Faith and History, Christian Theology, Volume 1, Part 1

by T.A. Noble

Christian Theology draws on major historical works of theology and contemporary scholarship to integrate biblical, historical, and systematic theology into a three-part framework of Faith and History, Christology, and Soteriology.

Part 1, Faith and History, introduces Christian Theology, explaining why it begins with Christ. It also reviews what is known about Jesus historically and the faith in which he was brought up—the faith in the God of Israel. This part concludes with an examination of the resurrection of Jesus.

Part 2, Christology: The Doctrine of the Person of Christ, begins with theology as ‘faith seeking understanding’. It is faith in the Gospel that the crucified Christ is risen from the dead, and this faith in turn issues in the confession that Jesus Christ is ‘Lord’. From here, part 2 traces the logic of the Church’s development of Christology, the doctrine of the Person of Christ, from Scripture and, specifically, from the apostolic Gospel.

Part 3, Soteriology: The Doctrine of the Work of Christ, investigates the ‘Grace’ of God seen in the doctrine of the Atonement as an aspect of Christology.

275 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2022

Reviews

[Chad Gibbons · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book 1 of Volume 1: Faith and History

Systematic Theologies are notoriously and necessarily lengthy and exhaustive. With a planned three volumes, with each volume consisting of (potentially) three books each, T.A. Noble's "Christian Theology" is no different, and perhaps lengthier and more exhaustive even than most. Though this is not uncommon when it comes to systematic theologies, it does make them prohibitive to readers.
The volumes of this work will be broken up into a consciously unique structure. Normally, systematic theologies tend to begin with a generic "God" and then moving to more specific topics, but Noble rightly begins his work with Jesus. Christians shouldn't start from an Aristotelian unmoved mover, or some pre-constructed philosophical conception of the divine, for example, and then try to fit Jesus into what we have already deduced. Rather, we should begin with Christ and construct our understanding of God based on what we see and experience of Him.
This first book in the first volume is called "Faith and History" and strangely does not actually consist of theology, per se, but rather acts as grounds clearing and prolegomena to the work as a whole. This is something Noble reminds us of at least a dozen times throughout the length of the book.
After an 85 page introduction to the work and the history of theology itself, Noble uses this first book to discuss how we know about Jesus in the first place. As far as I am aware, this too is unique in the history of systematic theologies.
We begin with the history of history, or how the historical critical method of studying history came about and where it stands today. This was a fascinating overview, and when juxtaposed with the specific history of historical Jesus studies, two things become abundantly clear:
1) The study of Jesus is what helped create the study of history itself.
2) Historians claiming to take a neutral position in their picture of Jesus are instead almost universally shaped by the philosophical zeitgeist that was en vogue at the time they wrote. Rather than painting a "neutral" picture of Jesus, they end up seeing merely their own faces reflected back at them from the bottom of a well.
Nevertheless, we do learn many things from this study, if not about Jesus, at least about how to study Jesus. Ben Witherington's work on the so-called "third quest" served as a guide for this section.
Noble then moves to the history of Old Testament theology as a background to understanding Jesus. This includes a brief history of the discipline, this time using Brueggemann and Goldingay as guides.
After this, we move to the study of Second Temple Judaism to get an idea of the setting Jesus was born and raised in. Here, Noble follows and summarizes N.T. Wright almost exclusively in his understanding of Jews at that time and place.
Noble ends the first book with a summary of the relationship between Faith and History, explaining three different ways Christians view history, with the resurrection being the point at which everything converges:
1) The 'liberal' modernist method of embracing secular history, concluding that miracles (especially the resurrection) are impossible and impossible to believe. This way conflates the rules of studying secular history with the rules that govern reality.
2) Instead, orthodox believers can use the practice of secular history to show that we will need something greater than history. Almost like using history as an apologetic for Christian faith. We can show historically that Jesus must have been raised from the dead. If the historical-critical method can't accept that, so much the worse for the historical-critical method.
3) Other orthodox believers see the resurrection is an act of new creation and thus requires study from that new creation. Secular history will not do, because it operates in the wrong world with the wrong rules. We accept the resurrection because we too live in a new world. And what we find in this new world inaugurated by Jesus and his resurrection is that only from this vantage point can we truly understand anything, including the old age, and including history itself. In other words: From the vantage point of secular history, history itself doesn't make sense. From the vantage point of the resurrection, all history makes sense.

This first book is an introduction to the work as a whole and should be understood as such.

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

With this first part of the first volume of Noble's systematic theology, he sets the table for the entire series by stating that this work is an attempt to provide a Weslyan but yet a distinctly catholic Wesleyan approach to theology. In other words, for Noble, Wesleyanism, at its root, is connected to the Reformational theology of early Protestantism and is catholic in the sense, like Reformational theology, that it is in continuity with the early church.

After this, the remainder of the volume goes into what he describes as historical prolegomena, clearing the ground and preparing the way for parts 2 and 3. Here, he discussed, in his clear and yet penetrating manner, the philosophical underpinnings that motivated the quests for the historical Jesus and gives a summary of these various quests. Then, drawing mostly from N. T. Wright, he discusses the historical reality of Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection. In the main, he is a sympathetic conversation partner with Wright; however, regarding the resurrection, he sees Wright's attempt at demonstrating the resurrection on historical grounds as somewhat misguided because, Noble argues, there is something about Christ's resurrection that is beyond anything we could historically demonstrate or contend for as it is, as base, an article of faith.

Having read through the entirety of this first volume, I am now more eager than ever to dive into second volume!