Strecker on NT kerygma and biblical theology

Posted by Alan Knox on Apr 14, 2010 in biblical theology | 1 comment

The Christ-event to which the early Christian kerygma [proclamation; message] testifies is the decisive point of orientation from which the theological conception of the New Testament authors proceeds. The kerygma is not to be subordinated to the schema of a ‘biblical theology.’ The kerygma breaches the material unity of Old and New Testaments, since despite the continuity with Old Testament tradition, from the point of view both of literary history and theology the New Testament stands in a relation of discontinuity to the Old Testament. The kerygma is not the guarantee of the integrity of the biblical canon, since the material content it affirms not only stands in diastasis to the Old Testament, but also in the New Testament is interpreted in different ways. And the kerygma is not the self-evident presupposition of the unity of biblical and dogmatic theology. Rather, the New Testament kerygma assigns to dogmatic theology the task of investigating and developing the unity of theology in the past and the church’s present. (Georg Strecker, Theology of the New Testament, Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2000, pg. 8 )