Yesterday, I was blessed to pick up a hardback copy of Geerhardus Vos’ Biblical Theology. I hope to read through most of it over the winter break. I rarely hear the term Biblical Theology. It seems Systematic Theology is more the rage on my own campus and elsewhere.
What is meant by the term Biblical Theology? Vos, Princeton Theological Seminary’s first professor of Biblical Theology, explains:
Biblical Theology is that branch of Exegetical Theology which deals with the process of the self-revelation of God deposited in the Bible.
In the above definition the term “revelation” is taken as a noun of action. Biblical Theology deals with revelation as a divine activity, not as the finished product of that activity. Its nature and method of procedure will therefore naturally have to keep in close touch with, and so far as possible reproduce, the features of the divine work itself. The main features of the latter are the following;
(a) The historic progressiveness of the revelation-process; it has not completed itself in one exhaustive act, but unfolded itself in a long series of successive acts.
(b) The actual emobodiment of revelation in history.
(c) The organic nature of the historic process observable in revelation.
(d) The fourth aspect of revelation determinative of the study of Biblical Theology consists in its practical adaptability.
Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology, (Chicago: Eerdman’s, 1959), 13-17.
