Biblical Theology of the New Testament by Peter Stuhlmacher
Essentials in Biblical Theology Series
Biblical Theology of the New Testament by Peter Stuhlmacher[1]
Peter Stuhlmacher, professor emeritus of New Testament Studies at the University of Tübingen, has produced a comprehensive New Testament theology that serves as a significant contribution to biblical scholarship. Biblical Theology of the New Testament represents the synthesis of Stuhlmacher’s rigorous historical methodology with a theologically conservative approach that distinguishes his work from the dominant trends of German critical scholarship. The English edition, translated by Daniel Bailey, combines material from the third German edition of volume one (2005) and the second edition of volume two (2012).[2] Despite being written over two decades ago and reflecting the scholarly discussions of that era, Stuhlmacher’s work remains relevant for contemporary biblical theology, as evidenced by commendations from G.K. Beale and Thomas Schreiner.[3]
Stuhlmacher’s distinctive approach stems from his academic context. Although a professor at Tübingen University, which is historically associated with F.C. Baur’s critical school, Stuhlmacher maintains theological commitments that distinguished him from the history-of-religions approach. Influenced by Martin Hengel's historical approach and Hartmut Gese’s Old Testament scholarship, Stuhlmacher develops a biblical theology firmly rooted in salvation history. His purpose throughout is to demonstrate that the Old Testament provides the essential foundation for understanding New Testament revelation, proceeding canonically from Jesus’ self-understanding through the early church’s proclamation to the developed theologies of Paul and John. Stuhlmacher eschews both purely dogmatic and history-of-religions approaches, maintaining that the historical-critical method remains “currently [the] only established method” for historical interpretation (37), although he qualifies this with criteria designed to keep exegesis open to divine revelation and ecclesial significance.
Stuhlmacher articulates his methodological framework through three governing principles and four evaluative criteria. His first principle insists that New Testament theology “must allow the New Testament itself to dictate its theme and presentation” (3), distinguishing his canonical approach from history-of-religions methodology. The second principle demands that theology “do justice to both the historical claims to revelation and the ecclesiastical significance of the New Testament canon” (5). The third principle addresses the relationship between the Testaments: “To the extent that a theology of the New Testament takes its orientation and task from the New Testament itself, it must respect and work through the special rooting of the New Testament message of faith in the Old Testament” (6). For Stuhlmacher, authentic New Testament theology must function “as a biblical theology of the New Testament that is open to the Old Testament, as a sub-discipline of a whole-Bible biblical theology encompassing both Testaments” (6).
These principles operate through four methodological criteria that require interpretation to be (1) historically appropriate, (2) open to God's revelation, (3) related to the church’s faith and practice, and (4) rationally transparent and controllable (13). Stuhlmacher views the text as a reliable witness to historical reality and he organizes his theology neither thematically nor dogmatically but historically. Moreover, he treats “the gospel of God concerning Jesus Christ” as “the decisive center of the New Testament” (12), affirming the kerygma that the “New Testament attests [to] the revelation of the one God in the mission, work, and resurrection of Jesus from the dead” (12).
The work’s structure reflects this historical-canonical methodology across two books. Book one traces “The Origin and Character of the New Testament Proclamation” through six parts: the proclamation of Jesus, the early church, Paul, the post-Pauline period, the Synoptic Gospels, and John's school. Book two addresses “The Problem of the Canon and the Center of Scripture.”
Stuhlmacher begins his treatment of the proclamation of Jesus by critiquing nineteenth-century critical approaches that produced “an artificial scholarly construct whose profile changes with the personality of the individual researchers, their methods and their zeitgeist” (60). Against Martin Kähler's distinction between the “historical Jesus” and the “Christ of faith,” Stuhlmacher maintains that the four Gospels are primary sources whose historical reliability should be presupposed. He contends that “one and the same Jesus was both believed in as the Messiah in light of the Scriptures and executed as a seducer of Israel into false faith” (61), with passages like Acts 10:34–43 serving as reliable starting points for investigating Jesus’ ministry.
After establishing chronological parameters for Jesus’ ministry, Stuhlmacher examines Jesus’ relationship to John the Baptist, his proclamation of God’s kingdom, and his self-identification as Son of God. He also investigates Jesus’ forms of teaching, his healing miracles, his table fellowship with sinners, the gathering of the Twelve, and the cleansing of the temple. Particular attention focuses on the Lord’s Prayer and Jesus’ distinctive practice of addressing God as “Father.” In the remaining chapters of Part 1, Stuhlmacher addresses God’s will in Jesus’ proclamation, the Son of Man title and claims to deity, Jesus’ preparedness to suffer, and his crucifixion. Two topics merit special emphasis: first, Stuhlmacher’s detailed analysis of the Son of Man Christology demonstrates how Jesus appropriated this title to communicate both his present authority and eschatological role. Second, his treatment of Jesus’ atoning death connects Jesus’ self-understanding to Isaiah’s Suffering Servant passages, establishing continuity between Jesus’ teaching and the early church’s proclamation.
Stuhlmacher’s conclusions prove striking, particularly given his institutional context. He affirms that (1) Acts 10:34–43 is historically well-founded, agreeing with Adolf Schlatter’s assertion that “the earthly Jesus was none other than the Christ of faith” (180); (2) Jesus’s mission intersects with Old Testament and early Jewish messianic expectation; (3) God’s kingdom was central in Jesus’s proclamation; (4) Jesus functioned as “atoner” (Versühner) and “reconciler” (Versöhner); and (5) “early Christianity gained its astonishing historical strength only by experiencing that Jesus had been raised by God and exalted to his right hand” (184).
The early church’s proclamation is characterized by three focal points: Jesus’ resurrection, the confession of Jesus as Christ, and the formation and mission of the first churches. Stuhlmacher identifies 1 Corinthians 15:3b–5 as “the oldest preserved Easter text” and he describes it as being fundamental to the church’s proclamation since it affirmed that Jesus’ tomb was well-known and empty on Easter morning (200). The earliest Christological confessions, he demonstrates, were “formulated in the language of the Old Testament and related early Jewish hymns, psalms, and prayers” (207). Significantly, Stuhlmacher argues that “in the faith formulation of 1 Corinthians 15:3–5 and Romans 4:25, the pre-Pauline church took up Jesus’s own understanding of his death, conditioned by Isaiah 43:3–4 and Isaiah 52:13–53:12, and made the idea of vicarious atonement a basic element of Christology” (216). His examination of early church structure addresses worship practices, mission, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper.
Unlike Bultmann, Stuhlmacher rejects the notion that Christianity originated with Paul and John; instead, he situates Paul within the trajectory of Jesus’ teaching and the proclamation of the early church. Working exclusively with the undisputed Pauline letters (1 Thessalonians, 1-2 Corinthians, Philippians, Philemon, Galatians, and Romans), Stuhlmacher traces Paul’s gospel to his Damascus Road experience and identifies justification as the center of Pauline theology.
Stuhlmacher's treatment of the post-Pauline period reveals his understanding of early Christianity as comprising various schools or traditions—Pauline, “Jewish Christianity,” and Johannine. Controversially, he claims James “massively contradicts the Pauline doctrine of justification” (506) and therefore cannot be placed “on equal footing in the canon next to the Pauline doctrinal letters” (512). First Peter, by contrast, achieves the “golden mean” between Paul and James (519).
Having addressed much Synoptic material in Part 1, Stuhlmacher briefly examines how each Synoptic Gospel uniquely contributes to Christology, ethics, and ecclesiology. His treatment of the Johannine tradition emphasizes the significance of understanding John’s Gospel and letters within a “Johannine school” framework. He addresses the Johannine school’s tradition, distinctive Christology, teaching on life in faith and love, ecclesiology, and overall significance within the New Testament corpus.
Stuhlmacher devotes substantial attention to canon formation and Scripture’s theological center. He argues against a closed Hebrew canon in early Christianity, noting the canonization process continued into the fourth century AD (748). The canon was formed due to missionary necessity and its formation served to protect the church against false teaching. In addition, he argues that the early church utilized the Septuagint as authoritative Scripture.
Engaging contemporary scholarly debates, Stuhlmacher identifies Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith as the biblical center. He contends that “Paul thought soteriologically deeper and clearer than James, Peter, and other apostles” (786). He concludes his discussion of Paul with an extended summary of this center and an admonition toward biblical exegesis that impacts “participation in the life of the church” (789).
Stuhlmacher's primary achievement lies in demonstrating the beauty of the New Testament while illuminating its Old Testament foundations—a distinction that likely explains G.K. Beale’s enthusiastic endorsement.[4] His tradition-historical approach, grounded in rigorous textual exegesis, establishes a coherent narrative of salvation history that culminates in Jesus’ redemptive work. Within the context of German biblical scholarship, Stuhlmacher’s affirmation of Scripture’s historical reliability represents a courageous departure from prevailing critical methodologies. His historical-canonical approach allows each biblical author and tradition to speak distinctively, providing a nuanced understanding of individual theological contributions while maintaining an overarching narrative unity. This methodology demonstrates how Christian theology emerges from and remains anchored in historical events rather than mythological constructions.
However, the strength of allowing each author to speak individually becomes problematic when it encourages interpreters to “get behind the text,” potentially downplaying the canonical text itself in favor of hypothetical reconstructions lacking biblical evidence. For instance, when Stuhlmacher claims regarding Jesus’ substitutionary death that “no one has dared to think this before Paul” (333), he appears to contradict his own careful work which demonstrates Jesus’ self-understanding as the Suffering Servant.
More fundamentally, Stuhlmacher’s rejection of verbal inspiration undermines his stated commitment to the unity of the canon. While affirming Scripture as inspired, his denial of verbal inspiration (797) leads him to question historical details (Luke’s numbers in Acts [228]), reject traditional claims of authorship (2 Peter as “classic pseudepigrapha” [544]), identify “obviously mistaken developments” in biblical teaching (women in leadership in 1 Timothy [472]), assert James contradicted Paul’s justification doctrine (504), and claim John’s Gospel presents “an actual opposing view of the Synoptics” with testimonies “selected, composed, and infused with theology in such a way that new facts and realities are thereby postulated” (692).
These conclusions create methodological tensions. If James misunderstood Paul and 1 Timothy contains theological errors, how can Stuhlmacher affirm scriptural unity? By elevating Paul over James, does not Stuhlmacher construct a “canon within a canon” that undermines genuine canonical authority? The biblical authors affirm the verbal inspiration of Scripture (2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Peter 1:21), and by doing so, they undermine Stuhlmacher’s claims to have found theological errors and contradictions within the Bible. True textual unity requires, at a minimum, the absence of theological contradictions. An affirmation of verbal inspiration would have provided Stuhlmacher with theological resources to avoid creating an unnecessary hierarchy within the canon while maintaining his historical-critical methodology.
Despite these significant weaknesses, Stuhlmacher's Biblical Theology of the New Testament deserves a place on every serious student’s shelf. The work demands careful engagement but it rewards readers richly with insight into twentieth-century German biblical scholarship. Stuhlmacher’s textually-grounded approach offers a methodological model for faithful theological work, demonstrating how historical reliability and theological confession can coexist without conflict. While readers may contest specific conclusions, the English-speaking world owes a considerable debt of gratitude for this translation. By grounding theology in historical reliability, Stuhlmacher makes an enduring contribution to biblical theology, calling followers of Jesus back to Scripture.
Aaron Mattox
Coram Deo Church (October 2025)
TL;DR
Stuhlmacher’s Biblical Theology of the New Testament is a landmark synthesis of rigorous historical scholarship and theological conviction, spanning the full sweep of salvation history.
Writing from within Tübingen’s critical environment, Stuhlmacher stands apart for affirming Scripture’s theological coherence and historical reliability.
Stuhlmacher establishes three core principles—canonical priority, theological-historical integration, and Old Testament rooting—alongside four criteria emphasizing historical, revelatory, ecclesial, and rational accountability.
The “gospel of God concerning Jesus Christ” serves as the New Testament’s center, guiding Stuhlmacher’s historical-canonical organization of theology.
Stuhlmacher upholds the credibility of the gospels, aligns Paul with the early church’s kerygma, and argues that justification by faith is the New Testament’s theological core.
[1] Peter Stuhlmacher, Biblical Theology of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018).
[2] Peter Stuhlmacher, Biblische Theologie Des Neuen Testaments, 3. Auflage, vol. 1 (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005); Biblische Theologie Des Neuen Testaments, 2. Auflage, vol. 2 (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012).
[3] G. K. Beale, “Foreword,” in Biblical Theology of the New Testament, ed. Daniel P. Bailey and Jostein Ådna (Eerdmans, 2018); Thomas Schreiner, “The Long-Awaited Translation of Stuhlmacher Is a Gift,” The Gospel Coalition, January 25, 2019, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/reviews/biblical-theology-new-testament/.
[4] Beale, “Foreword.”
