“The Idea of Biblical Theology as a Science and as a Theological Discipline”

This lecture was delivered on May 8, 1894 as Vos’s inaugural address as Professor of Biblical Theology in Princeton Theological Seminary.[1] He was 32 years old and just embarking upon his teaching ministry at Princeton. Vos spoke as a representative of Reformed orthodox theology on an issue that had been the nearly exclusive property “of the liberal/critical biblical-theological enterprise”[2] for over 100 years.

1.      Introduction

In the introductory section of this lecture, Vos lays out his reasons for approaching this subject. The primary reason was because biblical theology was “a new chair”[3] at Princeton, with Vos being the first to occupy it. He thought it his duty to present this material. Vos says, “I consider it my duty to introduce to you this branch of theological science, and to describe, in general terms at least, its nature and the manner in which I hope to teach it.”[4] But there is a second reason. Vos says:

This is all the more necessary because of the wide divergence of opinion in various quarters concerning the standing of the newest accession to the circle of sacred studies. Some have lauded her to the skies as the ideal of scientific theology, in such extravagant terms as to reflect seriously upon the character of her sisters of greater age and longer standing. Others look upon the new-comer with suspicion, or even openly dispute her right to a place in the theological family. We certainly owe it to her and to ourselves to form a well-grounded and intelligent judgment on the question. I hope that what I shall say will in some degree shed light on the points at issue, and enable you to judge impartially and in accordance with the facts of the case.[5]

Vos sets out, then, to introduce to his Princeton colleagues his method of biblical theology in the acknowledged context of the abuse of some and suspicion of others concerning its place as a legitimate theological discipline.

Before Vos defines what he means by biblical theology, he offers a definition “of what Theology is in general.”[6] He defines theology in general as “knowledge concerning God.”[7] He then argues that theology is a science all its own. It is unique and to be distinguished from all other sciences. This is so, says Vos, not only due to the object of theology–God–but also due to its “altogether unique relation to this object, for which no strict analogy can be found elsewhere.”[8] He says:

In all the other sciences man is the one who of himself takes the first step in approaching the objective world, in subjecting it to his scrutiny, in compelling it to submit to his experiments–in a word, man is the one who proceeds actively to make nature reveal her facts and her laws. In Theology this relation between the subject and object is reversed. Here it is God who takes the first step to approach man for the purpose of disclosing His nature, nay, who creates man in order that He may have a finite mind able to receive the knowledge of His infinite perfections. In Theology the object, far from being passive, by the act of creation first posits the subject over against itself, and then as the living God proceeds to impart to this subject that to which of itself it would have no access. For “the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God.” Strictly speaking, therefore, we should say that not God in and of Himself, but God in so far as He has revealed Himself, is the object of theology.[9]

Vos is quick to ground theology in revelation. God is the revealer. Man is the passive recipient of this revelation. God is the object of theology’s quest, but only in so far as he has revealed himself. “Theology presupposes an active self-disclosure of God.”[10]

Vos then discusses how man’s sinful condition and God’s desire to be known brings about “that new self-disclosure of God which we call supernatural revelation.”[11] Though man in sin retains some knowledge of God, in order to possess “all pure and adequate information in divine things,” “the objective self-manifestation of God as the Redeemer” is necessary and brings into being “a new order of things.”[12] Redemptive revelation comes as the objective, self-disclosure of God as Redeemer and is subsequently deposited in the Holy Scriptures so that “the human mind is enabled to obtain that new knowledge”[13] by the new birth and illumination of the Holy Spirit. Assuming other sub-branches of exegetical theology (the origin of Scripture, its canonization, the Hebrew and Greek languages of the Old and New Testaments, and the exegesis of its content) brings Vos to his definition of biblical theology.

2.      Definition of Biblical Theology

The first evidence of a definition of biblical theology occurs relatively early in the lecture:

In general, then, Biblical Theology is that part of Exegetical Theology which deals with the revelation of God. It makes use of all the results that have been obtained by all the preceding studies in this department. Still, we must endeavor to determine more precisely in what sense this general definition is to be understood. For it might be said of Systematic Theology, nay of the whole of Theology, with equal truth, that it deals with supernatural revelation. The specific character of Biblical Theology lies in this, that it discusses both the form and contents of revelation from the point of view of the revealing activity of God Himself. In other words, it deals with revelation in the active sense, as an act of God, and tries to understand and trace and describe this act, so far as this is possible to man and does not elude our finite observation. In Biblical Theology both the form and contents of revelation are considered as parts and products of a divine work.[14]

This seminal definition has several features. First, biblical theology is a branch of exegetical theology. It is not an island, nor is it the end of all theological formulation. Second, biblical theology deals with the revelation of God. Vos was quick to point this out. It is not a history of religion. It is not subjective. It deals with God’s objective revelation of himself in the Holy Scriptures alone. Third, biblical theology builds off of the results of the other preceding aspects of exegetical theology. It is the culmination of exegetical theology, though, as stated above, not the end of all theology. Fourth, and most instructively for our purposes, biblical theology deals with both the form and contents of the Word of God.

Prior to transitioning into a discussion of the history of biblical theology and its current state, Vos adds this definition, “Biblical Theology, rightly defined, is nothing else than the exhibition of the organic progress of supernatural revelation in its historic continuity and multiformity.”[15] Just how he came to that definition can be seen as we examine the characteristic features of supernatural revelation discussed by Vos.

Vos comments upon his initial definition as he proceeds and adds “feature[s] characteristic of supernatural revelation.”[16] As Vos says, this approach is based on “what the study of Biblical Theology itself has taught us.”[17] The characteristic features of supernatural revelation, as we shall see, will form the regulating principles for Vos’ methodology. These features will become evident especially in Vos’ exposition of the history of special revelation in his classic work Biblical Theology, which we will analyze below. Vos saw them as biblically derived principles for the proper exhibition of the historical unfolding of redemption in both the Old and New Testaments. Commenting on this, he says:

Here, as in other cases, the organism of a science can be conceived and described only by anticipating its results. The following statements [i.e., features characteristic of supernatural revelation], accordingly, are not to be considered in the light of an a priori construction, but simply formulate what the study of Biblical Theology itself has taught us.[18]

The features delineated below become programmatic for Vos and his biblical-theological methodology.

Vos’ subsequent outline is sometimes difficult to follow. In fact, at this point of his lecture, a distinct outline is difficult to trace. It appears that after the introductory comments discussed above, Vos presents “the features of God’s revealing work.”[19] He does so under the following headings with a degree of over-lap: its (1) historical progress, (2) organic development, (3) covenantal-expansiveness, (4) Christ-centeredness, and (5) multiformity of teaching. Some of these features seem to grow out of the previous ones. Assuming this developmental structure, Vos’ lecture takes on one of the characteristics of his subject matter, i.e., organic development. Each feature prepares for that which follows and each subsequent feature further develops its antecedents.

The first feature he offers is the historical progress of supernatural revelation.[20] Vos says, “The self-revelation of God is a work covering ages, proceeding in a sequence of revealing words and acts, appearing in a long perspective of time. The truth comes in the form of growing truth, not truth at rest.”[21] He states two reasons for the historical progress of revelation: (1) because of its nature and (2) because of its practical intent.

Concerning the former, Vos means by this the fact that revelation is connected to God’s wider work of redeeming the entire universe. He says, “It constitutes a part of that great process of the new creation.”[22] He then concludes:

As soon as we realize that revelation is at almost every point interwoven with and conditioned by the redeeming activity of God in its wider sense, and together with the latter connected with the natural development of the present world, its historic character becomes perfectly intelligible and ceases to cause surprise.[23]

Vos then distinguishes between what he calls the “two stages” of God’s redeeming process: the objective, redemptive acts of God in history (i.e., historia salutis[24]) and the subjective application of redemption to individual sinners (i.e., ordo salutis[25]).

Concerning the practical intent of revelation, he argues that God intended the knowledge of redemptive revelation “to enter the actual life of man, to be worked out by him in all its practical bearings.”[26]

Adding a slightly advanced and more nuanced element of his definition of biblical theology, Vos now says “that it is that part of Exegetical Theology which deals with the revelation of God in its historic continuity.”[27] This provides us with a second characteristic feature of revelation–its organic development. Describing what he means by this, Vos says:

When, nevertheless, Biblical Theology also undertakes to show how the truth has been gradually set forth in greater fullness and clearness, these two facts can be reconciled in no other way than by assuming that the advance in revelation resembles the organic process, through which out of the perfect germ the perfect plant and flower and fruit are successively produced.[28]

He further describes the material increase of revelation as “an internal expansion, an organic unfolding from within.”[29] This organic concept displays itself as the elements of truth grow out of each other and each preceding epoch prepares the way for a future one. Each epoch “was prepared for by what preceded, and being in turn preparatory for what follows.”[30] “So dispensation grows out of dispensation, and the newest is but the fully expanded flower of the oldest.”[31] Semel comments:

Redemptive history moves through stages. Each one is not merely a return to a former state of affairs, but rather, incorporating what has preceded, each stage moves on to a higher stage, one never seen or realized before, until the final stage is attained.[32]

This leads Vos to state that, since the basic needs of man are fundamentally the same, it follows that the heart of divine truth, that by which men live, must have been present from the outset, and that each subsequent increase consisted in the unfolding of what was germinally contained in the beginning of revelation. The Gospel of Paradise is such a germ in which the Gospel of Paul is potentially present; and the Gospel of Abraham, of Moses, of David, of Isaiah and Jeremiah, are all expansions of this original message of salvation, each pointing forward to the next stage of growth, and bringing the Gospel idea one step nearer to its full realization.[33]

Though Vos does not here identify “the Gospel of Paradise” with Genesis 3:15, it is no stretch of the imagination to conclude that this is what he intended.[34]

A third characteristic feature of revelation emerges, when Vos says:

In this Gospel of Paradise we already discern the essential features of a covenant-relation, though the formal notion of covenant does not attach to it. And in the covenant-promises given to Abraham these very features reappear, assume greater distinctiveness, and are seen to grow together, to crystallize, as it were, into a formal covenant. From this time onward the expansive character of the covenant-idea shows itself.[35]

Redemptive revelation, therefore, is covenantally-expansive, according to Vos.

Three years prior to the delivery of this lecture, Vos had given his now famous lecture “The Doctrine of the Covenant in Reformed Theology.”[36] In it he not only acknowledged the centrality of the covenant concept in historic Reformed theology, but he agreed with it and expounded upon it. Much of that lecture (pp. 242-67) is aimed at proving that and how the doctrine of the covenant answers all the exigencies involved with man’s relationship to God. For instance, Vos says:

God does not exist because of man, but man because of God. This is what is written at the entrance of the temple of Reformed theology. When this principle is applied to man and his relationship to God, it immediately divides into three parts: 1. All of man’s work has to rest on an antecedent work of God; 2. In all of his works man has to show forth God’s image and be a means for the revelation of God’s virtues; 3. The latter should not occur unconsciously or passively, but the revelation of God’s virtues must proceed by way of understanding and will and by way of the conscious life, and actively come to external expression. We hope to show how this threefold demand has been reckoned with precisely in the doctrine of the covenant. Let us now in succession take a look at (1) the covenant of works, (2) the covenant of redemption, and (3) the covenant of grace.[37]

While beginning his discussion of the covenant of grace, Vos says:

If the work of salvation has a covenantal form at its roots, then the rest of its unfolding is bound to correspond to it and proceed in a covenantal way. The covenant of redemption does not stand by itself, but is the basis of the economy of salvation[38]

We will see in subsequent discussions just how important the concept of covenant is in Vos’ theology. But we must not miss the fact that it was present in his seminal lecture on biblical theology. What appears to be a passing comment is actually pregnant with implications for Vos’ biblical-theological methodology.

Though Christ-centeredness does not appear in Vos’ lecture as a separate heading, the language he uses warrants its inclusion in a list of the features of supernatural revelation. While discussing the organic character of revelation, Vos says:

Hence from the beginning all redeeming acts of God aim at the creation and introduction of this new organic principle, which is none other than Christ. All Old Testament redemption is but the saving activity of God working toward the realization of this goal, the great supernatural prelude to the Incarnation and the Atonement. And Christ having appeared as the head of the new humanity and having accomplished His atoning work, the further renewal of the kosmos is effected through an organic extension of His power in ever widening circles.[39]

He then discusses how Messianic revelation picks up steam as redemptive history unfolds. The human nature of Christ, for instance, “is successively designated as the seed of the woman, the seed of Abraham, the seed of Judah, the seed of David.”[40] He calls this “the various stages in the gradual concentration of Messianic prophecy.”[41] He sees all of the various lines of revelation finding their terminus in Christ as he is revealed in the New Testament. He says most eloquently:

All the separate lines along which through the ages revelation was carried, have converged and met at a single point. The seed of the woman and the Angel of Jehovah are become one in the Incarnate Word. And as Christ is glorified once for all, so from the crowning glory and perfection of His revelation in the New Testament nothing can be taken away; nor can anything be added thereunto.[42]

Dennison agrees with the Christocentric thrust of Vos’ methodology:

Word and deed coalesce in the display of the new order advanced by God for sinful man. The heart of this new order is Christ. From beginning to end, from creation to new creation, the principle by which God makes all things new is the person and work of his Son. Christ Jesus is the central meaning of all revelation—word and deed. He is the one of whom the law and the prophets bear witness. The Christological meaning and structure of revelation is the goal toward which every interpreter of the Word of God must direct his efforts. Christ Jesus in his fullness—by way of anticipation (Old Testament), by way of accomplishment (New Testament), by way of consummation (parousia). Vos heartily endorsed the dictum of Augustine:

The New Testament is in the Old concealed;

The Old Testament is by the New revealed.[43]

Commenting on the claim that “Vos’s method guarantees that our preaching will be theocentric and Christocentric,”[44] Dennison adds:

our preaching must be Christocentric for we live on the nether side of the fall, east of Eden. Christ Jesus is our Daysman–our sole redeemer. Our only way to the Father is by him. All Scripture bears witness to him (cpr. Lk. 24:44). Ever since Genesis 3:15, there has been a Christological dimension to the Word of God because ever since Genesis 3:15 God has graciously inaugurated a new order for fallen man–the order of redemption through his Son.[45]

A fifth characteristic feature of revelation is its multiformity of teaching. In noting this element, Vos is getting at the various genres employed by God, and those who employed them, to communicate to man. He says: 

we witness a striking multiformity of teaching employed… All along the historic stem of revelation, branches are seen to shoot forth, frequently more than one at a time, each of which helps to realize the complete idea of the truth for its own part and after its own peculiar manner. The legal, the prophetic, the poetic elements in the Old Testament are clearly-distinct types of revelation, and in the New Testament we have something corresponding to these in the Gospels, the Epistles, the Apocalypse. Further, within the limits of these great divisions there are numerous minor variations, closely associated with the peculiarities of individual character. Isaiah and Jeremiah are distinct, and so are John and Paul. And this differentiation rather increases than decreases with the progress of sacred history. It is greater in the New Testament than in the Old. The laying of the historic basis for Israel’s covenant-life has been recorded by one author, Moses; the historic basis of the New Testament dispensation we know from the fourfold version of the Gospels. The remainder of the New Testament writings are in the form of letters, in which naturally the personal element predominates. The more fully the light shone upon the realization of the whole counsel of God and discloses its wide extent, the more necessary it became to expound it in all its bearings, to view it at different angles, thus to bring out what Paul calls the much-variegated, the manifold, wisdom of God.[46]

This element of Scripture highlights its humanness. However, even though there is a human element to Scripture seen in its variety of genres and individual human authors, it was God himself who shaped the individuals for his purpose of revealing himself as Redeemer.

[2] James T. Dennison, Jr., “What is Biblical Theology? Reflections on the Inaugural Address of Geerhardus Vos,” Kerux, 2.1 (May 1987): 34.

[3] Vos, RHBI, 3.

[4] Ibid., 3-4.

[5] Ibid., 4.

[6] Ibid. Vos follows a similar pattern over 40 years later in his Biblical Theology, as will be seen below.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid., 4-5.

[10] Dennison, “What is Biblical Theology? Reflections on the Inaugural Address of Geerhardus Vos,” 35.

[11] Ibid., 5.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Ibid., 7. Emphases added.

[15] Ibid., 15.

[16] Ibid., 7.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Ibid.

[19] Ibid.

[20] Ibid. Cf., Dennison, “What is Biblical Theology? Reflections on the Inaugural Address of Geerhardus Vos,” 37-38 for a brief discussion of this.

[21] Vos, RHBI, 7.

[22] Ibid., 8.

[23] Ibid.

[24] Latin for the history of salvation (i.e., salvation history/redemptive history/redemption accomplished). This is objective and outside of man’s personal experience.

[25] Latin for the order of the application of salvation (i.e., redemption applied). This is subjective and becomes the experience of all the elect in space and time.

[26] Ibid.,10.

[27] Ibid. Dennison, “What is Biblical Theology? Reflections on the Inaugural Address of Geerhardus Vos,” 37-38 for a brief discussion of this.

[28] Vos, RHBI, 11.

[29] Ibid.

[30] Ibid. Cf., Thomas Dehany Bernard, The Progress of Doctrine in the New Testament (New York: American Tract Society, n.d.), 44, for strikingly similar words. Since this is the only book referenced in Vos’ lecture to this point, we may safely assume that Vos has relied, at least in part, on Bernard for some of his thoughts. Vos references another book late in his discussion but for a different purpose than his reference to Bernard. As mentioned above, further investigation needs to be conducted in order to determine just how dependent Vos was on Bernard. For a detailed analysis of Bernard’s book see Richard C. Barcellos, “The Progress of Doctrine in the New Testament, by T. D. Bernard–A Review Article (Part I),” In Reformed Baptist Theological Review (4.1), 7-26 and “The Progress of Doctrine in the New Testament, by T. D. Bernard–A Review Article (Part II),” in Reformed Baptist Theological Review (4.2), 33-60.

[31] Vos, RHBI, 11.

[32] Lawrence Semel, “Geerhardus Vos and Eschatology,” Kerux, 10.2 (Sept. 1995): 34.

[33] Vos, RHBI, 11.

[34] Cf. Vos, BTV, 41-44, esp. 43-44, for an explicit reference to Genesis 3:15 in a similar context of discussion.

[35] Vos, RHBI, 11.

[36] Ibid., 234-67. This was delivered in 1891 in Grand Rapids as the rectoral address at the Theological School of the Christian Reformed Church.

[37] Ibid., 242.

[38] Ibid., 252.

[39] Ibid., 12.

[40] Ibid.

[41] Ibid.

[42] Ibid., 13.

[43] Dennison, “What is Biblical Theology? Reflections on the Inaugural Address of Geerhardus Vos,” 38.

[44] Ibid., 36.

[45] Ibid., 37. Cf., James T. Dennison, Jr., “Vos on the Sabbath: A Close Reading” in Kerux 16.1 (May 2001): 66, where Dennison says, “We are reminded once more of the central agenda in Vos’s writings–Jesus Christ.”

[46] Vos, RHBI, 13-14. Cf., Dennison, “What is Biblical Theology? Reflections on the Inaugural Address of Geerhardus Vos,” 39.

Richard Barcellos

Dr. Richard Barcellos is associate professor of New Testament Studies. He received a B.S. from California State University, Fresno, an M.Div. from The Master’s Seminary, and a Th.M. and Ph.D. from Whitefield Theological Seminary. Dr. Barcellos is pastor of Grace Reformed Baptist Church, Palmdale, CA. He is author of Trinity & Creation, The Covenant of Works, and Getting the Garden Right. He has contributed articles to various journals and is a member of ETS.

Courses taught for CBTS: New Testament Introduction, Biblical Hermeneutics, Biblical Theology I, Biblical Theology II.