The Next Generation and Systematic Theology

Last week Tanya and I had the privilege of heading up to Katoomba for a conference entitled NextGen 2012.  Basically, imagine 400-500 young Christian men and women who lead youth groups or children’s ministries getting together to think hard about how to read and teach from Scripture.  It’s great.

In God’s grace over the last three years I’ve been able to teach about Systematic Theology.  Amongst the myriad privileges in doing this, I’ve found it amazing to see young people start ‘connecting the doctrinal dots’.  The method which is taught is highly centered on Scripture and attempts to get the delegates to manually search the Scriptures and bring the pieces together.  The methodology is illustrated by examining the doctrine of the Resurrection – which really opens the eyes of the delegates (especially the implications for the renewed creation!).  Finally, the delegates get to choose their own doctrines to examine – in my group some topics were: ‘faith’, ‘the person of the Holy Spirit’, ‘the visible church’, ‘multiculturalism and ecclesiology’, ‘and neighbour-love’.  I love that part of the course!

If there were any critique of the course material I would suggest that firstly, it is unhelpfully dependent on Abp. Peter Jensen’s “The Revelation of God”, and secondly that there is no mention of philosophy or historical theology.  The latter is a shame because historical theology provides a colourful illustration of what systematic theology is, and how it operates. Not to mention that we are traditioned creatures situated in theological traditions!

Anyway, I came across this great little explanation of Systematic Theology today.  Enjoy!

The imperative task of the dogmatician is to think God’s thoughts after him and to trace their unity. His work is not finished until he has mentally absorbed this unity and set it forth in a dogmatics.

Accordingly, he does not come to God’s revelation with a ready-made system in order, as best he can, to force its content into it.

On the contrary, even in his system a theologian’s sole responsibility is to think God’s thoughts after him and to reproduce the unity that is objectively present in the thoughts of God and has been recorded for the eye of faith in Scripture.

—Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics Vol. 1: Prolegomena (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), p. 44.