Author Interview
I. Howard Marshall, author of 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.
IVP: But is it possible? How would you respond to those who say that writing a New Testament theology is like chasing a chimera?
Marshall: Heiki Raïaumlisaïnen has said more or less just that. The immediate response is to point to something like ten such works by leading scholars from across the theological spectrum that have appeared in the last few years, and to say that their works demonstrate that the task is profitable and useful, even though they do not agree with one another at every point. Some would argue that there is too much diversity in the New Testament for us to be able to extract "the theology of the New Testament," but I simply do not find this to be the case.
IVP: Let me clarify that I like this book just as it is--so this question does not mask a complaint--but I do recall that you started out with the idea of writing a fairly concise New Testament theology. What factors compelled its growth into a fairly robust 700-plus pages?
Marshall: The original inspiration was a book of 160 small pages by my Aberdeen teacher, A. M. Hunter, who never wrote anything other than short books that he could subsequently recommend to students as "my little book," and at one time I thought that it might be possible to update it. But updating somebody else's work is even more difficult than trying to rewrite your own, and I was pleased to see it simply reprinted as it stood in Paternoster's Biblical Classics Library in 1997, forty years after its original publication in 1957. There was a personal attachment to this book in that the author had Robert Mounce (then a Ph.D student in Aberdeen) and myself read the typescript and proofs for him. But as I got to work on my own project I found that it expanded beyond what I had envisaged (300-400 pages perhaps) if I was to do what I wanted it to be, namely to produce a work that would serve as a textbook for students.
IVP: On the other hand, you don't go in for extensive footnoting or bibliography in this book. What is your thinking on this?
Marshall: There are two points here. First, as I say, it is meant to have a primary readership among students, and they--like pastors--haven't time for enormous bibliographies without any guidance as to what is priority reading, nor do they at this stage want lots of technicality. So I have tried to list basic general reading on each part of the New Testament. In some cases I've written at greater length elsewhere on different topics, and therefore I can refer readers who want more from me to these other books and articles. I hope that that may excuse the excessive amount of self-citation. Second, it is quite common in books on New Testament theology simply to expound the theology without a great deal of interaction with other scholars and the technical literature. Compare Bultmann, who has no footnotes at all and minimal bibliographies. Ladd has perhaps more bibliography but about the same amount of footnoting. Much the same is true of Caird, Conzelmann, Morris and others. Since the book is meant for students who probably do their theological study in English, I've largely omitted works in other languages (which for me essentially means German), although I found it impossible to avoid some references. Maybe too the shortness of the bibliographies reflects my growing inability to cope with the vast numbers of ever-longer books and articles produced in recent years.
IVP: A look at your table of contents discloses that you have chosen the approach of working by authors or "family" groupings of New Testament literature, studying the individual books and then consolidating gains step by step. It is somewhat reminiscent of the approach taken by the New Testament Theology series edited by James Dunn and published by Cambridge. But you move on toward a synthesis. Were you consciously responding to the impulse represented in that and similar projects?
<Marshall: The approach by authors and individual New Testament books doubtless reflects the spirit of the present age, and I was conscious of trying to do in one book what the Cambridge series does at very much greater length. But I wasn't conscious of any precedent for the "consolidating gains step by step" approach. Indeed it took a long time before I found this structure developing almost before my eyes. What is important is to realize that the theological thinking of the New Testament authors is to be found in their individual writings, and therefore "the theology of the New Testament" is not reducible to the summary of their common thinking at the end of my book--admittedly quite a short summary--but is rather the sum-total of all that precedes in the book-by-book exposition.
IVP: If you had attempted to write a New Testament theology twenty-five years ago, how might it have differed from the present work? Has your mind changed on any key issues?
Marshall: The beginnings of this book go back to a lecture I gave in 1983 on "Jesus, Paul and John," in which I outlined how one might compare these three New Testament voices and show that there was a broad band of basic agreement between them, despite all the differences and individual accents. Some of the main principles of organization of the material were already present in that lecture, but the details had certainly not been worked out, and at that point I had no idea whether I would ever proceed further with the project. I hope that my thinking has deepened over the twenty or so intervening years, but I don't think that I have significantly changed my mind on any really substantial points.
IVP: You have been a mentor to many who are now productive New Testament scholars. Who were your own mentors? As you were writing, was there someone--a former teacher perhaps--who you felt was looking over your shoulder?
Marshall: As mentioned elsewhere, my New Testament teacher was A. M. Hunter, who stood alongside William Barclay as one of the two great mediators of New Testament scholarship to the broader Christian audience. I certainly profited from his example of expressing himself with great clarity and succinctness and from his combination of scholarship and warm-hearted Christian commitment. Contrary to what many people may imagine, I was never a student of F. F. Bruce, but he had passed through the University of Aberdeen shortly before I was born, and his writings were without doubt my main inspiration. I also had the privilege of two years in Cambridge, where W. F. Flemington was my tutor and I sat in the lectures of C. F. D Moule, and a year in Göttingen, where J. Jeremias gave an example of peerless scholarship.
IVP: You emphasize that the New Testament documents give us "missionary theology." While this seems fairly obvious once it is pointed out, it seldom plays a role in New Testament theologies. Why do you think this is so and what difference does it make?
Marshall: I really don't know. I suspect that it is because people have not realized that the New Testament is the product of what was essentially a missionary movement. We have been going through a period recently when the church by and large has been tempted to give up on mission. There has been a feeling that the younger churches in other parts of the world do not want missionaries any longer, although they welcome "partners." Fortunately, various independent missions have not felt as inhibited as some of the mainstream denominations seem to be. Again, evangelism has been something peculiar to evangelical churches, and therefore it has not provided the context within which many academic theologians work. Fortunately, there are changes in the air, and there is now much more interest in the theology of mission and the nature of Christian conversion than there was a few years ago. We shall understand the New Testament best when we share something of the driving forces that motivated its writers.
IVP: It seems that clearly distinguishing the theologies of the Palestinian Jewish, Hellenistic Jewish and Hellenistic Gentile churches is now passé. Is there a better way of speaking of how the gospel was "contextualized" in the contingent cultures and settings of the first-century Mediterranean world?
Marshall: It is not altogether dead. Ferdinand Hahn still holds to it in his outstanding work on New Testament theology, and Maurice Casey uses it when he argues that John's Gospel is not true. Nevertheless, under the influence of such scholars as Martin Hengel, it has been shown to be a blunt tool. But abandoning it must not lead us to think that the early Christians all said the same things in the same kind of way, and that there were not developments and diversifications throughout the period and area of the Christian mission. Undoubtedly people adapted the expression of the gospel to the cultures by which they were affected and within which they wished to communicate. There is no simple picture of what was going on. In history we generally have to go for complex solutions and explanations, not simplistic reductions.
IVP: When it comes to synthesis--identifying the "one gospel" of the "many witnesses"--what portion of the New Testament do you find most awkward or resistant?
Marshall: Possibly the Book of Revelation, which I don't find easy to position on the map. For whatever reason, it is dominated by an apocalyptic picture of what is happening or about to happen, and therefore, while essential Christian doctrines are clearly visible in it, the total picture and outlook is not always easy going. But this may be because Christians today tend to find apocalyptic hard to assimilate, whereas in the first century it may well have been different.
IVP: How might the "one gospel and many witnesses" provide an answer to the current popularity of the charge that the New Testament simply represents the "brand" of Christianity that eventually won the political, social and rhetorical battle among competing and "lost" Christianities of the first three centuries?
Marshall: We have a geographical spread in the New Testament which shows that the common theological core was widely accepted across the early Christian world. At the same time we have a concern for truth and orthodoxy which led to the exclusion of false and dubious ideas and shows that the concepts of orthodoxy and heresy and the identification of what was unacceptable go right back to the first century and set a precedent that helped the churches to cope with their later problems. I believe that Walter Bauer's thesis that the distinction between orthodoxy and heresy was a later development and that it was a case of the most powerful churches (especially Rome) winning is deeply flawed.
IVP: Obviously, you avoided the search for a "leading theme" or "big idea" of New Testament theology. In fact, I find you careful not to introduce "alien" terminology or ideas into your discussion of New Testament literature where they do not naturally appear. Do you think it is legitimate and possible these days to pursue a unifying theme of New Testament theology?
Marshall: Yes, I think we can legitimately ask what was common to the various Christian thinkers and writers and also what was central to their theology (two distinct but related questions). But many scholars would insist that there is no one "leading theme" but rather a complex of related beliefs at the heart of Christian theology. Early Christian theology must not be caricatured by over-simplification.
IVP: You address the relation between New Testament theology and systematics, and you occasionally speak to particular issues. Is there anything in general that you would like your New Testament theology to "say" to evangelical systematic theologians?
Marshall: I think the major point I want to make is that some systematic theologians try to be too systematic and assume that New Testament writers had carefully articulated logical systems that leave no room for mystery and recognition that God's ways are beyond our understanding. There is also a tendency to think that if one writer says or assumes something, then it can be taken for granted that every other New Testament author shared this outlook. I hope that I have not used the term paradox too often in trying to emphasize that finite human beings cannot understand the mind of the infinite God and especially that they cannot understand the interrelationship of divine and human causation in conversion and sanctification.
IVP: The layout of your New Testament theology seems to offer some extra benefits. For one, it could be very helpful for students who are studying New Testament introduction to have the theology of each book neatly summed up in one of your chapters. In addition, expository preachers and teachers should find it a very convenient resource for gaining theological overviews of New Testament books. Do you have any thoughts along these lines?
Marshall: Yes, I think that is a helpful analysis of what I have been trying to do. One thing that we need more of is preaching about Christian doctrines. Evangelicals under the influence of preachers in my country, such as D. M. Lloyd-Jones and William Still, have stressed the importance of exposition of passages of Scripture (as well as single texts), so that congregations appreciate the biblical books as books. I hope I may have done something to help expositors to see individual passages within the contexts of the books to which they belong. But it is also important that we preach on biblical doctrines, and I hope that my work may give some encouragement and help in this area too.
IVP: Finally, what advice would you give to others who contemplate writing a New Testament theology some day?
Marshall: Well. I know that three or four such books are in the pipeline, and I've expressed the hope that Peter Stuhlmacher's work--much more technical and detailed than mine--will get translated into English. So it's probably too late to give any advice. It may be that the next step should be to see what can be done by way of biblical theology, now that Brevard Childs and Charles Scobie have shown us the way.