THEOLOGY I

LECTURE NOTES
1. INTRODUCTION

I. THE NATURE OF THEOLOGY

 Theology is a human activity. Theology involves our interaction with the Scriptures and is not equal with
the Bible. Theology must always be under the authority of the Scriptures.
 What are we doing when we “do” theology? Some say, “we are doing a kind of science.” Others proceeded
as if “theology is psychology.” Others said that it is “a group or communal activity.”

A. Liberalism (represented by “theology as psychology”)

1. Theology is about man’s account of experience with “God” (experiential)
a. Began with Schleiermacher
b. Famous for anti-supernaturalism bias
c. Can be found at contemporary mainline, Protestant denominations

2. Theology can’t be systematic

 The Scriptures are simply human documents that give witness to mankind’s experience with God.
 Each person’s experience is different.

3. What is a “liberal”?
 It is NOT anyone who disagrees with you!
 Someone who DENIES the essentials of the Christian faith (in the early 20th century):
1) Inerrancy of Scripture
2) Virgin Birth
3) Deity of Christ
4) Substitutionary Atonement
5) Death and Resurrection of Christ
6) Second Coming of Christ

 Liberalism’s effect / fruit constitutes the reinterpretation of Scripture such that Christ is other than God,
and the gospel is other than Christ’s substitutionary death and resurrection for sinners who otherwise
face eschatological judgment.

B. Reformed / Scholastic Tradition (represented by “theology as science”)

1. Scripture is a systematic revelation of God to humankind
 It is God’s revelation for Himself for us to interpret into a systematic expression of its propositional
content.
 Scripture is holistically in agreement, and thus to seek the system in interpretation of the Scriptures.
 Emphasizes on propositional content
 Emphasizes on systematic intent

2. Theology is the “science” of God

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  Proceeding with a systematic, methodical intent results in a correct interpretation of Scripture that yields
a systematic doctrinal formulation

3. Difference of “Natural” and “Revealed Theology”

a. Natural: that which can be reasoned about God from nature and logic
 Truths that we can arrive at without the aid of special revelation.
b. Revealed: that which is known only by Scriptural teaching

o On Theology (spec. Systematic Theology) as a Science:

 Theology is a science that deals with both the infinite and finite, with both God and the universe, thus
making it the “queen of the sciences.”
 Theology is the science of God and of the relations between God and the universe.
 Systematic theology may be defined as the collecting, scientifically arranging, comparing, and
exhibiting of defending of all facts from any and every source (includes biblical, philosophical, and
scientific facts) concerning God and His works.
 Systematic theology is any study that answers the question “What does the whole Bible teaches today?”
on any given topic.

C. Postmodern Theology
 Objection (on Classical Liberalism and Reformed/Scholastic Tradition)

1. Objects to doctrine as systematic and timeless truth

a. Claims to timeless truth have often been undergirded with foundationalist epistemology, and thus is
discredited
 Epistemological Foundationalism – a construction of the Enlightenment era; modernism in full
bloom; discredited by the philosophical community.
 Foundationalism is associated with Rene Descartes (father of Foundationalism), called Cartesian
Foundationalism.
 Cagito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am (existing)).
 It exercises the power of reason through doubting certain things until reaching the foundation which
cannot be shaken by doubt, and thus, can build an edifice of truth that is undoubtable to a point of
certainty apart from divine revelation.
 Human reason can attain to truth
 Claim of absolute certainty
 Has been discredited philosophically
 Influenced evangelicalism

b. There is no all-encompassing metanarrative for God’s relationship with human beings

 All doctrine is community-oriented, and therefore designed the needs of that group of people.
 Postmodernism is incredulity towards metanarrative, meaning one perspective or point of view
cannot explain all of reality.
 There is no metanarrative for authoritative usage.
 When there is no timeless truth, then, expect the differences in Christian doctrine in span of all time
and culture.
 Significant hermeneutical interpretations of both parties doesn’t mean they aren’t true, but it does
mean to think critically about the presuppositions on interpretations and doctrinal formulations.
 When put into theology, it explains that the Christian story has been embodied in many different
communities at different times
 Source of “relativitism” charge
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 Evangelicalism (Evangelical Theology)
2. Post Liberalism – liberalism beyond existentialism (theology as “a communal or group activity,” with
some inclusions to post conservatism).
 Post – doesn’t mean anti (applied also with post conservatism). It means beyond.
 It follows liberalism but has a conceptual advancement.
 Know that liberalism is an existentialism movement, centering on the individual’s experience of the
divine.
 Post Liberalism now focuses on the community’s religious experience.
a. View of theology
(1) “Communally authoritative rules of discourse (way of speaking), attitude (way of thinking), and
action (way of living)”
 Formulated by the community
 Based on its traditions (includes Scripture)
 Authoritative for that community
 Communities are generally self-managing entities with a specific agenda, and the Christian
community’s agenda is to spread the Gospel and live for Christ.
(2) Traditional conservative theology
 Cognitive-propositionalist – emphasizes on thinking and on propositions.
 Using cognitive proposition in interpreting Scripture is wrong as it assumes that Scripture is
nothing but propositions.
 Scripture as propositional
 Doctrine as something to be investigated and understood
 Cognitive-propositionalist model seems static, not like the living community of faith
(3) Traditional liberal theology
 Scripture as merely human documents
 Doctrine as description of personal experience with God
 Experiential-expressivist model is individual, not collective like the community of faith

3. Post Conservatism
a. Characteristics as a movement
(1) Not liberal
(2) Not fundamentalist (anti-fundamentalist)
(3) Not doctrinally conservative but evangelical
(4) Not centered primarily on doctrine

 Four fundamentals that all Evangelicals share:

1) Activism – sharing your faith
2) Biblicism – the Bible as the sole source of authority
3) Crucicentrism – the center of belief is the cross
4) Conversionism – focuses on the new birth (born again)

(continued in next lecture – methodological distinctives [post-conservatism])

2. POST–CONSERVATISM
b. Methodological distinctives
(1) Focused on a “center,” not on “boundaries”
- We need not to draw certain limitations to who is “in” or “out,” but rather to be more focused on the
central aspect.

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 Figure 2.1 Figure 2.2
Post-conservatism does not draw a “circumference” in defining what Evangelicalism or
Christianity is and deciding who is in the “circle” and who is not (Figure 2.1). Rather, it
gets rid of the “circumference” and focuses on the ill-defined center (whose bases are
that of the four Evangelical fundamentals), the goal being to draw more people of faith
and to have fellowship with (Figure 2.2).
- Post-conservatism is not exclusionary yet distinctive.
(2) Rejects the “foundationalist” approach to traditional theology (particularly epistemology)
 Conservative foundation: inerrant Bible
 Liberal foundation: personal experience
 These foundations are both epistemological and theological by nature.
(3) Rejects correspondence model of truth
 More on the “coherentist” model of truth.

Models of Truth
1. Correspondence – a statement is true if it corresponds to reality. Truth is anchored in the way that things
really are.
2. Coherence – a statement is true if it agrees with other statements. The question relating to coherentism
“does it fit?”
The coherence model is likened to that of a spider web. On a
web, there are many different attachment points, but getting
closer to the web’s center makes the nearest attachment points
crucial in providing the web’s stability (Figure 2.3). In the same
way, there are some beliefs that are more crucial in our system of
worldview than other beliefs.
Figure 2.3 Another great thing about the spider web analogy is that it does
not only depend on the center connection for the stability but to
the anchor points as well. The coherence view are like the anchor
points while the center connection relates to the correspondence
model.

(4) Objects to traditional conservative bibliology

 Traditional theology basically views Scripture incorrectly as a catalogue for doctrine.
Specifically, the Bible is viewed as a collection of loosely-defined, unorganized beliefs and
statements about God and the world, and that the job of theology is to organize these doctrines
into a system.
 “Theology is the articulation of biblically-normed, historically-informed, and culturally-relevant
models of the Christian belief mosaic, for the purpose of assisting the community of Christ’s
followers in vocation to live as the people of God in a particular socio-historical context which
they are situated.”
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  Scripture is not merely a book of propositions about God
(5) Growing rejection of penal substitutionary atonement
 Penal substitution is part of the redemptive metanarrative, hence, is a critical part in Christian
doctrine.

Some important terms

1) Open theism – rejection to the synthesis of Greek philosophy and Christian theology. Their definition on
the attribute of God’s omniscience is that He knows the past, present, and the possibilities in the future,
rather than the biblical truth that God knows the past, present, and the future.
2) Narrative theology – another name for the post-liberalism movement; focuses on a narrative
presentation of the Christian faith as regulative for the development of a coherent systematic theology.
3) Process theology – collectively referred to as “the process of thought.”

c. Objections and fatal flaws

(1) Locus of authority – where does the authority reside in post-modern, evangelical thinking
(a) Postliberalism: the community (communally authoritative)
 How is continuity maintained?
 How can anything be ruled “out of bounds?”
(b) Postconservatism: the Spirit speaking through the Scriptures
 Difficult to evaluate critically
 How can Scripture function as arbiter of truth?
 How is it that the Scripture functions as the arbiter of truth in the Christian communities if we
are expecting that the Spirit would use the Scriptures differently from situation to situation?
(2) Postliberalism still “unbelieving”
 Retains antisupernaturalism of [classical] liberalism
 Still is an “unbelieving theology”
(3) Faulty objection against foundationalism
 False dichotomy: either Descartes or nothing
 But “soft” foundationalism is defensible
(4) Doctrine is downplayed, underestimated as definitive of Christianity

d. Good points
(1) Classical foundationalism is invalid
 Strong foundationalism cannot give a consistently Christian account of the world.
(2) The Bible is not a book of propositions
(a) Not all language use is statemental
 The Bible isn’t only for organizing theological principles and statements into a system.
(b) Varied genres in Scripture
 Scripture can’t only be used in formulating assertions because it has many other literary genres
such as apocalyptic, poetical, wisdom, didactic literature, etc.
(c) Scripture IS largely narrative
 Though the Bible is mostly narrative, this does not leave out things which are didactic
(teachable).

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 (3) Can’t separate orthodoxy from orthopraxy
 Orthodoxy – right belief
 Orthopraxy – right living/practice
 It strongly emphasizes that the academic side of theology cannot be separated to the pastoral
side of it. It rejects the idea that one who has study the Word of God cannot be changed by it.

How “cold” is Reformed Orthodoxy?

 “Nor is he to be considered exclusively under the relation of deity…but as he is our God (i.e.,
covenanted in Christ as he has revealed himself to us in his word not only as the object of knowledge,
but also of worship).”
 “The principal science is theology. Theology is the science of living blessedly for ever.”
 “Theology is the science of living unto God.”

(4) Community is a right emphasis

 We, Christians, are a community, an interdependent fellowship of Christ’s followers.
 We do not do theology in isolation; we contribute to one another in our study of Scripture and in
our growth in growing with God.
 We, a member of the body of Christ, does not sets it boundaries to those who are alive today. In
fact, it extends as the beginning of the church. They contribute to us, and we contribute to them
in generations to come.
 We do theology in conversation.

II. THEOLOGY FOR GOD AND CHURCH

A. Types of Theology
1. Biblical – a discipline that focuses more on the Scriptural texts (i.e.: Pauline theology; Johannine theology;
Old Testament theology, etc.). More on the development of the biblical themes from Genesis to Revelation
as they center on Christ and redemption. It takes Scripture as a whole or takes significant chunks of it based
on dispensation or author.
2. Historical – a discipline on the historical, geopolitical development of doctrine.
3. Philosophical – “theologizing which draws upon the input of philosophy rather than merely using biblical
materials.” Doing theology is a philosophical thing.

4. Practical – traditional term for disciplines such as pastoral ministry, counseling, theology of mission, and
the like. The outworking of theology in the ministry IS practical theology. The mere presence of practical
theology can cause some discrepancies. An example thereof is that “if there’s practical theology, then
there’s impractical theology.”

(continued in next lecture – systematic theology [types of theology])

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3. WHAT IS THEOLOGY? DEALING WITH DISAGREEMENTS, PART 1 OF 2
5. Systematic Theology is the comprehensive and holistic interpretation of Scripture for the purpose of
intimately knowing and rightly worshiping God.
- Another definition of systematic theology is “the cognitive and passionate enterprise that seeks to know
and love the God of the gospel and to demonstrate its understanding in forms of obedient speech and
practice.”
- Theology is not only about thinking, but doing.
- Interpretation of Scripture means emphasizing the gospel, the central story of the Bible.
- The interpretation of Scripture must be comprehensive, meaning “all of Scripture” – from Genesis to
Revelation, and it must be holistic, meaning that the Scripture is to be interpreted in unity (cohesive).
- Worship is the endgame of the activity of theology, and the material of theology is Scripture alone.

III. DOCTRINE AND DOCTRINAL DISAGREEMENTS

A. Theology and Doctrine
 Doctrine – summation of a biblical theme that states a truth and calls for a response.
 It may also be defined as “instructions for fitting participation in the drama of redemption.”
 Some doctrines that are derived from Scripture has less “worship value” (omnipresence, omniscience, etc.),
and others have great “worship value” (the love of God, the providence of God, etc.).
 Shortly, theology is the process, doctrine is the product, and the transformed life is the goal.

B. Balanced Emphasis on Doctrine

1. Theology must be theocentric (God-centered) and doxological (oriented toward worship).
 It is:
o Perceiving the glory of God
 God’s glory is perceived by His creatures in that we respond in His attributes and in His revelation.
o Grasping the beauty of God
 We must know God and His beauty in interacting with Him personally.
 We must avoid the utilitarian (“what good does this do me?”) view of doctrine.
 Transformational view of doctrine is essential in the growth of a Christian.

2. Theology must be pastoral and personal.

 It is:
o Prompting the individual to worship
 Theology’s endgame is not for bare knowledge’s sake, but again, for worship.
o Transforming the believer’s behavior
 The better we know God, the more transformed we are.
o Producing conviction of truth
 As you diligently study God’s Word, you come to a conviction that this is true, and that is not.
 Doctrine is for everyone, and everyone is a theologian.
 Theology is discipleship – meaning maturity in the Christian’s life emanating from the Holy Spirit’s work,
that is, the Word of God (Scripture).

C. Doctrinal Disagreements
 How to handle doctrinal disagreements:

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1. What is the relationship (toward the person of whom you disagree doctrinally)? Is this person:
a. Brother / sister in Christ? – it will give a certain perspective on the non-negotiable things (the deity of
Jesus Christ, the tri-unity of God, etc.).
b. Member of your flock? – it is entrusted in your care to answer these disagreements (accountability).

2. What is your goal? If doing theology is being transformed in Christlikeness thru knowing God personally,
the goal is not of:
a. Pride of knowledge / power (2 Timothy 2:24-25) – you shall not display your intellectual superiority in
doctrinal discussions. The goal is not to win over a debate / discussion.

2 Timothy 2:24 – 25 ESV

24
And the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil 25
correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of
the truth,

 The goal of doing theology in the form of discussions is to:

b. Practice the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15; 1 Timothy 1:5) – it is to correct someone with gentleness and
love.

Ephesians 4:14 – 15 ESV

14
so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of
doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to
grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ,

Ephesians 4:15 NA27 (Nestlé-Aland 27 – Simplified Text)

15
αληθευοντες δε εν αγαπη αυξησωμεν εις αυτον τα παντα ος εστιν η κεφαλη χριστος

 Notice in the NA27 text that it does not use the Greek word “ἀλήθεια” in the passage, (noun – G225),
meaning truth, but it uses the same root word for truth as a verb. It means that this text does not only imply
“speaking the truth in love” but “practicing the truth in love” (NET Bible).
 The good thing within these disagreements between sects is that it prompt us to be a better Christian by
encouraging each and everyone belonging to the church universal to be united in body and bond in the
Spirit.

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