One of the most famous archi­tects of Bib­li­cal The­ol­ogy is Aus­tralian. Graeme Goldswor­thy. His Gospel and King­dom is one of the sem­i­nal works on Bib­li­cal the­ol­ogy — its premise is that “God’s King­dom” is a lens through which the Bible can be cohe­sively under­stood — he defines God’s king­dom as “God’s peo­ple, liv­ing in God’s place, under God’s Rule”… So, in say the Gar­den of Eden we see God’s peo­ple (Adam and Eve), liv­ing in God’s place (Eden), in direct rela­tion­ship with God, and then, mov­ing for­ward a few books, in Judges we see God’s peo­ple (Israel), liv­ing in God’s place (the promised land), under God’s rule (the judges) — this idea devel­ops through­out the Old Tes­ta­ment, bib­li­cally cul­mi­nat­ing in Jesus, and ulti­mately cul­mi­nat­ing in the new cre­ation. This “redemp­tive his­tory” approach frames every pas­sage as it relates to the ulti­mate end of the Bible, books are not ends in them­selves, but part of the means to that ulti­mate end.

His book “Accord­ing to Plan” charts the devel­op­ment of this pic­ture through the Bible. For our OT exam we’re focus­ing on the Old Tes­ta­ment up to the end of 2 Samuel, so here are his divi­sions of our text under his head­ings (fol­lowed by a summary):

I think the strength of bas­ing approaches to Bib­li­cal texts in a frame­work of Bib­li­cal The­ol­ogy is that it is, by my reck­on­ing, what Jesus would do (and indeed what he did), and it’s cer­tainly what the apos­tles did — they were able to explain, begin­ning with Moses, how Jesus was the ful­fill­ment of the Bib­li­cal nar­ra­tive (cf Matthew 5:17–20). It’s not rocket sci­ence. So a good frame­work, or under­stand­ing of the unfold­ing nature of rev­e­la­tion, helps us read the Old Tes­ta­ment with­out get­ting bogged down in mechan­ics. To con­tinue Vos’ body anal­ogy — we can enjoy the fruits of anatom­i­cal research with­out know­ing the sci­ence — we can sit in our arm chairs and appre­ci­ate ath­letic endeav­our with­out analysing every aspect of the phys­i­o­log­i­cal make up of the ath­lete and his trap­pings, and any study of the mechan­ics should be under­taken with the goal of improv­ing on field performance.

For the ben­e­fit of other Old Tes­ta­ment stu­dents out there — below is Goldsworthy’s sum­mary of the key points in his struc­ture (via here).

Cre­ation by Word
Gen­e­sis 1 and 2
In the begin­ning God cre­ated every­thing that exists. He made Adam and Eve and placed them in the gar­den of Eden. God spoke to them and gave them cer­tain tasks in the world. For food he allowed them the fruit of all the trees in the gar­den except one. He warned them that they would die if they ate of that one tree.

The Fall
Gen­e­sis 3
The snake per­suaded Eve to dis­obey God and to eat the for­bid­den fruit. She gave some to Adam and he ate also. Then God spoke to them in judg­ment, and sent them out of the gar­den into a world that came under the same judgment.

First Rev­e­la­tion of Redemp­tion
Gen­e­sis 4–11
Out­side Eden, Cain and Abel were born to Adam and eve. Cain mur­dered Abel and Eve bore another son, Seth. Even­tu­ally the human race became so wicked that God deter­mined to destroy every liv­ing thing with a flood. Noah and his fam­ily were saved by build­ing a great boat at God’s com­mand. The human race began again with Noah and his three sons with their fam­i­lies. Some­time after the flood a still uni­fied human race attempted a god­less act to assert its power in the build­ing of a high tower. God thwarted these plans by scat­ter­ing the peo­ple and con­fus­ing their language.

Abra­ham Our Father
Gen­e­sis 12–50
Some­time in the early sec­ond mil­len­nium BC God called Abra­ham out of Mesopotamia to Canaan. He promised to give this land to Abraham’s descen­dants and to bless them as his peo­ple. Abra­ham went, and many years later he had a son, Isaac. Isaac in rum had two sons, Esau and Jacob. The promises of God were estab­lished with Jacob and his descen­dants. He had twelve sons, and in time they all went to live in Egypt because of famine in Canaan.

Exo­dus: Our Pat­tern of Redemp­tion
Exo­dus 1–15
In time the descen­dants of Jacob liv­ing in Egypt mul­ti­plied to become a very large num­ber of peo­ple. The Egyp­tians no longer regarded them with friend­li­ness and made them slaves. God appointed Moses to be the one who would lead Israel out of Egypt to the promised land of Canaan. When the moment came for Moses to demand the free­dom of his peo­ple, the Pharaoh refused to let them go. Though Moses worked ten miracle–plagues which brought hard­ship, destruc­tion, and death to the Egyp­tians. Finally, Pharaoh let Israel go, but then pur­sued them and trapped them at the Red Sea (or Sea of Reeds). The God opened a way in the sea for Israel to cross on dry land, but closed the water over the Egypt­ian army, destroy­ing it.

New Life: Gift and Task
Exo­dus 16–40; Leviti­cus
After their release from Egypt, Moses led the Israelites to Mount Sinai. There God gave them his law which they were com­manded to keep. At one point Moses held a covenant renewal cer­e­mony in which the covenant arrange­ment was sealed in blood. How­ever, while Moses was away on the moun­tain, the peo­ple per­suaded Aaron to fash­ion a golden calf. Thus they showed their incli­na­tion to for­sake the covenant and to engage in idol­a­try. God also com­manded the build­ing of the taber­na­cle and gave all the rules of sac­ri­fi­cial wor­ship by which Israel might approach him.

The Temp­ta­tion in the Wilder­ness
Num­bers; Deuteron­omy
After giv­ing the law to the Israelites at Sinai, God directed them to go in and take pos­ses­sion of the promised land. Fear­ing the inhab­i­tants of Canaan, they refused to do so, thus show­ing lack of con­fi­dence in the promises of God. The whole adult gen­er­a­tion that had come out of Egypt, with the excep­tion of Joshua and Caleb, was con­demned to wan­der and die in the desert. Israel was for­bid­den to dis­pos­sess its kins­folk, the nation of Edom, Moab, and Ammon, but was given vic­tory over other nations that opposed it. Finally, forty years after leav­ing Egypt, Israel arrived in the Moabite ter­ri­tory on the east side of the Jor­dan. Here Moses pre­pared the peo­ple for their pos­ses­sion of Canaan, and com­mis­sioned Joshua as their new leader.

Into the Good Land
Joshua; Judges; Ruth
Under Joshua’s lead­er­ship the Israelites crossed the Jor­dan and began the task of dri­ving out the inhab­i­tants of Canaan. After the con­quest the land was divided between the tribes, each being allot­ted its own region. Only the tribe of Levi was with­out an inher­i­tance of land because of its spe­cial priestly rela­tion­ship to God. There remained pock­ets of Canaan­ites in the land and, from time to time, these threat­ened Israel’s hold on their new pos­ses­sion. From the one–man lead­er­ships of Moses and Joshua, the nation moved into a period of rel­a­tive insta­bil­ity dur­ing which judges exer­cised some mea­sure of con­trol over the affairs of the people.

God’s Rule in God’s Land
1 and 2 Samuel; 1 Kings 1–10; 1 Chron­i­cles; 2 Chron­i­cles 1–9
Samuel became judge and prophet in all Israel at a time when the Philistines threat­ened the free­dom of the nation. An ear­lier move­ment for king­ship was received and the demand put to a reluc­tant Samuel. The first king, Saul, had a promis­ing start to his reign but even­tu­ally showed him­self unsuit­able as the ruler of the covenant peo­ple. While Saul still reigned, David was anointed to suc­ceed him. Because of Saul’s jeal­ousy David became an out­cast, but when Saul died in bat­tle David returned and became king (about 1000 BC). Due to his suc­cess Israel became a pow­er­ful and sta­ble nation. He estab­lished a cen­tral sanc­tu­ary at Jerusalem, and cre­ated a pro­fes­sional bureau­cracy and per­ma­nent army. David’s son Solomon suc­ceeded him (about 961 BC) and the pros­per­ity of Israel con­tin­ued. The build­ing of the tem­ple at Jerusalem was one of Solomon’s most notable achievements.

Author: Nathan Campbell

Nathan runs St Eutychus. He is currently a student at the Queensland Theological College. In a previous professional life he worked in public relations for an economic development and tourism marketing organisation. He is married to Robyn. He likes coffee and the internet.

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