March 31, 2023 Show with Andreas Köstenberger on “Biblical Theology: A Canonical, Thematic, & Ethical Approach”

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Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 31st day of March, 2023.

I'm thrilled to have back a returning guest who I absolutely love interviewing, and he is also one of the favorite authors of one of my pastors at Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania. His name is Dr. Andreas Kostenberger.

He is the co-founder of Biblical Foundations, a ministry devoted to helping restore the biblical foundations in the home, church, and society. He is also theologian in residence at Fellowship Raleigh, an internationally known leading evangelical author of over 60 books, including God, Marriage, and the Family, The Cradle, The Cross, and The Crown, and Invitation to Biblical Invitation.

And today, we are going to be addressing his latest book, Biblical Theology, A Canonical, Thematic, and Ethical Approach, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. Andreas Kostenberger.

Chris, I'm thrilled to be with you. Thanks so much for having me on.

Biblical Foundations and the New Book on Biblical Theology

Well, tell our listeners about Biblical Foundations.

Well, it's a ministry that my wife and I started about 16 years ago, and we just relaunched our website, biblicalfoundations .org, and people can write in with questions, with requests for us to come and speak.

We occasionally do marriage and family conferences, retreats, speak in churches, and so we have a special heart for parenting, especially in this culturally confused world, and also for God building solid marriages.

And the website for people who want to find out more about this very important ministry is biblicalfoundations .org, biblicalfoundations .org, you can't get easier than that. Well, we are going to be discussing today your latest book, Biblical Theology, A Canonical, Thematic, and Ethical Approach that you co-authored with Gregory Goswell.

Why don't you tell our listeners something about Gregory as well?

Yes, Greg has been a wonderful, congenial collaborator on this project. He's a well-known Old Testament scholar who teaches at Christ College in Sydney, Australia.

Great, well, there are obviously, as you have in the subtitle of your book, three different elements of an approach to biblical theology. The first is canonical, the second is thematic, and the third is an ethical approach.

Why don't you tell your listeners exactly what you mean by a canonical approach to biblical theology?

Yes, of course, we do have a library of 66 books in the canon, 39 in the old, 27 in the new, and so we do think it is very important to balance on the one hand the canonical approach that each book has its own message and its own unique emphases and its own context, but at the same time, we have been given an entire library of 66 books, and so biblical theology, we believe, is all about drawing connections between those various books, and I think that's very important not just for people in the academy, but also for pastors and teachers of Scripture.

Well, let's move on to a summary of what the book, or how the book handles. Thematic, a thematic approach to biblical theology.

Yes, so we do think it's important to start with just each book in its own context, and so we identify major themes, you know, starting with Genesis and going all the way through to Revelation, and we occasionally have summary sections where we would talk about the major themes in the Pentateuch or the major themes in the Gospels, and then at the very end, we have a grand synthesis in our final chapter where we talk about what are some of the major themes in all of Scripture.

And finally, the ethical approach.

Yes, I think that is probably the most unique element in our book, because, you know, the Scripture was not just given for information. As you know, it was also importantly given for us to live out its teachings, and yet, I think we're the first biblical theology that has embedded in its pages an entire biblical ethic.

So again, for every book of Scripture, all 66 books, we discuss the ethical teachings of that book, first individually, and then again, we synthesize the ethical teachings. So our readers, especially those who are pastors who are teaching the Bible, are able to tell their students in the congregations not just what the Bible says, but, you know, the so what question.

What does it mean, and how should we then live?

Now, the book is promoted as being ideal for pastors and academics, but is this something that your average Christian who loves the Scriptures, who wants to learn more deeply about the Scriptures, wants to study the book, take it to his elders, sit down with them, go over things that he's not clear on when he's reading or she is reading the book?

Can the average Christian handle this book?

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Now, the book is substantive, as you might expect, you know, for us to cover those three areas that you mentioned for all 66 books of the Bible, so it's about 750 pages long.

So I think what I would recommend, I've already heard from a lot of people, they use it as sort of a handbook or as a resource, and we have a very detailed table of contents. So if somebody wants to, for instance, they're studying the book of Isaiah, and they want to know what are the major themes in Isaiah, they can very quickly find out the page on which we, or pages on which we deal with that in the book, and they can look it up.

So this is not even just for people who, you know, want to read the book cover to cover, which obviously would take quite some time, but over time, they can access all the relevant information for the book that they happen to be studying at the time.

And Chris, it's actually our hope that biblical theology will, that people will fall in love with biblical theology, because we feel it is such a practical and useful approach to get to know Scripture better, to get to know what are the major themes, what are the ethical teachings, and also how a given book fits within the storyline of Scripture as a whole.

Great, and before I continue on this theme of the book, which is our primary topic today, biblical theology, a canonical, thematic, and ethical approach, I want to whet the appetite of our listeners for our interview next Wednesday.

We are going to be discussing the final days of Jesus, the most important week of the most important person who ever lived, a great way to enter into the celebration of the resurrection of Christ. Tell our listeners something about that book before we continue on our primary theme today.

Yes, and the subtitle, I think, says it all. You know, there's really no more important week, really, in human history, the week leading up to Good Friday and Easter Sunday. And so in that book, The Final Days of Jesus, we walk people through the gospel accounts of that last week, starting with Palm Sunday and concluding with Easter Sunday.

It's an ideal resource for families and for anyone who wants to, you know, you might say walk with Jesus that final week of his earthly life and ministry.

So mark your calendars, folks, for Wednesday, April 5th, 4 to 6 p .m. Eastern Time, when Andreas Kostenberger returns to Iron Trumpets Iron Radio to discuss that very important book that he has written, and at a very timely time of year that we will be addressing that book, The Final Days of Jesus.

Common Errors in Approaching Biblical Theology

And now returning to our primary theme on biblical theology, in your opinion, and from your experience of having the opportunity to counsel folks, whether they are average Christians, seminary students, colleagues, what do you think can be the most common errors amongst Christians, whether they are laymen, and I hate that term, laymen, by the way, but even some scholars.

Obviously, theologians do not all agree with each other, and there must be some reason for that, and some are considered by we who are Reformed as being in serious error when it comes to their theology, no matter how brilliant they are.

What are some of the errors that you have seen in a Christian's approach to biblical theology?

Well, you know, one would simply be one of application, and of course, Jesus and James and other, you know, writers of Scripture talked about the failure to live out the biblical teaching, so this is not so much a matter of interpretation but of application, and so I think I apply that standard to myself.

You know, I want to be a man of God, a man of prayer, a man of love, and also a man of obedience, and so, you know, it's not just about head knowledge. It's also a matter of being a man after God's own heart, so I would definitely encourage all of us, you know, if we want to fall short, let's fall short on our Bible knowledge, but let's not fall short on loving God and loving others and obeying, you know, Him.

I think the second thing that comes to mind is simply to fail to search the Scriptures on a given topic, you know, the whole Bible, and so I think the Reformation principle, I think, serves us well there.

The Scripture is its own best interpreter, Scripture interpreting Scripture, and as you know, Chris, there's a lot of cults or other, maybe even fringe denominations that have focused on one particular teaching in Scripture without adequately balancing it with something Scripture says elsewhere, and that's, I think, why the canon is so important and why drawing canonical connections is so important, so I think that is where balance comes in, and I think where biblical theology can help us to avoid that fallacy of studying one given passage and then presuming that is the only passage on that topic in Scripture when, in fact, it is not.

The Old Testament as the Foundation for the New

Well, the book is broken in two major parts. We have part one being the Old Testament, which is comprised of the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings, and as you may have heard, a very popular, unfortunately, and well-known TV evangelist, son of an even more well-known and popular pastor, author, and TV evangelist, recently got a lot of controversy brewing and back and forth between those in the media, whether it's the internet or podcasts or other forms of communication, who were either defending or radically opposing what this man said, but he emphatically stated that the Christian Church needs to unhitch itself from the Old Testament.

Obviously, the New Covenant is a new and better covenant, but some draw a very dangerous and deadly meaning behind that and respond to it in a horrible way in thinking that the Old Testament is nothing more than a history book that we can learn some fascinating things about the people of God before the Christian era and all that kind of thing, but they don't really think that it is necessary to plumb to the depths of the Old Testament to really thoroughly understand it and study it and research it and meditate upon it and apply it when appropriate to a New Covenant life.

So, tell us about how that is a real deadly error to dismiss the importance of the Old Testament even today.

Yes, I think, Chris, you set up the issue very well, and of course, in our book, We Don't Believe It At All, we have over 300 pages coverage of all 39 books of the Old Testament. We think it's just a vital foundation, even though I think, as you rightly said, there's a New Testament, and of course, there's a sense in which the Old Testament, as Jesus Himself said, sets the stage for the new and how the law, the prophets, the psalms, the writings all point to Him.

So, you know, what do you do with a building that doesn't have a foundation, right? The Old Testament is absolutely vital. It calls for hermeneutics. It calls for nuance, you know, to understand the progression between the Testaments.

So, yes, I think that's why we want to assist believers in interpreting Scripture properly where you do have a genuine love for and appreciation for the Old Testament, but then you also understand how the New Testament, in many ways, completes and fulfills what the Old Testament builds up to.

So, there's this wonderful complementary relationship, almost like a marriage between the Old and the New, where you really need both for us to appreciate God's plan of salvation. My wife is a writer and scholar as well.

She has a forthcoming book on sanctification in the Short Studies in Biblical Theology series with Crossway, and, you know, she has a beautiful chapter on the Old Testament, on the holiness of God, and on the holiness code in Leviticus, and the temple and the tabernacle.

And then she moves into the New Testament and talks about Jesus teaching on abiding in Him and Paul's teaching on the work of the Holy Spirit in sanctification. And it's never been clear to me that we could really not understand sanctification very well at all if we didn't first have the Old Testament witnessed to the holiness of God, the holiness code, and the temple, and so forth.

And even believing that Jesus Christ is who He says He is, to believe that He is our Lord, God, Savior, and King, that He is the promised Messiah who would emerge from the Jewish people to believe any of that, one needs to have some kind of an idea of the prophecies that foretold that and the entire legacy of the Old Covenant people of God that is bared open for us in the Hebrew Scriptures.

Am I not right?

Yes, you're exactly right. And I think, you know, when you think about it, writing a biblical theology gave us the opportunity to talk about all those things. We have an entire chapter on the New Testament use of the Old Testament where we talk about some of those things.

So you can imagine just how massive an undertaking it is to write a biblical theology, a whole Bible biblical theology, where you cover and want to do justice to the message of all 66 books, both individually and then in relation to each other within the biblical library of 66 books.

And we have, going back to the contents of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament, the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings, as I said earlier. Tell us something about the book, Biblical Theology's approach to the Law to start with.

Yes, thank you very much. So I think my collaborator, Greg Goswell, is in very good company. Many Old Testament scholars point to the Hebrew order of the Old Testament books, the Law, of course, the five books of Moses from Genesis to Deuteronomy, then the Prophets, which interestingly in the Hebrew canon are divided into the Former Prophets and the Latter Prophets.

And the Former Prophets include Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. We might not typically think of that as prophetic books, but in the Hebrew mindset, you have those leaders, essentially serve as precursors to what we would consider the major Old Testament prophets.

And so then the Latter Prophets would be Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and the Book of the Twelve, which we think of as twelve books, but in the Hebrew canon, that was just one book, the Book of the Twelve.

And then, of course, the Writings that contain, in the Hebrew canon, what we would call the Wisdom Books, Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ruth, Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, and then also some books that we would think of more as historical writings, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles.

So the important thing is that the Book of Chronicles in most forms of the Hebrew order, in the Hebrew canon, actually is the final book in the Old Testament, and some see in our Gospels indication that perhaps even in the Bible that Jesus used, the order of the Old Testament books, the Book of Chronicles may have been lost.

The Old Covenant Law, Torah, and the New Covenant

Now, it seems to me that the law in the Old Covenant is an area where those who profess to be Christians very often find themselves, and even throughout history have found themselves, in very serious and heretical danger when they misapply the law of the Old Covenant.

There are Christians that totally divorce the New Covenant Church from any of the laws of the Old Testament, unless we have some clear repetition of them by Jesus Christ and the disciples and the New, and then you have some that could rightly be labeled as modern-day Judaizers who import, in wrong ways, Old Covenant laws and practices and commands into the New Covenant.

How can the Christian, studying his scriptures and seeking to be obedient, make sure that he is free from making either of those opposite errors?

Yes, again, a very excellent question related to biblical theology. I've learned much from Greg Goswell here, from my collaborator. He points out in the book that the word law, you know, the Hebrew Torah, is actually much broader than merely what we might think of, you know, legal.

It really means instruction. And so the Old Testament contains instructions for living that in many ways are reflections of the holy character of God. It is also, as Paul writes in the New Testament, a tutor, you know, that teaches us about how to live a holy life.

And like Paul says, the law is good, but it is limited in its ability to save. And so that is why, in the end, Jesus came to die on the cross for our sins, and then to send the Spirit of God in fulfillment of the New Covenant promise in Jeremiah, put his Spirit in our hearts to give us the actual ability to live out and to obey God's commandments.

So yes, we need to understand the preparatory function of the Old Testament, the educational function, and even the prophetic function, that the law is not an end in itself. That's where the Jews in, you know, the first century went wrong.

It actually pointed forward to, as you mentioned earlier, to the Messiah who died to, you know, first to receive the Spirit so we could actually live out obediently what God expects of us from the heart.

And we have to go to our first commercial break right now. If anybody has a question of your own that you would like to submit to Andreas Kostenberger, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

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But if you're just asking a general question on theology and the Bible, please give us your first name at least, your city and state and country of residence. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Andreas Kostenberger and Biblical Theology right after these messages from our sponsors.

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For that, that's royaldiadem .com, royaldiadem .com. Make sure you mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, otherwise we will not get the benefit of receiving 100 of the profits from that sale. Well, if you just tuned us in, we are having a conversation today with Andreas Kostenberger about his new book, Biblical Theology, A Canonical Thematic and Ethical Approach, and we do have a listener in Hoshton, Georgia, and I hope I'm pronouncing that city correctly.

I've gotten emails from that city before and nobody's ever corrected me, so I'm assuming I'm pronouncing it right. We have Anthony from Hoshton, Georgia, who actually asks four questions, and I usually don't allow listeners to ask that many, but I'm making an exception because they're good questions and I can combine two of them, so there'll actually be three questions.

What have you found is the best way to translate the biblical theology once digested into making a more grounded and fluid presentation of the gospel of the kingdom? Do we suggest a timeline of redemptive history, looking at how the prophets looked into the coming of the servant of the Lord as a new exodus?

That would be the first question for you. Yes, so I'm thinking of 1 Corinthians.

15, 3 and 4, where Paul says that the gospel that he received and that he himself preached was that Jesus died according to the scriptures and that he was buried and rose on the third day according to the scriptures, and so this is a perfect example, I think, of biblical theology where Paul says the gospel that he himself preached and the saving events of the gospel, Jesus Christ crucified, buried, and risen happened in accordance with the scriptures, and you could go to Romans 1, where, again, Paul says that the gospel was already promised beforehand.

He mentions elsewhere that the gospel was preached already through Abraham, and Abraham was already justified by faith, and so there's many ways. I would say there's not just one way. There's many ways in which we can show that, Chris, as you and I were talking before the break, that there's an organic connection between the Old and the New Testament in terms of prediction and fulfillment, in terms of typology and Jesus being the anti-type and so forth.

So in our book, we advocate what we call a multiplex approach, saying, you know, there's not just one way to present the gospel. It may, to some extent, depend also on the person that we're talking to, to present it in the best way possible, and I think we see that also in Paul's ministry.

You think about the way he presented the gospel, say, in Athens, in chapter 17 of the book of Acts, for example, and how that was somewhat different. You might.

Have presented it in another context. And his second question, that's Anthony's second question, can we suggest such things in conversation with friends and family, suggesting and urging them to look toward Jesus found in the types and shadows?

Well, yeah, I think we could.

Educate them and teach them biblical theology. And, you know, when we talk about biblical theology, this is not just an academic, modern discipline. You see biblical theology, as I mentioned a minute ago, already in Scripture.

The biblical writers, you know, when they quote the Old Testament, they engage in biblical theology. And so, you know, to Anthony's second question here, yes, we can talk to our friends and, you know, about typology, the idea that, you know, you think of Jesus saying, just as Moses lifted up the bronze serpent in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life, the idea that he's using a previous event in Israel's history, in this case, Moses lifting up the bronze serpent in the wilderness.

And he's using that as a pattern to show that anyone who looks on a raised up object, and of course in Jesus' case, the crucified Jesus in faith will, through faith and by grace, have eternal life in him.

So it will take a little bit of education and a little bit of, you know, willingness to learn something new in some cases, but I think typology is a wonderful biblical way to understand the.

Relationship between the Old and the New Testaments. And his final question, Anthony's, that is, is there a caution that you would offer to keep us from going a bit overboard in using such teaching? I'm assuming he is talking about showing Christ in the types and shadows, and also I'm assuming what he means by that is that there have been people, very guilty, of eisegesis, who are seeing things that were never intended to be seen.

In a text, the late Harold Camping, who sadly ended his life as a heretic after years of running one of the most biblically faithful radio networks that existed on the planet, he was very guilty of eisegesis and seeing things in the Old Testament and in the New Testament that were not meant to be there through the God-breathed words that were written by God's chosen authors.

But so is there a word of caution that you would offer, and how do you know if you're seeing something or you think you're seeing something that was never intended to picture something.

That you think it is? Yes, I think that is very important. I totally agree with the underlying tenor and premise of that question, that there's balance. On the one hand, clearly, Jesus in Luke chapter 24, for example, mentions not once but twice that people ought to believe that everything that's written about him in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.

But as my collaborator Greg Goswell says so well, and he's very judicious in that area, that doesn't mean that every single verse in the Old Testament is about Jesus. And so that is the caution. I completely agree we ought not to engage in this eisegesis where we would maybe it's well-intentioned, but it's still misinformed that we read Jesus into passages.

That are simply not about him. Well, thank you, Anthony, for writing such insightful questions and sending them in. And your reward for doing that is that you have won a free copy of the book we are addressing, Biblical Theology, a Canonical, Thematic, and Ethical Approach by Andreas Kostenberger and Gregory Goswell.

And thanks to our friends at Crossway, and also thanks to our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com, who will actually be the ones shipping the book out to you at no cost to us or to you.

We have another listener, and we always love hearing from this listener, Grady, in Asheboro, North Carolina, a very regular listener and monthly supporter of Iron Sherpins Iron Radio. And I am looking for Grady's question.

There it is. Greetings, brothers. Could your book be used by a man doing family devotions with his wife.

And children? Well, I think probably the best way to do that would be, and the answer is yes, but I think the best way to do that would be for, you know, you, yourself, to read through a given section.

Say, you're looking at the book of Romans. Well, we have maybe, you know, a few pages on the major themes in Romans, and so I think what I would recommend is just for you to use it as a bit of a teacher's resource that you're equipped to lead a study on the book of Romans by reading that section in the biblical theology.

Well, thanks, Grady, and guess what?

You've also won a free copy of this book, Biblical Theology, generously donated by Crossway and generously shipped out to you by our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cbbbs .com. And before we go to the break, this kind of thoroughly detailed work, some people, when they see a book of this size, are intimidated to even pick it up and start delving into it, but Christians really need to learn that it's a good and healthy thing to reach above your current level of biblical literacy and understanding, that they shouldn't let things like this scare them away because you always have the ability to ask your own pastors and elders and ask other Christians and so on to explain things if they are still left with a lack of clarity when they're reading something.

Isn't this true with this work as well?

Absolutely, Chris. I've been so heartened by the early responses to a book which has only been out now for about a week or a week and a half, and when I look at, there's about a dozen or so Amazon reviews, and they're all from, you might say, ordinary people who really love the clarity and also the depth of the book.