This is the final of the ten “systems” of theology. Eschatology is the study of end times, also known as the Consummation. How will it all end? There are many debates on this topic, and they fall into two sub-categories. One category deals with the Tribulation, where and when that will take place in conjunction with the Rapture. The other category deals with the Millennial reign of Christ and whether the end times events take place before or after the 1000-year reign of Christ, or whether that reign is symbolic in the amillennial position. I am not going to argue any one of them here. I personally lean towards a pre-tribulation position followed by a literal 1000-year reign of Christ, but not in a way that lets believers escape any form of persecution. Another subtopic is whether the end times prophecies only described the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD. This is the preterist position.
That said, I know that no one in history ever really understood how a prophecy would be fulfilled prior to its fulfillment. The only ones whom seemed to get it were the chief priests at Jesus’ birth, knowing he’d be born in Bethlehem and knowing that Jesus said He’d raise from the dead after three days. That’s why they had the tomb guarded. Yet despite knowing what Scripture and Jesus said, they missed both badly. But no one else every figured out the details of how prophecy would be fulfilled prior to it being fulfilled. So I am perfectly fine if I am wrong on eschatology and won’t fight other believers for it. I tend to align more with David Wilkerson who said the point of it all is “Be ye ready.” Jesus’ main theme of end times is that we aren’t going to know when it will happen until it happens. He expects us to be watching, be ready, and be doing what we are supposed to be doing.
Our view of the end times is also affected by our view of origins if taken consistently. This is a key reason why Old Earth ideas must be false. The whole plan of salvation is a plan of redemption, a plan to restore that which was lost to an even more valuable form. A key thing about restoration is that it looks like the original. It’s more valuable than the original, but it looks like the original. For example, if someone wants to restore a 1957 Chevy, when the project is done, it is going to look like a 1957 Chevy. It is not going to look like a 2006 Lamborghini. When it comes to origins and end times, when God restores the Creation, it is going to look like what it originally did before sin corrupted it.
This is why Old Earth ideals, which include death before sin, must be false. If what we see now is how God created it all, which is their claim, then we have nothing to look forward to in the new earth. Everything will still die; sickness, disease, death, etc. are not going to change if this is how God created it to start with. I have heard some old earthers say that the new creation is going to be completely different and that it will finally be perfect. Yet, according to their position, the universe that God made is corrupt, defiled, cursed, breaking down, wearing down, and most certainly is not a product of someone who would make everything good and has the knowledge of getting it right the first time. So that would also be how the new universe will be made too. And how is that “restoration”? As I said, restoration brings back the original design.
Yet the Young Earth position, which derives from the clear reading of Genesis, teaches that when God created everything, it was in a perfect and ideal situation. No sin, death, disease, or heartache of any kind or in any of the living, breathing animals. Objectors will say that this would have been a severe problem because if there was no animal death, then the animals would have heavily overpopulated the earth. This is nice speculation but not fact. We don’t know what would have happened if Adam chose to eat from the Tree of Life instead. Some have suggested that God would have brought him with Him to paradise for choosing life. That too is speculation. But what we do know is that God had everything planned from the beginning, which means He had Adam’s sin and the curse in His plan. It also means He had how it will all end in the same plan, too.
The final thing I’ll note here is the Tree of Life. The Tree of Life is both in the Garden of Eden in Genesis and it will be in the New Jerusalem on the New Earth. The only details we truly have of this tree is that it gives 12 fruits in their season and that once Adam and Eve sinned, God did not want them eating from that tree lest they live forever in their sinful state. But once we have our resurrected and glorified bodies that will be freed from sin itself, then we will be able to enjoy this tree’s fruit for eternity. We know that there won’t be any night there because God’s glory will play the role of the sun, and that indicates that our physical bodies will not need to rest with sleep. It makes me wonder how that new body will operate.
This concludes my series on Systematic Theology. As expected, I knew it would be just a few snapshots of what each system should cover. While origins is not included among them, each of the ten systems do tie to origins. As each system is holistic, you cannot disregard one without having some effect on the others. Thank you for reading.
This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration. All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved. Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.
This is the 9th of the 10 systems you will find in most systematic theology texts. Angelology is the study of angels and demons. There has been a big uptick and interest in the spiritual realm with the Charismatic movement and books like Frank Peretti’s This Present Darkness and movies like The Exorcism of Emily Rose. Peretti had an influence on me as he indirectly was the one who got me interested in sword fighting as a whole. A mission group that I was part of was influenced by Peretti and did a spiritual warfare skit about what goes on behind the scenes in evangelism in a very Peretti-like manner. That skit had a profound influence on me, and I have been hooked on sword fights ever since. My book Call to Arms came out of all that.
To make it clear, angels and demons are real, but there are dangers as C.S. Lewis warned about in his Screwtape Letters. There are two equal and opposite dangers to dealing with angels and demons. One is to ignore them, and the other is to over-emphasize them. I will say that most demonic possessions do not do what “Emily Rose” deals with. About 15 years ago, I’d watch a show called “Haunted” and it primarily explored the ministry of Ed and Loraine Warren, who were controversial exorcists. Of course, this show rarely showed the true solutions to demonic activity, which is the Gospel of Christ, but as I have personally dealt with the demonic and heard many stories dealing with the demonic, I can state with high certainty that every person will confront them in some way. Some may not recognize it, but they will deal with it.
The Charismatics often go too far with their studies of the demonic and angelic realms. While there is a legitimate hierarchy of angels and demons, some take that to an extreme. Jim Osman is a Cessationist and the pastor over Justin Peters. On American Gospel TV, he did a series on spiritual warfare and showcased how some of the Charismatics go too far, going to climb mountains to renounce the “spirit of that region” and other strange things. However, I think he goes too far on the other side and denies the whole aspect of demons ruling over regions because of the extremes. He even makes a comment that our spiritual warfare is ultimately only against false teachings, not against demons, and in doing so he misses a big part of Ephesians 6:12, which explicitly marks the demonic realm as one of our enemies.
On the flip side, I sat through a sermon about 2 ½ years ago from the pastor’s wife about “angels” that she ultimately got while on the plane sitting next to another Charismatic preacher. The sermon started out with describing angels and their roles, but then it went downhill fast, basically having angels being our servants waiting for us to give the command to go serve them. It was borderline heresy. So, both extremes are seen today, and few know how to balance the right approach to the angelic and the demonic. I’m not about to say I have it figured out myself, but I’m at least going to try.
As with every other systematic theology theme, this one also ties back to origins. Job describes how the angels witnessed the creation of the universe. There are old earthers who use this verse to suggest that the earth had a long past and that Lucifer ruled over it until he rebelled. Then God destroyed the earth with water and started from scratch with the six days of creation. This is the “Gap/Ruination” theory. A variation of this is “Young Biosphere Creation,” which isn’t any better. Both of these theories put a massive time gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:3 all because the geology states “4.6 billion years.” Yet, within that geology are fossils of once-living things that completely refute the entire notion. And even under the Ruination theory, the “flood” that wiped out Lucifer’s reign left no evidence whatsoever, so there is no way to support it.
We don’t know when God created the angels, only that he created them prior to the physical universe according to Job. As Genesis marks the beginning of time, and considering that the angels are created beings that had a start time, I personally have good reason to suggest they were part of the creation of Day 1. On Day 1, we have water and light, but there is no mention of when angels were created. Some might make an argument that they were created on Day 4 because of how angels are often describes as stars such as in Revelation 12. The ultimate answer to when angels were created is that we don’t know.
What we do know, however, is that they had to be created sometime between the start of Day 1 and the end of Day 6. Only God existed prior to Day 1 and upon the completion of Day 6, everything was done and completed. We also know that Lucifer’s fall could not have happened prior to Day 6 because the creation was complete and God called it “very good.” But we know from Isaiah and Ezekiel that at some point, Lucifer, the brightest of the angels, known as the worship leader of heaven, got proud and thought he deserved worship himself. Personally, I think part of this came out of God creating man to be made in His image and being the focus of God’s grand plan. Lucifer was not going to be the center of attention; that puny human being was going to be. Somehow, angels had free will too. But unlike man, the angels who rebelled against God have no place for redemption. Jesus’ death was for men, not the angels. The ones who joined Lucifer in his rebellion will be cast into the judgment that they are all well aware of as noted when they tried to identify Jesus before He wanted to be known.
Jesus defeated Satan at the cross and crushed his power. He is a defeated foe, but that does not mean he is not still fighting. Many battles have been fought after the war formally ended because word did not get out. Likewise, Satan doesn’t acknowledge his defeat as long as we don’t acknowledge it. And he is not behind every temptation either. He is not God’s equal. He is a master plotter and strategist and a master observer, so he knows well how to get to us and what kind of lies we’ll believe and which ones we won’t. We will never outwit him. But if we trust in the Lord, God will outwit him, and we’ll get to watch him made the fool for trying to stop us.
The angels are God’s messengers and more. Some are warriors, some are messengers, some are worshipers and I’m not going to go into great detail on that. They long to see how God will deal with us and when one of us repents and comes into the Kingdom, they rejoice. And they outnumber the demons 2-1. So, we need not fear the demonic. We should not take them lightly, but we should not let them hinder us.
Next week, we’ll look at eschatology, the end times.
This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration. All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved. Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.
Ecclesiology is the study of the church. Many people think that the church started in Acts 2 at Pentecost. While that is historically true, God used the entirety of the Old Testament not only to provide pictures of Christ but pictures of the church, too. So, what is the church? There are several definitions of a church. One is a local body, a local congregation. My current church is The Old Paths Christian Church, which I joined two years ago. I previously went to Restoration Fellowship for 18 years before God called me out. That is a local congregation. Another description would be denominal identifiers, such as Baptists, Pentecostals, Methodists, Lutherans, etc. These are groups of local churches that adhere to the same doctrinal principles and an overseeing governing body. Then there is the general church of a particular region such as the US, Europe, China, India, etc. In many of my critiques of the church, I generally refer to the general state of the Christendom in the US. But then there is the universal Church, the Bride of Christ. This is what I will be focusing on here.
The universal Church is the combined collection of all believers who have been authentically born again by the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit. Unlike any of the other definitions of a church, this is the only one that is defined by true believers as described by the Bible. Most of Jesus’ parables deal with distinguishing the professing believers into true believers and false believers. The whole letter of 1 John provides a great set of tests to show who is indeed saved by what the style and overall tone of life looks like. The universal Church is not a show. It’s not a “religion” in a traditional sense, though there are most certainly religious aspects of it. It is not a “relationship” per se, but without that intimate relationship of which marriage is the closest image we have, it does not work. It is a religion, a marriage, an adoption, a new creation, a clean slate, a job, a journey, and both vertical and horizontal relationships all together.
The Church is also a holy body. The church is meant to be separate from the rest of the world. We are not to think, do, and operate as the world does but as God would have us operate. This is a huge problem we are facing in Western Christendom. The extreme majority of local churches and denominations today are so worldly-minded that there is really no separation between them and everyone else. Local churches are run as businesses where success is determined by growth and proclamations instead of genuine conversions, and the philosophies for how to run it are nearly entirely worldly. However, God has always had His Plan A for how His followers are to act and behave. I boil it down to two simple words: believe and obey. This has been God’s pattern from the beginning. All those who are called saints of God are those who believe and obey.
It starts in Genesis. The account of Adam and Eve and the Fall of Man is about believing and obeying. God told them to not eat from only one tree or the consequence would be death. They did not believe Him and chose to disobey Him instead. Cain and Abel then showcase the prototype of the reprobate and the believer. Abel knew what God required to cover for sin and he believed God, proving it by obeying Him through giving a blood sacrifice of the best of his flock. Cain, however, did not believe, and one can get an impression that Cain gave a spurious offering of his own work rather than properly examining his heart, and he gave God the scraps.
Noah found grace in the eyes of God and he believed God about the Flood and obeyed by building the Ark and preparing for the Flood. Abraham is considered the father of the faith. He was called out from his family and hometown and journeyed with God to an unknown land that would be the home of his people and the center of world history. His faith and obedience are considered righteousness. If I were to go through Hebrews 11, the list goes on. The central markers for all believers are belief and obedience. It’s that simple; God takes care of the rest. So it is with the Church. The Church is a group of individuals who believe and obey God. We can use the Old Testament history to give us examples of what that looks like played out. That is a central part of Paul’s argument in 1 Corinthians 10 – to learn from what Israel did and did not do.
One thing I want to be careful about is to not confuse the national covenant with Israel with the Church. There is a whole doctrine called “replacement theology” in which the church is a literal replacement for Israel as a people. Paul explicitly refutes that in Romans 11 in which he describes the Gentiles in the church as being “grafted” into the main vine. The original vine is still there. It has been significantly pruned back, but it’s still alive. God is going to restore the nation of Israel when the time is right, and the Jews will recognize Jesus as their Messiah. With that said, there are certain promises that are made to the nation of Israel that do not apply to us, especially to the US. 2 Chronicles 7:14 is a classic example. That verse was in the context of how God would restore the kingdom of Israel when they repented of their sin and sought the Lord. So many think that applies to the US, but it doesn’t. Jeremiah 18:7-10, however, does apply and it’s the same general message. Nations that turn towards God will be blessed and have judgment deterred, but those who refuse to hear God will be judged and condemned. While we can learn from Israel’s examples as to what the Church is supposed to be and do, the Church is not “Israel” for the modern day.
Note that Jesus confronted this very notion in John 8. The Jews thought they were already “saved” merely by being of Abraham’s bloodline, and today many think they are saved because they can check off doctrines and go to a local congregation. Yet Jesus made clear that the only ones who are truly saved are those who believed as Abraham did – those who believe and obey. Those who do not believe and obey, no matter what lineage they claim to be part of, are sons of the devil and not sons of Abraham, not sons of the faith. The Church is not people who claim the faith but people who have been born again, who believe God and obey Him. They may know next to nothing about doctrine or theology, but they know and trust and believe their God. Genesis gives the models, and we prove if we are in the faith if we walk as they walked: in faith, trust, and obedience.
Next week, we’ll look at angelology, the study of angels.
This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration. All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved. Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.
Soteriology is the study of salvation. This has been one of the hot debate points of 500 years of theology: predestination or free will. Are we saved because Jesus chose us and basically dragged us to salvation, or are we saved because we heard the Gospel and we chose to respond to it? I am not going to answer that here. I am only going to say that wherever you stand, you need two things: you need God being sovereign over all things, and you need man being responsible for his choices. You must have both. I personally see these two as parallel pillars in the same way that we have God’s government (His law, wrath, and justice) and God’s grace (His mercy, grace, and patience) operating at the same time without ever contradicting.
There is one thing I despise in the salvation debate and that is ultimately the “minimalist approach.” It comes in the form of “Do I need to believe that to be saved?” When it comes to topics like origins, baptism, end times, angels, etc., does belief in a certain position on this topic merit or lose salvation? I again question what people understand salvation is when they do this. They will say, “All you need to do is believe in Jesus.” However, what does that mean and what does that entail? It’s especially seen in Reformed circles, in the academics, where “salvation” and “doctrine” are ultimately a pure academic study. My own church has come out of a season of over-emphasis on doctrine and missing genuine salvation, and I am so grateful to my pastor for his approach on this because it’s pulled me back from going so far against one ditch that I get trapped in the other on the other side of the road.
Salvation does require belief in certain doctrines, but it’s more than that. It’s really believing Jesus. Not merely believing “in” Jesus, but actually believing Him. I have heard one person tell me when debating origins, “If God said it, I believe it.” I immediate asked him about whether God said “six days” or not and he never gave a clear answer. He professes belief in Jesus, and if he had never said anything about origins, I’d think he was a generally solid Christian because he checks off the doctrine boxes. Yet, a red flag keeps warning me about this issue. It’s not that he is an “old earther” because there are old earthers that I can tell are simply wrong on Genesis but genuinely love their Savior, but really how he has justified his position. The ones who genuinely love Jesus and show it also show very little knowledge about old earth ideas and also put very little weight to such ideas. I will say this: if the earth truly is billions of years old, then NO ONE is saved because there is nothing to be saved from.
People talk about salvation as being “saved from my sins” and “saved from Hell,” but that is as far as it goes. While those statements are true, that can easily become a weak knowledge of salvation if there is a weak view of sin. If you get your doctrines of sin wrong, you get the doctrines of salvation wrong, and with that, you will also have Jesus wrong. These are all intertwined; messing around in one area is going to greatly impact the others. If Jesus died for your sins but your view of sin is that it’s just imperfections within you that are no big deal, then what really was the point of his dying? The Progressive Christians have an extremely erroneous view of sin because they think they are “part God” or are “little gods” and thus are inherently good. And to their credit, they are consistent with this because they then ask, “Why did Jesus have to die?” They have to argue Jesus’ death from something other than being required to satisfy the wrath and justice of God, so their view of salvation is purely academic and rather Gnostic in their approach. It’s salvation via knowledge and the salvation is from ignorance. The Christian view, however, is that salvation is salvation from sin, salvation from ourselves, salvation from God’s wrath, and even more than that.
But salvation is not just salvation from something but salvation to something. God did not rescue Israel from slavery just to free them, but so that they would be a people to serve Him. Salvation for the Christian is not to get out from sin alone, but also so that we would be the Bride of Christ, a people who would serve, worship, and enjoy God forever. Under the Biblical view of Adam’s sin, the paradise was lost. Adam was in paradise. He was not only in a perfect world but in an ideal relationship with God. He’d talk with Him, walk with Him, and enjoy Him. But then he decided to eat from that tree, disobeying God. Adam chose to live another life and do his own thing, and it was a deadly decision. Yet, despite that, God still offered hope and salvation. Upon confronting Adam about his sin, God showed how He would bring salvation. He killed an animal to use its skins as clothing, shedding innocent blood as a substitute for sin. Why didn’t Adam die that very day? Because an animal died in his place. And thus, the first mention of the Gospel message was established.
Salvation is shown in many images throughout the Bible. I mentioned this earlier in the series, but Paul directly connects the regeneration process, the process of being born again, to creation. As God spoke light into existence, so He gives man light to see the truth. While I believe man is responsible to how he responds to the light given to him, it is God who illuminates man to begin with and gives him the chance to see his need for salvation. If man does not see his need for salvation, he won’t seek an answer for that need. That is why the Progressive Christians are so opposed to the Gospel; they don’t see their need to be saved, because they don’t see their sin to be an actual problem.
When it comes to origins, the wrong view of origins will drastically affect one’s view on the need for salvation. If the earth is millions of years old, salvation is not possible. Again, salvation is from sin and its effects. According to old earth beliefs, when taken to their logical conclusion, there is no need to be saved because sin never did anything. If Adam and Eve existed, they were just among a population that lived and operated as we do today – short life spans of no more than 80 years, got sick, hurt, died, etc. for hundreds of thousands of years. What did sin do in such a scenario? The Old Earthers who are better at theology would say it separates man from God, but what was the relationship between man and God prior to Adam if they weren’t the first and ONLY humans? What you will find is that they actually take the YEC theology on such issues and claim it as their own. But their entire theology that remotely sounds good doesn’t come from OEC ideas carried out. And as God is in the business of restoration, what does the old earther have to look forward to? We’ll cover this more on the study of end times, but if salvation is being saved to something, and that something is a restoration of what was originally planned, then what does salvation to an old earther actually look like? They actually don’t have answer because their models don’t have sin doing anything, and thus salvation truly doesn’t do anything either. Again, there are many OEC out there who have sound doctrine otherwise, but there are many more OEC out there who have much less.
Before we argue about how salvation is done, we need to have a clear picture of what salvation is. To do that, we need to know what things were like prior to sin, what sin is, what sin does, and why there is a need for salvation to begin with. We need to stop throwing out our Christianese vocabulary around and treat it as we have been. We need to get back to taking it seriously.
Next week, we’ll look at ecclesiology: the study of the church.
This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration. All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved. Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.
Please do not fear or dread these high-level academic vocabulary terms, but hamartiology simply means the study of sin. What is sin? What does it do? How does it affect us? What are the consequences of sin? All of that falls into the system of hamartiology, the study of sin.
Unfortunately, sin is really treated extremely superfluously today. We hear the term so much that it no longer has its sting. Even worse, it is so poorly and infrequently defined, often intentionally, that the solution seems like no big deal. Some of the biggest names that “represent” (and I use that term loosely) the faith boast on TV that they do not and will not preach about sin; they don’t want to talk about the “negative” stuff. They just want people to be happy and smile and go about their day, while giving up their paychecks to them.
There are many people who aren’t afraid to say the word “sin,” but they definitely don’t define it or describe it as the Bible does. When the Prosperity preachers or the Progressive preachers speak about sin, it is not in context of Biblical language, but as a mere “barrier to your blessings.” While it is true that sin will block us from being able to receive God’s blessings, the blessings are not the primary issue. There are others who know that sin is doing something wrong, but they try to soften the blow to call it mere “mistakes” or “imperfections.” Sometimes they will go further and say it is merely “something God doesn’t like.” The whole idea is that it takes the weight of sin off man for his choices or at least reduces it. It does several things. It reduces man’s responsibility for his choices because “I was born that way” or “Nobody’s perfect.” It also can give the unintentional effect of painting God as a petty figure. Many scoffers have objected to such notions. They object to why God should send any of them to Hell because as far as they are concerned, they are not bad people, and God is holding them responsible for things that are quite trivial. The people doing this are not intentionally being heretical, but they are not giving a correct diagnosis to the problem and thus they are giving the wrong medicine for the problem.
So, what is sin? We actually cannot get a proper understanding of it without going to Genesis. Just like we can’t define man properly without Genesis, we also cannot define sin without Genesis. Not only does Genesis give us the entrance of sin and death into the world but it also gives us the description of death. The term “hamartiology” comes from the Greek word hamartia that can mean sin in general or it can mean to “miss the mark” as in archery. Last year I wrote a full 20+ post series about sin and what it is, so I’m not going to regurgitate all that here. The key is that when we “miss the mark,” it’s not merely just getting a low score. It means missing the cut, you aren’t good enough, and you are out!
Why does God require such high standards of absolute perfection? No one can do that – and that’s the point. We cannot do it because man was never meant to be able to do it on his own. Man was created to depend upon God, and this was where the first sin came into the picture. God gave Adam specific instructions to work the garden and permission to eat from any tree in the garden. But there was one prohibition: don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because to do so would cause death. Note that God did not punish Adam for eating fruit; God punished Adam for directly and defiantly disobeying Him. The fruit itself was not the problem, it was the commandment of God that was the issue. Adam did not trust God and believed a lie instead. Then knowing what God said and knowing in his conscious that it was wrong, he disobeyed anyway.
This is what sin truly is. It’s not merely missing a target and “meaning well.” It’s intentional defiance and seditious treason against the thrice-holy God. God is not just holy; He is pure, righteous, and just. He cannot allow sin to be in His presence because of these attributes. He will destroy that sin and anyone or anything attached to that sin. This is why the punishment for sin is death. It’s not God being petty or overreacting. But if any person or being is found with sin, that being must end up in the one place where any intimate communion with God or even God’s presence will not be experienced: Hell. Every person in Hell is not going to experience God’s love and tenderness but rather His anger and wrath. And because sin is against the infinite God, the punishment for sin is also going to be infinite.
Adam’s sin wasn’t just on Adam himself but upon all mankind. While many scoffers object to this, it is actually a glorious reality. Adam is our federal head; he represents each person. He not only was our original father, but his choice to sin carries both forensic and legal consequences to us today. We all not only have our own inclination to sin, but we have all sinned individually. All this plays a vital role in our salvation, which will be discussed next week.
But what happens when one teaches the earth is billions of years old? All this teaching about what sin is suddenly disappears. Why? Because everything behind a universe that old all depends upon calculations of processes that happen today, which are part of a sin-cursed universe, not part of the original creation that God made which was “very good.” Also, with every teaching about old earth geology, there are fossils of dead things within those rock layers. By teaching an old earth, what comes with it are teachings of millions of years of death within those layers. The old earth crowd will argue that because the Bible does not explicitly state that “animals did not die before sin,” therefore their arguments of animal death are perfectly valid. The problem is that they openly admit that if humans died before sin, then that undermines the Gospel. Well, we find human fossils in antiquity, too. Skull 1470 is just one such example dated to 1.8 million years old, in a layer that was revised twice to match the Evolutionary story. Prior to the finding of that skull, the KBS Tuffs were dated to 2.7 million years by hundreds of dating methods, and prior to that they were dated to 270 million years, all changing when they found things inside the layers that mess up the Evolutionary story. See this video from Ian Juby where he traced this history. I still question why people think those methods are reliable when they throw them out at will when they mess up their Evolutionary story but praise them when they support it. Deep Time puts human death long before any view of Adam. That puts death before sin and thus makes death not the due penalty for sin and that nullifies the cross.
You can only have a correct view of sin by having a correct view of origins. Yes, there are preachers who have held to old earth beliefs and taught sin correctly, but if you listen to them, all their teaches on the topic were as though the Bible’s history was correct, not as though the secular models about the age of the earth were correct. In those people, you will not find teachings that carry Deep Time ideas through their logical conclusions, because those theologians never did think it through. Always test what you hear with Scripture. That is why Bibliology is so important.
Next week, we’ll look at soteriology, the study of salvation.
This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration. All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved. Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.
Anthropology is the study of man. In a mainstream academic study, this is studying of mankind and his history. But in theology, it goes much deeper. The doctrines of anthropology begin in Genesis when God makes man in His image. We are meant to be a physical reflection, a picture, an image of what God is like and how He operates. However, when Adam sinned against God, that image was marred by the corruption that sin does to anything it touches. Man is well aware that he does not function as he ought, and that this world is not functioning as it ought. That is why he is always trying to fix things and do things better. There is always a seeking of something higher and better, like something was lost that is not there – a utopia that is known but cannot be grasped. Anthropology is the Biblical study of who man is and why he is here.
One of the huge debate points about origins is on the nature of man. This is why origins cannot be a scientific study because science cannot define man. That is a worldview issue that far supersedes science. It answers one of the most fundamental questions of all time: Who am I?
What is man? Is man a special creation that bears the image of God, the only physical moral agent in existence, and the subject the epic story that is history which we are playing a role in? Or is man the descendant of an ape-like creature, a mere product of evolutionary mutations? There really aren’t any other options. Several of the old earth models say that God selected “Adam and Eve” out of a population of animal-like “homo sapiens” and breathed in them the “breath of life” and became “homo sapiens divinus.” But this is the same as the pure evolutionary story just with God decorated over it cosmetically.
Note that no scientific study will ever or can ever answer this question of man’s identity. Any scientific study that could be done will already have the answer decided before it starts. If the scientist believes in a special creation, he will not seek a connection between apes and humans other than the common designs of the Creator. But if the scientist is an evolutionist, he’ll already presume that apes and humans had a common ancestor, look for connections, and make them even if they’re not there. Darwin didn’t come up with universal common ancestry. He was already well versed in the “Great Chain of Being” which is the “tree of life” that had been taught by the pagan cultures for centuries. He just gave it scientific jargon.
This is not small debate point. So much rides on man’s identity and position and yet because the church has been so focused on just the cross that they have lost the battle over truth and the authority of Scripture. (Note that Paul made the cross his central point, not his only point, and every point pointed to and revealed the cross.) So many who have compromised on Genesis will say, “It doesn’t matter about Genesis, just worry about Jesus.” But if we have a wrong view of man in regard to Genesis, then we’ll have a wrong or at least an inconsistent view of what Jesus was able to do on that cross.
This ties into the study of Christology. Jesus came and lived on this earth as a man, not as a highly evolved animal. Only man is redeemable. The angels who sinned against God were never given a chance for redemption, only man was. And man’s origin says a lot about that. The Evolutionist may be able to make their arguments for how man and apes split genetically, but they never could explain the non-material distinctions such as language and morality. Apes have no moral code or standard. They grunt but do not have a language like we do. But if we had a common ancestor with apes, then how is man responsible for sin? The doctrines of sin also play a role here, and I’ll emphasize that more as this series progresses.
While God has used animals for His work, it is man that is the center of all attention. Man’s life is extremely brief and yet extremely valuable. We come and go like the wind, a vapor, a blade of grass, and yet the same God who keeps watch over the sparrows treats us far more valuable than any other part of His creation. The psalmist was right to ask, “Who is man that You would consider him?” This is the wisdom of God. We are the epitome of God’s creation, but we aren’t the biggest, fastest, or strongest creatures. If animal kind were to truly turn on us, they’d crush us rather quickly. Many sci-fi movies and books contemplate that scenario. Yet God gave man dominion over the animals, and after the Flood, He gave animals fear of man. Why? Because now animals would be available for food. Prior to the flood, the animals would never be skittish of men. This is all related.
The secular community knows that man has dominion over the creation. But unlike the Christian, they believe man has “evolved” into the “God-position.” While we are the epitome, the crown of God’s creation, sinful man has taken that notion and make himself like God, just as the serpent suggested we do. But man also sinned and brought all the corruption to the world that is here today. Sinful man acknowledges this in his corrupt way. Just watch your standard sci-fi disaster movie. Man is the problem, and man is the solution. Yet the Bible teaches us that man is the problem and Jesus Christ is the solution. Man is so hopelessly lost in his sin that he needs a savior.
I hope you get a picture of how critical this issue is. If we are to understand man correctly, we have to understand how God defines man, not how man defines himself. Man may be made in the image of God originally, but sin has greatly marred that image, and Satan is doing whatever he can to disfigure and make a mockery of that image. Please hear this: all this transgender and gender fluidity ideology is a satanic attack on the identify of man. The sexual identity issues are all attempts, and good ones now, to destroy how God has defined man and the relationships man is supposed to have with each other and with the rest of creation. Why has the world been so successful in attacking in this area? Because the church quit fighting over origins and let the world take over that battlefield. Yet all the identity battles we fight today – the marriage issues, the family structure issues, all of it – can be answered by having a right view of origins and how God defines man.
Next week, I’ll address hamartiology, the doctrine of sin.
This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration. All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved. Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.
The fourth category of doctrines we will examine is called Pneumatology, the study of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the person of the Trinity who is either the least discussed or is over-emphasized to a very unhealthy level. There is a reason why the Holy Spirit is often not spoken about much: because one of His primary jobs is to reveal Christ. So, unlike the Father and Christ, the Holy Spirit never points to Himself. Be careful about churches that over emphasize the Holy Spirit. I am not saying never talk about Him, but if the general trend is to talk about the Holy Spirit and NOT talk about what the Holy Spirit does, then you must be careful because something is not right.
One of the Holy Spirit’s jobs is to reveal Christ as mentioned above. He will showcase who the true Jesus of Nazareth of the Bible is, and one of the ways He does this is by illuminating Scripture. In my previous series, I wrote about how to read and understand the Bible. Above all I wrote in that series, it is the Holy Spirit who makes the Scriptures come alive. It’s not just understanding what the Bible states that gives it power; it is the active work of the Holy Spirit that gives it power. Spurgeon said that he would never think about trying to defend the Bible, because it would be like trying to defend a lion. Why would you? Just turn the lion loose and he’ll defend himself. Likewise, while apologists do make a strong effort to try to defend the Bible and the faith, I have been convicted that this is the totally wrong approach. We don’t need to defend the Bible intellectually. We instead need to turn it loose because the Bible, when used as the weapon of the Holy Spirit, will strike down the false teachings and demonic ideas and forces we face. For too long, I’ve merely relied on my intellect, rather than actually submitting to the Holy Spirit and letting Him do the battle.
One of the other jobs of the Holy Spirit is to convict the world of its sin. One thing you can state for sure: if a pastor or ministry refuses to deal with sin, and especially if they boast about not dealing with sin, you can mark that pastor or ministry as having nothing to do with the Holy Spirit. If they refuse to deal with sin, the Holy Spirit will, and they are at war with each other. I am not saying that every sermon has to only be about sin, however, when it shows up (which will be often) it does need to be addressed.
In this series, I am showcasing how each system of theology has to deal with origins, let us examine what the Bible says about the Holy Spirit regarding origins. The Holy Spirit is the second person of the Trinity mentioned in the Bible. In Genesis 1:2, God had created the primitive form of the earth, which was primarily just water and the Holy Spirit hovered over them. The term is more likened to “brooding” than mere “hovering.” And it was in this moment that the creation truly began and the Father said, “Let there be light.”
The Apostle Paul makes a connection between this passage of Genesis 1:1-3 and salvation. In Genesis 1:1-3, God creates the seed form of the earth that was incomplete, and the Holy Spirit “brooded” over the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light,” and the creation process began in greater detail. Then Paul states how in the same way God commanded light to come into existence, He also shines light upon our hearts. When God saves someone, we see the same process. The “seed” is planted, the Holy Spirit “broods” over that seed, and then God grants salvation. So even in the first three verses of Genesis, we have the process of salvation in its seed form.
The Holy Spirit didn’t merely enter the picture 2000 years ago at Pentecost. He was there from the start and had an active role in Creation. He was the agent who used the prophets to speak about future events and to reveal what was going on or what needed to happen. He is the one who does the work in plowing, sowing, planting, watering, making the seed grow, and then producing the harvest. The Holy Spirit is the one who convicts man of sin, teaches man right from wrong, corrects and trains man in his journey of sanctification, and then protects and preserves man in salvation.
So, this concludes the three big systematic theology categories of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but there are six more to come. We will also be looking at anthropology (the study of man), hamartiology (the study of sin), soteriology (the study of salvation), ecclesiology (the study of the church), angelology (the study of the angelic/demonic), and eschatology (the study of end times). I am still baffled that cosmology (the study of origins) is not an explicit category here; a misunderstanding of origins will lead to a misunderstanding of each of these categories. So even though the study of origins is not formally in the list, I will argue that you don’t have a proper view of the rest of the systems without a proper view of origins. Stay tuned for next week on anthropology.
This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration. All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved. Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.
Christology is the study of the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ. When you hear lectures and read articles about Christology, they typically center around what is called the “hypostatic union,” that Jesus is both full God and fully man at the same time. The studies go through Scripture to showcase the deity of Christ but also showcase how He was also just as any other man simply without the sin nature.
The other angle that many take when studying Christology is in the study of Scripture. When Jesus, after He rose, He caught up with two disciples walking to Emmaus trying to process what happened. He spent the trip explaining from Moses through the Prophets how all Scripture pointed to Him. Spurgeon cited an account of a young preacher and his mentor discussing a sermon the young preacher had just given. The mentor said it was a poor sermon despite all the correct exegesis, despite all the good analogies, and despite all the good practical applications. The mentor said it was a poor sermon because there was no Christ. Why? Even though the text did not specify Jesus, it was the pastor’s job to find Christ in any text and to search and even cut a road to get to the Master.
For this blog post, I want to emphasize on Christ as He relates to origins. A severe problem that people have today in their Christology is that many think that Jesus didn’t actually exist until 2000 years ago when He became a man, born of the virgin Mary. Yet, if we look through the Old Testament, we see Jesus all over the place. The “Angel of the Lord” often shows up in the Old Testament, and those are likely the “pre-incarnate” appearances of Jesus. It could be argued that any physical manifestation that God used to meet His people was Jesus. This is why Abraham could eat with God, Jacob could wrestle with God, Moses could speak with God face-to-face, Gideon had his requests met, and Joshua met the Commander of the Armies of Heaven. These are all very likely pre-incarnate appearances of Jesus.
Jesus existed before all of history began, and He is the reason and purpose for why we exist, for why the earth exists. ALL things were made for Him, by Him, and to Him. Jesus is the point and purpose for why anything exists and why anything happens. The Creation is about Christ. The Fall was about Christ. The Flood was about Christ. The slavery in Egypt was about Christ. The Exodus was about Christ. The list goes on; it is all about Christ. The entire Old Testament was not just to give 300+ prophecies about Jesus here on earth but also to give many examples of how Jesus would behave or what Jesus would overcome. The Exodos crushes Egypt and the conquest crushes Canaan. The Flood crushes all life outside the Flood. “What about all those innocent people?” One, who said they were innocent? Two, Jesus said it plainly: “Unless you repent, you too will perish.” Three, God has a plan for all that takes place, and everything is about fulfilling that plan. And that plan has Jesus at the center, not us. While we are part of that plan, it’s not about us. If our Christology is correct, we will know this. But each of these cases of the Egypt, Canaan, and the Flood showcase God’s wrath against sin and to help us see that we desperately need a Savior.
Jesus is an active agent in this entire plan. The Father made the plan, and the plan is for His Son, but the Son was active in the plan and still is active. God designed the entirety of Creation and He spoke it into existence, but Jesus is that Word that was spoken. Jesus was the creating agent in Creation. So, when we talk about Creation and when we talk about origins, we can zoom in on the specific details of what “day” means or what “whole earth” means; however, we must zoom out and look at the big picture. The big picture is to reveal Christ.
One image I have used when discussing the big picture is that the entirety of Scripture and all of our doctrine is creating a mosaic – a lot of little snapshots of individual pictures that when combined will produce the proper image of Jesus. If we get one of the doctrines wrong, it is going to impact and affect our view of Jesus. One of the reasons I emphasize origins so much is because origins isn’t just tied with the doctrines regarding Christ but to every other doctrine as well. If one believes that this universe came about over natural processes over billions of years old and is consistent with what that requires and what that entails, such a person will one day deny Christ as being Lord and Savior.
Jesus needs to be the center of the study of origins, as He should be with any study. There are two sermons that excellently address this issue: Eric Ludy’s “Christophany” and Voddie Baucham’s “The Supremacy of Christ and Truth in a Post-Modern Age.” Christ and the gospel need to be center, especially when debating with other believers. While I am an adamant believer that the Bible teaches a “young earth” and I do not waiver on this issue, there is ultimately no point or purpose to believing that, unless it had effect upon the point and person as to why Jesus had to come in the first place. Take note that the Old Earth crowd makes separation of the gospel, and their origins models a centerpiece argument. Their entire game plan is to say, “I can be a Christian and believe this,” as though it was a completely extraneous and irrelevant belief. To which I say, “Why believe that then?” And the answer ultimately boils down to trying not to look stupid before their non-Christian peers, or worse, their already compromised professing Christian peers. But Jesus is never center stage in such approaches. The Old Earthers may profess belief in Christ and some of them may be genuinely born-again, but when discussing the age of the earth, Jesus is never center stage. It’s always a side topic, and He is usually only invoked as a shield to protect their views from scrutiny.
Is Jesus center of our life? Is He center of our academics? There is not ONE of us where that is truly the case – even me. Too many times I battle over origins without making Christ the center. Too many times, I’ll battle over Scripture but not get to what Scripture points to: Christ. Christ must be center; however, one of the biggest problems we have is that so many of us have a false view of Christ and instead have a figment of our imagination. That is why Bibliology must be our foundation; only the Jesus Christ as described in the Bible is the One who saves. If we believe in a false Jesus, we aren’t getting in.
Is Jesus center? If so, that means we are not. It means our intellect is not. It means our emotions are not. It means our dreams are not. It means our pleasures, comforts, or family are not. It may even mean our preferred doctrines are not. It means Christ is. The Christian life is not about making things easy for us; it is about conforming us into the image of Christ and preparing us to be His bride. That requires a process that will cleanse and remove us from sin and false teachings and idols called sanctification. But if Christ is not center, and we put ourselves in the center, then Jesus becomes a means for our end. If Jesus is not center and master and lord over everything, He will not be your savior either. Jesus IS Lord regardless, but if we are not submitted to Him, then we can be sure we have not been born again. Let Christ be center, regardless of how painful it will be, and regardless of how isolated it will make us. Next week, we’ll look at the Holy Spirit.
This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration. All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved. Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.
Theology Proper focuses on the study of God the Father. One of the things that theologians must be careful about is that when we study God, we are not studying a concept or an idea but a person. God is not a research specimen that fits under our microscope to manage and control. There are two ways we can study God. We can know things about Him, such as knowing about a sports superstar. We can learn all his stats, the games he’s played, how he won championships, etc. We can do the same with God. We can learn and study His attributes and His characteristics. However, unless you know that superstar personally, you only know about him rather than knowing him. Likewise, many people know a lot about God, but few actually know Him.
I have written many blog posts about the attributes of God and the names of God, and I even have a book on the attributes, actions, and character of God in the Psalms available from Worldview Warriors Publishing called The God of the Psalms. I have also written about God as Trinity. The bulk of the teachings on “theology proper” is regarding the attributes of God, so I am not going to spend a lot of time on that here. Instead, I will showcase how our beliefs and our observations that we attribute to God are actually in agreement to these attributes, while also addressing the origins debate.
There are two major competing origins views. One comes from the Bible, that God created everything in six days and roughly only 6000 years have passed since its completion. The other has many different flavors but all involve gradual processes over the span of millions of years, whether some “god” is part of the process or not. The young earth creationists and old earth creationists all proclaim that God created, but we differ in our beliefs of how He created. The question we have to ask is this: Does the model we believe and teach fit with the character of God the Father as revealed in Scripture?
This is a question few people are asking. Some are asking it because some do bring it up. If God created a world in which millions of years of animal death was the norm prior to sin (and that is without mentioning all the human remains and fossils that they say predate any image of Adam), does that reflect God’s character of never making anything with error or flaw? Likewise, if God truly is immutable and He never changes, then therefore His scientific laws should never change, therefore the earth is millions of years old, correct? Those are the two arguments regarding origins and the character of God.
I find the latter to be a categorical error because it compares the creation of God to be akin to the character of God. Yet we know from the Bible that the “laws of nature” are not unchangeable and absolute fact. How do we know that? Because the Bible has miracles, and when the end times comes, God is going to end everything. So, I find that attributing the laws of nature to being immutable is actually an unintentional form of deifying nature. And God is a jealous God; He will not tolerate competition for His glory.
That said, if animals were dying and life was corrupt and broken prior to sin, then that is saying that God is not only inept at creating things, making them flawed, but it also lessens God’s justice upon sin. Why? Because if death was already happening prior to sin, then God threatening death as judgment upon sin has no real weight. If Adam and Eve and the animals were going to die anyway, all that eating the fruit of the Tree did was speed it up. It didn’t change anything.
Lastly on this point, the art is a reflection of the artist. If the creation is corrupt, the creator is corrupt. And the teachings of life over the span of millions of years is not original to the last 200 years. The Gnostics taught it 2000 years ago, citing a corrupt creator, the Demiurge, who created the universe out of the corrupted essence of the “True God” as we see it today. I truly believe that if the teachings of millions of years were carried to their logical conclusion, the resulting models would be all but identical to the Gnostics. What we believe about origins reflects what believe about the Creator. Likewise, how we view the Creator will determine how we view the creation. We need to at least be consistent with our position. When we try to mix and match things because a lot of mainstream people believe something other than what the Bible says, it shows we really only believe what the audience in front of us believes. We as Christians are commanded to not let the fear of man dictate what we do or think.
God the Father is not just some concept out there either. He knows every thought we have about Him and how we treat Him, whether we want to recognize it or not. Every one of us do not, cannot, and will not ever be able to treat God with the honor and respect He deserves. Yet He chooses to love us in our finite, broken, and rebellious state. But He doesn’t ask for much from us: just to believe Him and obey Him. That takes trust – trust He is more than willing to build with us if we let Him. Throughout the Bible, God showcases His character in Israel’s history so that we all know that He is good and trustworthy. Yet we also learn in His dealings that He does not mess around regarding sin. This is why we can’t mess around with the Flood account.
This past November, I taught a session on the theology of the Flood during a Creation Conference I helped host. All I did was showcase the Biblical account of the pre-Flood world, the Flood account, and the post-Flood world according to Scripture and the theological lessons we learn from it. My audience said it was very helpful for them to see the issues involved and that it’s not small matter. The only point from that talk I’ll point out here is that the Flood had to be global in its extent just on the point of the message of the Gospel alone. In the non-global flood models, there would always be an escape for mankind outside the Ark. And that is a severe problem because the Ark has always been understood as a type of Christ, the one means of salvation. Every New Testament author who speaks of this event said only Noah and his family escaped via the Ark. No one else. It is a strike against God the Father to teach a non-global flood because it teaches that God’s judgment is not universal, comprehensive, and complete. Yet if we teach what the Bible does say about the Flood correctly, we’ll get God’s character of righteous judgment and mercy and grace correct as well.
Next week, we’ll examine Christology: the study of Jesus Christ.
This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration. All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved. Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.
The first and perhaps most important theology “system” we can have regarding the Christian faith is Bibliology – the study of the Bible. Check out my numerous posts about the Bible (including my recent series on how to read the Bible) and my book Ten Reasons to Believe the Bible for more on this, but I’ll provide a quick recap here. The Bible is the source for all Christian doctrine, and it simply amazes me how many professing Christians seem to constantly resist the Bible, even while proclaiming they believe it and that it is inspired.
For the Christian, the Bible is supposed the ultimate authority on all matters. It is supposed to be our go-to for any decision, big or small, and every interaction we make in life. And frankly, as I explained in my last series on how to read the Bible, it has the authority over ALL authorities, includes pagan and secular. It is not an ordinary book. Until just the past one hundred years or so, even secular intellectuals who did not agree with the Bible believed that they could not consider themselves educated unless they had some working knowledge of what the Bible said. And I believe I have a fair argument that the reason secular society lost any respect for the Bible, even though they hate it, is because the church in the West lost respect for it.
I will blame the acceptance of “millions of years” into the Church as the catalyst for this. The moment the big names in Christianity in the 1800-1900s caved on Genesis 1, the world saw that as “open season” to fire upon the Church, and the Church has been totally powerless to stop it. The Scopes Trial pitted Day-Age Creationist William Jennings Bryan against Clarence Darrow, and it was clear that Darrow knew his Bible better than Bryan did. Darrow publicly embarrassed Bryan in his attack on Genesis, and Bryan had no answer for it. This did even more damage that Samuel Wilberforce’s loss to Huxley in the “Great Debate” of 1860. Though Darrow lost on a “narrow” decision because he did teach Evolution, which was illegal at the time, it was shown to be a great victory for the anti-Christians. In 1962, just 40 years after Scopes, God was removed from the public square over the Creation/Evolution debate, and the Church sat back and did nothing, with the exception of a small group of men spearheaded by Henry Morris and John Whitcomb whose book The Genesis Flood, published one year prior to the Supreme Court’s decision, finally gave the church a weapon to fight back with. How did they do that?
They believed the Bible on what it actually said and used it to combat Evolution and the compromised preachers to get people back to actually believing the Bible. They knew the Bible taught a 6-day creation and a global flood, and guess what? Many of the compromised preachers did too. They just didn’t know how to account for the “science” part of it. But they made a fatal mistake: they let science override the clear meaning of Scripture. In regards to origins, they thought it was a secondary issue, partly because origins was not part of the formal list of theological systems, despite being formally codified as part central doctrines in the Creeds and namely the 1647 Westminster Confession of Faith that specifically states 6-day creation (Q9). These compromised preachers did not defend the Bible against the attacks of the “enlightened” deists who were known to vocally oppose the Bible.
What has happened since? It is getting harder and harder to find a preacher who actually preaches from the Bible anymore. As I’ve mentioned, look at the creeds and the confessions of the faith throughout the ages. If not explicitly stated, it is clear they all held Scripture at the top and chief authority by which they get all their facts and ways of thinking. Today, even many top defenders of the faith by the Christian community can hardly be seen with a Bible in their hands. It’s as though they pride themselves on being able to defend the faith without the Bible directly. As a result, they may be able to win some intellectual arguments against bad logic users, but there is no real power in their messages. Despite being able to refute atheism and liberalism left and right, these guys really are not seen as threats by the world system and by compromised churches/pastors. Despite claiming to believe the Bible, they seem to never actually USE it. Do we believe this book or not?
Some will accuse me of “biblidolatry,” the worship of the Bible, but you will find that those who make that accusation are always looking to something else besides the Bible to “supplement,” or rather override, what the Bible actually teaches. But the fact remains that the Bible is our only physically tangible connection to God. It is the only thing that we can physically handle to tell us about God, what He is like, and how we should respond to that knowledge. It is also the authority God gave us to check and confirm any teaching we hear. There is a reason the early Church fathers all cited it to the point that we can easily confirm the transmission of Scripture from their writings alone. There is a reason why Paul and the other apostles wrote “according to Scripture” so many times. There is a reason the creeds and confessions all have the Bible as the source for every statement they make. And there is a reason why those who pioneered the fields of science were predominately Christian and held theology as the “Queen of the Sciences.” Instead, what we see now is more and more that the Bible is not actually treated as the inspired Word of God but a mere feel-good inspirational book – only the parts people like.
All our doctrine come from the Bible. It is the Bible that gives us the authority and the standards of how we should act, speak, and think. And despite what some may say, the Bible has the authority and the final say on every topic. Even if the topic is not explicitly covered, such as quantum physics, if the study of quantum physics leads to any idea that does not fit in or agree with the framework the Bible offers, then that study has false premises and therefore false conclusions. God gave us everything we need to have a fully informed framework for reality by which we can test and examine everything. And the biggest key to all that is that man’s own understanding and way of thinking is never going to cut it. We have to rely upon God revealing to us what reality is because only He sees things clearly.
Over the next couple months, I am going to look at the nine other major categories of systematic theology. There is a category for each person of the Godhead, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There are categories regarding mankind, sin, salvation, the church, angles, and the end times. In each case, I’m going to address how origins affects each category as well as the key things we need to know about it. What we believe about these categories actually says more about our worldview than most doctrine tests that are given today. So, let’s see what the Bible shows us about each of these.
This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration. All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved. Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.
These days if someone hears of systematic theology and knows what it is, R.C. Sproul will likely come to mind. For the longest time, I would hear the term “systematic theology” and not knowing what it was, I would be thinking “boring seminary junk.” However, let me be clear: you cannot do the Christian life without doing theology. Some may say, “I don’t have a religion, I have a relationship.” Guess what? That relationship requires theology – studying and knowing God. For more on why to study theology, check out this blog post that introduced Katie Erickson’s series on systematic theology.
My first exposure to systematic theology was Todd Friel and Steven Lawson’s series called “Drive by Theology.” It is basically 36 twenty-minute sessions about the major categories of systematic theology. Then I heard R.C. Sproul’s 60-session teachings on systematic theology. And it’s not this giant monster that people tend to think it is. Systematic theology is simply the major “systems” or “themes” that are seen throughout the Bible. Depending on who organizes them, there are perhaps ten major units to systematic theology.
Bibliology: The study of the origins, authority, and transmission of Scripture
Theology Proper: The study of God the Father
Christology: The study of God the Son, Jesus Christ
Pneumatology: The study of God the Holy Spirit
Anthropology: The study of mankind and the identity of man
Hamartiology: The study of sin – its effects, nature, and causes
Soteriology: The study of salvation
Ecclesiology: The study of the church
Angelology: The study of angels and demons
Eschatology: The study of the end times
One that that greatly surprised me about this list: Creation, or Cosmology, is not on the list. Eric Ludy included it on his list of seven in his sermon “Christophany,” but he was listing seven debate points that have a tendency of missing the central focus: Jesus Christ. He also included some terms he made up such as “Sabbathology” (the study of the Sabbath day of rest), “Ettiquitology” (the study of etiquette – moral appearance and clothing) and “Powerology” (gifts of the Spirit including speaking in tongues).
In my personal studies, I have seen creation being completely foundational to every other doctrine, where every single statement about the faith has some root or foreshadow laid down in Genesis. I have heard many preachers make such comments, but to this day, I have not heard or or read any study that actually goes through each of the major doctrines or tenets of the faith to showcase the critical role that Genesis plays. So, I’m working on writing a book that goes through the Apostles Creed and Nicene Creed statements and showcases where those have their foundation in Genesis. Worldview Warriors Publishing is aiming to release that book in summer 2023.
In March 2022, The Master’s University launched The Math3ma Institute Journal, which is a full peer-reviewed journal that intends to showcase both science and theology together. The opening article is from Dr. Abner Chao titled “The Queen of the Sciences: Reclaiming the Rightful Place of Theology and Creation.” In this article, Chao showcases the rightful place of theology, creation, Scripture’s revelation, what general revelation actually is, and what man’s knowledge is. It’s a spectacular way of saying the things I’ve been trying to say all along, however he really nailed it when he went through all ten of these systematic theology categories and in one paragraph each, addressing what happened when one gets creation wrong and how it will lead to getting the rest of it wrong.
So, over the next ten weeks, I am going to look at each of these ten major systems, or categories, of central theological topics that are covering throughout the Bible and are central to Christian thought. Why Creation is left out might be because Creation had never been attacked prior to the development of these “systems” (Sproul did not come up with them; he’s just the most well-known teacher of them) and/or because the doctrines of Creation are so intertwined with each of these systems that all ten still cover creation when properly and deeply enough explored.
Another thing I will emphasize is how often all these topics overlap. That’s one thing I love about the Bible. It releases bits and pieces of each doctrine to the point where you cannot ignore or remove even a single verse without affecting something else or in best case scenario, at least having that teaching echoed elsewhere. Never is a single doctrine taught in only one place.
The systems of systematic theology are basically major themes through which we can examine the faith and doctrines and teachings. They give us a structure in how to do our studies and to help keep us on track. Through this series, I simply want to help us with the core structures of the Bible and Christianity because when we understand these systems properly, as much as our finite minds can handle, we will be able to discern true and false doctrines as they come in and out from both friendly and unfriendly sources.
We’ll start by examining Bibliology because one thing Todd Friel pointed out is that in nearly every creed or confession of church history, they always started with the Bible and drew every statement and tenet from Scripture. If we do not give the Bible the place it deserves, we will drift off to who knows where, but it won’t be the truth. And do not be deceived; many profess to believe the Bible when they most certainly do not. That is why Jesus was far more interested in obedience to the Word, not just hearing it. Tune in next week.
This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration. All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved. Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.
