The Promise-Plan of God by Walter C. Kaiser, Jr.

Essentials in Biblical Theology Series

The Promise-Plan of God by Walter C. Kaiser, Jr.[1]

In order to understand Kaiser’s biblical theology, we must first consider how he understood the New Testament authors’ use of the Old Testament. It has long been noted that, at times, the New Testament authors seem to read the Old Testament in ways disconnected from its historical meaning. Are the New Testament authors misusing the Old Testament? Are they finding additional meaning in the Old Testament unknown to the original authors? Kaiser argues that there is one single meaning to the Old Testament, and the New Testament authors used the Old Testament in ways consistent with this single meaning.[2]

But Kaiser’s views are more nuanced than the simple claim that the Old Testament texts have a single meaning. For Kaiser, this single meaning could refer to multiple events spread over long periods of time. Within this single meaning, Kaiser would include “(1) the divine word; (2) the near fulfillments that transmitted that word through the events of history; and (3) the climatic realization in the eschaton.”[3] So, while the meaning of the Old Testament text is always singular, the Old Testament meaning is often generic enough to include long periods of time,[4] sometimes linking messianically “a whole string of persons, who in their office, function, or person pointed to the last person in the series who shared those same features specifically prophesied about the Davidic forerunners.”[5] The Old Testament has a single meaning that is generic enough to be fulfilled often multiple times in the Old Testament and then finally in Christ.

In The Promise-Plan of God, Kaiser presents a biblical theology that represents his views on the use the Old Testament by the New Testament authors. First, Kaiser sees the Bible as a unified whole, so he argues for one unifying center to the theology of the Bible. This center is the plan of God, represented by the term “promise.” For example, he argued that “it was a definite singular plan of God to benefit one man and through him to bless the whole world” (389). But, this one promise was composed of many parts. “The promise was continually fulfilled in the Old Testament, yet it awaited some climatic fulfillments in connection with the two advents of the Servant-Messiah. Still, the promise went beyond these two advents and remained eternally operative and irrevocable” (390). For Kaiser, the center of the theology of the Bible is the promise-plan of God.[6]

Second, this biblical theology unfolds gradually throughout the Bible in a way that is consistent with the intentions of the Old Testament authors. Kaiser’s view of biblical theology is both centered and diachronic. While he does argue for a united metanarrative to the Bible, he wants to be careful not to read the Bible in a way that flattens the meaning of its component parts.[7] If the New Testament presents a better covenant, “The superiority came from the progress of revelation and not from the errors or deliberate misinformation of the former covenants” (383). For Kaiser, there really is only one covenant and one people of God, but this covenant is renewed multiples times in the Old Testament, and finally in Christ. Kaiser calls his approach to biblical theology “epangelical,” from the Greek word for promise. “This view maintains that there is only one ‘people of God’ (even though there may be numerous aspects of that same singular group) and there is only one ‘program of God’ (again with several aspects all under that one umbrella)” (27).

The Promise-Plan of God represents Kaiser’s reading of the Bible in light of these controlling ideas. He traces the promise-plan of God chronologically from the pre-patriarchal period to the postexilic prophets in the Old Testament, then from the earliest New Testament letters, James and Galatians, through the writings of the apostle John. While each book of the Bible is handled as a whole, they are considered in chronological order.[8] In his treatment of each biblical book, Kaiser seeks to demonstrate the gradual unfolding of the one promise-plan of God throughout biblical history.

Kaiser’s views on the single meaning of the Old Testament, as reflected in its use in the New Testament, have certainly been critiqued. Darrell Bock argued that Kaiser tries to do too much with the idea of a single meaning to the Old Testament. Given the varied use of the Old Testament in the New, Bock argued that it was “more likely that the NT readings are not merely exercises in exegesis in the technical, modern sense but presentations of theology taking the whole canon and theology of hope into view.”[9] Kaiser’s views on the center of a biblical theology have resonated more broadly. Craig Blomberg wrote a New Testament Theology that has a lot of affinities with Kaiser’s views on Old Testament theology, with the Old Testament representing promise and the New Testament representing fulfillment.[10]

I would offer two critiques of the Promise-Plan of God, both related to its structure. First, Kaiser organized his biblical theology by moving through the books of the Bible chronologically. This pattern works well in certain sections, like when covering the historical books of the Old Testament. When covering certain books of the New Testament, however, the Promise-Plan of God can read more like a brief introduction to New Testament book, rather than as a biblical-theological treatment of that book. To use one example, Kaiser’s treatment of the book of Titus reads more like a brief summary of the contents and theology of the book, rather than as a treatment of how Titus displays the promise-plan of God (355–56). While I understand the desire to treat the Bible in a book-by-book manner, at times this organization led to the promise-plan of God being lost in the structure of the book.

Second, the chronological structure seems to make less sense in the New Testament than it does in the Old Testament. By following a chronological dating of the New Testament books, the New Testament section seems to lack flow and cohesion. The organization seems at times scattered, like the inclusion of James and Galatians under the heading of “The Promise-Plan and the Law of God” (249–264). These two books are connected by their date, and they certainly do both have implications for a Christian understanding of the law, but this chapter title seems to promise a bit more than the chapter itself delivers. A thematic treatment of the theme of the promise-plan and the law of God throughout the New Testament might have provided a better opportunity for Kaiser to demonstrate the coherence of his biblical-theological theme in the New Testament.

Kaiser continues to be an important figure in the fields of Old Testament and Biblical Theology. I would encourage students of biblical theology or the use of the Old Testament in the New Testament to be familiar with Kaiser’s contributions to both fields. The Promise-Plan of God provides a good introduction to Kaiser’s views on biblical theology, but it leaves something to be desired as a rigorous defense of how reads the whole Bible in light of this theme.

Charlie Ray

New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary (August 2025)

TL;DR

• For Kaiser, there is always a single meaning to any text of Scripture, particularly the Old Testament.

• This single meaning of Scripture is generic enough to include multiple fulfillments in the Old Testament as well as an ultimate eschatological fulfillment.

• Kaiser reads the Bible as a theological whole, unified around the one idea of the promise-plan of God.

• For Kaiser, there is one promise of God and one people of God, and this one promise of God unfolds throughout the Scriptures.

• The Promise-Plan of God is Kaiser’s attempt to trace this one promise-plan of God diachronically through the Bible.

[1] Walter C. Kaiser, Jr. The Promise-Plan of God: A Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008).

[2] For a good summary of the main issues, as well as three views on how to address these issues, see Kenneth Berding and Jonathan Lunde, eds., Three Views on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007).

[3] Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., The Uses of the Old Testament in the New (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2001), 71.

[4] The word “generic” is used by Kaiser himself and is important to understanding how he views the idea of a single meaning.

[5] Kaiser, Uses of the Old Testament, 72.

[6] Kaiser defined the promise-plan of God as follows: “The promise-plan is God’s word of declaration, beginning with Eve and continuing on through history, especially in the patriarchs and the Davidic line, that God would continually be in his person and do in his deeds and works (in and through Israel, and later the church) his redemptive plan as his means of keeping that promised word alive for Israel, and thereby for all who subsequently believed. All in that promised seed were called to act as a light for all the nations so that all the families of the earth might come to faith and to new life in the Messiah” (19).

[7] “In this book, however, I want to state the case for the unity of the metanarrative and to return to the original mission of biblical theology as a diachronic (‘through the times’) discipline (rather than an iterative systematic theology) of each book or section. That is, I have tried to capture the distinctive theological note in each section or book as the plan of God unfolded through the historic times of Israel and the church” (13).

[8] Appendix A gives Kaiser’s chronology of the books of the Bible (395–96).

[9] Darrell L. Bock, “Response to Kaiser, pages 90–95 in Three Views on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, edited by Kenneth Berding and Jonathan Lunde (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007), 95. Abner Chou’s approach has affinities to Kaiser, but Chou claims to have points of resonance with both Kaiser and Bock. See Abner Chou, The Hermeneutics of the Biblical Writers: Learning to Interpret Scripture from the Prophets and Apostles (Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2018). Chou might represent a view somewhere between Kaiser and Bock. Chou claimed that “as opposed to writing ‘better than they knew,’ the prophets wrote better than we give them credit for,” and he argued that the apostles did not “change the meaning of previous revelation but under the superintendence of the Spirit, fleshed out its implications in the current era” (23).

[10] Craig L. Blomberg, A New Testament Theology (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2018), 3.