The critic of biblical theologians: a review of James Barr's The Concept of Biblical Theology: an Old Testament Perspective - Book Review

Biblical Theology Bulletin, Summer, 2001 by Robert Gnuse

Abstract

James Barr offers critical insight on the craft of writing First Testament theologies, as well as the contributions of significant authors in the field. He addresses issues such as these: (1) the relationship of biblical theology to Christian doctrine, evolutionary concepts, the History of Religions, the Historical Critical Method, and other scholarly research; (2) the relationship of First and Second Testaments; (3) the question of objectivity versus faith commitment; (4) the relation of First Testament theologies to Jewish thought; (5) the choice between historical or systematic evaluations of the First Testament; (6) Canonical Criticism; (7) narrative analysis; (8) the question of Apocrypha; and (9) natural theology and biblical thought. He also critically reviews the work of numerous significant biblical theologians, including Brevard Childs and Walter Brueggemann in particular.

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FOR YEARS James Barr has been the gadfly or bane of First Testament and biblical theologians. (By biblical I refer to those theologies that encompass both First and Second Testaments.) His first assault upon the craft of biblical theologians was undertaken years ago with his books, THE SEMANTICS OF BIBLICAL LANGUAGE (1961) and BIBLICAL WORDS FOR TIME (1962), in which he undertook a critique of biblical word studies and their use as a foundation for insight into the supposed worldview of biblical authors. In particular, he challenged the assumptions of the articles in THEOLOGICAL DICTIONARY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT (and by inference the later THEOLOGICAL DICTIONARY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT). In the years thereafter Barr kept up an unrelenting criticism on what he considered slipshod thought among biblical theologians and scholars. This volume is the culmination of that life-long response to the guild. Some have assumed that Barr is opposed to the doing of First Testament theology altogether. Actually, as he states in this book, he is not opposed to First Testament or biblical theology in general, but rather to the articulation of flawed systems.

This volume is not a First Testament theology; it is an assessment of the task of doing First Testament theology in particular and biblical theology in general. In the author's own words, the book is a "discussion of the whole idea of biblical theology, its possibilities and prospects" (p. xiii). As such, the volume is a collection of essays that variously discuss issues involved in the creation of First Testament theology as well as the review of significant theologies crafted by First Testament theologians in the past thirty years.

There is not always a tight logical progression through the chapters of the volume, although some chapters do follow upon each other in logical sequence. Barr explains that this book was built out of his 1968 Cadbury Lectures at the University of Birmingham and his 1978 Firth Lectures at the University of Nottingham. His overall thesis is a further development of his book, OLD AND NEW IN INTERPRETATION (1966).

I would organize the structure of the book into four parts. Barr begins with introductory observations (chapters 1 through 4). Then he discusses the contrasts or differences among various First Testament theologians (chapters 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12). After this he addresses key issues that must be addressed by First Testament theologians, such as the use of the concept of evolution (chapter 7), the relationship of the First and Second Testaments (chapters 11, 16, 33), the nature of First Testament theology (chapter 13), opposition to the concept of First Testament theology (chapter 14), Jewish biblical theology (chapters 17, 18), the existence of a center in First Testament theology (chapter 20), the study of narrative in the First Testament as theology (chapter 21), natural theology in the Bible (chapter 27), and the use of the Apocrypha (chapter 32). Finally, Barr spends significant effort assessing specific First Testament theologians as thinkers who write in an age after Walther Eichrodt and Gerhard von Rad. Brevard Childs (chapters 23, 24) and Walter Brueggemann (chapter 32) merit special attention. Other individuals also receive briefer evaluations: Walther Zimmerli (chapter 19), Claus Westermann (chapter 19), Georg Fohrer (chapter 19), Samuel Terrien (chapter 19), Hans Heinrich Schmid (chapter 19), Hartmut Gese (chapter 22), Rolf Rendtorff (chapter 23), Otto Kaiser (chapter 26), Antonius Gunneweg (chapter 26), Horst Dietrich Preuss (chapter 26), Manfred Oeming (chapter 28), Friedrich Mildenberger (chapter 29), Heikki Raisanen (chapter 30), and David Brown (chapter 34).

In his critique of the various issues in biblical theology and the various theologians Barr hints at his own ideas and assumptions. He is critical of Neo-Orthodoxy and Karl Barth (especially Barth's rejection of natural theology), the Biblical Theology Movement (which took inspiration from Neo-Orthodoxy), and the more recent "canonical criticism" and post-modernist interpretive techniques. Barr is very positive toward theological systems that use the Historical Critical Method and a History of Religions approach. He also defends the use of evolution as a paradigm and the existence of natural theology. These issues serve as touchstones for evaluating the various biblical theologians.