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Depending on the “tradition” of theological education in which we have been reared, we tend to be introduced to “biblical theology” from different sources. Indeed the phrase itself means different things to different people. The majority of theological teachers and students did not suck in biblical theology with their mother’s milk (to rework some words of Calvin), and have accessed it through relatively recent literature; in addition they are often little versed in the theological literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is easy therefore to fall into the error of assuming that biblical theological, redemptive historical, and exegetical perspectives have been known and employed only relatively recently. We therefore need to be on our guard against the overworked canard that the authors of the Confession of Faith used a “proof text” method in doing their theology.

This is an example of “the heresy of modernity” in at least two ways. First, the Westminster Divines were deeply opposed to producing a confession with proof texts and did so only under duress at the command of the English Parliament. But, in addition, biblical theology itself is much older than its history as an academic discipline. As C. S. Lewis well notes, we moderns can all too easily be like people entering a conversation at eleven o’clock not realizing that it began at eight o’clock.

The truth is that there is an intricate weaving of exegesis and biblical and redemptive historical theology behind the wording of the Confession, and this is nowhere more certain than in its treatment of the law of God.