Song of Songs

Reading John Goldingay on the Old Testament is like listening to a lover talk about his beloved. The first two volumes of his projected trilogy on the theology of the Old Testament (or, as Goldingay prefers, First Testament) are filled with thoughtful interpretation and a sense of deep admiration for the text. Volume 1 (2003) dealt with Israel’s Gospel, the good news about “God’s relationship with the world and with Israel.” The second volume, Israel’s Faith, describes what Israel believed (or should have believed), drawing particularly from the Prophets, Psalms, and Wisdom literature. The final installment will focus on Israel’s “lifestyle.”

Goldingay explained his methodology in volume 1, but he begins the second volume by clarifying his approach to two contentious issues: whether to emphasize the text’s unity or diversity, and how to relate the Old Testament to the New. Earlier Old Testament theologies singled out a unifying theme (e.g., Eichrodt’s emphasis on covenant), but Goldingay does not support this approach. He makes less of the Old Testament’s diversity than Brueggemann or Gerstenberger, but he wants the First Testament to speak for itself, diversity and all. “We cannot identify a single faith articulation in the text, but we might be able to construct one out of its diversity, even if we find ourselves leaving some ambiguities and antinomies, and even if we still grant that the end result needs to recognize once more that we see only the outskirts of God’s ways.” As to the relation between the Old and New Testaments, Goldingay strives for a biblical theology—that is, one that takes both testaments into account. He does so, however, by attending primarily to the Old Testament text, then adding “occasional New Testament footnotes” and ending each chapter “with a reflection on what happens when First Testament faith is set in the context of New Testament faith.” Even when he’s discussing methodology, we can hear his passion for the Old Testament.

Goldingay’s heart is lost to the First Testament, and he wants us to love it too, ambiguity and all.

The lengthy second chapter (151 pages) is rich with insights on God (Yhwh). For the most part, Goldingay makes no attempt to explain away God’s unusual comments and behavior. Instead, he suggests we treat God as we treat our parents: “the evidence is that many of God’s acts do look good. We then trust God for the others.” Next he turns his attention to Israel, rightly setting his description in the context of their relationship with Yhwh: “Yhwh is the God of Israel, and Israel is the people of Yhwh.” When the children of Israel fail to appropriately respond to Yhwh and ignore the warnings of God’s prophets, they face a nightmare (the theme of chapter 4). But the nightmare is not the end; God envisions a restored relationship with Israel. Humanity is the theme of chapter 6, for though Israel has a “distinctive place in God’s purposes,” it is “a microcosm of humanity.” Here Goldingay describes God’s vision for a relationship with us, “a vision … of living in community, in family and as a self; of responsibility and wisdom; of blessing; and of suffering, mortality and limitedness.” The final two chapters address God’s relationship with the created order and the nations.

Goldingay, David Allan Hubbard Professor of Old Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary, writes here for educated lay and clergy, rather than for scholars. In earlier works, Goldingay proved his familiarity with the scholarly controversies and his willingness to enter the fray, but not here. His relaxed, lilting, sometimes colloquial style makes this material approachable. (“What of Yhwh’s character traits? Everyone knows that the Old Testament God is a God of wrath; the New Testament God a God of love. Oh no they don’t.”) Goldingay is the uncommon biblical scholar familiar with systematic theologians (Barth, Pannenberg, and Moltmann being favorites), but his goal is not to systematize the Old Testament. He wants to lead us through this material like a proud curator, pausing for long moments over single passages. The project already weighs in at over 1800 pages. Goldingay’s heart is lost to the First Testament, and he wants us to love it too, ambiguity and all.

He also wants to defend the First Testament against the neglect and abuse that has characterized its handling by Christians. He calls it “good news that has not been heard.” His indictment is stern: “What is revealed in the Old is taken for granted in the New and then forgotten in the church.” Evangelicals will be glad to hear Goldingay defend the abiding message and trustworthiness of the First Testament, though some may object to his definition of what this means. In his estimation, to be entirely trustworthy does not require inerrancy. Biblical history should not be measured against the standards of modern historiography. His conclusions will be too conservative for some and too liberal for others.

A few features of Goldingay’s presentation may actually prevent us from seeing the full beauty of the Old Testament. One concern has to do with how he relates the Old Testament to the New. To his credit, he affirms the essential unity of the two testaments and devotes considerable attention in volume 1 to how the story of the First Testament is continued in the second. He works hard to balance the tension between understanding the Old in light of the New on the one hand, and letting the Old Testament speak with its own voice on the other. (He remarks that at a conference several years ago, a Jewish scholar criticized him for being too Christian in his reading of the First Testament while a Christian scholar charged that he was not being Christian enough.)

Although I admire Goldingay’s effort to produce an Old Testament theology that is, to use Brevard Child’s words, “part of Christian theology,” [1] I discerned a disconnect between his view of the Old Testament and his view of the New—or, to be more precise, between his view of the Old Testament and his view of the church. Goldingay has precious little good to say about the church. By my reckoning, most of his comments about it in the second volume are negative. To choose just one example: “Neither the death and resurrection of Christ nor the pouring out of the Holy Spirit has turned the Christian community into an embodiment of goodness.” The brief section titled “Israel and the Church” does not explain the relationship except to deny emphatically that the church has replaced Israel as God’s elect. Another section, “The Church and the Nightmare,” refers to the church as “a vast expansion of that chosen people that has Israel at its core” but then focuses only on the church’s faithlessness. History is replete with examples of the church’s faithlessness, and Christian exegesis of the Old Testament has often missed the mark. So Goldingay’s frustration with the church, given this history and his deep love for the material, is understandable, but it is not defensible. The church cannot be so easily dismissed. The Apostle Paul sees the church in profoundly optimistic terms as a crucial component in God’s plan,[2] and has no trouble defending this view using the Old Testament (cf. Romans 9:22-26; 15:5-12). I realize Goldingay is not writing an ecclesiology, but he is writing to help the church understand the First Testament. This worthy goal may be more easily accomplished by helping the church discover its role in God’s eternal plan, a plan that begins to be revealed in the Old Testament. As Joel B. Green explains, “a ‘Christian’ reading of the Old Testament has no need to assert the superiority of the New Testament over the Old, nor that the Old Testament requires the New as its hermeneutical key. Rather, Christians recognize that the Old Testament points beyond itself toward the fulfillment of God’s purpose at the same time that it narrates the expression of that purpose in creation and among those whom God has made his people.”[3]

A second feature that clouds our view of the Old Testament is Goldingay’s openness to open theism. According to Goldingay’s reading of the Old Testament, God has “the capacity” for omniscience, but “does not ‘automatically’ know everything.” He finds passages that refer to God’s disappointment, surprise, and willingness to alter his will based on human response. He also finds passages that affirm God’s sovereignty and knowledge of the future, so that “when Yhwh decides to speak, declaring that something is to happen, Yhwh’s word is the effective causal agent in deciding what happens in the world.” Given his desire to let us hear the Old Testament with all its ambiguity, we expect Goldingay to leave us hanging with a God who is both sovereign and surprisable. Instead, Goldingay resolves the ambiguity and gives us a (too) easy way out into the open.

My experience confirms Goldingay’s diagnosis that the Old Testament is “good news that has not been heard” by many Christians.

A third feature of this project that works against Goldingay’s stated purpose is his methodology. In the first volume he relied mainly on the narrative material to speak of Israel’s gospel, in the second he examined Israel’s faith by looking particularly at the Prophets, Psalms, and Wisdom material, and in the third he plans to consider Israel’s lifestyle by concentrating on the Psalms and instructional material in the Torah. Goldingay recognizes that “Gospel, faith, and lifestyle appear in all the parts of the Old Testament,” and consequently does not limit himself exclusively to certain passages, but he has chosen to focus on particular sections of the canon as “the framework and/or starting point for the three parts of the study.” He does so believing that this reflects “something of the Old Testament’s literary and theological nature, and in the conviction that the literary and the theological are related.” No doubt the literary and theological are related, but I wonder if this is the best way to demonstrate their connection. The different genres of the Old Testament have long been of interest to Goldingay, and in earlier works—see Models for Scripture (1994) and Models for Interpretation of Scripture (1995)—he contributed to our understanding of how best to interpret them. Using these genres as the framework for his theology, however, seems artificial. The Old Testament doesn’t divide itself neatly along these lines, and the ancient Israelites probably didn’t share all our assumptions about literary genres. Even Goldingay seems aware of this artificiality. He admits in the first volume that the exilic community did “little narrative theology on the later centuries” but preserved “their theological reflections on their story in forms other than narrative.” He incorporates these non-narrative elements “to write a theological midrash on the narrative the Judahites never wrote.” To take this approach while encouraging us to let the Old Testament speak for itself seems a little strained.

My experience teaching the Old Testament to young people from Bible-believing evangelical churches confirms Goldingay’s diagnosis that the Old Testament is “good news that has not been heard” by many Christians. His three-part labor of love will help to redress this serious shortcoming. That his expression of passion contains blind spots only confirms Shakespeare’s conclusion that “Love is blind and lovers cannot see the pretty follies that themselves commit.” The weaknesses in Goldingay are the blindspots of a lover, one who sees beauty in the beloved and longs for others to see it too. Thankfully, these “pretty follies” need not blind us to the beauty of the Old Testament as Goldingay carefully and lovingly explains it.

Stephen J. Lennox is professor of Bible at Indiana Wesleyan University.

1. Brevard S. Childs, Old Testament Theology in a Canonical Context (Fortress, 1985), p. 7.

2. Cf. Ephesians 2:11-22, a passage mentioned only once in Goldingay’s first two volumes, and then only in an off-handed way.

3. Joel B. Green, Seized by Truth: Reading the Bible as Scripture (Abingdon, 2007), p. 41.