Four Essential Elements of Theology
Everyone does systematic theology: you fit together large amounts of Biblical texts in your mind to come to conclusions and you answer tough questions with Scripture. The question is, how do you go about answering these questions? What are the essential elements of theology that you should consider as you come to conclusions from Scripture? I recently started reading through Louis Berkhof’s Systematic Theology and, in one of the early chapters, he defines what systematic theology is and the different facets of it. Upon my own reflection of Berkhof’s insights, I think there are at least four essential elements of theology that you should think through when doing a topical or systematic Bible study.
1. The Vertical Side: God’s Authoritative Revelation
Fundamentally any attempt to “do theology” must start with God’s authoritative revelation. Your questions, your conclusions, your doubts, your insights, your applications all must be brought before the inerrant, inspired word. As Berkhof helpfully puts it, the Christian doctrine of revelation assumes that
- There is a personal God who communicated knowledge
- There are truths that cannot be known apart from divine revelation
- Humans can understand this revelation
So theology is not, at its foundation, humanity “figuring out” God. Rather, theology begins when the transcendent God reveals Himself to mankind. The vertical side of theology does not point from earth to heaven, but from heaven to earth. Therefore, your theological investigation will lead to a dead end until you take up the Word and read what it says. Even God’s revelation through His creation won’t be interpreted correctly without the corroborating and explanatory testimony of the Word. The first essential element of theology is God’s authoritative revelation.
2. The Reflective Side: Your Spirit-Empowered Synthesis
However, the Bible itself is not a systematic theology per se. As you read and study, your mind will naturally seek to fit together different texts and synthesize them into conclusions. Understanding what the Bible teaches about the deity and humanity of Jesus, for example, is a large and important theological topic. You cannot hope to understand this topic fully by merely reading one or two texts. Rather, your conclusions will require you to read, study, understand, and synthesize a large quantity of Biblical data from different literary genres.
In short, one of the essential elements of theology is simply thinking and meditating on Biblical texts with the goal of drawing summary conclusions. This takes work and time. It is very easy to come up with bad theological conclusions from the Bible: simply decide what you want the text to say, find a couple support texts, and then “prove” your position. But the careful theologian does not rush to draw broad theological conclusions on a topic until they are confident they have exhausted the pages of Scripture. Synthesis is difficult and, as far as the Christian is concerned, impossible without the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
3. The Corporate Side: What Do Other Christian’s Affirm?
Assuming you take up God’s inspired word, study it, and come to some theological conclusions, how can you check your interpretation? Certainly the first step is to continually compare your conclusions with the whole of Scripture. But another important element of theology is the corporate aspect. Christians are part of the body of Christ. We aren’t disconnected individual atoms that come up with our own theological conclusions on every issue. Rather, if we are reading the same texts and studying them properly under the Spirit’s guidance, we should expect other believers to come to similar conclusions.
Now, just because you find someone who agrees with you does not make your position correct. But if you can’t find a single fellow believer in your local Church that agrees with your theological conclusion, then you should pause and reconsider your analysis. If the Christians who you respect the most and who you know are daily in the Word cannot see from Scripture what you are seeing, you should seek to hear their own thoughts on the issue. Sharpening one another in the local Church theologically oftentimes takes the form of sharing Biblical insights with others and wrestling with conclusions together.
4. The Temporal Side: Church Interpretation Through Time
As you wrestle through difficult questions of theological interpretation, a source of great encouragement is that Christians throughout history have wrestled with many of the same questions and have written down their own analysis and conclusions. One of the most helpful disciplines I have found is to compare my own theological conclusions on a topic with several different historical creeds and confessions. You cannot get away from the fact that you are not the first person to ever read the Bible. In the Lord’s providence and grace, there are intelligent theologians throughout history who have tried to understand and synthesize the same Biblical texts that you have. To not at least consider their analysis would be foolish and border-line prideful.
Now, certainly no creed or confession is inerrant or to be put at the same level as Scripture itself. That is a given. But throughout history, the Church of Christ has worked to understand and externalize Biblical teaching on key doctrines like the Trinity, God’s sovereignty in salvation, what the Church is, baptism and countless others. So see how your theological conclusions fit in with the study of those who have gone before. If you seem to be the only Christian in the history of the Church to see something in the text, tread lightly! It is more likely that you are wrong then every other faithful believer before you was wrong.
Conclusion
Whether you are consciously aware of it or not, these four essential elements of theology are at play whenever you do serious theological study. You may think “I have to examine what the text says” (vertical side) or “I need to think about how these texts fit together” (reflective side) or “I need to check my conclusion with the elders at my Church” (corporate side) or “how do my conclusions line up the the historic confessions?” (temporal side). Consciously and explicitly including each of these four aspects into your own theological study will help you come to more robust conclusions and have more confidence that what you are seeing in Scripture is indeed what God intended you to see.
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