A Concise New Testament Theology
IVP: What can one hope to achieve in writing a New Testament theology? Is it something more than attempting to come up with a "good theological reading" of the New Testament?I. Howard Marshall: I suppose that this question is really asking what New Testament theology is, and that is not an easy question to answer. What one can say is that all the New Testament authors are thinking and writing theologically whatever be the themes that they are addressing. What you are trying to do is to reconstruct the Christian beliefs that they must be presumed to have in order to write the things that they do. Similarly, you might try to reconstruct the political beliefs that shape the speeches of a politician, working back from what is explicit to what is implicit and gives content and coherence to the whole.But then you have to go a bit further and ask whether the Christian beliefs of Paul, Luke, John and so on are essentially the same or diverse and even contradictory. A theology of the New Testament in the sense of a common body of belief held (with variations) by all the writers may be nothing more than a pious hope. Their views may have been so divergent that there is not enough of a common basis to warrant the name of "New Testament theology." I have tried to show that there is such a common core, while emphasizing that the different writers expressed and developed it in their own individual ways and at times not without problems (compare how Peter and Paul had a [in my opinion, temporary] difference of opinion, reflected in Galatians 2, and how James had to criticize what was probably a false understanding of Paul's theology). So a book on New Testament theology must exhibit the individual thinking of the various authors (and Jesus), show whether and how there is harmony between them, and bring out the particular nuances that may be peculiar to different writers.