...the recent Logos blog post on Adolf Schlatter that Cliff posted on May 19th.
Some people may think "why bother with a German theologian who died before WW2 even started?" Interestingly enough, following a rabbit trail in the blogosphere this week led me to the most recent editorial of JETS, where Andreas Koestenberger discusses biblical theology - starting with Gabler (the founder of BT as a discipline), he interacts a lot with Schlatter before turning to a recent book chaper by DA Carson. Koestenberger attributes to Schlatter a "grasp of the essence of New Testament (and Biblical) Theology a la Gabler second to none" But read for yourself.
Even more interesting, Carson in exactly this book chapter, titled "Theological Interpretation of Scripture: Yes, But..." (online at thegospelcoalition as his latest resource), also interacted with Schlatter. After mentioning in passing on p. 201 that Schlatter surely needed no help from current TIS-theologians for his work, he gives a summary history of Biblical theology from Gabler to today as well (emphasis mine):
... the biblical theology movement (whose origin is often pegged to Johann Philipp Gabler's inaugural address at the University of Altdorfin 1787).Sadly, the rising wave of naturalism gradually destroyed much of biblical theology as it pursued distinctions among biblical books and corpora while losing the big picture: biblical theology became thoroughly atomistic biblical theologies. Yet there were remarkable exceptions. The line through Johann C. K. von Hofmann in the nineteenth century (1810-1877) takes us directly to Adolf Schlatter and Geerhardus Vos in the twentieth century, and beyond - voices graced with responsible exegesis, theological confessionalism, historical awareness, sensitivity to the way the writers of the New Testament appealed to historical sequence to establish their conclusions regarding continuity and discontinuity between the Testaments, and much more.
If you want to learn more about this truly remarkable man, you may want to listen to the free MP3s of the Spring 1995 Francis A. Schaeffer Lectures: Adolf Schlatter and the Future of Christianity given by Prof. Yarbrough (alternative link here)
And of course you want to sign up for the first ever translation of Schlatter's masterpiece "Faith in the New Testament" if you haven't already done so. You knew from the start this was coming, didn't you? But then again, now at least you know why getting this resource into Logos is not a backward-looking thing: Schlatter is one of the giants on whose shoulders we might stand looking forward!
