The First Testament is good news that has not been heard
Old Testament Theology, Volume One: Israel’s Gospel
Author: John Goldingay
Publisher: IVP Academic (www.ivpress.com)
Pages: 940
This is the first (originally published 2003) of three
volumes on the Old Testament. The “first volume amounts to a theological
commentary on the Old Testament story” (Preface). It does not focus on the
contents of the “law,” the Prophets and the poetic books.
The author confines his study to the books of the Old
Testament. He makes occasional references to other Jewish writings but does not
treat them as a source for stating Old Testament theology.
“Old Testament theology attempts not merely to describe
the faith implied by the Old Testament but to reflect on it analytically,
critically and constructively” (17). Goldingay defines the task as seeing “what
greater whole can encompass the diversity within the Old Testament” (17).
I appreciate the author’s point of view that it’s “wise
to keep closer to the Old Testament’s own categories of thought in order to
give it more opportunity to speak its own insights rather than assimilating it
to Christian categories” (18). In other words, he avoids reading Christian
meanings into the text. It thus provides an opportunity to know what a text
might have meant to the original author and recipients. New Testament writers
may make a different application, but that doesn’t mean it did not have an
important meaning in its original context. Where the two testaments differ,
Goldingay sees it as an opportunity for Christians to learn something.
Further on, along the same line of thought, Goldingay
writes, “Only when people have learned to take the Old Testament really seriously
can they be entrusted with the story of Jesus, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer more or
less argued” (21). The author’s perspective is that the Old Testament is good
news that has not been heard. Goldingay’s aim in this volume “is to discuss the
Old Testament’s own theological content and implications, working with the
assumption that the Old Testament is Act I to the New Testament’s Act II (or
Acts I-IX to the New Testament’s Act X!)” (26). Therefore, he prefers to call
it the First Testament.
This first volume treats “the Old Testament as the story
of God’s relationship with the world and Israel” (28). Goldingay’s telling of
it is masterful. It’s a little like reading it for the first time. His
scholarly exegesis continually surprises and even puzzles.
An example of the latter is the idea of God gaining
knowledge through the process of discovery. “Stories about Babel and about
Abraham (Gen 11; 18; 22) will concretely show God taking steps to come to know
things. They will again show that God has extraordinary knowledge, but will
incorporate no declaration that Yhwh is omniscient, and preclude that by the
way they portray God acting so as to discover things: ‘I will go down to see
whether they have acted altogether in accordance with the cry that came to me.
If not, I will know’ (Gen 18:21) … Talk of God acting to find something out is
anthropomorphism, but like talk of God having a change of mind or loving or
speaking, such anthropomorphisms presumably tell us something true about God’s
relationship with the world” (137). Further, he adds, “In dialogue with Greek
thinking, Christian tradition let God’s possession of supernatural knowledge
turn into God’s possession of all knowledge” (137). Give him credit for being
faithful to what the Scriptures seem to say, but what are the implications. Is
God, therefore, not all-knowing? Would other scholars support this
interpretation?
Right or wrong, when Goldingay is provocative it can lead
to closer examination. What does the text actually say? Christian tradition can read potentially
suspect meanings into a passage. What is commonly called the “Fall” is one
example. “In Christian tradition the ‘sin’ of Adam and Eve thus brings about the
‘Fall’ of the human race” (144). The author sees the story as “more about loss
than one about a fall: about loss of innocence, loss of relationship, loss of
possibilities, loss of life” (144).
He continues this elaborate discussion by discussing the
advantages and disadvantages of the term. Though it might seem just a matter of
word usage, it shows the author’s commitment to being precise and accurate. Although
sometimes the attempt to differentiate may leave a reader slightly confused
about what the author means. The book doesn’t provide the luxury of clarifying
questions as in a classroom setting.
Overall, I find his discussion praiseworthy like when he
reviews the union of divine beings and humans in Genesis 6. He carefully avoids
the kind of wild speculation that sells popular books. He is not interested in
going beyond what is clearly stated in Scripture.
For me the Creation part of the story was interesting but
not as compelling as it is for the stories that follow. This is not a
commentary, but because of its comprehensiveness and the extensive Scripture
index in the back, it can serve as one. It’s a first-class textbook and
excellent companion for making sense of the Old Testament on its own terms.
