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Summary: Christ as the Center
Review: As a child growing up, my parents taught me a great deal of what theologians would call systematic theology. That means, how do you order the Christian religion. This has a most important application: evangelism and discipleship.
However, there is another side of the coin: Biblical theology. Biblical and systematic theology are not enemies, nor is one more important than the other. However, if you look at the order of events in evangelism or discipleship, Biblical theology comes first. Biblical theology is concerned about rightly extracting meaning out of the Bible. This process has many facets, including an understanding of the culture of the times, Greek and Hebrew grammar, and understanding the writers' intentions. Graeme Goldsworthy has correctly identified the whole flow of the Bible: it's _all_ about Christ. Some people mention this fact in different ways. One common form is say that the Bible is the history of redemption. Another form is to say that the Bible is all about covenants: God's dealings with men. Either way, it still comes down to Christ. One example of this is found on page 28, in which Goldsworthy tries to debunk (at least partially) what he calls the "character study approach" to the Old Testament. In that approach, as an example, we study the story of David and Goliath in order to make sure we know that, just like David, we must rely on God's strength and power to conquer our Goliaths (which happen to correspond to whatever random collection of sins we want it to be). In contrast to this character study approach, Goldsworthy puts forth the importance of the context of the passage, which happens to be the whole Bible. In that approach, we should not identify ourselves with David, but with the ordinary Israelite soldiers on the sidelines who watch David, the type (which means pattern or foreshadow) of Christ, deliver and save Israel (which in the New Testament corresponds to the church). This example really broadened my view of the Bible in a number of ways. Certain passages in the Old Testament, which seemed "dry" or "boring", really have their voice in speaking about Christ. I would highly recommend this book!
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