Is New Testament Theology Still Having an Identity Crisis? A Review of Five Recent Contributions
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This article reviews five recent contributions to the field of New Testament theology. More accurately, three NT theologies will be examined alongside two biblical theologies, given that some regard NT theology as inherently deficient apart from OT theology. These five works are notable not only for their diversity of methodology but also their diversity of cultural perspective—one book by a Finn (Timo Eskola’s A Narrative Theology of the New Testament), one by two Germans (Reinhard Feldmeier’s and Hermann Spieckermann’s God of the Living: A Biblical Theology), one by a Canadian (Thomas R. Hatina’s New Testament Theology and its Quest for Relevance: Ancient Texts and Modern Readers), one by an American (Craig L. Blomberg’s A New Testament Theology), and one by a native Briton (John Goldingay’s Biblical Theology). Along the way, this review article will consider how these works navigate the tricky and contested terrain of NT (or biblical) theology, particularly vis-à-vis matters of history, canon, synthesis and diversity, and contemporary relevance.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.006 | 0.009 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".