I.3.i. Methods of Theological Inquiry
Here divisions will mean the distinctions to be made between biblical, systematic, historical, and practical theology. These are both kinds of theological study, but they also represent methods of approaching God and the things of God. If God is not, in some sense, their subject matter, then there is no good sense in calling them by the name “theology.” A few things will be done differently here than in many treatments of these divisions. In the first place, we will add contemplative and polemical theology as disciplines in their own right; and in the second place, we will place systematic theology last for reasons that will become apparent as we approach it.
1. Biblical theology is the study of God by means of the text of Scripture per se. The term is, of course, potentially misleading. On the local church level, its modifying adjective “biblical” is thrown about as if only one's own theology made a point to consult the Bible. Anyone who disagrees with one's own insight is characterized as having an “unbiblical” theology. However, even where the claim is true, the mere appeal to biblical prooftexts can often get us only so far. Even on the academic level, there has always been a sense that the only true theology is done on the “left to right” level of the text. The way in which young seminarians from conservative Evangelical backgrounds went in for the New Perspectives on Paul precisely at that juxtaposition between text and dogma is a recent case in point.
Geerhardus Vos, one of the real fathers of modern biblical theology, reinforces everything we have said thus far within the context of his own field: “Theology is the science concerning God. Other definitions either are misleading, or, when closely examined, are found to lead to the same result.”1 It is in that classical context of divine truth as metaphysical that he sees “the necessity of its being based on revelation.” And so he is going to define biblical theology as dealing “with revelation as a divine activity, not as the finished product of that activity.”2 In short, the modern master of Reformed biblical theology understood biblical theology as the authoritative source for dogma, yes, but as the inductive, data-collection stage meant for a clearer pronouncement.
In the modern era, liberal theologians attempted to redefine theology as the acts of God. The idea here is that God makes himself known to us by what he does. There is a truth in this. We can only know God as he draws near to us. No one ascends to him, but he descends. Even when the word (lowercase w) foretells what God will do, there is the Word Incarnate and thus God’s supreme revelation takes on flesh, not more propositions. But Vos responds: “The usual order is: first word, then the fact, then again the interpretive word.”3 Another distortion was the tendency to pit biblical against systematic theology. Bavinck saw that there was an “antischolastic ‘biblical theology’”4 that overreacted to the inflation of tradition, and that had falsely blamed “system” as such. He said about the modern theologian: “If, along with Pietists and ‘biblical theologians,’ he assumes a sharp contrast between Scripture and church doctrine, he will adhere as closely as possible, in language, expressions and other ways, to Scripture and make a minimal attempt to process the discovered material rationally.”5 This has often been done by suggesting an irreconcilable conflict between Hellenistic ‘rational-didactic-propositional’ thinking and Hebraic ‘narrative-communal-poetic’ thinking.
Dimensions of biblical theology include: (1) The individual text or pericope. This is most commonly what is meant by exegesis, which may have at least two uses: first being that of commentary, the second being for preaching or other practical teaching. Either one would imply drawing out of a text what is its “full meaning” for both doctrine and life. It is in this applicational sense that Frame’s definition of theology would be better suited. (2) A singular book’s context. Each book, such as Genesis, Psalms, Matthew, or Romans, has a basic message. Perhaps there are more than one such theme. But each will be coherent throughout the book. (3) The corpus of an individual author. Moses has a covenantal literary purpose. Paul has a theology steeped in law and aimed at the inclusion of the Gentiles. David has a background to his songs and his military exploits. Such brings unity to the diversity of their writings.
(4) The corpus belonging to a unified genre. Covenant treaty, historical narrative, Psalm, poetry and wisdom, genealogy, prophecy, Gospel (which is not mere narrative), apocalyptic (which is not mere prophecy), and epistle—these all must be treated according to basic rules unique to their literary form. (5) The redemptive-historical approach to any part of Scripture. This refers to basic trajectories in God's progressive revelation of his dealing with his people. Such can cut across other textual boundaries.
For example, take the dwelling of God with his people: from the Garden to Tabernacle to Temple to Ezekiel’s vision to the Second Temple to Christ and the church as fulfillments to the consummated New Jerusalem. The line between such a redemptive-historical trajectory and a doctrine of systematic theology becomes thinner as that trajectory becomes more predominant.
(6) The corpus of multi-authored themes for tentative doctrinal formation. For example the prophets’ use of the term “The Day of the Lord” or Paul's use of “works of the law.” Mastery of the former idea allows us to understand how items from the two advents of Christ can be prophesied in the Old Testament (or in the Olivet Discourse for that matter) in the same place. Otherwise we are bewildered and can even fall into skepticism. Likewise with the Apostle's phraseology, we may be less likely to fall for the New Perspectives on Paul by the increasingly common sensical notion that such works ultimately cover anything that God requires of all people (cf. Rom. 3:19-20).
2. Contemplative theology is the study of God by means of rational reflection. It is a term that seems to cover what was more narrowly conceived as “philosophical theology.” If there is any advantage to this terminology it may be that it is not weighed down by the baggage of having to answer for secular thought. Note a few operative assumptions behind such a discipline. (1) Rational reflection is unavoidable. Even the determination to reject rational reflection as the means by which God is known is a rational reflection: as reason is the only faculty by which anything is known, and out of which determinations of the will proceed—“The will is mind choosing” [Edwards]. (2) All of the objects of reason are divinely revealed. Hence, since all proper objects of the mind are revealed, it follows that they are either recognized as such, or else distorted as either subsequent errors (which is covert idolatry) or else as being supposed to be creations of the finite mind (which is overt idolatry). (3) Therefore, rational reflection need not seek its content “outside of” revelation.
And even if and when it is the “choice” of a finite mind to reason “autonomously,” or apart from the immutable laws of God’s revelation, it is to no effect upon our present question. Since the thing is impossible (“reasoning upon the unrevealed”) the castigation is superfluous. Matters of apologetics, natural theology, and philosophy of religion are naturally handled by this form. Hence the anti-intellectualist becomes nervous that Reason is functioning as a principium for either the nature of God or biblical interpretation. We will come back to this confusion, characteristic of such groups as were effected by Anabaptist, Pietist, and Fundamentalist thinking, but which made its way into the Reformed world through the Van Tillians.
Their catch term autonomous reason is really only a proper designation for either (a) the pretension to reason apart from revelation, and / or (b) the erroneous effects of that pretension. To use that label for “extra-revelational truths” is a contradiction in terms, born out of anti-intellectual fear toward extra-biblical disciplines.
Now why does a contemplative theology matter? We can see it most clearly in its relationship to biblical theology. James Dolezal says, “[It] seems to me that biblical theology, with its unique focus on historical development and progress, is not best suited for the study of theology proper. The reason for this is because God is not a historical individual, and neither does His intrinsic activity undergo development or change. This places God beyond the proper focus of biblical theology. God is not changed by what He does—though what He does certainly brings about progress in history, creatures, and salvation.”6
At the end of the day, this all goes back to the ontological-over-lexical sense of theology. Recall that for Turretin, there were two senses of a ‘word’ being in Scripture: first, “as to sounds and syllables”; second, “as to sense and the thing signified”. Theology is only in the latter sense. Only in this sense can we say that theology is a science and so treats “objectively” of God.7 The Scriptures, he continues, “do not, as such, formally support divine faith as to the words, but materially as to the substance of doctrine expressed in them.”8 In other words, words mean things. In this case, the words of the text are meant to serve the mind in such a way that objects—realities—are contemplated. Further, Turretin added, “All signs have ‘mutual connection and dependence’ … all of which ought to be taken together in order to gather the full sense.”9 So metaphysical substance and coherent substance. Words in a single Scripture passage are a window to the things of God, and the rational contemplation about a collection of such things opens up a larger metaphysical window into yet more things of God.
The Scriptures model the harmony of biblical and contemplative theology: “And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures” (Acts 17:2). What exactly did Paul reason with them about? Surely not ink patterns. He reasoned with them from all the Scripture (biblical theology) that Jesus must be, granting those Scriptural premises (contemplative theology), the Son of God and Israel's Messiah. God even appeals to us to do the same: “Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD” (Isa. 1:18); and his Apostles command pastors beyond them: “Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything” (2 Tim. 2:7).
3. Historical theology is the descriptive evaluation of how the church has theologized; or, we might say, it is our best effort at reconstructing the historic flow of theological reflection. I say descriptive rather than prescriptive because the historian of theology (or at least when the theologian is wearing that hat) must have the integrity to read old authors on their own terms. He may have an agenda, but he may not read it into their documents. Historical theology is not dogmatic theology. It does not rule on the truth or falsity of doctrine or religious practice. While there had been compartmentalization between church history and historical theology, Bradley and Muller note, this is an untenable position now, the latter being “a subset of the broader discipline.”10 The theology of the ages (historical theology) must be understood in its respective era (church history). The historical theologian approaches his focus, Van Asselt says, “to delve into authors and their writings in terms of the relationship they have with earlier, contemporary, or later developments.”11
While the historic theologian is not ruling on the eternal truth of dogma, he is clearing away obstacles for those who do. For example, Muller, Van Asselt, and Trueman are all really engaged in this business of ground clearing with respect to the Reformed tradition of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Their work is always charging us that simplistic divisions of periods and schools is bound to make for bad theologizing in general. Anachronisms are a cardinal vice: not merely of words that change meaning, but of concepts that were not their pet project. The more we know of historical theology, the greater we appreciate that the theological enterprise is neither a “fixed block of dogma” delivered at the beginning, nor “a wholly fluid web of opinion relative in all respects to a changing social environment.”12
All of this is to say that we must depict historical thinkers as profoundly complex and dependent as they were: late and early Augustine; Purtian and Enlightenment Edwards; Secession Church and Modernist Bavinck—even if such complexities resist popular accessibility, and especially if such reassessments prevent us from exalting a particular thinker or doctrine to a level of distortion.
As to the value of this study, perhaps no one has said it better than C. S. Lewis in that bit of advice he gave in his little introduction to Athanasius' De Incarnatione,
“It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between … Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period … None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true, they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading the old books.”13
My only pushback on the way that historical theology is being pursued in the last few decades is that we are witnessing one more pendulum swing. The quite just slaying of the Calvin-versus-Calvinists and Humanist-versus-Scholastic models has exalted the Muller-Asselt school and the Contextualism methodology that stands behind, and so enthroned a frenzy at doctoral programs to have everyone doing only the minion work of empirical investigation. One obvious consequence of this will surely be the utter neglect of raising up profoundly orthodox systematic theologians. The previous generation raised biblicists and dogmaticians who became disconnected from pre-Reformation texts. We are now hell bent on fixing that by ensuring that only finely lettered young weasels with enough money to get into the doctoral programs early will be those handful of systematics professors in the next few years.
4. Polemical theology is the study of God by means of contrast with errors. At first glance this would not seemed to be a study of God at all. In one sense it is not. However the Reformed Scholastics would devote an entire section to the question of true and false theology. Junius said that the different types of theology (archetypal and ectypal, true and false) could all share the same genus by what he called analogical equivocation.14 So false theology is claiming to be theology. If one does not know how to discern between the true and the false, then on what grounds does he call one true and the other false? But such a standard: Is it an object of contemplation or isn't it? And then when things go wrong—either by embracing an unsound premise or by drawing an invalid inference—is this not also an object of contemplation? Polemical theology is not devoid of content.
Is polemical theology a department of apologetics or dogmatics? Dabney did not accept polemical theology as a distinct unit: “But the attempt to form a science of polemics different from Didactic Theology fails; because error never has true method. Confusion is its characteristic … Indirect refutation is more effectual than direct. There is therefore, in this course, no separate polemic; but what is said against errors is divided between the historic and didactic.”15 I am going to be disagreeing with this somewhat. I will agree that such a department should exist within systematic theology [so, the polemic inside of the didactic]; but I would suggest that a doctrine by the name of heresiology be developed to treat scientifically the nature of both the error (the doctrine) and the sectioning off from orthodoxy (the division) that such error effects.
5. Practical theology is the study of God by means of what our action says about God. Following from what we have said about practice being inside of, or following from, theory, such a definition does not permit our own experience of the action of practical theology drive how we understand all that activity. If we simply take a few actions that God has given to the individual Christian or the church, it will become clear how the practice of practical theology has to gain its legitimacy from God's own institution. For brevity sake, let us simply take the two activities of confronting evil spirits and taking care of the poor. Very often a pastor is asked what they think about casting out demons or about fighting poverty. The biblical pastor is in an immediate awkward position. In the question what he really hears are things like this: “What words do you use to bind evil spirits or break generational curses?” Or in the other issue, “What is our position on social justice?” or even, “Why do we have to be single-issue voters with respect to abortion? Couldn't alleviating poverty prevent the conditions in which abortion is more prevalent?”
The pastor who has been taught Christian ethics out of that same deep tradition we are supposedly recovering in historical theology, will realize that there are many invalid inferences and unsound premises that will need to be operated on before he can answer any such questions. Indeed he will realize that the questions are wholly inoperative to the real world. But how to break that news and still remain pastoral? This is the lion share of practical theology. It is simply not an utterly divorced and isolated discipline from the rest.
Since all of our practice is as images of God in relation to other images of God, all of our practice is an exercise in what the image (individual or social) says about God. This is what it means to glorify God (1 Cor. 10:31), namely, that human thought, affection, and decision tells true things about God. This definition alone preserves the Godward direction of the image. This definition alone makes sense of practice in any sense being called theology. This definition alone prevents the divorce between dogmatics and ethics. This definition alone prevents theology from becoming moralism or pragmatism.
6. Systematic theology is the study of God by means of doctrinal summary and ordering of the parts into a coherent whole. Now we can see why it comes last. It is the sum. To anticipate the objection of the oversensitive, when we say it is a “sum” we do not mean that either it or we are a “finished product.” It is rather that our system is our working reservoir of our reflection about God. But it is not a collection that may operate like a stream of consciousness. We cannot let the rooms of our systematic theology get messy. Every truth must have its place. It is deliberate, progressing, organized and organizing theology.
Grudem makes this same point, that everyone does systematic theology. Anytime we say something like, “The Bible teaches x,” and really the only alternative to systematic theology is disorganized theology.16 Moreover any objection against such organization into a system is self-defeating. Consider that the notion that biblical truth should not, or cannot, be studied systematically will naturally have a reason. That reason will ascribe certain attributes to Bible truths which we are supposed to take as the reason why they cannot be put together (into a system). But these “a-systematic” attributes: are they only true of some biblical truths or all? If some, then we have a fractured Bible. If all, then the whole Bible does indeed exhibit common characteristics. These qualities, whatever they are, represent that person’s system.
It is also called dogmatic theology. It is the whole versus part, but the intentional whole at that. Shedd gives us an understated beginning: “The only difference between biblical theology and dogmatic theology is in the form. The first examines the Bible part by part, writer by writer. The last examines it as a whole.”17 Bavinck adds that its goal is to rationally reproduce and conceive of that whole metaphysically:
Dogmatics is not a kind of biblical theology that stops at the words of Scripture. Rather, according to Scripture itself, dogmatics has the right to rationally absorb its content and, guided by Scripture, to rationally process it and also to acknowledge as truth that which can be deduced from it by lawful inference … The task of dogmatics is precisely to rationally reproduce the content of revelation that relates to the knowledge of God.18
Systematic theology must not be conceive as some opposite to biblical theology. The biblical authors modeled the two working in harmony: “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Lk. 24:27); Apollos in the synagogues, “powerfully refuted the Jews in public, showing by the Scriptures that the Christ was Jesus” (Acts 18:28). And the Bereans were “examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so” (Acts 17:11).
Because systematic theology is the sum, it is also the organizing principle of kinds. Shedd is characteristically sane on this point: “Systematic theology should balance and correct biblical theology, rather than vice versa, for the following reasons. First, because biblical theology is a deduction from only a part of Scripture. Its method is fractional. It examines portions of the Bible … [but] Science is a survey of the whole, not of a part … A second reason why biblical theology requires the balance and symmetry of systematic theology is the fact that it is more easy to introduce subjective individual opinions into a part of the Bible than into the whole of it.”19 What is the aim of systems? Shedd answers: “Theology, then, as a science of God aims to obtain a knowledge of him free from contradictions and is as profound as is possible.”20
(#theology #systematic #biblical #dogmatics #theologicalmethod #contemplative #polemical #historical)
1. Vos, Biblical Theology, 3.
2. Vos, Biblical Theology, 5.
3. Vos, Biblical Theology, 7.
4. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, I.59
5. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, I.54
6. Dolezal, All That is In God, xv.
7. Turretin, Institutes. I.1,2
8. Turretin, Institutes. I.13, 126
9. Turretin, Institutes. I.19, 152
10. James E. Bradley and Richard A. Muller, Church History. An Introduction to Research, Reference Works, and Methods (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1995), 2, 6.
11. William J. Van Asselt, Introduction to Reformed Scholasticism (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2011), 2-3.
12. Robert L. Calhoun, “The Role of Historical Theology,” The Journal of Religion, Vol. 21, No. 4 (Oct., 1941), 447.
13. Lewis, Introduction to Athanasius, De Incarnatione
14. Franciscus Junius, A Treatise on True Theology (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2014), 103.
15. Dabney, Systematic Theology, 6
16. Grudem, Systematic Theology,
17. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 48
18. Bavinck. Reformed Dogmatics, I.45
19. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 49
20. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 56
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