Back to Table of Contents | Next Chapter
As I have indicated, my thinking about perspectives has developed under the influence of my own study of the Bible, especially of the Gospels and Revelation. But I might never have come to see the implications of biblical revelation in the way that I do if it had not been for the stimulus of the classroom teaching and the written works of Cornelius Van Til, John M. Frame, and Kenneth L. Pike. The extent of my debt to these thinkers cannot easily be indicated. For readers who wish to supplement and enrich their knowledge of the use of perspectives, I have included in the my bibliography a selected list of their writings, including those that show the closest connections with the perspectival approach developed in this book.
In addition, some works of mine listed in the bibliography develop other aspects of a perspectival approach. Philosophy, Science and the Sovereignty of God (Nutley, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1976) represents an earlier stage of my thinking about perspectives, in which I sketch elements of a Christian world view that are important as a framework for modern science and technology. Method and Discovery in Science and Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, forthcoming) examines the relation of perspectives in theology to developments in philosophy of science, especially the work of Thomas S. Kuhn. Understanding Dispensationalists (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, forthcoming) applies symphonic methods to the analysis of dispensational theology and its relation to its traditional antagonist, covenant theology.
Developments outside theology have also begun to show certain points of contact with the concerns of symphonic theology and the use of perspectives. First, advances in the study and understanding of language challenge us to refine our own use of language in the study of the Bible itself and in the writing of theology. The challenges come from the joint impact of twentieth century linguistics (post-Saussurian, structural linguisþtics),1 language philosophy (both logical precisionists and Wittgensteinians),3 But from other directions analogous questions are raised. Anthropologists and missiologists report the variety of world views and the influence of a whole society on its members. Sociologists of knowledge, philosophical relativists, and pragmatists apply similar insights to Western culture. Marxists argue for the influence of our relationship to the means of production, Freudians for the influence of invisible biological drives. Heideggerian phenomenology argues for the key role of our situation of being-in-the-world and being-toward-death. We need not agree wholesale with their presuppositions or their conclusions in order to recognize a glimmer of truth in some of their intuitions.4
Finally, advances in the study of biblical themes challenge us to study the Bible in ways that cut across previous lines of separation between topics. "Biblical theology," as practiced by Geerhardus Vos and Richard B. Gaffin, studies main themes of the Bible in their historical development.5 This approach leads to an increasing understanding of revelation as an organic whole, in which each theme is to be understood in the light of other themes and in the light of the total purposes and plan of God. Gaffin appropriately challenges us to reorganize our systematic theology on the basis of this advance.
Back to Table of Contents | Next Chapter
Footnotes
1. See Lyons, Semantics; Kenneth L. Pike, Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behavior, 2d ed. (The Hague: Mouton, 1967); Silva, Biblical Words and Their Meaning).
2. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 3d ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1968).
3. See Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, 2d ed. (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1963); Dooyeweerd, New Critique of Theoretical Thought; Hendrik G. Stoker, Die wysbegeerte van die skeppingsidee (Pretoria: J. H. de Bussy, 1933); Hendrik van Riessen, Wijsbegeerte (Kampen: Kok, 1970).
4. For further bibliography on these movements, see Poythress, Method and Discovery in Science and Theology.
5. Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1966); idem, "The Idea of Biblical Theology as a Science and as a Theological Discipline," in Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation: The Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos, ed. Richard B. Gaffin, Jr. (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyteriand and Reformed, 1980), 3-24; Richard B. Gaffin, Jr., "Systematic Theology and Biblical Theology," in The New Testament Student and Theology, vol. 3, ed. John H. Skilton (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1976), 32-50 (reprinted from Westminster Theological Journal 38 [1975-76]: 281-299).