to fourth] centuries’ (Wrede 1973: 71). To admit that there is an interpretative arena called the Bible places the interpreter (whether self-consciously or not) within a community of interpretation that evaluates positively the theological decision to read these disparate documents together. Conversely, to reject the necessity of the ‘Bible’ or, as did Wrede, the appropriateness of the name ‘New Testament’, is to situate oneself within a different community of interpretation on the basis of a different but equally ‘dogmatic’ judgement. Thus the question of social location, or community of interpretation, is raised by the name we give to what we interpret, and the name we give to what we interpret is inseparably bound with theological decisions of one kind or another. Let us at least be consistent: if we say we study the ‘New Testament’ but desire to do so free of doctrinal or dogmatic decisions, we are involved in a contradiction at a basic level, since in fact dogmatic decisions constitute in a crucial way the very object we claim to study. And if we reject the notion of the ‘Bible’, let us say on what dogmatic grounds we do so and in which community of interpretation we are thereby located.

Fourth, however much the previous points press for a recognition of the implicit unity between biblical studies and systematic theology, they do not preclude an emphasis within biblical studies on the distinctiveness and particularity of the diverse texts. In fact, it may not be too much to suggest that the careful delineation of the manifold and richly varied emphases of the individual witnesses within scripture is one of the unique contributions of modern biblical studies to the overall reception of the gospel. In this light, the insistence of Gabler and Stendahl upon descriptive exegesis is indispensable, even if their view of a separation from dogmatics is untenable. Descriptive exegesis always involves theological decisions with respect to the object described, but the content of particular descriptions is not for that reason predetermined or rendered irrelevant for theological reflection. Indeed, even Karl Barth was quick to say that there was no ‘path to the whole gospel except the one through the comprehension of the particular, for no one has yet displayed all sides simultaneously’ (Barth 1947: xvi).

We thus come, finally, to the question with which the essay began: the relation of biblical studies to systematic theology. The history of the relationship outlined in this essay suggests that where the subject matter of biblical exegesis and of dogmatic theology is not taken to be the same, there exists no real ground for mutual interaction between the two disciplines. Indeed, such interdisciplinary interaction may even be logically precluded, and the point of a biblical studies essay for this handbook would then be to say ‘Hands off!’ to the systematicians. At best, systematic theology could attempt to appropriate the ‘results’ of biblical exegesis. Such an essay would consist of a simple summary of the most significant advances in biblical studies, which the systematicians could then put to use—a contemporary remnant of the older proof-texting approach.

However, where the subject matter of biblical exegesis and of dogmatic theology is thought to be the same, the two disciplines are of necessity inseparable. In this respect, to refuse interdisciplinary work between biblical interpretation and constructive theology is to deny the coherence of the subject matter itself. Today, however, the complexity of the interpretative task may warrant a continued, though always provisional and cooperative, division of labour between biblical scholars and systematicians. The exegete concentrates upon the refraction of the subject matter through particular witnesses, thereby penetrating more deeply into the particular shape of the subject matter and helping to avoid banal theological generalities (Childs 2004: xi). And the theologian concentrates more upon the whole of the subject matter as it is expressed through the understanding of scripture in the dogmatic tradition, thereby helping to avoid the tendency toward fragmentation in exegesis (the old problem of losing the forest for the individual trees).

Yet, in continuity with the ancient church, there is no final division between biblical interpretation and theological reflection, for they are united in the common task of attending to the subject matter of scripture. Their actual relationship is thus dialectical, in the sense that within their respective foci there exists a constant movement between the particulars of the biblical text and the whole of systematic reflection in an effort to do justice both to the exegetical thickness of doctrine and the theological coherence of biblical exegesis.