The discipline of Old Testament theology seeks to provide us with a picture of YHWH and his relationship to the world as described in the Old Testament. But within this discipline, there are many disagreements about the key issues and methodologies:
- Is the Old Testament unified in some way?
- Should the context of the theologian play a role in interpretation?
- Should Old Testament theology merely describe what ancient Israel believed, or should it offer guidance for the church today?
- What is the relationship between history and theology?
All these considerations and more result in so many different kinds of Old Testament theologies (and so many publications), that it’s difficult for students, pastors, and laity to productively study this already complex field.
In Understanding Old Testament Theology, professors Brittany Kim and Charlie Trimm provide an overview of the contemporary approaches to Old Testament theology. In three main sections, they explore various approaches:
- Part I examines approaches that ground Old Testament theology in history.
- Part II surveys approaches that foreground Old Testament theme(s).
- Part III considers approaches that highlight different contexts for doing Old Testament theology.
Each main chapter describes both common features of the approach and points of tension and then offers a test case illuminating how it has been applied to the book of Exodus.
Through reading this book, you’ll hopefully come to see the Old Testament in a fresh light—as something that’s alive and active, continually drawing us into deeper encounters with the living God.
Book Insights from Charlie Trimm
The church often does not know what to do with the Old Testament. How do we as Christians profitably read the Old Testament along with the New Testament? Scholars have written extensively on Old Testament theology as a way to help answer this question, but these similarly entitled “Old Testament Theology” books are often dramatically different from each other. And they tend to be very large! This book seeks to help theological students and pastors get a handle on these different approaches to Old Testament Theology and provide them with a beginning place to mine the riches of Old Testament Theology for church life today.
