My very first theology class in college was titled “Systematic Theology.” It was an orderly overview of all the important doctrines of Christianity, and all the major topics Christian theology touches upon. Didn’t hit every topic, ’cause there simply wasn’t time. (The upper-division theology classes went into much more detail.) But like I said, the main topics:
- God and his existence.
- Revelation and how God can be known.
- The scriptures and how to base theology upon ’em.
- The trinity and God’s mighty attributes.
- Jesus’s nature, person, and work.
- Jesus’s self-sacrifice and our salvation.
- The Holy Spirit and his activity in his church.
- The church’s governance and purpose.
- Death, afterlife, resurrection, and New Jerusalem.
On this blog, I am obviously not going through theology in any systematic way. Largely I’ve been discussing topics as they come up—either going into detail about theological issues in other articles I’ve written, or prompted by someone sending an email.
So if you want an overview of all the main topics of Christian theology, you might wanna buy a systematic theology book. They tend to be written by Calvinists, ’cause Jean Calvin wrote the first Protestant systematic theology, Institutes of the Christian Religion, and systematizing theology has kinda become a big deal to Calvinists ever since. They really like presenting all their doctrines in a tidy, logically consistent package. Makes God sound all orderly and quantifiable!
Is he really? Nah. God’s way bigger than the human mind can grasp. Even bigger than the scriptures can present. Jn 21.25 Systematic theologies can only tell us so much—and same as my theology class, try to hit all the major topics, but can’t get to all of ’em.
Some of ’em try! And, when they’re trying to be intellectually honest, they also try to cover all the major Christian viewpoints about these topics, ’cause Christians aren’t universally agreed on everything. (And, unless we joined a cult, don’t have to be.) Hence some systematic theology books are huge. One of my college textbooks, Millard J. Erickson’s Christian Theology, most definitely is; the current edition clocks in at 1,200 pages. He’s thorough.
Anyway, when Christians get it into our heads to study theology, some of us want this kind of overview. I certainly did; I wanted to make sure I filled in all the gaps in my knowledge. (Or at least learn where the gaps were.) So, there y’go: Systematic theology.
The downsides to systematizing theology.
Yeah, there are downsides. Not many, and let’s make sure to mitigate ’em.
The most common downside is the false assumption that now that we’ve gone through all the major doctrines and theological topics, we know everything we need to know about God. And like I said, God’s way bigger than that. Infinitely bigger. Let’s never be so naïve and prideful as to presume we have him all figured out. Trillions of years from now, in New Jerusalem, we’ll still only have scratched the surface.
The nextmost common is the bad habit too many Christians have of prioritizing their theological systems over the scriptures. Fr’instance Calvinist views on God’s sovereignty—which isn’t based on scripture so much as on Calvin’s experiences living under the tyrannical absolute monarchs of France. It gave Calvin some messed-up, graceless views of sovereignty, which he later read into the scriptures and attributed to God… and Calvinists ever since have repeated Calvin’s error, because the foundation of Calvinism is God’s sovereignty. Not his grace; not his love. His might.
You can really warp your views on God and Christianity when your system has such fatal flaws in it. You don’t just wind up practicing a graceless form of Christianity; you alienate others, and at some point the Holy Spirit might decide it’s time you stopped hindering him, and triggers a faith crisis which causes you to finally realize you have some seriously false beliefs, you’ve attached way too many things to those beliefs, and you need to deconstruct everything. It can be pretty traumatic. God will get you through it, if you trust him… but some Christians simply don’t trust him enough, and quit in despair. Don’t be one of those; remember there’s a difference between your beliefs about God, and God himself. God is legit. If it turns out your beliefs aren’t, God’s still legit.
So how do we find and correct these flaws? Simple: Humility. Don’t presume you have God all figured out! Keep the attitude, “I’m wrong, but Jesus is right, which is why I follow Jesus.” Humility is supposed to be the first principle of theology—and remain so.
Stick to the bible. Don’t cherry-pick favorite verses which support your beliefs, and pretend all the verses which don’t support ’em (and there might be more of these verses than the ones which support you!) don’t exist, don’t matter, or you can reinterpret them in twisted ways till they finally support you. Acknowledge the whole bible—and let it govern our theology, not the other way round.
Lastly: Even so, we’re gonna be wrong. We just are. We won’t know it, but we’ll have misinterpreted a passage, or trusted the wrong preacher, and somewhere in our theological systems there will be an inaccurate or even false belief. If we’re listening to the Holy Spirit, sometimes he’ll point this out to us… but in my experience, if that false belief isn’t hurting anything, sometimes he won’t. (Yet. He may later.)
When we bear this in mind—when we never forget we could be wrong about any given issue—we’ll remember to be humble. We won’t demand no, dangit, we’re right, and everybody else needs to repent and adopt our view. We won’t defend our viewpoints so strongly, we alienate everyone around us. We’ll keep pointing to Jesus, not ourselves, not our knowledge and intellect. And we’ll keep looking through our belief systems to make sure everything honestly jibes with the scriptures.
