Systematic theology

Gathering by topic

Systematic theology takes one subject at a time and listens to what Scripture says about it from Genesis to Revelation, asking how the parts fit together. When it asks who God is, what a human being is, who Christ is and what he did, or how we are saved, it puts the question not to one verse but to the whole Bible. Older theologians called these subjects loci, ‘places’. Paul told the elders of Ephesus:

For I did not shrink back from declaring to you the whole will of God.

Acts 20:27

That is what systematic theology aims at: not a few favourite verses, but everything Scripture says, heard together. So it builds on careful exegesis of each passage in its setting and on biblical theology, which follows the unfolding of revelation. It compares Scripture with Scripture, listens to the church's creeds and doctrine, and sets out the result coherently in the language of its own time. Paul told Titus to "speak the things that are consistent with sound doctrine" (Titus 2:1): right teaching exists to build up life.

The method has its own danger. If verses are pulled from their setting and pressed into a framework decided in advance, the system ends up ruling Scripture. Good systematic theology goes as far as Scripture goes and stops there, and is always ready to be corrected by it.

A short history

In the first half of the third century Origen's On First Principles was one of the first attempts to set out the faith in order Origen, On First Principles. In the eighth century John of Damascus gathered the teaching of the Fathers into his Exposition of the Orthodox Faith John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith. Peter Lombard's Sentences, from the 1150s, became the textbook of the medieval universities, and Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae is often counted the summit of that tradition. At the Reformation Philip Melanchthon's Loci Communes (1521) is often called the first Protestant systematic theology Melanchthon, Loci Communes, and John Calvin's Institutes, in its final edition of 1559, follows broadly the order of the Apostles' Creed: God the Creator, Christ the Redeemer, the work of the Spirit, and the church Calvin, Institutes. In the nineteenth century Charles Hodge's Systematic Theology, written at Princeton, shaped English-speaking evangelicalism for generations Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology.

Where the traditions differ

The traditions do this work from somewhat different places. The Catholic Church often speaks of dogmatic theology, which sets out the faith from Scripture and Sacred Tradition as interpreted by the church's teaching office. Many Orthodox theologians insist that theology must never be separated from worship, prayer and the witness of the Fathers, and have been wary of building systems. The Reformation churches place Scripture above every system and creed as the final judge, while valuing the creeds and confessions beneath it. In the modern era Friedrich Schleiermacher redefined dogmatics as the description of Christian religious experience Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, while evangelical theologians have generally kept to the path that begins from the revelation given in Scripture. See the lesson Biblical and systematic theology.