Topic: Systematic Theology

Systematic theology is a discipline of Christian theology that formulates an orderly, rational, and
coherent account of the doctrines of the Christian faith. It addresses issues such as what the Bible
teaches about certain topics or what is true about God and His universe. It also builds on biblical
disciplines, church history, as well as biblical and historical theology. Systematic theology shares
its systematic tasks with other disciplines such as constructive theology, dogmatics, ethics,
apologetics, and philosophy of religion.

Method
With a methodological tradition that differs somewhat from biblical theology, systematic
theology draws on the core sacred texts of Christianity, while simultaneously investigating the
development of Christian doctrine over the course of history, particularly through philosophy,
ethics, social sciences, and even natural sciences. Using biblical texts, it attempts to compare and
relate all of scripture which led to the creation of a systematized statement on what the whole
Bible says about particular issues.

Within Christianity, different traditions (both intellectual and ecclesial) approach systematic
theology in different ways impacting a) the method employed to develop the system, b) the
understanding of theology's task, c) the doctrines included in the system, and d) the order those
doctrines appear. Even with such diversity, it is generally the case that works that one can
describe as systematic theologies to begin with revelation and conclude with eschatology.

Since it is focused on truth, systematic theology is also framed to interact with and address the
contemporary world. There are numerous authors who explored this area such as the case of
Charles Gore, John Walvoord, Lindsay Dewar, and Charles Moule, among others. The
framework developed by these theologians involved a review of postbiblical history of a doctrine
after first treating the biblical materials. This process concludes with applications to
contemporary issues.

Categories
Since it is a systemic approach, systematic theology organizes truth under different headings and
there are ten basic areas (or categories), although the exact list may vary slightly. These are:

Theology proper – The study of the character of God

Angelology – The study of angels

Biblical exegesis – The study to find the original meaning of the texts of the Bible

Biblical hermeneutics – The study of the principles of biblical interpretation

Christology – The study of Christ

Ecclesiology – The study of the church

Eschatology – The study of the end times

Hamartiology – The study of sin

Pneumatology – The study of the Holy Spirit

Soteriology – The study of salvation

Theological anthropology – The study of the nature of humanity.

Israelology – The study of Israel's role in salvation plan.

History
The establishment and integration of varied Christian ideas and Christianity-related notions,
including diverse topics and themes of the Bible, in a single, coherent and well-ordered
presentation is a relatively late development. In Eastern Orthodoxy, an early example is provided
by John of Damascus's 8th-century Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, in which he attempts to set
in order and demonstrate the coherence of the theology of the classic texts of the Eastern
theological tradition.

In the West, Peter Lombard's 12th-century Sentences, wherein he thematically collected a great
series of quotations of the Church Fathers, became the basis of a medieval scholastic tradition of
thematic commentary and explanation. Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae best exemplifies
this scholastic tradition. The Lutheran scholastic tradition of a thematic, ordered exposition of
Christian theology emerged in the 16th century with Philipp Melanchthon's Loci Communes, and
was countered by a Calvinist scholasticism, which is exemplified by John Calvin's Institutes of
the Christian Religion.

In the 19th century, primarily in Protestant groups, a new kind of systematic theology arose that
attempted to demonstrate that Christian doctrine formed a more coherent system premised on
one or more fundamental axioms. Such theologies often involved a more drastic pruning and
reinterpretation of traditional belief in order to cohere with the axiom or axioms. Friedrich
Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher, for example, produced Der christliche Glaube nach den
Grundsätzen der evangelischen Kirche (The Christian Faith According to the Principles of the
Protestant Church) in the 1820s, in which the fundamental idea is the universal presence among
humanity, sometimes more hidden, sometimes more explicit, of a feeling or awareness of
'absolute dependence'.
Contemporary usage
There are three overlapping uses of the term 'systematic theology' in contemporary Christian
theology.

According to some theologians in evangelical circles, it is used to refer to the topical collection
and exploration of the content of the Bible, in which a different perspective is provided on the
Bible's message than that garnered simply by reading the biblical narratives, poems, proverbs,
and letters as a story of redemption or as a manual for how to live a godly life. One advantage of
this approach is that it allows one to see all that the Bible says regarding some subject (e.g. the
attributes of God), and one danger is a tendency to assign technical definitions to terms based on
a few passages and then read that meaning everywhere the term is used in the Bible (e.g.
"justification" as Paul uses it in his letter to the Romans) is proposed by some evangelical
theologians as being used in a different sense to how James uses it in his letter (Romans 4:25,
Romans 5:16–18 and James 2:21–25). In this view, systematic theology is complementary to
biblical theology. Biblical theology traces the themes chronologically through the Bible, while
systematic theology examines themes topically; biblical theology reflects the diversity of the
Bible, while systematic theology reflects its unity. However, there are some contemporary
systematic theologians of an evangelical persuasion who would question this configuration of the
discipline of systematic theology. Their concerns are twofold. First, instead of being a systematic
exploration of theological truth, when systematic theology is defined in such a way as described
above, it is synonymous with biblical theology. Instead, some contemporary systematic
theologians seek to use all available resources to ascertain the nature of God and God's
relationship to the world, including philosophy, history, culture, etc. In sum, these theologians
argue that systematic and biblical theology are two separate, though related, disciplines. Second,
some systematic theologians claim that evangelicalism itself is far too diverse to describe the
above approach as "the" evangelical viewpoint. Instead, these systematic theologians would note
that in instances where systematic theology is defined in such a way that it solely depends on the
Bible, it is a highly conservative version of evangelical theology and does not speak for
evangelical theology in toto.

The term can also be used to refer to theology which self-avowedly seeks to perpetuate the
classical traditions of thematic exploration of theology described above – often by means of
commentary upon the classics of those tradition: the Damascene, Aquinas, John Calvin,
Melanchthon and others.

Normally (but not exclusively) in liberal theology, the term can be used to refer to attempts to
follow in Friedrich Schleiermacher's footsteps, and reinterpret Christian theology in order to
derive it from a core set of axioms or principles.In all three senses, Christian systematic theology
will often touch on some or all of the following topics: God, trinitarianism, revelation, creation
and divine providence, theodicy, theological anthropology, Christology, soteriology,
ecclesiology, eschatology, Israelology, Bibliology, hermeneutics, sacrament, pneumatology,
Christian life, Heaven, and interfaith statements on other religions.

See also
References
Resources