The biblical theology of H. H. Rowley, 1890-1969 - Critical Essay

Baptist History and Heritage, Wntr, 2003 by Ronald E. Clements

For Rowley, the Old Testament pointed forward unerringly to the New and to the birth of the Christian church, which continues the task Israel began. The idea of election is central to both Testaments. It is not the self-delusion of a weak and struggling nation, nor simply a doctrine without practical demands in response to its claims. Rather, it is an awareness of a divine purpose revealing itself in historical events that makes them guides to further events. Election can never be a cause for human self-praise but rather demands commitment toward establishing a just and righteous world order. To be engaged in fulfilling this purpose, as every Christian must be, may, and probably will, involve self-denial and suffering. This focused Rowley's attention on the biblical portrait of the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53--a subject that was enigmatic in its complex nuances, but one which Rowley believed lay at the very heart of Christian faith and to which he devoted a great deal of attention. (16)

The Historicity of the Biblical Story

In Rowley's student years in Bristol and Oxford, the field of archaeological research in the biblical lands of the Middle East was still in its infancy. It was popularly perceived as bearing the potential to transform the entire face of biblical knowledge. Already in the nineteenth century, the recovery and decipherment of writings from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia had caused an immense public stir. The cautious voice of the Oxford biblical scholar S. R. Driver (1846-1914), in the Schweich Lectures of 1908 given under the auspices of the British Academy, (17) had anticipated the possibility of a whole panorama of new discoveries shedding an entirely fresh light on the Old Testament. By 1920, the field of biblical archaeology, as it was customarily described at the time, appeared to represent the most inviting field of new research for the scholar to contemplate.

It comes as no surprise, therefore, that when he was invited to contribute to the same lecture series in 1948, Rowley chose as his subject From Joseph to Joshua: Biblical Traditions in the Light of Archaeology (1950). (18) In the preface, he told how even while he was still a missionary in China he had reflected on the problems of establishing the history of Israel's beginnings from the time of the exodus from Egypt to the conquest of Canaan. He had composed a letter to Stanley A. Cook of Cambridge on the subject but had never posted it. The publication of these lectures provides testimony to Rowley's orderly mind and patience in bringing together multifarious pieces of evidence and focusing them on a specific subject. In this case, the subject is the beginnings of Israel as a nation. Like a detective, Rowley, out of seeming confusion and contradiction, could assemble a balanced set of possibilities. From among these, he then could set out his own solution to the problem.

These lectures may appear to be so essentially historical as to mark another side of Rowley's interest, which had begun in his student years in Oxford. Yet, the historical conclusions set out at the close of the book related closely to his theological interests. They were soon taken further in ground-breaking essays from his pen and formed a central basis for his reconstruction of The Faith of Israel. Moses had been the leader of a group of fugitives from the slave gangs employed by Pharaoh. The Ten Commandments formed the charter of faith that formed his great legacy to the emerging nation that looked back to him as its founder. These rules of life established the inseparable bond between ethics and religion. They have remained the moral foundation of all human society. So, in brief compass, runs the outline of Rowley's presentation of Israel's faith. His task as a scholar was to research, defend, and proclaim this.