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In reviewing Abraham Gosman’s 1894 charge to the new professor of Biblical Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, Geerhardus Vos, it is interesting to note that he credited Joseph Addison Alexander and Caspar Wistar Hodge, Sr. as early precursors of this theological discipline.
Here is a brief extract from that charge which summarizes the nature of Biblical Theology, as conceived by a Director of the Seminary, and its relation to other areas of study.
Biblical Theology stands in close relations both to Exegetical and Systematic Theology, and yet has its own well-defined bounds. It presupposes Exegetical Theology; it furnishes the material for Systematic Theology. If Systematic Theology is, as we may conceive it to be, the finished building, harmonious in its proportions, symmetrical and beautiful; then Exegetical Theology may be regarded as the quarry from which the material is taken; and Biblical Theology, as putting the granite blocks into form, not polished and graven, but shaped and fitted for the place they are to fill, as the structure grows in its vastness and beauty. It seeks the saving facts and truths as they lie in the Word, and are embedded, and to some extent expressed, in the history of the people of God. God's methods are always historical and genetic, and it conforms to His methods. It views these words and facts in their historical relations and their progressive development. It aims not merely to arrive at the ideas and facts as they appear in particular authors and in the books justly ascribed to them, and as they may be modified in their form by time, culture, influences friendly or hostile; but to set forth these facts and truths thus ascertained in their relation to the other books in which they may appear in clearer light, — to trace their progress and unfolding from the germ to the ripened fruit. As the stream of sacred history runs parallel with that of revelation, it borders closely upon Historical Theology. But the two conceptions are distinct.
Read more of Gosman’s charge as well as Vos’ inaugural address on The Idea of Biblical Theology as a Science and as a Theological Discipline, at their respective pages, as well as the Biblical Theology page.
