Theology is the study of God. During the remainder of this year we are going to think about God according to five of the categories of what is called Systematic Theology... in fact, you should have begun taking notes and will begin commenting and quoting readings and categorizing this knowledge into five sections of your notebook.
We can say that "Systematic Theology is the study of God with this knowledge divided into categories"
The categories we will use are:
Bibliology (the study OF the Bible)
Theology Proper (the study of the nature and attributes of God)
Christology (the study of Christ)
Pneumatology (the study of the Holy Spirit)
Biblical Anthropology (the study of man, sin and salvation - this one is really a combination of three categories, but we will simplify things by using this one category)
Your notebook should have these five categories among the dividers.
As a Modernist (kind of), I am interested in knowledge but I want to say a word about mystery.
I want to address the amazing amount of really cool ideas in the Bible that seem to defy human understanding. As finite humans seeking to study who God is, we cannot answer everything, we cannot come to a full explanation of all things. We are not God. Our minds are limited, they are fallen. There are some things that I take on faith. My heart believes and the Bible informs my mind,[1] but - there are some things in the study of God that are paradoxical, mysterious and the Modernist cannot answer every question... YET, there is clearly enough knowledge that we DO understand enough about God to know God well in a relationship.
Yes, paradox exists[2]...
The church has recognized mysteries that are hard to wrap our brains around,
BUT we can know God and know Him well...
THUS, I have found that the categories of systematic theology are a way to seek that understanding...
now on to Bibliology
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[1] A student of mine in class mentioned this quote by G.K.Chesterton, which turned out to be from his amazing book, Orthodoxy: "You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it." This is a great quote. While googling it, I found this blog post which is also very interesting. It's title is "G. K. Chesterton, Postmodernist", click here to read it.
[2] We can wrestle with eternally based ideas, mysteries and paradoxes like:
- the nature of the Trinity
- the hypostatic union
- predestination and free will
- God outside of time and space
- the existence of time itself
- and so on
without KNOWING the answers... Can we wrestle with ideas and slowly grow in understanding without being certain about the formulae? I hope so... that is what make the journey of learning and knowing God interesting.