A Brief Introduction to Revolutionizing Your Bible Reading Through Family Theology
The Family Theology framework I have built upon Scott Hahn, my famous theology professor’s Covenant Theology framework (which he put together from the Biblical insights of Jewish, Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant scholars – a combination of the gifts of all who love the Bible as God’s Inspired Word!) – is a comprehensive Biblical theological framework for understanding the Bible which ties together the entire text of both Testaments (including many difficult passages which at first seem incomprehensible or even offensive to the Christian mind), all of the fundamentals of traditional Christian orthodoxy, and Christian history since the Biblical record ended, including the failures and divisions of Christians which are all part of a divinely patient process of God the Father raising His human Covenant Family since Adam gradually to its maturity in love. This framework literally revolutionizes Bible reading because it makes plain the ‘Big Picture’ or single overarching story of the whole Bible which flows and unfolds naturally from the heart of the Eternal Trinitarian God who is Love – and shows how current Christian history is a natural continuation of the story of the Bible, a wonderful story of God creating a human family specifically in order to adopt it into His Eternal Trinitarian Family of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, unified through family bonds with the one God who is Love. Family Theology shows how God is divinely loving, wise and patient with His adopted children’s immaturity in love (including divisions) throughout the human history of all the major Covenants including the New Covenant of Jesus Christ which was not an end to His plan (we still await the Eternal Covenant of the New Heavens and New Earth after Jesus returns) but rather was Him giving His adopted Covenant Family the latest and highest standard of love yet to strive for knowing we would struggle in this task as the earlier Covenant Families had in their tasks. Our loving Father God knew we Christians too would often fail as all the earlier Covenant families did (as Christian history attests to), yet He knew Christians, as the Jews before them (who at first were very inconsistent at worshipping Yahweh [the LORD] but who by the end of the Old Testament were zealous for Him as a nation), would also very gradually mature in love (as today’s Ecumenical Movement for healing the scandalous divisions in our Christian Family demonstrates).
© 2009 Peter William John Baptiste, SFO
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Family Theology as a Complement to (And an Orthodox Foundation For) Other Theological Approaches to Understanding the Bible
It is my hope that Family Theology will revolutionize any Christian’s Bible reading because in a few dozen pages I present a framework for understanding the “Big Picture” or single overarching story of the Bible’s thousands of pages written over thousands of years by dozens of inspired human authors in different genres of literature. Any particular passage of the Bible you read will fit somewhere within this single unfolding story, and many passages will make much more sense if one understands this ‘Big Picture’ interpretational framework of Family Theology. I hope that Family Theology will also revolutionize any Christian’s faith life because it shows how the Christian era we live in which began near the end of the Biblical Revelation is the continuation of the Bible’s single overarching story of God slowly and patiently raising His human Covenant Family descended from Adam ever closer to its full maturity in love. The story of the Bible is not just our family history as Christians, because this story is not finished – we are still living it!
Family Theology is not meant to replace all other ways of looking at the Bible, nor to answer all theological questions which can be asked of the Bible’s infinitely rich text. Rather, Family Theology is a Biblical Theology which provides a foundation and background for other, deeper and more focused theological investigations. I believe Family Theology is the best such background available because of how its “Big Picture” encompasses the entirety of the Christian Scriptures (both Testaments) and incorporates all the fundamentals or essentials of Christian faith.
In the natural sciences, Einstein’s Relativity Theory explains the natural universe in “macro” very well – it gives “the Big Picture” of the universe. However, it is not sufficient for answering smaller questions – and thus other perspectives on the universe are needed to supplement Relativity Theory, particularly Quantum Mechanics which explains the natural universe in “micro” very well. Likewise in the theological sciences, no one interpretational theory can answer every single Biblical and theological question, and so Family Theology must be supplemented by other theological approaches to yield the fullest understanding of the Bible. As different theological approaches come and go all the time, and since none that I am aware of are near so Biblically comprehensive and fundamentally orthodox as Family Theology, I would suggest that theological ideas can appropriately be judged by whether or not they are compatible with Family Theology.
Theology Is Not Faith, but Faith Seeking Understanding
Still, it should always be kept in mind that theology is not faith – it is faith seeking understanding. Faith is an obedient response to what God has revealed to His Family the Church in His Living Word, Jesus Christ, who came to Earth, died, rose, ascended, and who today dwells in our hearts; and in His Written Word, the Bible (and the dogmas or fundamental interpretations of the Bible which are the standards of orthodox Christianity – see the “Creed” Tab). Theology is faith seeking understanding, the science of human wisdom applied to the data of this Divine Revelation, looking for patterns of order and building theories of how the various elements of Divine Revelation we accept in faith “fit together.” It is very possible to share completely common orthodox Christian faith in what God has revealed, and have widely different theological opinions. In fact, this is a big part of the mutually enriching unity in diversity of the Undivided Early Church – many of our different theological insights are complementary not contradictory, and we can learn much from each other’s insights, which enriches the faith of all parties. Some theological theories are incompatible with each other, some of which are tried for a while by some Christians and prove not so fruitful, and are eventually dropped for better, more fruitful theories – just as scientific theories are – but this does not mean the Christians who held these theological theories for a time did not share completely orthodox common Christian faith in what God has revealed with those who did not hold it. Theology is not faith, it is an attempt to intellectually understand what we believe in faith (therefore differences in theology are not sufficient grounds for Christian divisions, as they were not in the Undivided Early Universal (Greek katholikos, or Catholic) Christian Church of the First Millennium, which was composed of several different orthodox Christian “Sister Churches, both Eastern and Western. I present Family Theology to the reader because I believe it is an exceptionally fruitful way of understanding the entire Bible in a way which is completely orthodox, true to the fundamentals of Christianity, and demonstrates how New Covenant Christian history is a continuation of the Biblical Covenant history in a way which could be very fruitful towards the divided Christian Church of today eventually reestablishing the loving unity in diversity of the Early Undivided Church of Jesus Christ, as Jesus prayed for which obligates us to seek such unity.
Excerpts from The Bible’s ‘Big Picture’ contains only an overview of Family Theology and how it shows the “Big Picture” of the entire Bible, focused on the Covenant Theology aspect of Family Theology. For those interested in understanding and exploring this deeper, I go into more detail to describe and demonstrate Family Theology (especially the Trinitarian Theology part of it) in my book-length essay, Love Unbounded: Tracing Salvation History from the Eternal Trinity to the New Covenant Church – Using Family Theology to Answer the Question “How and Why Does Jesus’ Death Save Us?” Several things I simply state in Excerpts from The Bible’s ‘Big Picture’ I take the time to “prove” from the Scriptures and the Early Church’s understanding of them in this essay.
Family Theology as Not Only an Extremely Rich and Beautiful Framework but Also as Potentially a Common Overview Framework for Biblical Studies, as a Further Basis for Renewed Christian Unity
A solid overview of the Trinitarian Theology and Covenant Theology which I combine (together with Christian history) as Family Theology can also be found, respectively, in the books First Comes Love: Finding Your Family in the Church and the Trinity and A Father Who Keeps His Promises: God’s Covenant Love in Scripture, both by my former professor, the noted author and Biblical theologian Dr. Scott Hahn. Dr. Hahn drew on much Jewish, Eastern and Western Christian, Catholic and Protestant Christian Biblical scholarship to put together Covenant Theology as I present it, so it represents the collective Biblical insights of all who love God and His written Word in Scripture.
Family Theology is built upon Trinitarian and Covenant theology, and it follows the “golden threads” throughout the tangle of human history from the Biblical Covenant made with Adam through to the present day New Covenant Church of Jesus “the New Adam.” Thus Family Theology is a thoroughly orthodox way of looking at the Scriptures – true to traditional, historic, orthodox Christian faith as preserved by the Catholic, Orthodox, and conservative/ Evangelical Protestant churches (see the Common Creed). Protestant Christian readers will want to know that Family Theology is also a thoroughly Biblical way of looking at the Scriptures, for it incorporates the entire Bible, respecting every verse as the Divine words of God to His adopted Family the Church (and making beautiful sense out of a great deal of its “difficult” passages). Catholic Christian readers will want to know that Family Theology is also a thoroughly Catholic way of looking at the Scriptures, which keeps the official dogmatic teaching of the Catholic Church (from the Early Church Councils which established Christian fundamentals through to Vatican Council II) completely in view, and it actually provides the best theological and Biblical explanation for several things which the Catholic Church now officially teaches as its mature reflection on Divine Revelation since the ecumenically-focussed Vatican Council II, but without explaining in near such depth as Family Theology explains them.
It is my hope and prayer that Protestant, Orthodox, and Catholic Christian readers (and ‘Messianic Jews’) – who already share common Scriptures and a vast common faith listed in the Common Creed – will find in Family Theology a wonderfully beautiful common framework from which to view ‘the Big Picture’ of the Bible and its ongoing story through history of the one, common Covenant Family of the Holy Trinity of Divine Love which we all belong to through Jesus Christ.
© 2007, 2010 Peter William John Baptiste SFO
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