Each chapter on a major doctrine: (1) states a classic issue of ultimate concern; (2) surveys alternative past and present answers; and (3) tests those proposals by their congruence with information on the subject progressively revealed from Genesis to Revelation. Then the chapter (4) formulates a doctrinal conclusion that consistently fits the many lines of biblical data; (5) defends that conviction respectfully; and finally (6) explores the conclusion's relevance to a person's spiritual birth, growth and service to others, all for the glory of God. In short, Integrative Theology masterfully integrates the disciplines of historical, biblical, systematic, apologetic, and practical theology.
Each chapter on a major doctrine: (1) states a classic issue of ultimate concern; (2) surveys alternative past and present answers; and (3) tests those proposals by their congruence with information on the subject progressively revealed from Genesis to Revelation. Then the chapter (4) formulates a doctrinal conclusion that consistently fits the many lines of biblical data; (5) defends that conviction respectfully; and finally (6) explores the conclusion's relevance to a person's spiritual birth, growth and service to others, all for the glory of God. In short, Integrative Theology masterfully integrates the disciplines of historical, biblical, systematic, apologetic, and practical theology.
Integrative Theology, Volume 1: Knowing Ultimate Reality: The Living God
400
Integrative Theology, Volume 1: Knowing Ultimate Reality: The Living God
400Hardcover(Reissue)
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Overview
Each chapter on a major doctrine: (1) states a classic issue of ultimate concern; (2) surveys alternative past and present answers; and (3) tests those proposals by their congruence with information on the subject progressively revealed from Genesis to Revelation. Then the chapter (4) formulates a doctrinal conclusion that consistently fits the many lines of biblical data; (5) defends that conviction respectfully; and finally (6) explores the conclusion's relevance to a person's spiritual birth, growth and service to others, all for the glory of God. In short, Integrative Theology masterfully integrates the disciplines of historical, biblical, systematic, apologetic, and practical theology.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780310521075 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Zondervan Academic |
| Publication date: | 08/25/2014 |
| Edition description: | Reissue |
| Pages: | 400 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.20(d) |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Dr. Bruce Demarest is professor of theology and spiritual formation at Denver Seminary.
Read an Excerpt
Integrative Theology, Volume 1
By Gordon R. Lewis, Bruce A. Demarest
ZONDERVAN
Copyright © 1987 Gordon R. Lewis and Bruce A. DemarestAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-310-52107-5
CHAPTER 1
THEOLOGY'S CHALLENGING TASK
Theology's Challenging Task
INTRODUCTION
The Need for Integrative Thinking
We seldom find time to put all the bits and pieces of our learning together in a meaningful whole. The rapid growth of knowledge makes it difficult to keep up in one field, let alone develop a unified world view encompassing all fields of knowledge.
The diversity of experiences and cultures accessible to us adds to the difficulty of comprehensive knowledge. The radically different kinds of experiences of people in East and West, North and South complicate the challenge of relating areas of learning cohesively on a shrinking globe. And even within the same culture people's interests vary greatly.
Difficult as it may be for us, with a multiplicity of experiences and interests in an exploding information age, to "put it all together," we need to relate our thinking about our particular specialty to reliable thought about other areas. The importance of seeing life whole is illustrated in ecology. Before unnecessarily exhausting a limited source of energy for personal profit, a person ought to consider, as far as possible, the potential effect on the earth's whole ecological system.
A coherent world view and way of life provides a necessary context for our ethical decision making in general. Without the "big picture" it is difficult to determine wisely what values are worth living and dying for in a fast-moving, pluralistic world. Francis Schaeffer diagnosed the basic problem of Christians in America in this way: "They have seen things in bits and pieces instead of totals." In the social issues of life it is important to be able to detect the underlying assumptions about reality (metaphysics) and about how we know reality (epistemology).
Not all those who reject skepticism and try to make sense out of life accept the existence of special revelation as their starting point. A variety of unifying principles are proposed. Many naturalists find the ultimate integrative factor in nature's energy-matter and its uniform laws. For secular humanists the highest reality that gives meaning to everything else is not impersonal, but personal: humanity. Pantheists think the supreme being is an impersonal god: the dynamic underlying energy of nature and our inner being.
Theists on the other hand see every thing in the cosmos as the creation of a personal God who is distinct from the world but active in it. And Christian theists find that the existence, meaning, and purpose of energy, nature, and persons derive from the purposes of the transcendent Lord of all, disclosed in Jesus Christ and the Bible.
Developing a theology that relates biblically revealed truth to humanity and nature is not an elective for Christians who believe in the Lord of all, but a requirement. God knows, sustains, and gives purpose to all that is. God provides a focal point not only for our limited personal experiences or special interests but for all thought. The question for Christians is not whether they will relate all their fields of knowledge to God's purposes, but whether they, as stewards of God's truth, will do so poorly or well.
Entry Points for Serious Thinking About Revealed Truth
As new Christians begin to further their understanding of what changed their lives, language functions not only to communicate vague feelings but to define the experienced reality. Usually new believers express the same beliefs about God and his purposes as those held by the people who were most influential in their conversion to Christ.
Denominationally, their earliest influences may have come from Baptists, Pentecostalists, Nazarenes, Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, or independents. Transdenominationally, the earliest influences may have come from systems of theology primarily evangelical, liberal, neoorthodox, ecumenical, liberation, process, fundamentalist, or charismatic.
Whatever our original enthusiasm and psychological certitude, subsequent experiences may cause us to think more carefully about particular beliefs. In this shrinking, pluralistic world we discover other Christians with quite different and even contradictory views. Our relatives, co-workers, neighbors, or friends may have significantly different perspectives, and their loyalties challenge us to know why we should maintain beliefs that until now we accepted without question.
There are many points in life at which we are forced to think more deeply about what we believe and why. While each of us has his or her specific "entry points" for serious thinking about revealed truth, there are some broad areas of experience that provide the "entry points" for many. Involved in church outreach programs, we confront people involved in non-Christian philosophies, religions, and cults. Dialogue with non-Christians may raise difficult issues that motivate further study. Compassion for people genuinely struggling with issues of basic beliefs may also motivate the search for answers.
Christians who have dedicated their lives to vocational service must decide in which doctrinal tradition they can serve with intellectual integrity and fervent commitment. A preliminary form of that decision may be the choice of a college or seminary. In training, courses in church history present many alternative theological traditions. Other challenging issues may be raised by studies in psychology and counseling, sociology, philosophy of religions, and crosscultural missions. Even the study of the Old and New Testaments discloses conflicting beliefs among knowledgeable and dedicated interpreters of the biblical languages. And responsible courses in theology involve the student in comparing and contrasting live options in the field. In order to establish normative beliefs to guide life and ministry, people considering Christian vocations will evaluate the relevance of alleged biblical evidence and the cogency of the arguments drawn from it.
Members of committees and boards of various organizations are often called on to discern the implications of doctrine that may determine the future of organizations and their personnel. The vitality of churches may depend on the theological discernment of pulpit committees who must make a choice from among candidates with radically different doctrinal loyalties to recommend for their pastorate. For the integrity of their mission agencies and schools board members must determine what beliefs are nonnegotiable.
A well-founded, personally appropriated faith becomes crucial when one is experiencing serious illness and facing death. Do the anxieties of a seemingly meaningless life, real guilt, and death have an answer that stands examination? In times of crisis it may not be enough to hunt for a verse here and there. When pressures gang up on us we need well-formulated, well-founded convictions that will not let us down. Even under the more ordinary pressures of life we need well-established convictions by which to live in a faithful, loving relation to God and others.
Experiences at some of these "entry points" motivate Christians to investigate the work others have done in theology and to become involved in the discipline themselves. Throughout our lives we need the guidance of revealed truths. Our spiritual Master asked us to grow, not only in grace, but also in knowledge of him and his revealed purposes (Eph. 4:15; 2 Peter 3:18).
Developing intellectual maturity takes Christians through at least four stages. (1) As they become aware of other religions, philosophies, and theologies, they can think and speak of them fairly. (2) Then they grow in an ability to evaluate alternative doctrines objectively by reliable criteria of truth. (3) Mature people do not remain in an undecided state but decide in favor of the most coherent account of the relevant data with the fewest difficulties. (4) Having personally accepted a well-founded conviction, they grow in their ability to live by it authentically, state it clearly, defend it adequately, and communicate it effectively.
SYSTEMATIC FORMULATION
Systematic Theology
The root meaning of the word "theology" is the "organized study {logos) of God (theos)." However, in this work we do not claim to know anything about God apart from God's disclosure of himself in nature and in Scripture. As used here, therefore, theology is the topical and logical study of God's revealed nature and purposes.
Theology is more comprehensive than the study of separate doctrines. Doctrinal studies consider individual biblical topics without logically relating them to other biblical or nonbiblical tenets in a developing belief system. Systematic theology not only derives coherent doctrines from the entirety of written revelation but also systematically relates them to each other in developing a comprehensive world view and way of life.
Systematic theology differs from biblical theology in its aim and organizing principle. Both systematic and biblical theology derive their data from the same primary source, the Bible. But biblical theology, aiming to be a descriptive science, is organized around the chronological and cultural development of a given biblical writer's own terms, categories, and thought forms in his historical and cultural context. Systematic theology, on the other hand, aims to produce normative guidelines to spiritual reality for the present generation; it organizes the material of divine revelation topically and logically, developing a coherent and comprehensive world view and way of life.
During centuries of attempts to develop systematics, the discipline has met with much opposition, as is true of any ethical or social attempt to state normative principles that people ought to accept and live by unhypocritically. But the opposition has targeted particularly systematic theology's method of reasoning. The discipline of systematics has sometimes been dominated by a given philosophical emphasis and paid insufficient attention to the history of doctrine and to biblical teaching in its literary, historical, and cultural contexts.
Not only biblical and historical scholars but also philosophers opposed (and oppose) premature systematizing. Some of the most influential recent philosophies (such as positivism, linguistic analysis, existentialism, and pragmatism) abandoned all hope of developing coherent and comprehensive world views. A similarly based anti-systematic temper is also evident in influential twentieth-century theologies such as liberalism, neoorthodoxy, and biblical theology.
Instead of systematic theology, graduate schools and publishers by and large emphasized psychology of religion, philosophy of religion, comparative religions, Old Testament studies, the faith of Israel (as evidenced in stories or case studies), New Testament studies, and the faith of the church. Even Karl Barth, who tried to call liberalism back to the transcendent God of the Bible, failed to regard the Bible itself as a coherent, divine revelation and wrote his extensive series of volumes on church dogmatics rather than systematic theology.
Charges Against Systematic Theology
These trends produced some very powerful charges against the discipline of systematic theology, and these charges led many to think it presumptuous and arrogant even to attempt coherence in all our thought about God, humanity, history, and nature. These charges, described below, cannot be overlooked by anyone approaching the field today.
1. Systematic theology organized a system of Christian thought around one central theme (such as sovereignty, freedom, covenant, dispensation, or kingdom) chosen a priori and imposed on the rest of revelation in a contrived interrelatedness.
2. Systematic theology failed to do justice to the multiplicity of relevant lines of biblical information seen in their cultural and historical contexts.
3. Systematic theology paid insufficient attention to the history of doctrine in the church.
4. Systematic theology tended to regard a system of theology as closed rather than open to new discoveries from God's Word or God's world.
5. Systematic theology passed its teachings on to the next generation by sheer indoctrination—an unworthy approach to education.
6. Finally, systematic theology failed to display the relevance of its content to the burning personal and social issues of its day.
Responses of Systematic Theologians
In spite of the measure of validity and power in criticisms like these, some evangelical theologians have made few methodological changes, while others have made major changes without explicitly formulating a new method of decision making.
Apparently unmoved by charges like those above are presuppositionalists (such as Cornelius Van Til and Rousas Rushdoony) and the deductive rationalists (such as Gordon Clark and Carl Henry). Valuable as the contributions of these writers have been in many ways, their presuppositional and axiomatic methodologies remain unchanged. Consequently, charges of a priori assumptions of the things to be proved, eisegesis, insufficient attention to the history of the doctrines, closed-mindedness, indoctrination, and insufficient relevance continue to limit the extent of their outreach and impact.
A change from such presuppositional approaches is evident in Millard Erickson's Christian Theology. Called "systematic theology" in chapter 1, this work displays a heightened consciousness of biblical contexts, the history of doctrine, an openness to investigation, avoidance of sheer indoctrination, and a meeting of contemporary needs. Some of these advantages are reflected in Erickson's definition of systematic theology as "that discipline which strives to give a coherent statement of the doctrines of the Christian faith, based primarily on the Scriptures, placed in the context of culture in general, worded in contemporary idiom, and related to issues of life."
Although Erickson devotes valuable chapters to methodology, biblical criticism, and philosophy, his systematic theology is not explicitly developed on the basis of a distinctive method of decision making. (A similar weakness appears in the helpful work of John Jefferson Davis.) Commendable as the elements discussed in Erickson's chapter on methodology and related chapters are, a procedure by which a reader might be expected to relate these elements to each other is not explicitly outlined. The telling criticisms leveled against systematic theology seem to require a more developed methodological proposal than either Erickson or Davis offers.
Contemporary theologians generally announce their intention to do justice to historical, biblical, contemporary, and practical aspects. However, the data may not always be made available to students who want to evaluate the evidence for themselves, and the relationship between the data and the decision-making process may not always be clear. Assuming a participatory philosophy of education in such a comprehensive field, a methodological paradigm becomes an essential tool for both research and teaching.
Integrative Theology
The Meaning of "Integrative Theology"
Integrative theology utilizes a distinctive verificational method of decision making as it defines a major topic, surveys influential alternative answers in the church, amasses relevant biblical data in their chronological development, formulates a comprehensive conclusion, defends it against competing alternatives, and exhibits its relevance for life and ministry.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Integrative Theology, Volume 1 by Gordon R. Lewis, Bruce A. Demarest. Copyright © 1987 Gordon R. Lewis and Bruce A. Demarest. Excerpted by permission of ZONDERVAN.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Preface, 7,Abbreviations, 15,
PART ONE: KNOWING ULTIMATE REALITY,
1. Theology's Challenging Task, 19,
2. Divine Revelation to All People of All Times, 59,
3. Divine Revelation Through Christ, Prophets, and Apostles, 93,
4. The Bible as Given by Inspiration and Received by Illumination, 129,
PART TWO: THE LIVING GOD,
5. God: An Active, Personal Spirit, 175,
6. God's Many-Splendored Character, 213,
7. God's Unity Includes Three Person, 249,
8. God's Grand Design for Human History, 291,
Notes, 337,
General Index, 359,
Scripture Index, 379,