As we navigate the complexities of our own time, Vos’s work reminds us that the Bible isn’t merely a collection of ancient texts. Scripture is living and active. It speaks with authority and clarity to the questions and challenges of every generation. Biblical Theology shows us how to discover the richness of the biblical story as we’re drawn ever closer to the heart of God’s redemptive purposes.

Editors’ note: Taking the advice of C. S. Lewis, we want to help our readers “keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds,” which, as he argued, “can be done only by reading old books.” To that end, our Rediscovering Forgotten Classics series surveys some forgotten Christian classics that remain relevant and serve the church today.

Given the popularity of resources like The Bible Project and Sally Lloyd Jones’s The Jesus Storybook Bible, it’s hard to remember that biblical theology wasn’t always such a common approach to Scripture among evangelicals. We owe biblical theology’s popularity, in part, to the work of Geerhardus Vos (1862–1949), who’s often referred to as the father of Reformed biblical theology. As distinguished professor of biblical theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, Vos culminated his career by systematically articulating his understanding of biblical theology as a distinct discipline.

Vos’s endeavor to promote biblical theology drew on years of teaching and preaching the Bible. His magnum opus was published in 1948 as Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments. Though dated in some ways, this work and the approach established by Vos in it have unmistakably influenced contemporary evangelical biblical theology. This book is a classic that deserves rediscovery by every generation.

Confessional Coherence

Vos envisioned a method where biblical theology occupies a unique space between exegesis and systematic theology. This helped give shape to biblical theology as a discrete discipline.

While exegesis deals with the granular details of specific texts and systematic theology presents a logical, organized overview of biblical teachings, biblical theology focuses on the historical unfolding of the truths of Scripture. For Vos, the discipline’s subject matter is best characterized as the “history of special revelation” (v). Accordingly, he structures his study around significant historical epochs like the patriarchal period, the Mosaic era, and the time of prophetic revelation, culminating in the New Testament’s “new dispensation” (302).

Through biblical theology, we see the coherence of the Bible’s message. Vos presents God’s action in the world as a unified and organically unfolding revelation of God’s redemptive plan rather than as a collection of disjointed stories. With Scripture’s narratives serving as an authoritative source for his reconstruction, Vos illuminates the interconnectedness and coherence of God’s redemptive work in history.

A helpful feature of Vos’s method is his engagement with critical scholarship. Throughout Biblical Theology, he summarizes the historical-critical consensus about specific periods of Israel’s history. He then shows both the inadequacy of the critical construct and the reasonableness of the biblical narrative’s witness as summarized by traditional Christian confessions.

This confessional instinct serves an apologetic function but also an exegetical one. Vos uses the insights raised by critical questions even as he rejects the answers that critical scholars give.

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