What is the central theme of the Bible?
Given the diversity of authorship, genre, and context of the Bible’s various books, is it even
possible to answer such a question? Or in trying to do so, is an external grid being unnaturally
superimposed on the biblical text?
These are difficult questions that the discipline of biblical theology has struggled to answer.
In this thoroughly revised and expanded edition of his classic Toward an Old Testament Theology,
Walter Kaiser offers a solution to these unresolved issues. He proposes that there is indeed
a unifying center to the theology and message of the Bible that is indicated and affirmed by
Scripture itself. That center is the promise of God. It is one all-encompassing promise of life
through the Messiah that winds itself throughout salvation history in both the Old and New
Testaments, giving cohesiveness and unity to the various parts of Scripture.
After laying out his proposal, Kaiser works chronologically through the books of both testaments,
demonstrating how the promise is seen throughout, how the various sub-themes
of each book relate to the promise, and how God’s plan to fulfill the promise progressively
unfolds. Here is a rich and illuminating biblical theology that will stir the emotion and the
intellect.
