Systematic Theology and Biblical Theology

antiskeptic

Theological is doing a series on Matthew and is using a method of approach called "Biblical Theology". I'm finding it difficult to understand what this method is and how it is supposed to work.

Systematic theology, it appears, is something that is interested in the final product: what can we conclude from the whole of what scripture has to say about a particular area. Take for example: salvation by faith. You might, via a systematic theology approach conclude that the whole of scripture points towards salvation by faith and not by law adherence (works).

With ST you cross reference material seeing an element mentioned in one place revealed in perhaps slightly different way in another place. Bit by bit you construct and hone towards a final product. This is how salvation is wrought: by faith.


Biblical Theology (BT) is describe thus in Wikipedia

Biblical theology is not concerned to state the final doctrines which go to make up the content of Christian belief, but rather to describe the process by which revelation unfolds and moves toward the goal which is God's final revelation of his purposes in Jesus Christ. Biblical theology seeks to understand the relationships between the various eras in God's revealing activity recorded in the Bible. The systematic theologian is mainly interested in the finished article - the statement of Christian doctrine. The biblical theologian on the other hand is concerned rather with the progressive unfolding of truth.

Now as I understand it, a BT approach isn't permitted to let the final product inform it's reading of a passage mid-scripture. Take salvation by faith and Matthew. Salvation by faith is something detailed and explained in depth in the book of Romans, for instance. But the book of Romans is later to Matthew.

Therefore, if arriving at Matthew, you can only conclude what the bible is saying about how salvation is wrought from scripture available up to that point. Which isn't Romans.

It would seem to me that theologians of old concluded salvation by law up to the end of the OT period. They built their Religion around that notion. And so theologians today, who are not using knowledge of the final product (salvation by faith) to inform themselves, ought to conclude as Jewish theologians concluded up to the time of Christ.

The next book available is Matthew. And Christ in Matthew (at least up to the point Theological is at) weighs in heavily on the salvation by law adherence side. There is no inkling of salvation by faith - at least not if you are not relying on your knowledge of the final product.

And so my confusion: you cannot but conclude Christ talking of salvation by law/performance/work at this point in Matthew, unless you lean on your knowledge of the final product.

But if you lean on your knowledge thus then you will read that knowledge into the text. Which I suppose Theological to be doing. The audience at the Sermon on the Mount couldn't but suppose salvation rests upon their performance. And if it were Christs intent was that they suppose salvation rested upon their performance then we might ask why he would do that. And get one outcome from our reading.

But if we import our Christian knowledge of the final product into the text and read it through that lens, then we get another outcome from our reading. ?Theological is drawing a message about how Christians should live from the Sermon on the Mount. I agree that message can be drawn, but it is a secondary one and an entirely different outcome to the above, regarding what God was intending to achieve at this point.

Christ intending to have his audience (who are not necessarily believers) think salvation is by law adherence

Christ intending to tell us how us Christians should live.


How is this squared? Is the final product meant to be "banned" from informing the BT view. If BT really is about the progressive nature of revelation in scripture, how can we avoid concluding Matthew (at this point) describing a works salvation?

theological

When we're doing Biblical theology we're trying to work out how Matthew works and how the narrative unfolds from beginning to end so we can understand the structure and understand the aim of the material. It is a valuable exercise. When we finish we'll hopefully understand better as to how Matthew works. It's a particularly valuable exercise for me because at present I'm not as familiar with the structure and aim of Matthew than I am with the structure and aim of Mark, Luke or John.

I'm not avoiding the fact that there is a tension at this stage in the Matthew series. I've said as much. Based on what we know we know so far from Matthew we can see that. The Sermon of the Mount places a high bar on the Christian. Yet we're also told that the Christian needs to repent, and we're told that Jesus has come to save His people from their sins. All of these things are pieces in the jigsaw that will probably become clearer as we work on in the book. Acknowledging that these tensions exist is OK, and it is even helpful. In the same way in the whole Old Testament there is a tension between the God's judgement and God's mercy. For example:

Exodus 34:6-7 wrote:

6 The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, 7 keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

A Biblical theology approach would be to simply acknowledge that this tension exists, and to hold it in the back of our minds so that we can see how it gradually gets resolved as we read through the Bible.
A systematic theology approach would be to go through the Bible and see what it says about God's mercy. The risk in this approach if we've not done biblical theology first is that we can run to Jesus without understanding the intermediary stages it takes to get there. That means we miss out on having a fuller understanding of how this works.

Systematic theology is also valuable "What does the Bible say about X?", but if we've not done our Biblical theology on the passages we use first we risk taking passages out of context and coming to the wrong conclusion.

antiskeptic

theological wrote: »

When we're doing Biblical theology we're trying to work out how Matthew works and how the narrative unfolds from beginning to end so we can understand the structure and understand the aim of the material. It is a valuable exercise. When we finish we'll hopefully understand better as to how Matthew works. It's a particularly valuable exercise for me because at present I'm not as familiar with the structure and aim of Matthew than I am with the structure and aim of Mark, Luke or John.

Yes, but how are we to approach it? On it's own merits as any reader would or pulling what we know, reading it through a Christians lens?

I'm not avoiding the fact that there is a tension at this stage in the Matthew series. I've said as much. Based on what we know we know so far from Matthew we can see that. The Sermon of the Mount places a high bar on the Christian.

Again I say "Christian?". The hearers weren't necessarily Christians / believers / born again. You keep saying Christians as if that is safe to assume. You have followers or disciples .. which is not enough evidence to safely assume Christians. And even if Christian (how can one be before Christ rose from the dead) they haven't got Romans to make it clear to them that it is by faith they are saved and not by works)

Yet we're also told that the Christian needs to repent,

Is it not the unbeliever who has to repent? Yes Christians in a secondary way, but that is not the audience here. What is the primary purpose of this passage if we are to read it as written and not draw in our wider Christian knowledge. The secondary way is relevant to us, but I thought the approach you were taking was to take it on own merit.

and we're told that Jesus has come to save His people from their sins.

To little to draw the tension you want to draw from it. Throwing them a line that they grasp by performance is saving them from their sins - just as a someone throwing someone a life ring saves someone from drowning.

Acknowledging that these tensions exist is OK, and it is even helpful. In the same way in the whole Old Testament there is a tension between the God's judgement and God's mercy. For example:

Yes, but we have here clear performance being prescribed. The bar being raised higher. You can see how RC theology of works is arrived at. Hoping for God's mercy and endeavoring to perform to best of ability in the meantime. That is the tension we have at this point in Matthew. We cannot introduce a tension (such as how will salvation by faith without works be arrived at) without importing our systematic end-point into things. Nor can we suspect a tension we have no reason to believe exists based on what we read thus far.

Thus far we have clear works involved in our salvation.

A Biblical theology approach would be to simply acknowledge that this tension exists, and to hold it in the back of our minds so that we can see how it gradually gets resolved as we read through the Bible.
A systematic theology approach would be to go through the Bible and see what it says about God's mercy. The risk in this approach if we've not done biblical theology first is that we can run to Jesus without understanding the intermediary stages it takes to get there. That means we miss out on having a fuller understanding of how this works.

Systematic theology is also valuable "What does the Bible say about X?", but if we've not done our Biblical theology on the passages we use first we risk taking passages out of context and coming to the wrong conclusion.

But you have already read the sermon on the mount as aimed at Christians and how they should live. When that isn't possible to extract from the text at this point. You have imported "Christian" into the text and made a Sunday sermon of it. Now I think there is such a sermon in it. But that is not primary. If I similarly import "law as a schoolteacher" into it, we find a very good fit there, a better fit. It resolves the tension straight away: Jesus is putting pressure on the unbeliever, using the law as a schoolteacher to lead them to him.

We are both importing something into the text. The question is, which is the better import. If not importing then I really can't see how you arrive at the tension you arrive at.

Peregrinus

Couple of thoughts, in no particular order:

First, antiskeptic mentions in the OP that the gospel of Matthew predates St. Paul’s letter to the Romans.

This is not so. While it’s conventional in bibles to print the letters of Paul after the four gospels, this convention arose long after the texts were written, and was never intended to reflect the order of composition. A number of factors are taken into account in the conventional grouping and ordering the New Testament works - authorship, subject matter, degree of confidence the early church had in their authenticity, even length - the letters of Paul are arranged in descending order of length, longest to shortest. But the order of composition doesn’t feature at all.)

So far as the order of composition goes, all of the letters of Paul were written before any of the four gospels. Romans in particular was probably written in the mid-50s AD, and Matthew between 20 and 50 years later than that.

This is more than just a nitpick. It’s possible to ask the question “Did Matthew write his gospel uninfluenced by Romans?” But a much more challenging question is “Do we read Matthew’s gospel uninfluenced by Romans?” And in one sense that’s very difficult; you can’t un-know what you have already learned, understood or believed.

This relates to antiskeptic’s point: “if we import our Christian knowledge of the final product into the text and read it through that lens, then we get another outcome from our reading”. And this raises for him the question as to how we should approach Matthew - “On its own merits as any reader would or pulling what we know, reading it through a Christians lens?”

The thing is, Matthew is written to be read through a Christian lens. This was not a world, remember, in which you could author a book and offer it to the general public through booksellers. Everyone who wrote, wrote for a clearly-identified readership. You would have a reason for writing for that particular group (and a reason for thinking that they would read what you wrote), and you would write against a background of what they already knew or believed and of what you knew was being said to them by others.

Matthew isn’t introducing Christianity to unbelievers. (Why would unbelievers have any interest in reading anything Matthew wrote? How would they even hear of it?) He’s writing for a group of Greek-speaking second-generation Jewish Christians, located somewhere in Asia Minor - maybe Antioch, maybe some other Greek town with a Jewish community in it. He’s writing against the background of the relatively recent destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, the crisis of identity that this produced in the Jewish community and the resulting stresses and pressures that emerged for Jewish Christians - torn between, on the one hand, the emerging Rabbinic Judaism and, on the other hand, Pauline Christianity with its emphasis on salvation by faith and its relative downgrading of the significance of law. Matthew’s purpose may be to affirm the centrality and validity of the Jewish tradition as a foundation for a Christianity that is becoming increasingly gentile.

If he doesn’t build on Paul’s themes, therefor, this is not because he is writing before Paul - he isn’t - or because he is unaware of Paul’s themes or because he rejects them, but because he wants to move attention away from Paul’s themes and to other, equally valid and important themes within Christianity. We can read Matthew as a reaction to Paul - not in the sense of reacting against Paul, rejecting what Paul says; but more in the sense of supplementing Paul, calling attention to aspects of revelation that Paul has not stressed.

This means that we can read Matthew on its own. Matthew is offering a coherent presentation of Christianity that stresses themes that Matthew regards as important, and in need of attention. You don’t have to have read Paul to understand what Matthew is saying. But equally we shouldn’t read Matthew as though it stands alone, because it never did. Matthew’s gospel focusses on matters that, in Matthew’s view, this particular community needs to hear at this particular time. (This doesn’t mean that Matthew is of just transient or local interest; if it were, Matthew would not have been received as canonical scripture by the whole church.) But these are matters which Matthew offers to his readers as well as the wider body of Christian belief already held by the community, not instead of it.

theological

I think the reason why I'm working through Matthew is because it is a gospel I am less familiar with than the others. I want to see how it is structured, and how it flows. I want to see how the narrative builds up to a conclusion rather than to jump straight there. I think that's valuable.

I'm not convinced of the claim that I've imported too many ideas into the passages that I've been presenting and I've been trying to see how does this passage follow on from the previous.

The difference between Biblical theology and systematic theology is that Biblical theology isn't about trying to build up a case for a topic. Systematic theology is helpful and useful, but only when we understand the Bible in context. It is helpful to think in daily Christian life "What does the Bible say about X?", but it is equally important and helpful to think "What is this passage saying to me in the context of the book where I am finding it?". The second approach is valuable to me if I want the Bible to speak to me rather than me trying to find a case for a topic.

I'm happy to discuss Romans in the context of Romans, and I definitely want to do that in the same way as I'm doing this in Matthew. Although I think we're going to be quite a while before we get to chapter 28. Hopefully we'll have rediscovered a lot about Jesus by then, and hopefully we'll have learned a lot together.

I'm not claiming my understanding is perfect. The posts are based on a second hand posting of what I've jotted down for myself in my Bible reading in the morning.

Edit: We can also take a break after we reach the end of the Sermon of the Mount to gather together an idea on a higher level of what we've seen so far. Also - if Jesus follower is more helpful at this stage we can also use this instead of the word Christian.

antiskeptic

Peregrinus wrote: »

Couple of thoughts, in no particular order:

First, antiskeptic mentions in the OP that the gospel of Matthew predates St. Paul’s letter to the Romans.

This is not so. While it’s conventional in bibles to print the letters of Paul after the four gospels, this convention arose long after the texts were written, and was never intended to reflect the order of composition. A number of factors are taken into account in the conventional grouping and ordering the New Testament works - authorship, subject matter, degree of confidence the early church had in their authenticity, even length - the letters of Paul are arranged in descending order of length, longest to shortest. But the order of composition doesn’t feature at all.)

So far as the order of composition goes, all of the letters of Paul were written before any of the four gospels. Romans in particular was probably written in the mid-50s AD, and Matthew between 20 and 50 years later than that.

I would have had no idea when what book was written. I was coming from the angle "later" as if someone was reading through the bible sequentially, that being one way to view "God's unfolding revelation"

Romans wouldn't have been encountered yet, not that I saw sense in that approach...

Approaching it in the sequence it was written down doesn't strike me as much use either - if tracing "God's unfolding revelation" is your aim.

Jesus talked on the Mount and what he talked about then, ca. 30 A.D., was actually God's unfolding revelation -whatever about when it was finally written down, whatever it's position in the Bible. God's revelation unfolds in time.

The author of Matthew had a purpose. But more important than that, Jesus had a purpose. And His purpose, at that time and at the Mount clearly appears to be: to teach a personal performance based salvation. It's not "what is Matthew up to?" but "what is Jesus up to?" For our clue as to what Matthew is up to would derive from what he figured Jesus was up to.

We might know the overall, but if we are only looking at God's unfolding revelation, then that is the conclusion we ought to draw: Jesus is teaching a works salvation at that time and place and to that group of people. That is our starting point.

“Do we read Matthew’s gospel uninfluenced by Romans?” And in one sense that’s very difficult; you can’t un-know what you have already learned, understood or believed.

This relates to antiskeptic’s point: “if we import our Christian knowledge of the final product into the text and read it through that lens, then we get another outcome from our reading”. And this raises for him the question as to how we should approach Matthew - “On its own merits as any reader would or pulling what we know, reading it through a Christians lens?”

The thing is, Matthew is written to be read through a Christian lens.

If it were not the Bible then I would agree you could sleuth solely on the goings on of the time. But the Bible, I think, has far more dimension to it - many an unbeliever being converted upon mere reading of it. Wasn't Augustine iirc? What Matthew had in mind again, plays second fiddle to what God has in mind regarding the assembly and spread of scripture.

Matthew is probably the first book of the bible that any unbelieving man on the street would mention. How many of those men have picked up a Gideon Bible? And to which book might they have gone for a casual persual? And what would they come across quite quickly in encountering the sermon on the mount? Can I suggest the same conclusion that many of our atheist brethern have come to: "you've got to be a very good boy to get to heaven". A takeaway from Jesus own lips!

Is it correct to approach Matthew like we would approach non-divine inspired ancient literature?

As a related aside: I came across this in the wiki article on Matthew (which includes some of the kinds of analysis you mention)

..Unlike Mark, Matthew never bothers to explain Jewish customs, since his intended audience was a Jewish one; unlike Luke, who traces Jesus' ancestry back to Adam, father of the human race, he traces it only to Abraham, father of the Jews; of his three presumed sources only "M", the material from his own community, refers to a "church" (ecclesia), an organised group with rules for keeping order; and the content of "M" suggests that this community was strict in keeping the Jewish law, holding that they must exceed the scribes and the Pharisees in "righteousness" (adherence to Jewish law).[28] Writing from within a Jewish-Christian community growing increasingly distant from other Jews and becoming increasingly Gentile in its membership and outlook, Matthew put down in his gospel his vision "of an assembly or church in which both Jew and Gentile would flourish together".

It would appear this bolded conclusion takes something mentioned by Jesus in the gospel "unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees..." and uses it to support the notion that there is a community of Jewish Christians, to whom Matthew belongs, which was strict in keeping the Jewish law??

I was just wondering how on earth someone could conclude so (unless perhaps they were an atheist theologian who supposed Jesus never said any such thing, rather, Matthew was putting words in his mouth.) Do you know what approach is being taken here?

Matthew’s purpose may be to affirm the centrality and validity of the Jewish tradition as a foundation for a Christianity that is becoming increasingly gentile.

If he doesn’t build on Paul’s themes, therefor, this is not because he is writing before Paul - he isn’t - or because he is unaware of Paul’s themes or because he rejects them, but because he wants to move attention away from Paul’s themes and to other, equally valid and important themes within Christianity. We can read Matthew as a reaction to Paul - not in the sense of reacting against Paul, rejecting what Paul says; but more in the sense of supplementing Paul, calling attention to aspects of revelation that Paul has not stressed.

This means that we can read Matthew on its own. Matthew is offering a coherent presentation of Christianity that stresses themes that Matthew regards as important, and in need of attention.

I'm not sure about 'coherent' if taken on it's own. I mean, salvation by works is a very strong theme majored on by Jesus which isn't coherent with Christianity.

Sure, explore Matthew and what he wants' to emphasize but it appears absolutely necessary to carry with you what the rest of scripture is saying so as to ensure you don't go off road. Else you would conclude works salvation being taught by Matthew. And so I'm not sure how this stands...

You don’t have to have read Paul to understand what Matthew is saying.

antiskeptic

theological wrote: »

I think the reason why I'm working through Matthew is because it is a gospel I am less familiar with than the others. I want to see how it is structured, and how it flows. I want to see how the narrative builds up to a conclusion rather than to jump straight there. I think that's valuable.

I'm not convinced of the claim that I've imported too many ideas into the passages that I've been presenting and I've been trying to see how does this passage follow on from the previous.

The difference between Biblical theology and systematic theology is that Biblical theology isn't about trying to build up a case for a topic. Systematic theology is helpful and useful, but only when we understand the Bible in context. It is helpful to think in daily Christian life "What does the Bible say about X?", but it is equally important and helpful to think "What is this passage saying to me in the context of the book where I am finding it?". The second approach is valuable to me if I want the Bible to speak to me rather than me trying to find a case for a topic.

I'm happy to discuss Romans in the context of Romans, and I definitely want to do that in the same way as I'm doing this in Matthew. Although I think we're going to be quite a while before we get to chapter 28. Hopefully we'll have rediscovered a lot about Jesus by then, and hopefully we'll have learned a lot together.

I'm not claiming my understanding is perfect. The posts are based on a second hand posting of what I've jotted down for myself in my Bible reading in the morning.

Edit: We can also take a break after we reach the end of the Sermon of the Mount to gather together an idea on a higher level of what we've seen so far. Also - if Jesus follower is more helpful at this stage we can also use this instead of the word Christian.

I make a point in the post to Peregrinus above. The question isn't what is Matthew up to. It's what is Jesus up to - for this is God unfolding his revelation and that is what Biblical Theology is concerned with.

Jesus is the one teaching what appears to be a works salvation. There is nothing available to his then-hearers to permit them to conclude otherwise. All they know about righteousness through law has merely been set a higher bar.

If you're a Jesus follower then, then this is the standard he is setting you. That is what God unfolds by way of revelation at that place and that time.

theological

antiskeptic wrote: »

I make a point in the post to Peregrinus above. The question isn't what is Matthew up to. It's what is Jesus up to - for this is God unfolding his revelation and that is what Biblical Theology is concerned with.

Jesus is the one teaching what appears to be a works salvation. There is nothing available to his then-hearers to permit them to conclude otherwise. All they know about righteousness through law has merely been set a higher bar.

If you're a Jesus follower then, then this is the standard he is setting you. That is what God unfolds by way of revelation at that place and that time.

Matthew is presenting Jesus to us. He has arranged this eye witness material for us. So understanding how Matthew works as a gospel will help us to understand how he is presenting Jesus to us, and therefore helps us with the question of what do we learn about Jesus from this gospel.

I agree with you. Jesus is setting this standard. At this point in Matthew we have an obvious tension, one that I've already highlighted to you a few times now. We have the idea that Jesus is born to save us from our sins, and we have the idea that we need to live according to this standard to be in the kingdom of heaven. Both of those ideas need to be held together in tension until that tension is resolved. We've seen all of this in Matthew so far. I agree with you that we are in a place of tension at this point in the gospel.

For the record I think there's three different type of contexts we need to consider when looking at the Bible:
1. Passage or local level context to understand what is happening in a particular set of verses.
2. Book context to understand how certain chapters fit into a book.
3. Bible context to understand how a book fits into the Bible.

From what I can see all 3 require good Biblical theology and all 3 are needed for good systematic theology.

antiskeptic

theological wrote: »

Matthew is presenting Jesus to us.

Which raises the first question: who is us? Peregrinus gave a brief explanation of who the book is intended for and why it was written. Now I'm not sure where that view stems from - the gospel itself doesn't appear to indicate a particular audience - but I imagine the "us" you decide upon would depend on to "to whom" Matthew intended his gospel. How do you arrive at an "us"?

You say later:

1. Passage or local level context to understand what is happening in a particular set of verses.
2. Book context to understand how certain chapters fit into a book.
3. Bible context to understand how a book fits into the Bible.

Which one of these (I suppose it must be the first, if any) deals with the audience Jesus was addressing? When he said what he said, why was he saying it - bearing in mind, there wasn't the rest of Matthew for the audience to work out any "tension" that might arise in them. He says what he says and presumably knows what thoughts will arise in his listeners.

Wouldn't Jesus intent be the primary intent?

I agree with you. Jesus is setting this standard. At this point in Matthew we have an obvious tension, one that I've already highlighted to you a few times now. We have the idea that Jesus is born to save us from our sins, and we have the idea that we need to live according to this standard to be in the kingdom of heaven. Both of those ideas need to be held together in tension until that tension is resolved.

At the point we are dealing with, there is no particular tension between Jesus sent as saviour and performance based salvation. As I say: Jesus can save those who grasp the performance rope (something concluded by RC, for instance).

Any other tension (Jesus is going to save me / but I have to save myself) only exists if you apply what you know from outside the gospel.

The only necessary tension for the reader thus far in Matthew is "how on earth am I to grasp this rope".

theological

antiskeptic wrote: »

Which raises the first question: who is us? Peregrinus gave a brief explanation of who the book is intended for and why it was written. Now I'm not sure where that view stems from - the gospel itself doesn't appear to indicate a particular audience - but I imagine the "us" you decide upon would depend on to "to whom" Matthew intended his gospel. How do you arrive at an "us"?

Insofar as we are reading his material, we are his readers. Perhaps not his first audience, but we are a second audience looking in. It is a rather simple position.

We could debate about whether or not we are legitimate readers of his material (I think we are) but insofar as we are reading it, we are his audience.

antiskeptic wrote: »

Which one of these (I suppose it must be the first, if any) deals with the audience Jesus was addressing? When he said what he said, why was he saying it - bearing in mind, there wasn't the rest of Matthew for the audience to work out any "tension" that might arise in them. He says what he says and presumably knows what thoughts will arise in his listeners.

All of them are relevant in doing good Biblical theology. All of them help us to handle the Bible correctly when we are doing our systematic theology. Why Jesus is saying what He is saying in a particular passage requires interpretation with a consideration of the context. Sometimes all 3 come into play particularly if there is an allusion to earlier Biblical events, or a direct Biblical quotation from another part of the Bible. When looking into that quotation we need to see how it is used in the local context, and how it fits into the book context of where it is quoted from, and how it fits into the whole Bible.

antiskeptic wrote: »

Wouldn't Jesus intent be the primary intent?

Both are important. Jesus is present in the passage that Matthew has arranged in his gospel. Matthew has arranged his gospel with a structure and with an intent. Jesus has an intent in respect to His hearers. God the Holy Spirit has inspired Matthew to arrange the book in the way that he has in the same way as all Scripture is inspired.

antiskeptic wrote: »

At the point we are dealing with, there is no particular tension between Jesus sent as saviour and performance based salvation. As I say: Jesus can save those who grasp the performance rope (something concluded by RC, for instance).

Any other tension (Jesus is going to save me / but I have to save myself) only exists if you apply what you know from outside the gospel.

The only necessary tension for the reader thus far in Matthew is "how on earth am I to grasp this rope".

There's definitely a tension. Both ideas are present in the book context in Matthew (they are not outside of the gospel, it is there in chapter 1, repentance is there in chapter 3 and chapter 4) and we're not sure as to how they reconcile at this stage. This is what I mean when I am referring to a tension.