Episode Transcript
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0:07
[ MUSIC PLAYS] I have a heart full of questions quieting
0:09
all my suggestions. What
0:12
is the meaning of Christian in this American life?
0:17
I'm feeling awfully foolish
0:19
spending my life on a message.
0:22
I look around and I wonder ever
0:24
if I heard it right. [MUSIC STOPS]
0:27
Welcome to the (A)Millennial podcast. I'm
0:29
your host, Amy Mantravadi, coming to you
0:32
from Dayton, Ohio, home of the U.S. Air
0:34
Force Museum, also known as the main
0:36
reason that tourists come here. Located
0:38
on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, the museum
0:41
surely has the country's best collection of aviation
0:43
items other than the Smithsonian Air
0:45
and Space Museum. Depending on what you're looking
0:47
for, some might argue it's even a bit better. If
0:50
you can't make it to Dayton in person, especially
0:52
during this time of travel restrictions, check
0:54
out the virtual tour on the museum's website,
0:56
where you can get a 360 degree view
0:58
of all the exhibits. Today, I'll be speaking
1:00
with Gray Sutanto about systematic theology.
1:03
Some of you may be very familiar with this type
1:05
of theological study, while others may have
1:07
heard the term but have little idea of what it means.
1:10
Whichever camp you fall into, I hope
1:12
that today's discussion will be of some benefit to
1:14
you. We're going to talk about what systematic
1:16
theology is, what it involves, and
1:19
how it differs from and builds on other methods
1:21
of theological study. We'll also
1:23
dig in a little to the debates in history surrounding
1:25
this topic. Scripture tells
1:27
us that our purpose as human beings is to know
1:29
God, glorify him, and rejoice
1:31
in him. All of those things require
1:33
us to understand something about theology
1:35
, which is nothing other than the study of God.
1:38
So when we talk about systematic theology,
1:40
we're talking first and foremost about how we
1:42
understand our Creator as he has revealed himself
1:45
and the intentions he has for us as
1:47
his creatures. Let me illustrate this
1:49
by appealing to a familiar biblical story.
1:52
When God revealed himself to Moses in the burning
1:54
bush, he told him, "I am
1:56
the God of your father, the God of Abraham,
1:59
the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." When
2:02
Moses asked God his name, he replied,
2:04
"I AM who I AM." Furthermore,
2:07
God told Moses, "I have certainly
2:09
seen the oppression of my people who are in Egypt
2:11
and have heard their outcry because of their taskmasters,
2:14
for I am aware of their sufferings, so I
2:16
have come down to rescue them from the power of
2:18
the Egyptians and to bring them up from
2:20
that land to a good and spacious land, to
2:23
a land flowing with milk and honey, to
2:25
the place of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite
2:27
, the Perizite, the Hivite , and the Jebusite." Those
2:31
quotes are all from Exodus chapter 3. Every
2:34
one of these statements tells us something about who God
2:36
is: enough that we might spend
2:38
a lifetime in meditation upon them. We
2:40
learn that God is personal, compassionate,
2:43
eternal, self-existent, never
2:45
changing. He is above and beyond
2:47
history, and yet intimately involved
2:49
in it, carrying out his plan on behalf of
2:51
those he loves. Think of how it
2:53
changes our lives to know these things about God.
2:56
This is the whole purpose of the study of theology:
2:58
to bask in the greatness of our God and
3:00
to turn around and praise him. Now, let's head
3:03
on to the interview where I'll be discussing this
3:05
with Dr. Sutanto.
3:07
[MUSICAL INTERLUDE]
3:17
And I'm here with Dr. Gray Sutanto.
3:20
He was educated at
3:22
Biola University for his bachelor's
3:24
degree, Westminster Theological Seminary
3:27
for his masters , and he received his
3:29
PhD from the University of Edinburgh.
3:32
He has served as teaching elder at
3:34
Covenant City church in Jakarta, Indonesia.
3:37
He is a visiting fellow at Kampen Theological
3:40
University, associate fellow at the
3:42
Neocalvinism Research Institute, and
3:44
fellow in modern theology at the Greystone
3:46
Theological Institute. His research
3:49
interests include the Dutch Reformed theologian
3:51
Herman Bavinck and the Neocalvinism
3:53
movement, along with several other theological
3:55
topics. He is currently the
3:58
assistant professor of systematic theology
4:00
at Reformed Theological Seminary in
4:02
Washington, D.C., and his published
4:04
works include God and Knowledge:
4:07
Herman Bavinck's Theological Epistemology,
4:09
and he also contributed to the editing
4:12
and translation of Herman Bavinck's
4:14
Christian Worldview and Herman Bavinck's Philosophy
4:16
of Revelation, and he's been published in several
4:19
theological journals. So
4:21
Gray, thank you so much
4:24
for coming on the podcast with me today. I really appreciate
4:26
it.
4:27
Thanks so much, Amy. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.
4:30
Yeah. So how
4:32
have you and your wife been
4:34
doing during the coronavirus pandemic?
4:37
I know you said you've been in Indonesia
4:39
all this time, but teaching virtually
4:41
still with RTS.
4:44
Yeah, that's right. It's been a really surprising
4:45
year and a half
4:47
or so. I mean, we'd anticipated actually moving
4:50
to DC back in May
4:52
of 2020, but already
4:54
in February, the consulates in
4:56
Jakarta and Indonesia
4:59
were basically closed because of the pandemic, and there
5:01
were a few executive orders on immigration
5:04
that meant that immigration was basically frozen
5:06
for the work visas for a while now. So
5:08
we've been just back here, still in Jakarta
5:11
and teaching, like you said, virtually on Zoom for
5:13
RTS. We've definitely grown
5:15
in confidence in teaching over Zoom. I bought
5:17
into, "How is this going to work?" But you know, the students
5:20
have been incredibly tenacious, hardworking,
5:22
patient with us, and we've been very grateful for that, and
5:24
we've been close to friends and family still as well here
5:27
in Jakarta where we have come from. So
5:29
overall, it's gone as good as it could have been, so
5:32
we're really grateful for that.
5:33
Yeah, I know it's just been so
5:36
challenging this
5:38
whole year. It's been really interesting to hear from
5:40
all the missionaries that our church
5:42
supports, because of course they're all over the world
5:45
and some of them haven't been able to go back to the places
5:47
where they're supposed to be working, whereas
5:50
some of them haven't been able to come back to the U.S. So we
5:53
just have all these international connections
5:55
that haven't been being made this past year. So
5:58
I'm glad that you've been able to sort of make
6:00
that work despite the difficult circumstances.
6:02
Has Indonesia been particularly
6:05
hard hit by the pandemic?
6:08
Yeah, I think - we've been grateful
6:10
in Jakarta that we've been able to work
6:12
from home, and a lot of our friends have been able to
6:14
work from home, but in other more - maybe
6:16
in smaller towns, in smaller cities,
6:18
and also in just the more rural areas,
6:21
people don't have the privilege of being able to
6:23
work from home. So they've been
6:25
still having to carry out their work, so our numbers
6:27
aren't exactly the best right
6:29
now, and we haven't really flattened
6:31
the curve. So it's a bit worrying
6:34
to take a look at that, but at the same time, we're
6:37
very hopeful of the vaccine and
6:39
we're reminded, like you said, this is a very global
6:41
thing. Lots of different nations are struggling
6:44
with this, and so we have to also kind
6:46
of zoom out and realize that we're all in
6:48
this together and dependent upon this vaccine
6:50
together. So we're hopeful for that.
6:53
Well, thanks so much for just sharing a little bit about
6:55
how things have been going. And now
6:58
we can get into the topic that
7:00
we're to discuss today, which is systematic
7:02
theology, and as I mentioned,
7:04
you are the assistant professor of systematic
7:06
theology for RTS in Washington,
7:08
D.C. So maybe
7:10
you could just start out by telling us,
7:12
what is systematic theology?
7:15
Yeah, that's a great question, and depending
7:17
on who you ask, you might get different people
7:20
answering that question. Well,
7:22
systematic theology, as it is understood
7:24
here today , basically refers
7:26
to thinking about what the
7:29
Bible teaches holistically, logically,
7:31
and in a way that therefore connects
7:34
particular doctrines that you find in the Bible together.
7:37
So instead of asking the question perhaps of, "What
7:40
does the book of Genesis chapter three say particularly
7:43
in a narratival form?", you might be asking the question, "What
7:46
does it say about the condition of humanity?
7:48
What does it say about the nature of
7:50
human fallenness, sin,
7:53
human wrongdoing? What does it say about the
7:55
law of God?" And then you're therefore taking
7:57
teachings from, let's say the Book of Genesis,
7:59
and connecting it with New Testament
8:01
texts, let's say in Romans chapter
8:03
five on the fall of man. You're connecting
8:05
it with different descriptions of the conditions
8:07
of sin, let's say if you get from the Book of Proverbs. So
8:10
you're trying to therefore ask the question of,
8:12
"What does the whole Bible say about particular
8:14
doctrine?" But it is a bit more than that
8:16
too. It's also asking the question of, "How
8:18
do we use philosophical tools
8:21
and concepts to help articulate
8:23
what the Bible teaches in a way that is not
8:25
only logically coherent and persuasive,
8:28
but also that makes sense for
8:30
the world today?" So it's
8:32
definitely the interconnection of exegesis,
8:35
biblical theology, and philosophy
8:38
for the sake of articulating a
8:40
coherent system of
8:42
truth together, if that makes
8:44
sense. And there's probably more to say, but that's
8:46
an overall rough sketch of it.
8:49
Yeah, no, I appreciate that - kind of
8:52
summing it up in a way that's
8:55
pretty easy to understand there.
8:57
And that leads
8:59
me really naturally into my next question,
9:02
which is how is systematic theology
9:04
different from biblical theology?
9:07
And just to give a little personal example
9:09
there, when I was in
9:11
college and I did a degree in biblical
9:13
literature , my senior year I had
9:15
to take a course in biblical theology
9:17
where we went over the whole broad narrative
9:21
of the Bible and looked for the
9:23
broad connections in the narrative, but
9:26
I actually never had any courses in systematic
9:28
theology because I was mainly looking
9:30
at the study of the biblical
9:32
text as a work of literature, and
9:35
so we didn't get as much into systematic
9:38
theology . So if you had someone
9:40
ask you to compare the two - systematic and biblical theology
9:42
- how would you do that?
9:44
Yeah, that's a great question. I
9:47
think historically there hasn't been
9:49
a strict separation between the two. So
9:51
when you take a look at the Church Fathers,
9:54
the medieval doctors, the Reformation divines,
9:56
they don't really make a strict distinction
9:58
between biblical theology and systematic
10:00
theology. They normally
10:02
regard just the whole work of theology
10:04
as sacred doctrine, which is really just
10:06
exegesis of Scripture in a
10:09
way that is something for the whole Church
10:11
to believe universally. It's a
10:14
catholic statement about what Christians ought
10:16
to believe about God and the Bible,
10:18
and classically they
10:20
argued that theology is the study
10:22
of God and all things in relation to
10:24
God. And the Bible teaches us
10:26
about all those things in relation to God, and also
10:28
of course, God himself. So the
10:33
modern division between biblical and systematic theology
10:36
is really, again, a 19th, 20th
10:39
century division because of the specialization
10:42
of the disciplines in the modern research university,
10:45
rooted really in the German research
10:46
universities, right? So I think today
10:50
we see that division because of that specialization,
10:52
but again, classically it hasn't been the case. But because
10:55
we live in the present times, here's how
10:57
we might divide the two perhaps. If
10:59
biblical theology asks about the
11:02
story of redemptive history
11:04
from creation, fall,
11:06
redemption, consummation, right ? The basic
11:09
plot line of the Bible from Genesis
11:11
to Revelation, and in the middle of that, what God
11:13
had done in Christ Jesus. Systematic theology
11:16
perhaps goes a little bit beyond
11:19
the narrative of the biblical text and
11:22
asks the more unifying
11:24
questions of, "What is behind
11:27
the biblical text and what does the whole
11:29
biblical text teach coherently?" So it
11:31
traces the biblical
11:34
text to the foundations of the biblical text, so if
11:36
this is what, let's say again, the Book of
11:38
Genesis teaches about the narrative
11:41
of Joseph and Jacob, what does this tell us about the character
11:43
of God that is behind this? What does this
11:45
say about the faithfulness of God
11:47
that he would do this to the sinners that we
11:49
see in particular narratival accounts. So
11:53
it traces behind the exegesis, as well
11:56
as along with the exegesis, if that helps.
12:00
Yeah, I think that does help, and systematic
12:03
theology is pretty
12:05
commonly divided by topics.
12:07
Sort of as you're talking about, making
12:10
links and going behind the biblical text to
12:12
look at what the Bible has to say
12:14
about a particular theme throughout
12:16
the text. What are some
12:19
of the common topics that tend to be
12:21
covered in systematic theology?
12:24
Yeah. Some of the common topics - I think you would
12:26
probably begin with what theologians
12:28
have called prolegomena, which simply
12:30
just means the things that you say beforehand,
12:33
right? So what are the theological
12:36
assumptions and foundations,
12:38
presuppositions, then you have to affirm before
12:41
you study theology. Well,
12:43
you would have to say something about the fact that
12:45
you can't know anything about God unless God
12:48
reveals himself to you, right? Just
12:50
as when you meet a stranger, you might
12:52
not know anything about them, unless
12:54
they've disclosed themselves to you. They've voluntarily
12:56
and willingly said something about themselves to
12:59
you. So it is with God
13:00
- our knowledge of God. So normally systematic
13:03
theology starts with the doctrine of revelation,
13:06
right? That God has spoken both
13:08
in nature and in scripture, and God therefore
13:11
is knowable to us, even though ultimately he
13:13
transcends creation and is
13:15
far above us. So the doctrine
13:17
of revelation normally comes first in the work of systematic
13:19
theology. You even see this in the Westminster
13:22
Confession of Faith. Chapter one is
13:24
on the light of nature and scripture, and it's
13:27
a description of how God has disclosed himself to us
13:29
basically. And then you would normally
13:31
get to doctrine of God: how God
13:34
is one, that we worship the one God,
13:37
and that he is indivisible
13:39
and so on, but he's also at the same time
13:40
a triune God as Father,
13:42
Son, and Holy Spirit. And then
13:45
we would get to the doctrine of creation,
13:47
that God has created all things out of nothing;
13:50
doctrine of Providence, that God continually
13:52
sustains creation; the doctrine
13:54
of the creation of humanity, that
13:56
mankind is made in the image of God; and
13:58
how humanity is fallen and redeemed in
14:00
Jesus Christ, doctrine of salvation.
14:02
Therefore towards the
14:05
end, we also get a doctrine of the church
14:07
and last things, how has God
14:09
redeemed us, not only as individuals,
14:11
but as a community of believers united to
14:13
Jesus Christ and how by his
14:15
Spirit, he is working to renew all things
14:18
so that there would be no more sin in the last
14:20
day and there would be
14:22
a total restoration and consummation
14:25
of God's creation in the last day. So there is
14:27
definitely - you see the
14:29
connection there , don't you, between biblical and systematic theology?
14:32
There is a following roughly a
14:34
biblical plot line, even if in its articulation
14:37
of those particular loci, there is a
14:39
more philosophical, expositional
14:42
aspect to it.
14:44
And it almost seems like with
14:47
the topics you mentioned in systematic
14:49
theology, you're looking at things
14:52
that are essentially implied
14:55
topics from the biblical texts
14:57
in certain cases, such as - the Bible
14:59
starts with God creating. It doesn't spend
15:02
a lot of time with the backstory of what happened
15:04
before God created, although there are certainly
15:07
things in scripture that lead us to think
15:09
of certain considerations that happened before
15:11
that, such as that God already
15:13
was aware that he would have to save
15:15
humanity, and there was a plan in
15:17
place for how that was going to happen. But it
15:20
does really compliment our study
15:22
of the biblical text in that way.
15:25
How did systematic theology
15:28
then develop as a discipline
15:30
in Christian history? You mentioned that
15:33
in previous times, it wasn't thought of necessarily
15:35
as different from biblical theology,
15:38
but were there particular
15:41
periods during the Reformation
15:43
or even earlier that you kind of saw
15:45
that starting to develop?
15:47
Yeah, that's another great question, and
15:50
it's almost like for any of these questions, you could probably
15:52
spend about 45 minutes each, because there's
15:55
so many things to say - so many different angles you can
15:57
take. So maybe I could mention
15:59
probably two here. I think in
16:01
the Reformation period, there was
16:03
a heightened focus on the writing
16:05
of biblical expositional commentaries.
16:09
So you think about Calvin's
16:11
commentaries on particular books of the Bible
16:13
- Now, this wasn't completely new. You already see
16:15
this even in the Church Fathers
16:17
and the medieval doctors. Aquinas wrote so
16:19
many commentaries on the scriptural texts, but
16:21
I think in the Reformation, the desire
16:23
to reform the Catholic tradition
16:26
by way of an appeal to the
16:28
Bible heightened that focus.
16:31
And so Calvin understood, for example,
16:34
that you can't just hand over
16:36
the voluminous amounts of commentaries
16:39
that he had written to just anyone, so he
16:42
started to write The Institutes of Christian Religion
16:45
as a kind of remedy to that. It
16:47
wasn't exactly a systematic theology the way we understand
16:50
it here today, but it was basically a summary
16:52
of Christian teaching for
16:54
the Church that he thought would be helpful.
16:57
And I think also you can take a look at the confessionalism
17:00
of the reform periods as a kind of proto-systematic
17:03
theology. And now some might maybe
17:06
contend with what I just said there, but basically
17:08
I think the confessions are a nice summary
17:10
of the scriptural texts that is very
17:13
logically focused, tightly
17:15
knit, and also in a way that is immediately
17:18
understandable to the Church in that present
17:20
day. Right? So you take a look at the
17:22
Westminster standards, Confession of Faith,
17:25
larger, shorter catechisms, and the Three Forms of Unity.
17:27
These were basically, I think, theological
17:29
texts that said, what do we need to believe?
17:32
What are some errors that we need to encounter in Roman
17:35
Catholicism or in the Radical Reformation
17:38
side of things. And so it presented
17:40
not only the truth of things, but also in a philosophical
17:43
expositional way, denied
17:46
errors that attended to it, right?
17:48
So you see these different genres where you...in the
17:51
Reformation, but really it was in the
17:53
modern era with some
17:55
concerning developments, which
17:57
basically started to say things like, "Well,
18:00
the Bible is grounded in history and
18:03
the Bible therefore should be read as
18:05
free from the doctrines
18:07
of the Church." And so
18:10
the origin of biblical studies actually
18:13
it comes with this Enlightenment
18:16
and philosophical assumption
18:18
that the Bible in and of itself is not
18:20
a theological text. It's just a human
18:23
book, like any other human book, and
18:25
you should be able to read it free from
18:27
the constraints of churchly
18:30
confession. And so
18:32
when the modern research
18:35
university started to say, therefore, "Well,
18:37
we got to therefore distinguish between the
18:39
historical study of the Bible
18:42
on the one hand and churchly
18:44
dogma on the other," and
18:46
that became a really strict bifurcation
18:48
in the modern research university. Figures behind
18:51
that are figures like Friedrich
18:53
Schleiermacher in the 19th
18:56
century and so on. So there's that kind
18:59
of movement, and I think what happened after that
19:01
is theologians started to
19:03
say, "Okay, maybe there's something helpful
19:06
about this division between historical biblical
19:08
study on the one hand and churchly dogmatics
19:10
on the other, but how do we therefore
19:13
reevaluate this
19:15
division in a theological
19:17
way?" And they started to say, therefore,
19:19
that in the historical exegesis
19:22
of the biblical texts , we
19:24
can use some of the methods
19:26
of historical grammatical exegesis, that
19:29
the modernists have taught us, but at the same time,
19:31
not completely divorced that from churchly dogma. So
19:35
we started to say, therefore, there's a distinction
19:37
between biblical studies and systematic theology,
19:40
not division. This is a cause for
19:43
self-reflection perhaps, because I don't think many
19:45
of us realize how much of the modern seminary
19:47
curriculum is indebted to movements
19:49
in the modern research university and the Enlightenment.
19:52
But there's always going to be, I think, a
19:54
tension, but also a reciprocal
19:58
relation between where
20:00
the Church is and where the modern
20:02
culture is, and I think this is one way where
20:04
we see it for better or for worse.
20:08
Yeah, I think that's a good point. And it
20:10
seems like in every era
20:13
of Church history, there's
20:15
been a kind of swinging of the pendulum
20:18
slightly in one direction or another. For
20:20
instance, I've spent some time
20:23
studying medieval Christianity for
20:25
the novels that I write and just for some
20:27
theological interests, and that
20:31
period was characterized by
20:33
very sort of high-minded philosophical
20:36
considerations. So they
20:38
had something like
20:40
systematic theology and that it was arranged by topics,
20:45
but it imported
20:48
philosophical ideas very
20:50
heavily, probably more than you
20:52
would see today. And
20:54
the Reformation, I think, was in
20:57
part a
20:59
correction against what
21:02
they saw as a lot
21:04
of philosophizing and getting away
21:06
from the plain gospel
21:08
and the scriptural text. So
21:10
like you said, there was this big explosion
21:13
of commentaries and things like that, and then
21:16
maybe you have to correct back in the other direction
21:18
a little bit, but that is interesting
21:20
that you can think at every point there
21:23
is sort of a going back and forth
21:25
between those two things.
21:28
So how is
21:30
a book on systematic theology
21:33
usually set up? If I were to go to
21:36
the library - if I had a library
21:38
nearby, that stocked systematic theology works.
21:41
Luckily I do, but assuming that you're in a city that does - and
21:45
you get, say, Herman
21:48
Bavinck's systematic theology,
21:50
or Louis Berkhof or someone
21:52
like that, how would
21:54
you go about navigating it?
21:57
How would you expect to find it arranged?
22:00
Yeah, that's a great question.
22:02
I think it really depends on which particular
22:05
texts you're thinking about. Like you said, in
22:07
the medieval period, you
22:09
actually would get more treatments
22:12
on particular topics perhaps even
22:14
in isolation, right? So there's particular
22:16
treatments by Bonaventure purely on
22:19
the doctrine of illumination: kind of just a
22:21
one-off study on illumination,
22:23
his journey of the mind to God. But
22:26
I think in Bavinck's example
22:28
- in Bavinck's case, because he came after
22:30
the rise of modern biblical study and modern
22:33
biblical criticism, he has this heightened
22:35
interest to talk
22:37
about theology in that
22:40
narratival fashion, right? So he would really start
22:42
off with the doctrine of revelation and then doctrine
22:44
of God and creation, fall,
22:46
redemption, and last
22:48
things. His Four volumes is really set up according
22:50
to that biblical plotline. And I think
22:53
in Bavinck's case as well, you get
22:55
this more rigorous historical
22:57
attention to the development of doctrine. So
23:00
oftentimes in the
23:02
modern period and afterwards,
23:04
you get a systematic theology -not just
23:07
their summary of these particular doctrines,
23:09
but also their sense of how the doctrine
23:12
had developed. So in Bavinck's case, again, you would start
23:14
with the biblical exegesis, and then
23:17
after that, you would go to the Church
23:19
Fathers, to the medieval doctors,
23:22
to the Reformation, to the moderns,
23:24
and then Bavinck's own restatements
23:27
toward the end of his particular chapter. So
23:29
whatever doctrine you dive into in the middle of
23:31
his dogmatics, you would get that kind
23:33
of chronological, genealogical
23:36
tracing out of that particular
23:38
doctrine. I think that's really, really helpful. So
23:40
if you want to get a more concise
23:44
philosophical treatment of a particular
23:46
doctrine, maybe going to an Aquinas
23:48
or a Bonaventure would be useful, but if
23:50
you want this more historically conscious
23:52
tracing out of a particular
23:55
doctrine, then diving into Bavinck and isolating
23:57
a chapter in Bavinck on a particular doctor would help you
23:59
do that.
24:01
Yeah, and for those
24:03
who have any experience
24:05
with reading Aquinas , it
24:09
could be very confusing for the modern reader
24:11
because it's set up very much
24:13
in the question
24:15
and answer format that was popular
24:17
in the time, and it can
24:19
get a little difficult to determine
24:22
which part is actually him stating
24:25
what he believes and which part is him stating
24:27
what someone else believes. And there isn't the historical
24:29
necessarily - like you
24:31
said, going through all the different historical periods
24:33
like you might see nowadays, so that
24:36
is interesting just to think about how it's
24:38
developed over the years. Yeah, so thank
24:41
you for that. Some
24:43
Christians have contended that systematic
24:46
theology either causes
24:48
us to ignore the original
24:50
biblical context and narrative, or
24:53
causes us to delve into areas of
24:55
speculation that God never intended.
24:58
As a teacher of systemic theology
25:00
, how do you respond to such
25:03
criticisms? I've heard this particularly
25:05
from - certain theological
25:07
movements tend to make these
25:09
arguments more than others, but what
25:12
do you think when you hear something like that?
25:14
Yeah, I think my first gut instinct
25:16
is maybe to
25:18
say that, "Well, the
25:21
biblical text itself, I think,
25:24
and the arrangement of the biblical text requires
25:26
particular theological choices and
25:28
theological judgments, right?" The
25:30
fact that the canon was set up in a particular
25:33
way was, I think, partly
25:35
a product of the Church's ecclesial
25:38
and theological confession about what they
25:40
think the presentation requires, right?
25:43
So there's lots of different
25:46
scholarly movements on this, but the theological
25:48
interpretation of scripture movement that came out, I think, in
25:50
the last two decades or so pointed
25:53
out to the fact that even in the way that the canon
25:55
was arranged in the early Church, it's
25:58
reflective of theological judgments. So
26:00
in other words, there's never been a time
26:03
or period where there was a purely
26:05
neutral historical standpoint
26:08
from which to read the biblical texts. It always
26:10
came with theological assumptions
26:12
about reading these different
26:14
authors, whether you're
26:16
in the Apocalypse of John
26:19
or in the Book of Mark or something
26:21
that Peter had wrote, that these authors
26:24
were writing in
26:26
a way that was inspired by a single
26:28
divine author, right? That
26:30
was a theological judgment. That's a theological
26:32
confession. So even as you're studying
26:34
the Bible as a biblical
26:36
historian, you have
26:38
to come to grips with the
26:40
fact that if you're reading the Bible as a canon,
26:44
you're really bringing into it a theological consideration. And
26:48
to push us even further, I
26:50
would suggest that even the
26:52
most basic plot line summary
26:54
of the Bible of creation, fall, consummation,
26:58
or redemption, consummation is
27:00
itself a theological summary of
27:02
the Bible, right? The moment you move away from
27:04
what the words of the Bible and history
27:06
of the Bible actually says to any
27:09
summary that you have of the Bible's plotline, you're already
27:11
saying that this is one story - that
27:13
there's a single divine plan, and here's
27:15
a coherent way of summarizing the biblical
27:18
texts . You can't escape from theological judgments,
27:20
in other words. And so if
27:22
this kind of criticism is coming from an evangelical
27:25
or Christian biblical studies scholar,
27:29
then I would suggest to this person that
27:31
you're already presupposing theology,
27:33
even as you're studying the biblical texts.
27:36
And when you're studying the biblical texts, in
27:39
the work of exegesis there will
27:41
always be theological questions
27:44
that would arise, that prompt you toward
27:46
asking about questions
27:48
about being, questions about knowing,
27:50
questions about ethics that
27:53
go beyond strict exegesis, I
27:54
think. You know, when you are reading
27:57
Exodus 3:14, God says, "I AM who
27:59
I AM." That prompts you toward
28:01
particular questions about what this circular
28:03
way of describing God means exactly. When
28:06
you're asking questions about how
28:09
God created everything out of
28:11
his Word, what does that actually
28:13
mean? It requires some philosophical
28:15
exploration. And then when you're asking the
28:17
question of, "How do I communicate what I see
28:20
in my exegesis to the Church in the
28:22
modern world?" then you're asking questions
28:24
about, "What are the philosophies that are present
28:27
today and how do I communicate it to the modern world?"
28:29
So instead of I think dividing the two, again,
28:32
we do well to think about these disciplines
28:34
as really complementing one another, and you
28:36
can't really do one without the other, right?
28:39
And this is why, again , in history, theology
28:41
and biblical studies have also gone hand-in-hand as
28:44
sacred doctrine.
28:46
And thinking back to what you mentioned
28:48
about the doctrine of revelation
28:51
or a doctrine of scripture,
28:54
when you come to the biblical text
28:56
, you come, like you said, with a set of assumptions
28:58
about what this book is. And in
29:01
a certain sense, your belief that it is
29:04
the Word of God and that it's
29:06
worth reading has to stand a little bit
29:08
outside of the text itself, because
29:11
the text tells you that, but you have
29:13
to have some faith in yourself to believe
29:15
the text. So I think,
29:17
like you said, there are - I
29:19
don't think anyone comes to it neutrally - comes
29:22
to the study of the Bible neutrally.
29:24
So that's probably a good way of thinking
29:26
about it. I mentioned that you've
29:28
done really extensive research on
29:31
Herman Bavinck, who wrote an influential
29:33
work of systematic theology in the 19th century.
29:36
How does his approach to systematic
29:38
theology compare to others
29:40
in the broadly Reformed tradition?
29:43
It probably would be way
29:45
too long of an answer to compare him to everyone else who's
29:47
written systematic theology, so let's keep it
29:49
within at least the Reformed world.
29:51
Yeah, really, really useful
29:53
question here. I think one way
29:56
to think about his work, again, is his
29:58
rigorously genealogical approach to
30:00
the history of theology, right? He
30:02
never just says
30:04
a doctrine as if it just drops out of
30:06
heaven. He's always aware that whatever
30:08
he says is in the context of his present
30:11
moment , and he's standing upon the giants of
30:14
these church dogmaticians that have come before
30:16
him, right? So that's, I think, incredibly
30:18
useful, because theologians today
30:20
need to be aware that everything
30:22
that we say here today is responsible
30:25
to the history of the Church,
30:27
right? We can't just say things in isolation.
30:31
And then I think another useful way of
30:33
thinking about what Bavinck was doing is
30:35
he was trying to proclaim
30:39
this confessional, catholic,
30:41
Reform tradition to the modern
30:43
world. He saw that as a responsibility
30:45
of the theologian, the Church dogmatician. He
30:49
actually argued that each generation
30:51
requires a new systematic theology,
30:53
not because the truth changes, but
30:55
because the world changes. And so
30:57
how you articulate the same truth should
31:00
use the philosophical
31:02
tools, concepts, terms, and
31:05
even the cultural lingo of
31:07
the current day. So you see in Bavinck, I
31:09
think, a very consistent
31:11
desire to articulate that truth in
31:13
a way that is winsome, relevant,
31:16
and penetrative to
31:19
his modern academic milieu. So
31:21
I think that's incredibly useful for us to think about as
31:23
well - that I think the Church, like
31:26
you said, does go through a kind of pendulum
31:28
swing between one pole to another, and
31:30
I think one of the poles that we could tend
31:33
to get used to is kind of the isolationalist pole
31:36
that says, "Hey, all we need is just
31:38
to be in the Church." And there's
31:40
a sense in which that's completely right and true.
31:42
We believe that the Church is beautiful. This is the
31:44
people of God. God has redeemed us to be
31:46
a set apart people. That's very, very
31:48
true and Bavinck would affirm that. But
31:50
at the same time, we are still in this world - that we're
31:53
not of the world, and we are to communicate
31:55
and be salt and light in this world. And how
31:57
can we therefore be a light in this world unless
32:00
we read what others are
32:02
doing and saying right there? And so
32:05
I think that that's what Bavinck was doing in a very
32:07
unique way, and even in his own period,
32:10
you would see Church dogmatics
32:12
- not just Barth's, but I
32:14
mean, theologies that were being written
32:16
by his contemporaries. But
32:18
I think he was particularly acutely aware of
32:21
those twin responsibilities of being
32:23
in the catholic tradition, Reformed
32:26
broad tradition, and at the same time engage
32:28
in modern culture.
32:31
Yeah, and the thing for those
32:33
who are not familiar with Bavinck - the
32:35
thing that's interesting with him
32:38
is that he was writing originally
32:41
in Dutch, so in a sense
32:43
- he's an older theologian in the
32:45
sense that yeah, he lived in the 19th century,
32:48
but it's only been
32:50
within the past few decades that a lot of his stuff
32:53
has been translated. I mentioned that you've been involved
32:55
in helping with the translation of some of his work, so
32:58
in a way he seems
33:00
very contemporary, even though he
33:02
was writing a while ago, because the
33:05
exposure to him in the American
33:07
church is still only ramping up
33:09
now. So it's just a
33:11
very interesting case of
33:13
how we connect to history in that way. So
33:17
if an average Christian, without a seminary
33:19
education wanted to study systematic
33:22
theology, where would you recommend
33:24
that they begin? Could you maybe suggest
33:27
a resource or two that are more
33:29
accessible for the average person?
33:32
Yeah, that's a
33:34
really useful question. I think perhaps
33:37
it might be a bit intimidating to just
33:39
jump into Bavinck's Reformed Dogmatics, four volumes that it is, so
33:43
I would suggest actually some contemporary
33:45
treatments of particular doctrines would
33:47
be really useful just as a starting point. I
33:50
can think of maybe Scott Swain's little
33:53
introduction to the doctrine of the Trinity, or even particular
33:57
popular works that are useful
34:00
in introducing, let's say, the Westminster
34:02
Standards, Chad VanDixhoorn's Confessing the Faith.
34:04
That would be really useful. But if
34:06
you're thinking about primary sources, let's
34:08
say in someone like a Bavinck, then
34:11
his Wonderful Works of God would be a great
34:13
place to start. I think there, if
34:16
it's Church Dogmatics - sorry, Reformed Dogmatics.
34:19
I don't know why I keep saying Church Dogmatics today. I
34:21
haven't been thinking about Karl Barth too much recently.
34:23
But his
34:26
Reformed Dogmatics is a very
34:28
footnoted, historically rigorous
34:31
text. His Wonderful Works of God
34:33
was written for the ordinary
34:35
person. In the preface, he actually says modern
34:38
people are so busy nowadays and so
34:40
totally bombarded by the news and
34:42
work that they scarcely have
34:45
time to read theology, and that's
34:47
why he wrote The Wonderful Works of God: to
34:49
engage with that kind of readership
34:51
. So his Wonderful Works of God would also
34:53
be a great place to start there. Can
34:55
I circle back to the question that you asked before?
34:57
Absolutely.
34:57
You asked, "How does Bavinck differ
35:02
a little bit from other theological
35:04
works in his day?" You know, I think it's
35:06
useful here to distinguish him from maybe
35:08
the Dutch pietist tradition, or maybe even
35:10
the Puritan tradition that
35:12
we might be used to reading in the Reformed world: the
35:15
Puritan Paperbacks that are - I'm
35:17
not saying they're bad. They're very good. I
35:19
think of a lot of the Puritan Paperbacks that you see,
35:22
you get almost a desire to write
35:24
evergreen exposition of
35:26
doctrine. In other words, they desire
35:29
to write something completely timeless: an historically
35:32
distinguished piece of work
35:34
that simply tells you what the doctrine
35:37
in a very devotional way. And
35:39
I think Bavinck would probably say something like, "That's
35:42
useful at all, but it's not going to be
35:44
helpful to penetrate
35:47
the modern world." And I think that's one
35:49
way to distinguish Bavinck's works from the Puritan
35:52
tradition is that he
35:55
thinks that an evergreen kind
35:57
of desire is a limited good.
36:00
I think he would actually argue that the theologian
36:02
has a harder job of, yes, actually
36:05
trying to reinvent something every generation.
36:07
And I think that's worth thinking about, because
36:09
I think sometimes we think to write something
36:12
evergreen and timeless is actually a more pious,
36:14
more holy thing to do. Bavinck would actually
36:16
suggest that that's actually a more - it
36:19
reflects a lack of ambition perhaps.
36:21
And controversial or not, but that's another insight
36:24
that Bavinck would challenge our readership
36:26
today, "Hey, don't just
36:28
deny the world, but see the world
36:30
as an opportunity for you to say something
36:33
fresh." Well,
36:35
and that's getting also into
36:37
the Neocalvinist tradition
36:39
that you also have researched
36:41
a lot. So yeah, these
36:44
debates are ongoing. I think ever since
36:46
the Church began
36:49
there have been debates over, "How much
36:51
should we incorporate philosophy into
36:53
our theology?" and "How much should
36:55
we be engaging with the world or
36:57
trying to be separate from it?" These are questions that
37:00
never go away, so it's been
37:02
good to talk about some of them today. Thank you so
37:04
much for coming on to answer
37:07
these questions, and I hope that it's been a good
37:09
introduction for a lot of people. Thank you, Amy. It's great to be here.
37:14
[MUSIC PLAYS]
37:38
I need to know there is justice, that it will roll in abundance, and that you're building a city where we arrive as immigrants and you call us citizens and you welcome us as children home. [MUSIC STOPS]
37:40
It was great to have Gray on the podcast today.
37:43
I'm especially thankful that we were able to make
37:45
an interview work despite the 12 hour time difference.
37:48
As always, the music is the song "Citizens"
37:50
by Jon Guerra. I'd like to give a special
37:52
shout out today to my husband Jai for caring
37:54
for our son Thomas while I've conducted these interviews,
37:57
and to Thomas for taking time to nap so that
37:59
I can edit them. May
38:01
the Lord bless you and keep you. May
38:03
the Lord make his face to shine on you and give
38:05
you peace. May the Lord lift up
38:07
his countenance on you and be gracious to you.
38:10
Amen. Have a great week.
38:13
[MUSIC PLAYS] Is there a way to live always living
38:16
in enemy hallways? Don't
38:18
know my foes from my friends and don't know
38:21
my friends anymore. Power has several prizes.
38:26
Handcuffs can come in all sizes.
38:29
Love has a million disguises,
38:31
but winning
38:33
is simply not one.
38:34
[MUSIC STOPS]
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