New Testament Theology

This work is not a history of New Testament times, nor an account of New Testament religion. Nor does it proceed from a view that the New Testament was written as theology. We must bear in mind that the writers of the New Testament books were not writing set theological pieces. They were concerned with the needs of the churches for which they wrote. Those churches already had the Old Testament, but these new writings became in time the most significant part of the Scriptures of the believing community. As such, they should be studied in their own right, and these questions should be asked: What do these writings mean? What is the theology they express or imply? What is of permanent validity in them? We read these writings across a barrier of many centuries and from a standpoint of a very different culture. We make every effort to allow for this, but we never succeed perfectly. In this book I am trying hard to find out what the New Testament authors meant, and this not as an academic exercise, but as the necessary prelude to our understanding of what their writings mean for us today. — From the Introduction

While many New Testament theologies approach the material through a particular thematic construct (e.g., covenant), Schnabel takes a different approach. First, he focuses on Jesus Messiah and his significance for the early church. Second, he seeks to describe the theology of the New Testament as it was written and read in its historical context. This approach honors the fact that the authors and original readers of the New Testament were real people dealing with real issues in their specific ecclesiological, cultural, and missiological settings. Schnabel comprehensively combines a historical description of the New Testament’s theology with a systematic reflection on the New Testament’s message and the convictions of Jesus and his early followers.