The October 2020 issue of Table Talk is devoted to covenant theology. In an article entitied the Covenant in History, R. Scot Clark writes:
In the history of theology, the elements of what we know as covenant theology--the covenant of redemption before time between the persons of the Trinity, the covenant of works with Adam, the covenant of grace after the fall--have existed since the early church.
And here, in a recent (July, 2020) article on dispensationalism, entitled Dispensationism and the Early Church Fathers, William B. Hemsworth writes:
In this paper I will show that dispensationalism was not the invention of a 19th-century Biblical scholar, but that it has roots in the earliest days of the Christian church.
And of course there are the Baptist Successionalists, who argue that Baptists (not counting just "John-The") have been around since, you guessed it, the early church.
Apparently the early church fathers were covenant theologian dispensationalists who baptized infants and re-baptized them later, as adults, for good measure, and held regular pot-luck dinners, at least until they had their fill of green-bean casseroles. Their views on dancing (and eschatology) were presumably quite muddled.
Systematic theology. It sounds good, It sounds wholesome even. Who could not be in favor of Systematic theology?
Well, I'm not. It is a trap. In my opinion, it is humanly impossible to champion a systematic theology and be free of confirmation bias.
In my experience (and I was once there) as soon as you are heavily invested, your hermeneutic becomes: how can I make this passage fit my systematic theology? It devolves into a massive "cart-before-the-horse" scenario.
A relatively benign version of the syndrome is "Cage Calvinism." If you have this malady, you try to make everything you read fit TULIP, especially the U. Annoying, but not fatal.
When systematic theology is the illness, the disease is more virulent, especially as it first infects theologians and academics at a higher rate than the normal population. They then become effective super-spreaders.
I have seen systematic theology destroy relationships and cause some to leave a church.
And, by the way, there was absolutely nothing resembling full-blown covenant theology or dispensationalism in the early church. They are both modern inventions. Yes, there were elements of both present--but those elements are so generic that only confirmation bias makes one see them as meaningful confirmation.
So the early church wasn't, say, Wesleyan-Arminian?
ReplyDeleteThanks for the post.
Could you clarify what the alternatives to systemic theology look like? I have only a rudimentary understanding of the distinctions here, but I thought systemic theology is the basic idea of "interpreting scripture with scripture" in order to form a coherent understanding of the word as a whole. Does the problem that you see lie with the practice itself or the snare of becoming wedded to a particular theology? I acknowledge that confirmation bias is difficult to avoid in such an endeavor, but if one takes the Bible as God's inerrant word, how can a believer not seek to have a unified theology from that word? [I think I might be misinterpreting your argument]
ReplyDeleteHi Sean,
ReplyDeleteIf by systematic you mean scriptural-based, self-consistent and more or less comprehensive, I'm all for that. I was referring to "schools" of systematic theology in which there is a real danger of bending scripture to fit the theology rather than vice versa.
Ah, thanks for the clarification. In that case I am in complete agreement. Those kinds of "schools" that break up the body of Christ seem to me to also be a little too similar to the divisions that Paul spoke about in 1st Corinthians 3. We have enough tribalism in the secular world as it is!
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