Austin's Blog

Scripture is the basis for any systematic theologian to develop their doctrine. Why? Because it holds the supreme authority within the church and, ultimately, over everyone and everything. To say Scripture possesses authority is to affirm that it is endowed with the authority of God himself. When Scripture speaks, God speaks. When one obeys any portion of holy writ, he or she is obeying God. When one disobeys its commands, he or she is disobeying God. The systematician’s primary task then is to articulate in detail what the Bible teaches from cover to cover on any given scriptural topic. Indeed, Systematic Theology is the attempt to summarize what the Bible teaches on one topic in a full and comprehensive fashion.

An important question to ask of the theological task is, “How do we become persuaded that the claims of Scripture to be God’s Word are true?”[1] Indeed, such a question has always been asked of the Church for herself and from her skeptics for hundreds of years. Various confessions articulate the reasons why Christians are convinced of the claims of the Bible. The Second Helvetic Confession article 1 asserts that the authority of Scripture does not originate in man but in God, “We believe and confess the canonical Scriptures of the holy prophets and apostles of both Testaments to be the true Word of God, and to have sufficient authority of themselves, not of men. For God himself spoke to the fathers, prophets, apostles, and still speaks to us through the Holy Scriptures.”[2] Noting that the authority and dignity of Scripture are not derived from the church per the position of the Roman Catholic Church, The Belgic Confession article 5 argues as follows:

We receive all these books, and these only, as holy and canonical, for the regulation, foundation, and conformation of our faith; believing without any doubt, all things contained in them, not so much because the Church receives and approves them as such, but more especially because the Holy Ghost witnesses in our hearts, that they are from God, whereof they carry the evidence in themselves. For the very blind are able to perceive that the things foretold in them are fulfilling.[3]

The Westminster Confession of Faith Chapter 1:5 goes further and lists various streams of evidences why one is convinced to hold the Bible in high esteem while noting the primacy of the Spirit’s illuminating work:

We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the Church to a high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scripture. And the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is, to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of man’s salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God: yet notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.[4]

These three confessions highlight why Christians have believed the Bible to be authoritative. What of modern interpreters? The goal of this blog series is an examination of a litany of modern systematic theologies to determine why the authors believe the authority of the Bible is to be accepted. What grounds their pursuit of Systematic Theology as it relates to Scripture? Why use the Bible, mining it for its truths in a holistic and comprehensive fashion. I will restrict this brief perusal to ST texts and not examine the full breadth of each scholar’s scholarship. While this may seem unduly restrictive, the interests of this pursuit are pinpointed for a reason. Most of us do not read the full depths of a scholar’s works when we come to the task of Systematic Theology, especially the laymen in the pew. Furthermore, the ST usually stands as the scholar’s magnum opus.

[1] Wayne A. Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Zondervan, 1994), 73.

[2] Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom with a History and Critical Notes. Vol. 3, The Evangelical Protestant Creeds. (Baker, 1983), 237.

[3] Ibid., 386-387.

[4] Ibid., 602-603.