Monday, March 17, 2008

Rob Whittaker on Systematic Theology

"Many of us have a system, we may not have put a label on it, we may not even realize it is a system, it's the system of our denomination, it's the system of our parents, it's the system of our culture, it's the system of our education, etc. What we tend to do, is make all truth submissive to our system. Look at theology... when we find a bible verse that does not fit our system, what we tend to do is force the verse into our system, so for instance, if you believe God (describes calvinism) and you find a verse that says God wills all men to be saved, what do you do? You look into the greek and the word want, and you'll do some pretty fantastic expositional gymnastics, to make that verse fit your system...we all do that.... can I suggest to you a better method... could I encourage you, when you find some truth that doesn't fit your system, to be prepared to change your system... we make truths fit our system, rather than making our system submissive to the truth.... for example studying the stars is biblical theology, systematic theology is studying theology, where we join up the dots and put them into systems that we understand and can predict God...Some of you have a Calvinist system, some of you have a Charismatic/Pentecostal system, Lord bless you all, I'm not knocking systems I'm just saying: systems are helpful provided that you do not get tyrannized by them." - Rob Whittaker Principal of Capernwray Hall Bible School, England.

1 comment:

  1. One of the books I am reading (Metamorpha by Kyle Strobel) just talked about this. It wasn't so much about doctrine or theology, but world view.

    Basically saying that so often we let our cultural understanding interpret the Bible, but we need to let the Bible form our cultural understanding.

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