Jesus Loves Religious People Too

Jesus is a friend of sinners. It is a glorious gospel truth that Jesus befriends those who are entangled in sinful and complicated circumstances and loves them even when ostensibly religious people do not. We see this countercultural acceptance of sinners throughout the Gospel accounts, as Jesus extends divine forgiveness to tax collectors and “sinners,” embraces and reverses the uncleanness of the leprous and demonic, and even dares to enjoy table fellowship with prodigals and prostitutes, whose lawlessness was viewed by the religious people of the day as an impediment to God’s coming kingdom.
By contrast, Jesus reserves his harshest words of judgment for religious people, the scribes and Pharisees, in particular. He describes them as white washed tombs—respectable and presentable on the outside but filled with stinking corpses on the inside (Matt 23:27). He calls them a “brood of vipers,” thus identifying them Satan himself and warning them of the judgment of hell (Matt 23:33). Ironically, Jesus warns religious people of the severest forms of eschatological judgment.

And yet, Jesus still shows compassion to the chronically religious. After pronouncing woe after woe upon the scribes and Pharisees, Jesus can still speak words of tenderness and mercy on their behalf: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!” (Matt 23:27). And in one of his most striking parables, Jesus holds out hope that even self-righteous Pharisees might repent and enter the kingdom of God.

In the parable of the two sons, Jesus describes two responses to a father’s call to work in his vineyard.

What do you think? A man had two sons. And he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ And he answered, ‘I will not,’ but afterward he changed his mind and went. And he went to the other son and said the same. And he answered, ‘I go, sir,’ but did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you (Matt 21:28-31).

At first blush, the two sons in the parable seem to parallel exactly the two groups whom Jesus is addressing. The first son would seem to represent the tax collectors and prostitutes and the second son the scribes and Pharisees. To be sure, this does seem to be the basic application Jesus is drawing from the parable. Even though the tax collectors and sinners started out in rebellion, they repented and obeyed the call of Christ. And conversely, the scribes and Pharisees might claim to be obeying God, but their rejection of Jesus contradicts this claim.

But Jesus then adds an interesting twist in his application of the story:

For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him. And even when you saw it, you did not afterward change your minds and believe him (Matt 21:32, emphasis added).

Notice the repetition of the language of repentance: “afterward change your minds.” This was the exact same language applied to the first son in the parable. So, it seems that Jesus is placing the scribes and Pharisees into the category of the first son, at least potentially. In other words, Jesus still holds out to them the invitation to repent and enter the kingdom of God. Their rejection of John and his message doesn’t have to be final. There is still space for repentance, even for religious people.

Think about how much time Jesus spent dialoging with the religious leaders of his day. Yes, he rebuked them, but he didn’t ignore them. Nor did he needlessly provoke them. He warned them in the strongest of terms, but he also befriended them (see his meal with Simon the Pharisee in Luke 7:36-49) and counted some of them among his disciples (Nicodemus and Joseph). To be clear, Jesus did not leave religious people in their self-righteousness and judgmentalism, any more than he left tax collectors in their extortion or prostitutes in their immorality. His call to “go and sin no more” was equally applicable to the religious as to the irreligious. But the invitation was still mercifully extended to all.

One cannot read the Gospels without getting a sense of Jesus’ compassion for all kinds of people. That is good news for recovering prostitutes and recovering Pharisees alike. Jesus is a friend of sinners, it is true. But he is also a friend to people who often struggle to see and repent of their sin. After all, Jesus loves religious people, too.

What Is the Gospel? A Reformed Orthodox Perspective

I suppose it’s safe to say that there has been a revival of interest in all things “gospel” among evangelicals in the last several years.  Evangelical churches, organizations, conferences, blogs, sermons, ministries, and writings are as likely to feature the language of “gospel” as any other biblical theme.  And with good reason.  Our very name, evangelical, explicitly denotes our commitment to the evangel—the gospel—and all that it entails for Christian faith and life.  Evangelical publishing houses have been especially interested in producing books that seek to define, recover, revisit, reclaim or rediscover the biblical gospel.  These are praiseworthy endeavors.  Each generation of Christian believers must reflect anew on the ancient message that is, as the apostle Paul instructed us, “of first importance” (1 Corinthians 15:3).

But in our attempts to summarize the main contours of the gospel, we should remember that we are not the first generation of Christians to wrestle with this question.  We are not the first Christians to consider how broad or how narrow to define “gospel.”  We are not the first Christians to ask how the four Gospels relate to the one gospel of Jesus Christ.  We are not the first Christians to make distinctions between the gospel and other aspects of God’s revelation.

The period of Reformed Orthodoxy (roughly 1520-1725) provided many helpful answers to this most basic Christian question: What is the gospel?  The reflections of Amandus Polanus (1561-1610), one of the most significant theologians of the period, are particularly insightful in this regard.  Richard Muller summarizes Polanus’s definition of the gospel like this:

After completing his analysis of the law, Polanus proceeds to a discussion of the Gospel, “that whole sum of doctrine concerning Christ, already shewn and manifested.” The Law-Gospel contrast here…manifests a concern for the historical dispensation of salvation while the discussion of Gospel and Christ together manifests the inseparability of the incarnate Word from his historical work as fulfilled in the Gospel Word. Indeed, Polanus argues a threefold meaning of evangelium [gospel]: it indicates first the historia Christi or the historical books of the disciples concerning Christ, as stated by Mark (1:1), “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Second, evangelium, Gospel, indicates generaliter [generally] the doctrine of Christ and his Apostles, and third, it indicates specialiter ac stricte [specifically and strictly] the “most blessed…work of redemption of the human race through Christ” (Richard Muller, Christ and the Decree, 133).

Several features of Polanus’s argument are especially relevant for the contemporary discussion about gospel definitions.  

First, the Law-Gospel distinction most often associated with Lutheranism was no less prominent in Reformed discussions of the gospel.  God’s demands must be distinguished from God’s promises.  The New Covenant established by Christ is not dependent upon its members’ obedience.  Instead, it is based upon the obedience of Christ, whose righteousness is freely and unconditionally given to believers in the gospel.

Second, Christ and his benefits belong together in the gospel announcement.  As Muller puts it, Polanus’ discussion of the gospel “manifests the inseparability of the incarnate Word from his historical work as fulfilled in the Gospel Word.”  The gospel is about Christ—his life, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension.  It is not, first and foremost, about us.  At the same time, the gospel announcement includes, imbedded within it, the good news of Christ’s work on behalf of sinners.  To put it in terms of systematic loci, the person of Christ cannot be separated from the work of Christ.

Third, the gospel can be defined in broader and narrower terms.  The gospel can mean strictly the good news of salvation in Christ: the “most blessed…work of redemption of the human race through Christ.”  But the term can also stand in for the whole of the apostolic witness: the doctrines of Christ and his Apostles set forth in the New Testament.   And in yet another sense, the gospel denotes most fundamentally the story of Jesus: his life, death and resurrection as recorded in the four Gospels.  Polanus exhibited a remarkable flexibility when offering a definition of the gospel.  Perhaps, this example should caution contemporary evangelicals against overly restrictive definitions of the gospel.  Perhaps we could avoid some needless debates by emulating Polanus’s flexibility.

Finally, and related to the previous point, Polanus rooted the good news of salvation in the historical accomplishment of Christ.  The announcement of individual salvation is not abstracted from the story of Jesus.  But as we saw in the second point above, neither was the story of Jesus divorced from its salvific implications.  Once again, the person and work of Christ cannot be severed.  Both are the subject of the apostolic gospel.

Evangelicals may choose not to follow Polanus on every point.  We may seek a different answer to the question—What is the gospel?—than the one he provides.  But for the sake of historical humility—and the sanctification that comes from being sharpened by other believers—we ought at least to consider carefully how he and others in the past have defined this doctrine “of first importance”: the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Oxygen of Our Spiritual Lives

Carl Trueman thinks “we need to go to church to expect it to do things for us.” He’s right, too.

 

What he has in mind isn’t the consumeristic approach to ministry that dominates the American evangelical landscape.  He isn’t thinking of coffee shops and popular children’s programs.  Instead he is thinking of the crucial role that confession of sin and assurance of pardon plays in the church’s corporate worship.  This weekly reminder of the Gospel is, in his words, “the oxygen of our spiritual lives.”  This is how he describes the experience:

At some point prior to the sermon each Sunday in my church, the minister or elder leading the service will read a passage of Scripture designed to expose the moral failure of fallen humanity before God. Then he will lead the congregation in a corporate prayer of confession. Finally, when he closes the prayer, he will read a short passage (often just a verse or two) which speaks of the forgiveness of sins in Christ. The dramatic theological movement of the service at that point is profound: the congregation goes from being reminded and convicted of their sin, to calling out to God for forgiveness, to being reminded that in Christ God has acted in a startling and decisive way to cast our sin as far away as the east is from the west. We are reminded of the entire gospel, from fall to redemption to consummation, in the space of just a few minutes.

I am grateful that my own church also includes this confession/assurance element in our corporate gatherings.  There is something deeply moving and comforting about this weekly epxerience: a body of covenanted believers confessing together our unworthiness and sin and then hearing the word of gospel absolution from one of our leaders, made secure to those who believe by God’s unbounded grace and mercy in his Son.  Trueman explains the significance of this corporate setting:

It is not, of course, that I do not know this Monday to Saturday; it is not that I do not read the gospel every day in my Bible; it is not that I do not confess my sins during the week and look then to Christ. But this is a word from outside, God’s work spoken to me by another human being, which lifts my head once again and assures my conscience that I am clean despite the filth I so often choose to wade in. So often I enter church weighted down with care; when I am once again reminded of God’s rich forgiveness in Christ, the weight is wonderfully lifted from my shoulders.

I hope that more churches, including those with relatively “low church” services like our own Southern Baptist churches, would work to include a time of confession of sin and assurance of pardon into their corporate gatherings.  This weeky reminder of the Gospel of God’s Son is, after all, the “oxygen of our spiritual lives–those words of rebuke that cut down our pride and self-sufficiency, those words of brokenness that allow us to call out to God for his mercy, and that word that comes from outside that assures us that all of our sins have been dealt with in Christ and that we are thus liberated to give ourselves in lives of service to our brethren and to our neighbours because our own debt has been paid.”

(HT Nathan Finn)

It’s Meant for Sinners

One of the benefits of celebrating the Lord’s Supper more regularly than the quarterly pattern that many of our churches observe is the influence that the Supper exerts on the other worship activities of the Lord’s Day.  My own church celebrates the Lord’s Supper on the first Sunday of every month, and I could see the benefit of doing so even more frequently.  Knowing that we will come to the Lord’s Table at the end of a worship service gives added significance to the prayers, readings, songs and sermons of our corporate gatherings.  The Supper looms large in the worship service as a reminder of our sin and God’s provision of forgiveness in Christ.

Recently, our pastor’s sermon text was Luke 12:35-48, where Jesus warns his disciples to be ready for his return.  Jesus’ words seemed especially relevant as we prepared our hearts to receive the Lord’s Supper: “Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will dress himself for service and have them recline at table, and he will come and serve them” (Luke 12:37).  Isn’t this astonishing?  The Master returns, not to recline at table and be served, but to dress himself for service, to have his servants recline at table, and to serve them!  This shocking reversal of roles characterizes the very heart of Christ’s mission: “For even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). 

And isn’t this exactly what the Lord’s Supper is all about?  As Michael Horton has pointed out, the covenant ratification that takes place in the Supper does not involve God’s people standing in his presence and promising that they will serve him (as at Sinai; Exodus 24).  Instead, it involves God himself, in the person of his Son, sitting his people down and girding himself to serve them.  The blood of the New Covenant doesn’t ratify our words—“All that the Lord has spoken we will do” (Exodus 24:7)—but Christ’s—“This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20).  The Supper isn’t about our giving, but about Christ’s: “This is my body given for you” (Luke 22:19).  As such, it is a foretaste of the heavenly banquet which the church, as a sanctified bride, will one day share with her Messianic groom.

This emphasis on the Lord’s giving can sometimes be obscured by the way that we approach the Lord’s Table.  Taking our cue from 1 Corinthians 11:28, we rightly wish to “examine” ourselves so that we do not take the Supper in an “unworthy manner.”  But we distort this passage if we begin to think that it calls for worthy recipients, rather than worthy participation, at the Lord’s Table.  Some might be so trained to think of the Supper as an occasion for introspection that they dread the meal.  In previous centuries, some churches were so fearful about taking the Supper in an unworthy manner that few would actually participate when the elements were distributed.  Surely something is amiss when believers who are perhaps most in need of grace are hesitant to receive the sanctifying grace of Christ in the Lord’s Supper.  Examination is good.  But being overly-introspective is counter-productive, because it diverts us from the very gospel of grace that is displayed before us at the Lord’s Table. 

After hearing Christ’s Word and receiving Christ’s Supper on that Lord’s Day, I was reminded once again of the astounding mercy of God to give sinners like us these means of grace.  I was also reminded of the story, relayed to me by one of my seminary professors, of the old Scots minister who once noticed a young lady in his congregation so gripped by guilt over her sin that she hesitated to take the Lord’s Supper.  The minister’s counsel to her is worth remembering every time we come to the Lord’s Table: “Take it, Lass. It’s meant for sinners.”

Learning the Language of Zion

One of the subtle temptations of Christian ministry is the tendency to assume that all of our teaching must be immediately and specifically applicable to our hearers.  This statement needs qualification.  To be sure, all of our teaching and preaching should be ultimately applicable to our hearers.  The Christian faith is not ultimately a pure science but an applied science: a body of truth that demands a response of faith and obedience.  Christian sermons cannot be reduced to textual commentary.  Christian college and seminary lectures cannot terminate on merely theoretical knowledge.  Christian parenting cannot consist in mere information transfer.  No. Christian ministry, whether ecclesial or scholastic or parental, must be applicable if it is to live up to its name: “ministry,” that is, service in and for the body of Christ.

But having said that, we make a mistake if we think that all of our teaching must be immediately and specifically applicable to our hearers.  If we set up these criteria as a litmus test for our teaching, we may end up truncating our message.  If we demand that our teaching be immediately and specifically applicable, we will only teach and preach those things which we subjectively sense are immediately and specifically applicable.  This temptation is manifest in many pulpits that focus almost exclusively on needs that are already felt by the congregants.  Turn on a typical Christian radio program and you are more likely to hear a sermon on how to be a better husband, father, and financial steward (all worthy topics) than you are to hear a sermon on how to understand Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith alone (the more fundamental basis for these other worthy topics).  Obscure Scripture passages are avoided.  Difficult doctrines—or perhaps all doctrines—are ignored. 

Perhaps this is a uniquely American phenomenon.  We live in a pragmatic culture.  We want to know what the message means for us.  Give us something practical—give us something to do—or else the message seems irrelevant.   But I suspect this temptation cuts across cultural lines.  It is rooted in our creatureliness (as those who were made to obey God) and our fallenness (as those who mistakenly think that we can establish our own righteousness).

And this temptation isn’t just relegated to the seeker-oriented mega-church pastors that we might have in mind.  Many preachers and teachers who are sound in doctrine might nevertheless be tempted to focus exclusively on matters of application: how to engage this or that cultural artifact from a Christian worldview, how to respond to the latest political developments from a Christian perspective, how to prevent our preaching from being “boring,” and so forth.  All of these things are worthy endeavors.  We should seek to view our culture and our politics through a Christian lens.  We should want our preaching to be relevant and engaging and heart-felt.  But at the same time, I think there is a danger in assuming that all of our hearers share the doctrinal base from which we wish to accomplish these things.  We assume that our hearers know the language of Zion—the grammar of the Christian faith.  But in an increasingly biblically-illiterate culture, we cannot afford to make that assumption.  Grammar isn’t always fun and exciting, but it is essential if we want to read well and function well in society.  Similarly, wading through the sometimes difficult issues of Christian doctrine may not always be thrilling, but it is crucial if we want to live well as citizens of Christ’s kingdom.

So what do we do to avoid this application-centric approach to Christian ministry?  Here are several suggestions (Yes, I see the irony. Let him without sin…).

1. We shouldn’t be ashamed to preach sermons and teach lessons that are explicitly doctrinal.  If biblical doctrine comes across as boring or irrelevant, then the problem lies with the preacher not the message.  Also, to repeat the distinction made above, some doctrinal issues might not be immediately applicable but will be ultimately applicable.  For example, a sermon or lesson on the difficult doctrine of God’s providence might seem theoretical and impractical at the time.  But when unemployment or cancer or death comes, we will be glad to have the theological concepts necessary to make biblical sense of our suffering.
2. We should preach the whole counsel of God, including difficult and obscure passages.  This may seem like an obvious exhortation for many readers of this blog. But even in theologically-minded circles, it seems to me that we still have a long way to go in really listening to the uncomfortable portions of God’s Word.
3. In an academic context, some theological disciplines will be more theoretical than others, but this shouldn’t deter us from pursuing them.  We need Christian scholars who will engage academic issues that people in the pews will likely never pursue.  Not everyone is called to study the culture and language of the Ancient Near East or the technical details of linguistics or the tools of analytic philosophy or the specifics of seventh century Christological controversies.  But some Christians are.  All of these things are ultimately applicable to the life and ministry of the church, but they may not be immediately applicable.  That’s okay.
4. We should not only catechize our children but our adults.  This may take place in formal catechesis, but it may also take place in a “What We Believe” Sunday School class or in small groups that focus on specific doctrinal truths.  We can no longer assume that the people in our churches know basic Bible doctrine.  Leaving to one side the important theological concepts developed throughout church history (like the hypostatic union), many Christians have trouble articulating a proper understanding of basic New Testament terms like justification, sanctification, and regeneration.  We need application, but we also need to know what we are applying.

So what do you think?  Are there other ways we can better communicate the basics of the Christian faith?

What Is the Fundamental Reformation Legacy?

What is the fundamental Reformation legacy?  Is it a matter of content or method?  Did the Reformation leave us a deposit of truth: the recovered content of the biblical gospel?  Or did the Reformation provide us with a theological method: a willingness to part ways with tradition in order to give Scripture a fresh reading?

N. T. Wright believes it is the latter. He wonders how the Reformers might respond to contemporary theological proposals:

Of one thing we may be absolutely sure. If the Reformers could return and address us today, they would not say, “We got it all right; you must follow our exegesis and theology and implement it precisely as it stands.” What they would say is, “You must follow our method: read and study scripture for all it’s worth, and let it do its work in the world, in and through you and your churches.” They would not be surprised if, as a result, we came up at some points with different, or differently nuanced, theological and practical proposals. They would encourage us to go where scripture led, using all the tools available to us, and being prepared to challenge all human traditions, including the “Reformation” traditions themselves, insofar as scripture itself encourages us to do so (The Last Word, 77).

In  his address to the 2010 Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society, Wright made essentially the same point, with a bit more vitriol:

Now I discover that some from what I had thought were Protestant quarters are accusing me of something called “biblicism.”  I’m not sure what that is, exactly.  What I am sure of is what I learned forty years ago from Luther and Calvin that the primary task of a teacher of the church is to search Scripture ever more deeply and to critique all human traditions in the light of that, not to assemble a magisterium on a platform and tell the worried faithful what the tradition says and hence how they are to understand Scripture.  To find people in avowedly Protestant colleges taking what is basically a Catholic position would be funny if it was not so serious.  To find them then accusing me of crypto-Catholicism is worse.  To find them using against me the rhetoric that the official church in the 1520s used against Luther – “How dare you say something different from what we’ve always believed all these centuries” – again suggests that they have not only no sense of irony, but no sense of history.  I want to reply, how dare you propose a different theological method from that of Luther and Calvin, a method of using human tradition to tell you what Scripture said?  On this underlying question, I am standing firm with the great Reformers against those who, however Baptist in their official theology, are in fact neo-Catholics (JETS 54, no. 1: 51).

So how should evangelicals respond to these claims?  There is a sense in which Wright is touching on an important point.  Certainly evangelicals, like the Reformers before them, should give Scripture pride of place in their theological formulations.  Even our confessional standards should be open to revision, if our churches become convinced that Scripture demands it.  Surely this principle of sola Scriptura is a significant part of the Reformation legacy that evangelicals should not abandon.  But at the same time, is this all that the Reformation has left us?  Did the Reformation give us an abstract method unfettered from any specific doctrinal content?  It seems that Wright wants to have the formal principle of the Reformation–sola Scriptura—without the material principle of the Reformation—justification by faith alone.  But can one rightly claim the mantle of the Reformers if one makes the kind of significant revisions to their doctrine of justification that those like Wright have made?  Steve Duby over at the Theology Forum blog has it about right, it seems to me: “I think one of the problems [with Wright’s reasoning] is the insinuation that the theologians of the Reformation prized a methodological breakthrough over a material one.”

Furthermore, it strikes me as a bit naïve to think that we can return to Scripture unencumbered by our Reformation heritage.  Nor should we want to.  To be fair, Wright’s version of “critical realism” acknowledges our situatedness in a particular tradition, but I wonder if he applies this epistemology consistently.  In any event, the Reformers themselves didn’t reject tradition out of hand.  They, too, sought to align their readings of Scripture with those Christian interpreters who came before them.  It is a flat-footed reading of the Reformation to assume that it was a protest against any role for tradition in the theological task.  It seems to me that one of the positive developments of the theological interpretation movement, of which N. T. Wright is a part, is its reminder to us that we do not read Scripture as detached individuals.  Instead, we read Scripture in community with other believers, including those in our catholic, Reformation, evangelical, and denominational traditions.  This doesn’t mean that Scripture cannot correct our traditions.  It can and should.  But we run the risk of “chronological snobbery” if we think our “fresh readings” of Scripture are always going to be superior exegetically to the readings of the past.

In the end, I would suggest that this whole question—did the Reformation give us content or method?—presents a false choice.  I know it isn’t fashionable in some circles today, but I still believe that the Reformers’ interpretation of Paul’s gospel was largely correct.  In other words, when we return to Scripture in order to give it a fresh hearing, I believe that what we find there is precisely what the Reformers found: the good news that God justifies the ungodly by faith alone in Christ alone.

Judge with Right Judgment: Making the Move from Biblical Theology to Systematic Theology

This post also appeared at the Credo magazine blog.

Last week, I posted a short article on the differences between Charles Hodge and Herman Bavinck with regard to theological method.  Bavinck criticized Hodge’s “empirical” method by which he treated the Bible as a “store-house of facts” that must be collected and organized by the theologian.  In its place Bavinck offered his own “genetic-synthetic” method, by which he sought to tether dogmatics more closely to the theological development already present in Scripture. 

But this insistence upon the organic relation between biblical theology and systematic theology should not be misunderstood as a conflation of the two disciplines.  Bavinck acknowledged that the two have different forms and methods, even if they share a common source, namely, God’s self-revelation in Holy Scripture.  Dogmatic or systematic theology arranges theological truth according to various topics, or loci, such as God, man/sin, Christ, salvation, and so forth.  Biblical theology is organized according to the various corpi of biblical literature and ultimately along the plotline of redemptive history.  Or, as Gerhardus Vos famously put it, biblical theology draws a line and systematic theology draws a circle. 

Still, this way of distinguishing the form and method of the two disciplines does not necessarily show how the two are related.  It seems to me that more work needs to be done in order to show how one moves from biblical theology to systematic theology.  Systematic theology must, in one very limited sense, go beyond the Bible; that is, it must do more than simply repeat the words of Scripture.  It must also explain all that Scripture says about a particular topic in a way that is intelligible to the contemporary culture.  It also must develop theological models or concepts that help preserve, explain, and defend all that Scripture says on a given topic, especially in the face of heretical or unbelieving challenges.  But how can we know that the concepts of systematic theology accurately reflect the theological developments already present in Scripture?  As Kevin Vanhoozer has stated the problem, how can our systematic theology be “biblical”?  How can we make the move “from canon to concept”? 

One of the most promising proposals in recent years on this question comes from Lutheran theologian David Yeago.  Yeago claims that a doctrine can be faithful to Scripture even if it uses terms that are very different from the ones used in Scripture.  Theology does not simply repeat the language of the biblical concept.  Instead, theology seeks to render the same judgment as the biblical text in a way that addresses the needs of the present context.  The classical example of this problem is the Nicene dogma—that Christ is of the same substance (homoousia) as the Father—and the question of its faithfulness to Scripture.  Yeago specifically addresses Philippians 2, where the Apostle Paul declares that Christ is in “the form of God” and possesses “equality” with God. Obviously, the Scriptures do not speak of Christ in terms of Nicaea’s homoousia.  But an excellent case can be made that this doctrine renders the same judgment as Philippians 2, albeit in different conceptual form.[1]  Systematic theology is not simply a rote repetition of biblical theology, but is instead a faithful application of Scripture in different contexts.  John Frame has defined theology precisely in terms of this application step.  According to Frame, theology is “the application of God’s Word by persons to all areas of life.”[2]  Frame’s definition emphasizes the fact that theology is not merely an academic discipline but is intended to “meet the spiritual needs of people, to promote godliness and spiritual health.”[3]  This application takes various forms, so that, in this view, systematic theology covers a wide range of other theological disciplines: philosophical theology, pastoral theology, apologetics, evangelism, church life, ethics, and so forth.  Seen in this light, systematic theology is essentially applied biblical theology.  And in order to produce a faithful application, systematic theology must seek to render the same judgments as Scripture itself. No doubt, there will be disagreements about which rendering of a doctrine is more faithful to the biblical judgments, but these are the kinds of questions that systematic theology must continue to grapple with.

In short, systematic theology involves judging “with right judgment” (John 7:24).  Systematic theology requires the theologian, having traced a particular topic along the redemptive-historical plotline of Scripture (biblical theology), to articulate the doctrine in a manner that remains faithful to this biblical development and that speaks to the needs of the contemporary context (systematic theology).  Thus, systematic theology is organically related to biblical theology, but it isn’t simply reducible to biblical theology.

[1]David S. Yeago, “The New Testament and the Nicene Dogma: A Contribution to the Recovery of Theological Exegesis,” in The Theological Interpretation of Scripture: Classic and Contemporary Readings, ed. Stephen E. Fowl (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 87-100.

[2]Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, 76.

[3]Ibid., 81.