Given that our theology ought to stem from God’s revelation of Himself in His Word, one might expect that biblical theology is simply sound theology, theology that matches the Bible. While sound theology is biblical, the adjective “biblical” here has a different purpose, to describe a particular way of practicing theology. It stands in contrast with systematic theology. The two approaches are equally important and equally valuable, each informing the other.
Systematic theology takes all that the Bible teaches on a given subject and seeks to understand it in relationship to every other subject. It seeks to ensure that what we say about the person of Christ melds together with what we say about His work, what His work tells us about the sacraments, what the sacraments tell us about the church. It takes the content of the Bible and arranges it in an orderly fashion.
Biblical theology, on the other hand, recognizes the importance of letting the Bible not only say what it says, but to say it the way it says it. It acknowledges that the Bible doesn’t begin where our systematics books begin, explaining the doctrine of revelation. Instead it begins with the true story of how He made the world. Biblical theology leaves the elements of story in place and sees the value in those elements.
There is a beautiful illustration of this distinction in CS Lewis (who, of course, has countless beautiful illustrations in his writings) and his Narnia tale, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. There, Eustace Scrubb, (and he almost deserved the name), representing the prissiness of modernism, meets Ramandu, a retired star. Eustace points out that in our world stars are great balls of burning gas. Ramandu replies to this effect, “They may be made of burning gas, but such is not what they are.” Reducing a star down to its atomic make-up doesn’t get us closer to understanding stars, but farther away.
Biblical theology pushes against the weakness of systematics that can sometimes descend into abstract Aristotelian notions. When we are so busy parsing the meaning of expiation and propitiation that we miss that our heavenly Father loves us, we’re doing something wrong. Of course it is possible to err in the other direction, to allow literary flights of fancy to lead us outside the safe harbor of orthodoxy.
Which is why they are both necessary. Systematic theology is the beautiful fence God has built to keep us safe. Outside the fence is heterodoxy and worse, heresy. Biblical theology, however, is the grass inside the fence. The fence lets us know the grass is safe. What we should be eating, however, is the grass, not the fence. If your study of systematics doesn’t drive you to doxology, to tears, to worship you have turned God into an object under your microscope. If your embrace of biblical theology leads you into wild speculation, you have untethered your imagination from sound doctrine and are eating the deadly grass outside the fence.
If you have an interest in further study of biblical theology, but want to study with trustworthy guides, let me commend to you Geerhardus Vos, T. Desmond Alexander, and my friend Dr. Michael Morales.
If you have a question you’d like me to try to tackle, feel free to email me at hellorcjr@gmail.com.