Systematic Theology
Definition
Systematic theology is the theological discipline that organizes the whole content of biblical revelation into “an all-embracing and self-consistent system,” treating each doctrine in its relation to the others rather than in isolation.1 Also called dogmatic theology, it works from the conviction that although Scripture contains no ready-made system of formal dogmas, “the material for them is all to be found in it,” so that systematic theology is the truth of Scripture “absorbed and reproduced by the thinking consciousness of the Christian theologian.”2 It is one of several theological disciplines, alongside exegetical, historical, and practical theology.3
Historical Development
The discipline is older than its modern names. Protestant theologians of the immediate post-Reformation period followed the Lutheran Philip Melanchthon’s Loci Communes (“Common Places,” 1521), a commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences and Paul’s letter to the Romans that outlined the principal truths of the Christian faith under rubrics such as God, creation, sin, law, and grace.4 Over time the looser term loci gave way to theologia, qualified as “didactic,” “systematic,” or “positive” to distinguish it from moral and practical theology, and eventually to “dogmatics,” a term that anchors the discipline in the church’s normative teachings, or dogmas, themselves grounded in Scripture’s own authority.4
During the seventeenth century, Reformed scholastic treatment of the loci grew increasingly technical, and the covenant theologian Johannes Cocceius reacted against it. In his Doctrine of the Covenant and Testament of God (1648), Cocceius reorganized the whole material of dogmatics around the covenant idea, hoping for a more biblical and less scholastic result.5 Herman Bavinck judges the experiment a caution rather than a model: Cocceius so sharply distinguished the successive covenant dispensations, treating the history of the covenant of grace as a series of abrogations, that “the unity of God’s covenant promise was lost,” and the doctrine of God was reduced to a mere introduction to the doctrine of salvation, with “any boundary between the history of revelation and the content of dogmatics” erased.5 Later still, under the influence of Kant’s denial that God could be known, dogmatic theology’s own content shrank as debates over method and epistemology grew to occupy the space earlier theologians had spent on the doctrines themselves.6
Branches of Systematic Theology
A. A. Hodge classed systematic theology as one of six branches of what he called theological encyclopaedia, alongside sciences auxiliary to theology, apologetics, exegetical theology, practical theology, and historical theology.3 Within systematic theology itself, Hodge grouped Christian doctrine under six further heads, following what he called the synthetical method: starting from the nature of God and tracing his purposes and acts through creation, providence, and redemption to their final consummation.7 Theology proper covers the existence, attributes, and triune personality of God, along with his eternal purposes and temporal acts. Anthropology covers the creation and nature of man, his original state, and the fall. Soteriology covers the plan, execution, and effects of salvation, including Christology, the person and work of Christ, and the office of the Holy Spirit. Christian ethics covers the principles and duties Scripture reveals for human conduct. Eschatology covers death, the intermediate state, the second coming, the resurrection, and the final judgment. Ecclesiology covers the church’s nature, constitution, and government.7 Systematic theology, on this account, “roots itself in a thorough exegesis at once scientific and spiritual.”8
Objections and Responses
Doesn’t organizing Scripture’s teaching under topical headings like God, sin, and salvation impose a system foreign to the text, in place of what Scripture itself actually says? Bavinck answers that Scripture supplies no formal dogmas ready-made, but does supply, in an organic rather than mechanical way, all the material a system draws on: dogmas are not extracted from Scripture “like water from a well,” but grow from it the way a plant grows from a seed, so that dogmatic theology remains, at every point, “the truth of Scripture, absorbed and reproduced by the thinking consciousness of the Christian theologian.”2
If systematic theology should stay this close to Scripture, why not simply organize dogmatics around Scripture’s own historical unfolding, the way Cocceius attempted with the covenant idea, rather than around inherited topical categories? Bavinck’s own assessment of Cocceius’s project supplies the answer: an organizing principle drawn too tightly from one biblical theme can distort as much as it clarifies. Cocceius’s covenant-centered reorganization, intended as a more biblical alternative to scholastic dogmatics, ended up losing “the unity of God’s covenant promise” and collapsing the line between the history of revelation and the content of dogmatics itself, so that “the distinctive work of dogmatic theology” was absorbed into what Bavinck calls “a specious ‘biblical theology.’”5 The topical categories systematic theology uses (the doctrine of God, of humanity, of salvation) are themselves drawn from the shape of the biblical material as a whole, tested and revised against Scripture rather than fixed in advance.
Related Doctrines
References
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Archibald Alexander Hodge, Outlines of Theology (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1879), chap. 1, “Christian Theology; Its Several Branches; and Their Relation to Other Departments of Human Knowledge,” 17. ↩
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Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 1, “Dogmatic Theology as a Science.” ↩ ↩2
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Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 1, “Dogmatic Theology as a Science.” ↩ ↩2
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Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 1, “Dogmatic Theology as a Science.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3
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Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 1, “Dogmatic Theology as a Science.” ↩
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Hodge, Outlines of Theology, chap. 1, 24. ↩