How does philosophy relate to Biblical Studies

Introduction
Historically, Biblical theology and philosophy had so many things in common and thus complemented each other. Philosophers and theologians even considered themselves mortal enemies in certain cases. Most Christianity doctrines have critical implications or pre-suppositions on philosophy. The discussion begins with the relationship between philosophy and Christianity. It then defined Biblical Theology based on three Christian doctrines that influence philosophy. They include the trinity, the atonement and the incarnation. The paper excludes other doctrines such as those about God’s attributes and providence because they are not unique to Christianity. Also, unlike the doctrine of Christ’s Real Presence in the Eucharist and the origin of sin, the three doctrines have long been discussed and used in relation to philosophy over many decades ago (Amanze, 2012).
The debate on Christian traditions and the relationship between philosophy and Biblical theology continues to rage. An influential apologist and Christian theologian in the early times, known as Tertullian, did not believe that a relationship exists between philosophy and theology. According to Tertullian’s argument, intrusion or influence of secular philosophical thoughts into Biblical theology was not in order. Therefore, even though some theological thoughts and claims seemed reasonable in the eyes of some philosophers, a true Christian should never flinch (McLean, 2012). According to the theologian, philosophy has the tendency of corrupting biblical theology and coming up with beliefs neither grounded in the orthodox nor the early traditions of Christians. He often asked what Athens has to do with Jerusalem. Due to Athen’s role as Hellenistic philosophy center, it represented the philosophical technique. On the other hand, Jerusalem symbolized Christianity due to its role as the early church’s intellectual center and a critical location (Legaspi, 2010).
However, other theological leaders could relate philosophy with Biblical theology. According to Justin Martyr, the likes of Socrates and Heraclitus possessed revelation’s divine light. He believed they were authentic philosophers. He believed Christianity is the True Philosophy. Therefore, her utilized philosophical terms and techniques to argue for Christianity. Another influential theologian in the past, St. Augustine, laid the basis for Western philosophy and a good part of Western theology using his works. The philosopher adopted a more moderate approach to argue his beliefs. According to him, philosophy and Biblical theology complement each other. However, he cautioned against using philosophy in Biblical theology (Amanze, 2012).
St. Thomas Aquinas also introduced the Thomistic model to help explain the relationship between philosophy and Biblical theology. According to the model, Biblical Theology and philosophy are distinct, especially based on their starting points of intellect. People hear, see, touch, taste and smell. Acceptable reliable data is then used to deliver natural mental faculties. The manner in which a person’s natural faculty sees and respects the world of nature is what makes the data acceptable. On the other hand, Biblical theology uses divine authority and revelations in the Bible as a starting point. The process is synonymous to how people accept, for instance, a physics professor may make assertions on the subject’s basic facts (DeWeese, 2011).
Although St. Augustine thought the two complemented each other, he said that is only true if philosophical reflections or thoughts are grounded in a previous intellectual dedication to the truth at the core of the Christian faith. Therefore, the legitimacy of Christian faith commitments is what drives philosophy and its authenticity. The views of Augustine were defended widely. Justin, instead, recommended the use of philosophical approaches grounded on traditional Christian values. With philosophers and theologians often working together, interacting and discussing similar or overlapping challenges, philosophy and Biblical theology have always been intertwined. Philosophy has been attributed to the development of Western theology (Addinall, 1991).
Another influential theologian and philosopher in history, Thomas Aquinas, for example, obtained most of his concepts from Aristotle. During the Middle Ages, scholasticism was an important aspect of both theology and philosophy. For instance, theologians such as Albertus Magnus, Anselm of Canterbury, William of Ockham, Bonaventure, Duns Scotus and Peter Abelard, engaged in both theology and philosophy (Amanze, 2012).
Today, Anthony Thiselton has explained how philosophy has helped with scripture interpretation through his work “Fusion of Horizons.” A good example is the hermeneutics field. Philosophy offers grids for interpreting and understanding revelation. On the other hand, Sadhu Sundar Singh believed that it is the Holy Spirit that gives the correct interpretation or meaning of revelation. However, it is also clear that cultural grids also influence theology development. Based on Christian view, many traditional philosophers or those in the early centuries, use concepts in Christianity to write and discuss their philosophical works. Examples of philosophers who based their work on Christianity include James K.A. Smith, William Lane Craig, Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, Jean-Luc Marion, Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor and Paul Tillich (Johnson, 2014).
Therefore, based on this perception of a relationship existing between philosophy and Biblical theology, arguments borrowed from revelation render a discussion theological. Otherwise, it would be philosophical if the concepts used are not grounded on Biblical concepts. This is one way the two disciplines can be clearly differentiated and demarcated. However, when a single person reaches a conclusion, other people with a different view are bound to make contradictions. People advocating for the model, nevertheless, perceive such conflicts as merely apparent. The claims or arguments made by an individual cannot be contradicted with claims by others unless the former (theologian or philosopher making the first claim) has made some errors. This has been attributed to the fact that God created the world, and the information was revealed to theologians through texts and made accessible to philosophers (In Bartholomew, 2011).
With the coincidence between the two disciplines, philosophy can easily fall under Biblical theology. The converse may also be true. But, how can philosophy play the complementary function? For starters, people who do not accept divine revelation and expressed in religious texts (the Bible) are bound to believe philosophical thoughts and reasoning. Therefore, an atheist who willingly rejects religious authority as expressed in the Bible may be persuaded through philosophical arguments to believe that God exists. Secondly, philosophical techniques can help a theologian to clear ambiguity or errors in theological arguments. Therefore, for instance, theology may offer enough information to conclude that Jesus Christ was an individual with divine and human natures. However, it may fail to explain or give a proper understanding into the relationship between human and divine nature (DeWeese, 2011).
This is where philosophy can come in handy to offer some assistance to the theologian. The theologian can discern logically inconsistent models that do not offer a clear insight into comprehending Christ’s nature as a human and a divine being. English language philosophy in the 20th century, including religious philosophy, was practised without influence from biblical theological. Whereas many sophisticated reasons have been attributed to the total separation between the two disciplines, only three seem critical. Firstly, English language philosophers throughout the century were majorly atheists (Johnson, 2014).
Secondly, 20th century philosophers considered Biblical theology as either meaningless or required some form of scrutiny because it involved religious practices. The belief that theology may have been meaningless was driven by logical positivism tenets. According to the tenets, statements or arguments without empirical content lacked value or meaning. For instance, the Trinity doctrine (as part of Biblical theological language) lacks empirical content, hence was meaningless in the eyes of the philosophers. Wittgenstein inspired the second belief of theology requiring scrutiny. It states that language only has meaning in particular contexts. And, religious language was not focused on expressing truthful information regarding the world, hence was subject to objective scrutiny based on philosophy (McLean, 2012).
Thirdly, most great academic theologians developed scepticism on human’s ability to think and say meaningful things about God. However, instead of just abandoning Christianity’s traditional doctrines, they did away with quasi-scientific and “metaphysical” theological techniques and adopted alternative construals and doctrine’s developed from them such as existentialist, metaphorical and post-modern construals, among others. This explains the rift between methodological “non-analytic” and “analytic” philosophers and why it has been replicated, to some extent, as one between analytic religion philosophers and their Biblical theological counterparts. However, religion philosophers, over the last four decades, have gone back to using theories to assess Christianity’s traditional doctrines. They use traditional philosophy tools in more varied ways than was initially envisioned through Thomistic or Augustinian models (Addinall, 1991).
Traditional religion philosophers have refused to maintain fast and difficult differences between the two disciples to keep up with emerging trends in academics. Therefore, when reading recent philosophical works, it is difficult to differentiate the works of philosophers from those of biblical theologians (and philosophers alike). What had been regarded as strictly theological by historical philosophers now appear in the works of modern philosophers. Today, both disciplines use the term “analytic theology” when referencing theological work aimed at exploring theological doctrines to reveal the underlying message based on the techniques, resources and relevant traditional analytic philosophy literature. The use of the terminology is a clear indicator that, despite being unacknowledged, the kind of work being done and labelled “philosophical theology” is theology in real sense, just as it is philosophical (Legaspi, 2010).
What is Biblical Theology?
In the next section, the phrase “Biblical Theology” is defined. The study of Biblical doctrines is known as Biblical Theology. The doctrines are studied in chronological and historical background as they are organized in the Bible. Unlike systematic theology, Biblical theology analyses God’s unfolding revelation as it occurred in history. However, systemic theology organizes doctrines based on particular topics. Biblical theology may separate and express Biblical teachings in a particular part of scripture such as John’s writings, the Pentateuch theology (the first five books in the Old Testament). It can also emphasize on a specific time period such as the unified kingdom years theology. It can also study specific biblical themes or motifs. For instance, a study of “the remnant” may seek to find out how the scripture introduces the motif and develops it (Hamilton, 2014).
A German biblical scholar, J.P. Gabler, has been credited with founding biblical theology. During his inauguration to professorship in 1787, he called for a clear differentiation between doctrinal, systematic or dogmatic theology and biblical theology. According to Gabler, biblical theology is a strict study of the beliefs and teachings during the different eras in the history of the Bible. It must be independent of modern doctrinal, denominational, cultural and philosophical influences. Generally, his principals were correct, and he played a role in biblical theology development and influenced it for many years yet to come (Velde et al., 2014).
However, the Bible cannot be studied with utter objectivity. Each Bible interpreter adds a new and different pre-suppositions to the table. The different biases significantly influence the procedure of scripture interpretation. Therefore, the biblical theology field is full of various opinions and variations of the Bible’s teachings. Biblical theology relies on the theologian hermeneutics. The techniques used to interpret the Bible scriptures are an important part of biblical theology. The methods an individual uses to interpret scriptures are as good as their biblical theology (Hamilton, 2010).
Systematic theology seeks, for instance, to find out what the Bible as a whole says about Angels. It then assesses each passage concerning the angelic being and makes conclusions. The findings are then organized into an “angelology” truth body. The final outcome is a revelation of what God says on the subject matter from Genesis to Revelation. On the other hand, biblical theology seeks to find an understanding of angels as it develops in the Bible based on history. It begins assessing the subject from the first five books, the teachings of the Pentateuch on angels, tracing God’s word on the beings progressively throughout scripture. At some point, conclusions are made based on people’s thoughts on angels and how they may have changed as more revelation on the truth is known. In conclusion, the study reveals what the Bible says about angels in a general context as God’s revelation on the beings. With biblical theology, the Bible is pictured as one unit instead of different unrelated doctrines put together (Hamilton, 2010).
According to Geerhardus Vos, biblical theology’s grandfather, it is a sub-category of Exegetical Theology dealing with God’s self-revelation as written in the Bible. It means that biblical revelation does not focus on the different books of the Bible, but God’s “divine activity” as unfolds in the history recorded in the book. Based on the definition, God says and does things through revelation as recorded in the Bible. Biblical theology runs along the redemptive historical axis. This means that a fundamental attribute of the study is that it focuses on historical organization. It emphasizes on the development, continuity and discontinuity of biblical occurrences (Vos, 2003).
On the other hand, D.A. Carson defines biblical theology as a study aimed at unearthing and articulating how the different biblical texts unite to come up with the different primary text categories. It means the study focuses on the different literary and historical story context, with the aim of relating its meaning to the story itself. As an example, biblical theology seeks to find out how covenant and sacrifice came about because the terms are articulated in the story under study. But, they are not looked into due to their relevancy as traditional terms in the Bible. According to Tom Schreiner, biblical theology seeks to find out the most important themes to the biblical authors within their historical settings, discerning the themes’ coherence (Carson, 2012).
On the other hand, Stephen Wellum defines biblical theology as a study that unifies scripture not just for interpretative reasons, but also for the best correspondence to text’s nature due to its inspirational divinity. Therefore, the discipline offers a framework for comprehending how texts in different parts of the scripture relate to each other, acting as the foundation of theologizing the text. The definition indicates that biblical theology is interested in the prophetic promise and fulfilment, including specific type of prophesy and antitype, and also their demonstration. This ensures that a single story’s reality as it emanates from one Divine mind based on one divine and sovereign will is for everyone’s eyes and understanding, despite the diversity in the history, literature and human authors. It means that biblical theology, just like its counterpart systematic theology, is not descriptive for no reason. Instead, it tells of God’s will, nature and plan for mankind during creation, including redemption through His beloved son. It also shows the purpose, nature and “story” of mankind from creation and the grace of redemption (Wellum, 2016).
Conclusion
Clearly, philosophy and biblical studies were distinctive in the early centuries. The two disciplines have been said to be related and complementary in various aspects. However, today there is almost no difference between the two disciplines. Philosophy is essential used in Biblical theology, and the latter used in the former. Biblical theology is the study of the Bible as a whole unit from the first book to the last. It attempts to tell the biblical story as a whole based on what is written in the Christian scripture, the Bible. Just like life itself, the Bible story is not just normative in claims, but authoritative. It is the story of God’s creation, glory in salvation through the sacrificial lamb, His son, and judgment.
References
Addinall, P. (1991). Philosophy and biblical interpretation: A study in nineteenth-century conflict. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Amanze, N. (2012). Biblical Studies, Theology, Religion and Philosophy: An Introduction for African Universities.
Carson, D. A. (2012). Christ and culture revisited. Grand Rapids, MI ; Cambridge: Eerdmans.
DeWeese, G. J. (2011). Doing Philosophy as a Christian. Westmont: InterVarsity Press.
Hamilton, J. M. (2010). God's glory in salvation through judgment: A biblical theology. Wheaton, Ill: Crossway.
Hamilton, J. M. (2014). What is biblical theology?: A guide to the Bible's story, symbolism, and patterns.
In Bartholomew, C. G. (2011). "Behind" the text: History and Biblical Interpretation.
Johnson, D. (2014). Biblical knowing: A scriptural epistemology of error. Havertown: James Clarke & Co.
Legaspi, M. C. (2010). The death of Scripture and the rise of biblical studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McLean, B. H. (2012). Biblical interpretation and philosophical hermeneutics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Velde, M. ., Visscher, G. H., Van, V. J., Kamphuis, B., Venema, C. P., Anderson, R. D., Visser, A. J. ., ... Kwakkel, G. (2014). Correctly handling the word of truth: Reformed hermeneutics today.
Vos, G. (2003). Biblical theology: Old and New Testaments. Eugene, Or: Wipf and Stock Publishers.
Wellum, S. J. (2016). God the Son incarnate: The doctrine of Christ.