Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 23:2 (Summer 2019)
Article: Promise, Law, And The Gospel: Reading The Biblical Narrative With Paul
Author: Pierre Constant

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Promise, Law, And The Gospel: Reading The Biblical Narrative With Paul

Pierre Constant

Pierre Constant is the Chair of New Testament Studies at the Toronto Baptist Seminary and Bible College, Toronto, Ontario, Canada since 2003. He is also an elder at the Église chrétienne du Plateau in Gatineau where he previously served full time in pastoral ministry for fifteen years, and is involved in French-speaking ministries in Québec (SEMBEQ) and in Switzerland (Institut Biblique de Genève), where he teaches and mentors young adults. He is the author of the Survol des Évangiles (SEMBEQ, 2012), and works on a forthcoming French book on New Covenant theology. Pierre is married to Lise and together they have four adult children and five grand-children.

Introduction

The Bible did not come to us as a catechism, or in a way similar to a systematic theology book. Even though it contains literature written in different genres, the Bible not simply a stitching together of stories, laws, proverbs, praises to God, words spoken by prophets, miracles stories, bizarre images of dragons, stars falling from the sky, and the battle of Armageddon.

As it is nowadays more and more recognized, the Bible presents a single story, from creation in the book of Genesis, to new creation in the book of Revelation. Words such as “meta-narrative,” or “the biblical storyline” and the like, are becoming more familiar. Bible readers and scholars alike acknowledge that each part of Scripture is to be read in light of its overall storyline to better understand its different components. Instead of readings paragraphs or

SBJT 23:2 (Summer 2019) p. 124

chapters in the Bible from the “street view” perspective, we slowly learn to scroll back to an overview of sections or entire books of Scripture and come to a more satisfying interpretation of more difficult passages.

No one denies that evangelical Christianity has its own fads, its popular tendencies, its buzz words that resonate for a few years, and then disappear almost as soon as they appeared. We see theological movements come to life, producing a few buds, blooming and then producing fruit, to finally dry up and perish.

For some readers of the Bible, this renewed emphasis on the “meta-narrative,” or “the biblical storyline” and the like, is but a fad, destined to pass by in a few years or in a few decades, just as others fads eventually disappeared from our theological radars or practices. For others, at the other end of the spectrum, reading Scripture through the lens of a grand plan is the only way to make sense of the diversity found in Scripture.

This school, since its beginning, ha...