Our two sons ventured into the world of baseball this year...wow, what memories this brings back! Growing up in Varina, a rural community just east of Richmond, VA, baseball was big in the summer. And just as it was 30 years ago, the concession stand is the main attraction! Here in Newport News however, they load up a golf cart and travel around to all the fields, what modern day conveniences!
However, some things are still the same, the game. Especially the aspect of players learning to follow the direction of the coaches, regardless of their own personal inclinations. When the coach says to keep running, you keep running. When the coach says get down, you slide. When the coach says...you..., simple isn't it? Who's your coach in life? I know that I often have my own personal inclinations, they may be right or they may be wrong or they may just be mediocre when excellence is within my reach. I want to know that just as it is for my kids running the bases, there is someone actively involved in my life who knows exactly what I should and shouldn't do next. And unlike a coach, The Coach always makes the right call!
In 2 Chronicles 16, we find a story of Judah's King Asa being attacked by Israel's King Baasha (this was during the years of civil war among the 12 tribes divided among Judah and Israel). King Asa seeks a neighboring kingdom's king, Ben-hadad of Aram to ally with Judah by attacking Israel from the north forcing King Baasha to fight on two fronts. The plan is successful, King Baasha withdraws his attack and Judah safety is secured...or is it?
Hanani the seer comes to King Asa and on behalf of God, rebukes him for seeking the King of Aram's aid instead of first seeking God's help. King Asa was cruising around the bases and he never looked up to the Third Base Coach for direction. Let us not misunderstand God's anger. He is not jealous that King Asa did not need His help. Certainly King Asa's plan from a military standpoint was a stroke of genius. However, God is trying to help us gain a greater victory, one over the inclination of our human nature to be self-reliant. We will never fully reach our potential in life apart from God and His constant, abiding direction giving voice.
Even when the path forward seems clear, stop. Look up. What is your Coach telling you to do? Trust Him...
Trust in the LORD with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways acknowledge Him,
and He will make your paths straight.
Do not be wise in your own eyes...
(Proverbs 3:5-7a)
Pastor Fred
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Friday, May 8, 2009
Systematic Theology
My good freind Corey Doise shared this with me recently...enjoy!
The Value of Systematic Theology
Systematic theology gets a bad bit of press these days. It is often associated with being hardheaded, arrogant, and more concerned about theology than the Bible. While there may be examples of these faults in people, these are not inherent virtues in systematic theology. Systematic theology is a necessary effort to understand God's revelation as a whole. The attempt is to give us greater insight in what God has revealed to us.
Mike Horton writes a helpful and instructional article on the value of systematic theology. He begins with the inherent liabilities before pointing out the value.
[W]e must be careful to keep our systems open to correction by accurate exegesis, that is, by accurate interpretation of biblical passages. And we must beware of equating our confessional and systematic theologies with Scripture itself. No responsible evangelical theologian has ever attributed final authority to any system. In fact, the Protestant scholastic successors of the great reformers especially stressed the splendid distinction between archetypal theology (God's own knowledge) and ectypal theology (our knowledge). Creatures will never attain a God's-eye view of anything, not even of themselves, but will always possess only a finite version of "the way things are." Our older theologians used to call this "ectypal theology" theologium viatorum-the theology of pilgrims on the way-to contrast it with the theologium beatorum -the theology of the glorified in heaven. All believers living today are equally pilgrims....
Good systematic theologians, regardless of their differences, always strive to approach Scripture as students rather than as masters. They also seek to gather together whatever Scripture says anywhere on the same topic and thus interpret the particular parts in the light of the whole, even as they once again test their conclusions about the whole in the light of what they find in Scripture's particular parts-and so on. This dance never ends on this side of Glory....
Systematic theology gives us a better understanding of what Scripture teaches in the whole and gives us an important larger context of the whole to read specific passages.
Every believer needs at least some "big picture" grasp of the doctrinal teaching of Scripture. While most readers would not come away from a Bible study with the sort of refinement exhibited in the Creed of Chalcedon, at least those trained through the teaching, the liturgical ascriptions of praise, the hymns, Sunday school, and catechism classes and sermons can get the most out of their inductive reading of Scripture precisely because they are already engaged in making deductions based on the whole system of Christian theology as they know it.
A well-trained believer will come to particular passages that stress the humanity of Christ and yet recall the conclusion that our forefathers have reached by examining all of the relevant biblical data and, thus, interpret those passages in the light of the hypostatic union. This does not impose a system on the Bible but, rather, interprets particular passages in the light of the whole teaching of Scripture.
In the end, all Christians engage in systematic theology-not at the professional level, necessarily, as those who study full-time to serve the ministers of the Word in their preaching-but as "the faithful." The question is never whether we will have a systematic theology but what kind of systematic theology we will have. Will it be a tangled ball of yarn? Will we merely inherit it without much questioning or investigation on our part? Will it be based on Scripture as its normative authority or will it rely more on reason, experience, and tradition than on solid exegesis?
Many of those who most vociferously denounce "systematic theology" as obscuring the plain reading of Scripture end up being among the most guilty of imposing their own system on the Bible precisely because they do not realize that this is what they are doing. Their unawareness that they have, in various ways, inherited a tradition and been formed by certain communal readings of Scripture keeps them unconscious of their own "big picture" ways of organizing the Scriptures into a systematic whole.
The Value of Systematic Theology
Systematic theology gets a bad bit of press these days. It is often associated with being hardheaded, arrogant, and more concerned about theology than the Bible. While there may be examples of these faults in people, these are not inherent virtues in systematic theology. Systematic theology is a necessary effort to understand God's revelation as a whole. The attempt is to give us greater insight in what God has revealed to us.
Mike Horton writes a helpful and instructional article on the value of systematic theology. He begins with the inherent liabilities before pointing out the value.
[W]e must be careful to keep our systems open to correction by accurate exegesis, that is, by accurate interpretation of biblical passages. And we must beware of equating our confessional and systematic theologies with Scripture itself. No responsible evangelical theologian has ever attributed final authority to any system. In fact, the Protestant scholastic successors of the great reformers especially stressed the splendid distinction between archetypal theology (God's own knowledge) and ectypal theology (our knowledge). Creatures will never attain a God's-eye view of anything, not even of themselves, but will always possess only a finite version of "the way things are." Our older theologians used to call this "ectypal theology" theologium viatorum-the theology of pilgrims on the way-to contrast it with the theologium beatorum -the theology of the glorified in heaven. All believers living today are equally pilgrims....
Good systematic theologians, regardless of their differences, always strive to approach Scripture as students rather than as masters. They also seek to gather together whatever Scripture says anywhere on the same topic and thus interpret the particular parts in the light of the whole, even as they once again test their conclusions about the whole in the light of what they find in Scripture's particular parts-and so on. This dance never ends on this side of Glory....
Systematic theology gives us a better understanding of what Scripture teaches in the whole and gives us an important larger context of the whole to read specific passages.
Every believer needs at least some "big picture" grasp of the doctrinal teaching of Scripture. While most readers would not come away from a Bible study with the sort of refinement exhibited in the Creed of Chalcedon, at least those trained through the teaching, the liturgical ascriptions of praise, the hymns, Sunday school, and catechism classes and sermons can get the most out of their inductive reading of Scripture precisely because they are already engaged in making deductions based on the whole system of Christian theology as they know it.
A well-trained believer will come to particular passages that stress the humanity of Christ and yet recall the conclusion that our forefathers have reached by examining all of the relevant biblical data and, thus, interpret those passages in the light of the hypostatic union. This does not impose a system on the Bible but, rather, interprets particular passages in the light of the whole teaching of Scripture.
In the end, all Christians engage in systematic theology-not at the professional level, necessarily, as those who study full-time to serve the ministers of the Word in their preaching-but as "the faithful." The question is never whether we will have a systematic theology but what kind of systematic theology we will have. Will it be a tangled ball of yarn? Will we merely inherit it without much questioning or investigation on our part? Will it be based on Scripture as its normative authority or will it rely more on reason, experience, and tradition than on solid exegesis?
Many of those who most vociferously denounce "systematic theology" as obscuring the plain reading of Scripture end up being among the most guilty of imposing their own system on the Bible precisely because they do not realize that this is what they are doing. Their unawareness that they have, in various ways, inherited a tradition and been formed by certain communal readings of Scripture keeps them unconscious of their own "big picture" ways of organizing the Scriptures into a systematic whole.
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