Systematic Theology: Introduction to Systematic Theology

 * Notes for a class I'm teaching on Systematic Theology

Systematic Theology

 

What is Systematic Theology and Why does is matter?

 

1.     Definitions:

 

a.     “Systematic theology is any study that answers the questions, ‘What does the whole Bible teach us today?’ about any given topic.”  Wayne Grudem ST, p. 21

 

b.     “The attempt to summarize religious truth or the belief system of a religious group (such as Christianity) through an organized system of thought carried out within a particular cultural and intellectual context (see method of theology).”  Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms, p. 111

 

c.     “Evangelical theology can be defined as systematic reflection on scripture and tradition and the mission of the church in mutual relation, with scripture as the norm.”[1]

 

d.     John Frame  “theology is the application of God’s Word by persons to all areas of life.”[2]

 

e.     “Theology, then, must be a secondary description, a reinterpretation and reproclamation of Scripture, both of its propositional and of its nonpropositional content.  Why do we need such a reinterpretation?  To meet human needs.  The job of theology is to help people understand the Bible better, not to give some sort of abstractly perfect account of the truth as such, regardless of whether anyone understands it or not.  Rather, the job of theology is to teach people the truth of God.  Although Scripture is clear, for various reasons people fail to understand and use it properly.  Theology is justified not merely by its correspondence with the truth—if that were the criterion, theology could do no better than simply to repeat Scripture—but theology is justified by the help it brings to people, by its success in helping people to use the truth.”[3]

 

2.     Goals of systematic theology:

 

a.     Task-oriented theology

 

The ultimate aim of theological reflection is to assist in the church’s task of bringing about the “obedience of faith…among all the nations” (Rom. 1:5).  Evangelical theology is task-oriented reflection upon scripture in light of the practical needs of ministry and mission.  Evangelical theology’s task is to be the church’s servant in the extension of the kingdom of God in the world and in the believer’s heart.[4]

 

Theology should never be a merely academic enterprise, but rather the search for biblical understanding in the context of the ministry and mission of the church.  The point of theological reflection is to “let the earth hear His voice.”  Evangelical theology is properly “task theology,” i.e., theology hammered out in response to the challenges posed by the Great Commission.[5]

                        

Systematic theology is a tool for extending God’s dominion in the world; it is dominion-oriented.[6]

 

b.     To help people

 

“It is all too easy for us to imagine that we have a higher task than merely that of helping people.  Our pride constantly opposes the servant model.  And it is all too easy for us to think of theological formulations as something more than truth-for-people, as a kind of special insight into God himself (which the biblical writers would have written about, had they known as much as we)… Our theologies are merely attempts to help people, generally and in specific times and places, to use Scripture better.”[7]

 

3.     Relationship to other branches of theology:

 

a.     Biblical Theology:  

 

“Biblical theology gives special attention to the teachings of individual authors and sections of Scripture, and to the place of each teaching in the historical development of Scripture.”  Wayne Grudem ST, p. 22

 

·      Two crucial ideas: process and progress

 

“The first term (process) teaches us that both the character and task of Biblical theology is that of tracing the great themes of salvation history according to their historical order of unfolding.  The second  (progress) informs us that the focal point of Biblical theology is not only the historical unfolding of God’s self-revelation but also the expansion and upward movement of that revelation.”[8]

 

b.     Historical Theology: “a historical study of how Christians in different periods have understood various theological topics” Grudem, p. 21

 

c.     Philosophical Theology: “studying theological topics largely without use of the Bible, but using the tools and methods of philosophical reasoning and what can be known about God from observing the universe”  Grudem, p. 21

 

d.     Triangle: Biblical studies  Systematic Theology  Apologetics

 

·      Need to understand the what the Bible says before we can accurately do systematic theology

·      Need to know what we believe (systematic theology) before we can accurately defend it

 

 

 

4.     Why study systematic theology?

 

a.     Know God better: John 17.3

 

b.     Protect the church: 1 Timothy 4.11-16; 2 Timothy 2.14-18; 4.1-5; Titus 1.9-11

 

c.     Promotes godliness: 1 Timothy 4.6-8

 

d.     Form of spiritual warfare: 1 Timothy 4.1-5

 

e.     One of the means of salvation: 1 Timothy 4.16

 

f.      Comfort in the midst of deep pain: Psalm 102.25-27 (deep theology) and see vv. 1-11 (deep pain)

 

g.     Worship: Psalm 145; Revelation 4 and 5 

 

·      Rev 4.11  praise (“Worthy”) for God the Creator

 

·      Rev 5.9, 12  praise (“Worthy”) for Lamb as Redeemer

 

5.     How should we study systematic theology?

 

a.     Prayerfully

 

“Men who know their God are before anything else men who pray, and the first point where their zeal and energy for God’s glory come to expression is in their prayers….Yet the invariable fruit of true knowledge of God is energy to pray for God’s cause—energy, indeed, which can only find an outlet and a relief of inner tension when channeled into such prayer—and the more knowledge, the more energy!  By this we may test ourselves.”  J. I. Packer Knowing God, p. 24

 

·      Seek to pray what you are learning in systematic theology—bring every doctrine into your prayer life

 

b.     With help from others—especially teachers in the church

 

·       Ephesians 4.8-12 (teachers as gifts from Christ to the Church!  This includes teachers from the past!)

 

c.     For the sake of others

 

·      1 Corinthians 8.1-13

 

d.     With rejoicing and praise: 

 

·      Psalm 139.17

·      Psalm 19.8; 119.14, 103, 111, 162

·      Romans 11.33-36

 

e.     With obedience

 

·      Matthew 7.24-27

 

“Of what use is it to discourse learnedly on the Trinity, if you lack humility?  Lofty words do not make a man just or holy; but a good life makes him dear to God.  I would far rather feel contrition than be able to define it.  If you knew the whole Bible by heart, and all the teachings of the philosophers, how would this help you without the grace and love of God?”  Thomas a Kempis The Imitation of Christ (book one, chapter one)

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[1] John Jefferson Davis Foundations of Evangelical Theology, 43.

[2] John Frame The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, 76, 81.

[3] John Frame The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, 79-80.

[4] John Jefferson Davis Foundations of Evangelical Theology, 9.

[5] John Jefferson Davis Foundations of Evangelical Theology, 45.

[6] John Jefferson Davis Foundations of Evangelical Theology, 47.

[7] John Frame The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, 80.

[8] Don Garlington, “The Biblical-Theological Method” in Exegetical Essays (3^rd ed.), Wifp and Stock, 2003, p. 1.

Perspectivalism and Postmodern Views of the Human Person

In reading Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay’s Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody, they make the following statements regarding postmodern understandings of the human person:

 

“Consequently, to postmodern Theorists, the notion of the autonomous individual is largely a myth.  The individual, like everything else, is a product of powerful discourses and culturally constructed knowledge.  Equally, the concept of the universal—whether a biological universal about human nature; or an ethical universal, such as equal rights, freedoms, and opportunities for all individuals regardless of class, race, gender, or sexuality—is, at best, naïve.  At worst, it is merely another exercise in power-knowledge, an attempt to enforce dominant discourses on everybody.  The postmodern view largely rejects both the smallest unit of society—the individual—and the largest—humanity—and instead focuses on small, local groups as the producers of knowledge, values, and discourses.  Therefore, postmodernism focuses on sets of people who are understood to be positioned in the same way—by race, sex, or class, for example—and have the same experiences and perceptions due to this positioning.”[1]

 

“The intense focus on identity categories and identity politics means that the individual and the universal are largely devalued.  While mainstream liberalism focuses on achieving universal human rights and access to opportunities, to allow each individual to fulfill her potential, applied postmodern scholarship and activism is deeply skeptical of these values and even openly hostile to them.  Applied postmodern Theory tends to regard mainstream liberalism as complacent, naïve, or indifferent about the deeply ingrained prejudices, assumptions, and biases that limit and constrain people with marginalized identities.  The ‘individual’ in applied postmodernism is something like the sum total of the identity groups to which the person in question simultaneously belongs.”[2]

 

The specification of three aspects—the universal, the individual, and the group—reminded me of John Frame’s perspectivialism.  The following would illustrate a Framean perspective:

 

 

Universal (Humanity)

                                     Class/group                                Individual

 

 

These three perspectives correlate with Frame’s categories:

 

            Normative: Universal humanity

 

            Situational: Class/group

 

            Existential: Individual

 

Within a biblical worldview all three perspectives are important for full understanding of the truth.  To isolate one perspective, to the exclusion of the others, will be to fail to fully understand the nature of the subject at hand.  As Vern Poythress notes, “Monoperspectival reductions of the truth frequently make some one perspective into a god-like origin for everything else.”[3]

 

Under the sovereignty of God, every individual is created in the image of God (universal) and is situated in a number of particular overlapping groups.  Postmodern views, as noted by Pluckrose and Lindsay, are thus reductionist choosing to privilege the group to the exclusion of other perspectives.

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     [1]Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody(Durham, North Carolina: Pitchstone Publishing, 2020), 42—bold-face added.

     [2]Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody(Durham, North Carolina: Pitchstone Publishing, 2020), 60-61—bold-face added.

     [3]Vern Poythress, “Multiperspectivalism and the Reformed Faith” in Speaking the Truth in Love: The Theology of John M. Frame(Phillipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed, 2009), 195.

John Frame on the Comprehensiveness of Scripture

"Jesus anticipates a kingdom covering the earth, in which people love God and their neighbors from the heart.  The gospel that we preach throughout  the world is the good news that the kingdom of God is at hand (Matt. 3:2; 4:17, 23; 5:3; Acts 1:3; 8:12; 19:8; 20:25; 28:23, 31).  In the fundamental prayer of God's people (Matt. 6:10), we ask that God's kingdom come.  That kingdom will inevitably change human institutions as well.  When people are converted to believe in Christ, they bring their new faith and love into their daily work.  They ask how Christ bears upon their work as historians, scientists, musicians, how this new passion of theirs affects art, entertainment, medicine, the care for the poor and sick, the justice of courts, the punishment of convicts, relations between nations.  All of life is different because of grace.  And indeed, Christians have influenced their societies in profound ways through the centuries: adopting babies left to die, building hospitals and orphanages, working to abolish slavery."  

--John Frame The Doctrine of the Word of God, page 218

2018 Books

* Here's my list of books from 2018.  

Top Three

1.  Love Thy Body by Nancy Pearcey.

2.  Scientism and Secularism: Learning to Respond to a Dangerous Ideology by J. P. Moreland.

3.  Why Is There Evil in the World (and So Much of It)? by Greg Welty.

And the Rest... (order read during the year)

* Sex Scandal: The Drive to Abolish Male and Female by Ashley McGuire.

* God and the Transgender Debate by Andrew T. Walker.

* Theology of My Life: A Theological and Apologetic Memoir by John Frame.

* When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment by Ryan T. Anderson.

* God: Three in One by E. Calvin Beisner. 

* Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views by Robert A. J. Gagnon and Dan O. Via.

* Francis Schaeffer: An Authentic Life by Colin Duriez. 

* From Trials to Triumphs: The Voice of Habakkuk to the Suffering African Christian by Faustin Ntamushobora.

* John Calvin by T. H. L. Parker.