Understand the Relationship Between Systematic Theology and Biblical Theology

Listen as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of Biblical interpretation in this address from The Gospel Coalition sermon library.

I want to begin with just one or two questions that have been raised, especially regarding things I said at the very end that were clearly obscure, because I was covering too much ground too fast. The first question was “Do you have any plans to produce these lectures in book form?” The short answer is no. Some of the material, however, is in book form, in a book called Exegetical Fallacies. It’s not available in this country from a British publisher, but you can obtain it from Baker through some sort of discount house or the like.

The second question raised was “Could you recommend any reading on logic?” You may recall that I ended up last day by saying some things about logic. It depends a bit on who you are. If you like reading into new subjects, and have never read anything on the nature of logic, but you are a good reader, probably the one I’d recommend is by William Kilgore, An Introductory Logic, second edition, 1979, in North America published by Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Here, I’m not sure, but Books In Print would show you quickly.

In terms of the application of logic to exegesis, that is, to biblical study, then, in the little book that I just mentioned, Exegetical Fallacies, I do have a section on logic in that which may be of use. In that connection, I should say that logic, the term, is a slippery term. That, too, needs to be said. In common parlance, it has at least four or five different meanings. For example …

First, it can mean something like reasonable. “Oh, that seems logical to me,” where the person does not necessarily mean that this is a logically valid argument, it’s just that it seems reasonable and I accept it.

Secondly, it can be almost a term that defines a whole cultural outlook. “Well, you know, there’s Japanese logic, and there’s British logic, American logic,” and so forth. Clearly that is not quite what I’m talking about here, either. What we are dealing with in that sort of use of the term is a whole set of interlocking cultural presuppositions.

Thirdly, often it means something like the form of an argument, so we say, “The author’s logic here is that …” which does not necessarily mean that the argument is valid, or that the assumptions are true, or any of those sorts of things, but we still use the word logic.

Fourthly, it is that which describes a whole set of axiomatic, or self-evident, relationships, and they hold true in any culture. This is the kind of logic that I was briefly trying to introduce yesterday: the more formal kind. For those of you who are interested, this includes such things as the law of the excluded middle and so forth. Don’t worry about it. They’re set forth in any book that deals with those sorts of issues at great length. Often you find breaches in logic of this technical sense in sermons, commentaries, or the like.

Let me give you an example that everyone knows. “A cat is an animal. A dog is an animal. Therefore, a cat is a dog.” Everyone perceives that’s not right. When you try to analyze exactly why it’s not right, in fact, you can use formal logic to show exactly why that doesn’t make sense. Let me try it on this way. “Prophecy declares the mind of God. Preaching declares the mind of God. Therefore, prophecy is preaching.”

I can introduce you to some very esteemed theologians who have argued exactly that, but at the level of logic, it doesn’t work anymore than the first one does. Do you see? It sometimes helps to have just enough logical savvy to spot bad arguments, and we all make them sometime. I can introduce you to some of my own, too, that I then spot a few years later when I’m going over things and see that, “Uh oh. I blew it there.” Within that kind of framework, then, it’s important to discover what is a good argument and what is a bad argument and why.

Now, the second question was tied up with this. I was trying to say, rather too quickly at the end yesterday, that one must be especially careful of how one uses logical arguments in any area of theology where there is mystery involved, and the example toward which I was driving was God’s sovereignty and human responsibility.

I have a comment in which the writer says he agrees, but part of the problem is that systematic theology intrudes too often. We ought, in this sort of area to develop a kind of biblical framework, but not a systematic theology. He says a biblical framework is not a systematic theology.

Now that is such a common viewpoint that I want to say something about it, and the only way I can say something about it is by giving a little more detail on this example that I’ve already introduced, God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. So let me wander into that excursus for a while. I think it will still be of profit, even though it wasn’t originally on the agenda, and it still may show us some things about the nature of biblical interpretation that are rather important.

Think first of a number of biblical passages that depict God’s sovereignty and human responsibility in close juxtaposition. For example, Genesis chapter 50, verses 19 and 20. In this one, the brothers of Joseph come to Joseph after their father has died, and they are afraid, now that the old man is dead, that the son will take vengeance upon them for their barbaric cruelty to him in his youth.

So they come up with this plea, and Joseph is quite moved by this. He feels that they’re judging him too harshly again, and what he says is, “Am I in the place of God?” He says. “In that event where you sold me into slavery you intended it for evil, but God intended it for good.” Now notice carefully what he does not say. He does not say, “You intended it for evil, but God turned it around after the fact to bring good out of evil.” There are some parts of the Bible that do say that, but this isn’t one of them.

Nor does it say, “God intended to send me down to Egypt by limousine to save the race, but you chaps mucked it up, and as a result I went down on a camel train as a slave.” He doesn’t say that either. Rather, in one and the same event, God’s intentions were good, and it was going to take place. Their intentions were bad, and they were responsible characters.

The second passage, Isaiah, chapter 10, verses 5 and following. Here God speaks through the prophet to the superpower, Assyria, and he says, “You are the staff of my indignation, the rod of my anger. I send you against a wicked nation.” In the context he means the Jews. He sends the superpower, Assyria, against the Jewish people.

“I send you against them to destroy, to trample down in the mud.” “However,” he says, “That’s not what you think. You think that you are doing this simply by your own power and might. You say, ‘Is not Calno like Carchemish?’ That is, cities I’ve already destroyed? You really think that you’re going to stop me from taking Samaria when I’ve already knocked off Damascus?”

“Therefore,” God says, “when I have finished using you as a tool …” As a man takes a hammer or a saw and uses an instrument, “When I have finished using you as a tool, I will turn again and rend you, because your heart is puffed up in pride. You are arrogant, and you think you’re doing this yourself, and I hold you accountable.” Now stick that under your systematic theology. That’s very difficult to think about.

Here God is insisting, simultaneously, in the same breath, that he uses this whole nation as a tool and he holds the nation accountable for what it’s doing. A tool of judgment, but yet he holds them accountable for what they’re doing, and for the way they think that they are acting in independence. Thus, in one and the same event, God is portrayed as utterly and unqualifiedly sovereign and the nation is represented as responsible, morally accountable to God.

We come to a third instance, Philippians, chapter 2, verses 11 and 12. There we’re told that we are to “work out our salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God working in us, both to will and to do of his good pleasure.” Notice, again, what it does not say. I have to admit, quite frankly, that there are some people who interpret the whole verse another way. I won’t go into that here but in the way that I think it really has to be taken.

Notice carefully what the text does not say. It does not say, “I have done my bit. Now it’s all up to you.” Nor does the text say, “Just let go and let God.” It doesn’t say that either. It says, “Work out your own salvation …” Which clearly lays the responsibility upon us. “… because it is God working in us …” Both at the level of action and at the level of will, “… both to will and to do of his good pleasure.”

In other words, God’s continuing work within us is to become an incentive to perseverance, not a disincentive. “Oh, well, if God’s going to do it, he’ll do it without anything from me. Let go, let God.” But perhaps the most stunning example of the bringing together of these two themes in the entire canon has to do with the death of Christ. It comes up many times, but the most dramatic, I think, is probably Acts, chapter 4.

There, the believers are first facing a whiff of persecution. As they gather in Acts 4, they begin to pray. They start by citing Psalm 2, “Why do the nations rage? Why do the heathen gather together against your anointed, against the Lord and against his anointed?” Then after quoting this psalm, they say in verse 22 and following, “Indeed, Pontius Pilate and Herod and the leaders of the Jews …” And so on, “… they gathered together and conspired against your holy servant, Jesus.”

“Indeed,” they continue, “they did what your hand had determined beforehand would be done.” When you stop to think of it, you cannot easily be a Christian unless you affirm both of those things, at the same time, in the same breath. If you hold that there was a criminal conspiracy that caught God out, he was sort of outmaneuvered, he didn’t quite see that one, then, inevitably, you have reduced the cross to an accident of history, a place where, quite frankly, God goofed.

If, on the other hand, you hold that by God’s determination to send Jesus to the cross the people who made all the decisions to send him there were absolved from all responsibility, if people are absolved from sending Jesus to the cross, cannot any sin be absolved on the same grounds, that God is sovereign? In which case, why the cross at all?

No, it is of the essence of a theistic universe that God is sovereign, utterly sovereign, and we are morally accountable before him. Now that introduces all kinds of difficult questions. It does. Part of the problem is bound up in the very nature of God himself. In the Bible, God is presented as so utterly sovereign that he turns the heart of the king any which way. “The lot is thrown into the lap,” Proverbs tells us, but which side comes up? It’s like throwing a die. Which side comes up is determined by God. Not a bird falls from the heaven without his sanction.

Yet, on the other hand, this same Scripture presents God as one who is personal, that is, he interacts with us. He asks questions. He waits for our response. He is in dialogue with us. He insists that we commit ourselves. However much faith may be of grace, it’s still our faith. Part of our problem when we try to think of God and insist simultaneously that he is sovereign and he is personal is that we don’t have the categories to put those things together very well.

All of our experience of a personal relationship, apart from with God, is with finite human beings. I talk to my wife; she talks to me. She asks me a question; I answer. I ask her a question; she answers. We talk about the children. There’s sequence-of-time progression. I grow to know her better; she grows to know me better. It’s finite. There is a growing relationship, but the Scriptures that picture God as personal also insist that he is transcendent and sovereign. How do you put the two of those together?

If you make God personal and not transcendent and sovereign, you’re a process theologian, certainly not a biblical theologian. If you make God sovereign and not personal, you’re a fatalist, certainly not a biblical Christian. How do you put those two things together? The short answer is: I don’t have a clue. I don’t know. I do know that it is important to say these things in such a way that you have no necessary logical contradiction. You knew I’d get back to logic eventually, didn’t you?

The thing is, I think it is possible to identify some huge areas where we don’t know enough to be dogmatic. For example, all of our experience of finitude locks us into space and time. Our experience of sequence is because we’re locked into space and time. What does that look like to God? I don’t know. I scarcely know what time is. My first degree was in the sciences, and I scarcely know what time is. I certainly don’t know what eternity is, and I don’t know how time quite looks to God. I know what most of the theories are, but, at the end of the day, I don’t know.

I don’t know how a sovereign, transcendent God is also personal, but I see that that is how he has disclosed himself in Scripture, and if I remove either pole, then I destroy God’s self-disclosure. It is no longer the God of the Bible. It’s some other kind of god, some kind of god that I’ve manufactured.

So now we come to this question of systematic theology and framework. What many people mean by systematic theology is putting together a whole picture of everything from a theistic point of view, and if that’s what you mean by systematic theology, then let me say quite frankly, the enterprise is illegitimate. We will never put together everything because we are not omniscient. We don’t know enough.

On the other hand, people who despise systematic theology, or people who depreciate it, tend to drift toward categories of illogicality that I find deeply disturbing. A model that I sometimes use is this: What the Bible gives us is something like a jigsaw puzzle, but it’s a peculiar jigsaw puzzle.

It’s a jigsaw puzzle with a set of instructions that says, “Some of the pieces are missing. What we do guarantee you is that all the pieces of this puzzle belong to the same puzzle, but you have to understand that some of the pieces are missing, because this puzzle was so big that if we gave you all the pieces, you’d never finish it.”

So God, in his mercy, has given us a puzzle, if you like … (There are breakdowns to this analogy.) God has given us a jigsaw puzzle where all the pieces fit, they all belong to the same puzzle, but there are holes here. Now, along comes some jigsaw puzzle players, and they are really keen on systematic theology.

They manage to ram some of those pieces together so that it does all fit, more or less. It’s all one puzzle. No holes. Then, when you look closely, you see that a whole lot of the pieces don’t really fit, and you go, “Wait a minute. That doesn’t really fit there.” You pull that out, and then you’ve got a hole.

Then along come some other people that say, “Hey! There are obviously holes here. I bet you these pieces don’t even belong to the same puzzle.” So they make a little clump over here, and a little clump over there, and a little clump over there, “Choose which puzzle you prefer. Choose some pieces, fit them in where you can.” In the first case, you get a God who is too small. In the second case, you don’t have a coherent revelation.

The best of systematic theology has always realized that there are holes in the puzzle, and that there have to be, because we are both finite, we are not omniscient, and sinful. What is wonderful is that God, in his great mercy, has given us so much and has shown us how much coheres. And, if there are all kinds of things which in the nature of the case we, this side of eternity, and perhaps even on the other side, cannot understand, he has given us more than enough to understand and to draw us on in faith and worship.

The end of the exercise, from his point of view, is not that we should say, “Ah! I understand,” but, “I repent, and I believe, and I obey.” Within that framework, then, it is important to defend the enterprise of systematic theology. It is important to defend that there is a unity to the revelation. It is important to defend that all the pieces belong to the same puzzle, and it is important to become good puzzle players so we don’t ram the pieces in the wrong place.

Now, it’s been wonderful how.… You know, I’ve tried to prepare for these talks. I haven’t known exactly how Roy was going to break down his material, but every time, in the morning Bible reading, I’ve found something that provides a good illustration for something I’m saying in the afternoon.

This morning, if you saw, Roy began with texts in Malachi that talked about divorce but was very careful to put those texts not only within the context of Malachi, that’s exegesis in biblical theology, but also to put things within the context of different covenantal structures, that’s biblical theology on a larger scale, looking to how Christians should view the question of divorce and remarriage today, covenantally, biblically, and theologically.

Thus he was moving from text, through biblical theology; to systematic theology; to application. It was a superb example of exactly that move. He didn’t use any of the jargon to get there, but that’s what he was doing, and he could do it because he believes that all of the pieces belong to the same puzzle. Now that is part, then, of the use of logic, it seems to me, to recognize that there are limits to our understanding and then still to try to build synthetically.

When you come to something like God is sovereign, do not make so many inferences from that truth that unwittingly you destroy other truths that God has revealed. For example, some people have argued, “If election is true, then God will convert the sinners without your help or mine, so it is a disincentive to evangelism.” I think that viewpoint can be massively falsified.

To go no farther than Acts, chapter 18, there is Paul in Corinth, feeling rather battered and bruised, facing the challenges of a new pagan city, clearly discouraged, and God comes to him in a vision in chapter 18, verses 9 and 10, and says, “Preach on, Paul, for I have many people in this city.”

In other words, it was God’s election that became, for Paul, the incentive to press on in evangelism. I am persuaded the Bible announces so strongly our own depravity and guilt and rebellion and darkness of understanding that if I did not believe in election I’d leave the ministry. Do you know where I learned that? In later years, I learned it from Scripture. I learned it, first, from my dad.

My dad was a church planter in the province of Quebec in the lean years when people got beaten up and their businesses burned and pastors got put in jail for preaching the gospel. Then in the mid-50s and late-50s, after the Congo Rebellion, as it was called, many American francophone missionaries came back to North America and were unable to return to what eventually became Zaire because of the troubles there.

They began to look around for some other French-speaking part of the world in which to minister, and a few of them eyed Quebec, to the North, in Canada, and came north to help the handful of workers there, about 15 full-time Christian workers for a population of about 6.5 million French speakers.

Not one of them stayed more than a few months, not one, and by that time I was old enough, by the end of the 50s, to start asking rude questions. In a very arrogant way, I said, “How come none of these people stick? Don’t they have any guts? No stamina?” You know an awful lot when you’re a teenager.

My father, who was the mildest of men, said, “You’ve got to understand, Don, that these people have ministered in a part of the world where they’ve seen an enormous amount of fruit. They’ve come here and they know the language, they don’t really understand the culture, and they simply are not equipped to handle ministry, at this point, in a part of the world where there’s very little fruit. They want to go to someplace where there’s a lot of blessing.”

So I said, “Well, why don’t you go to someplace where there’s a little more blessing, make your life count for something a little more significant?” I was doing church growth with Donald McGavran before Donald McGavran! He rounded on me, and he said, “I stay because I believe God has many people in this place!”

We didn’t see the turn until ‘72, but since then thousands and thousands and thousands have been converted. My father died last October, one of the grand old men of Quebec, because he believed election was an incentive to evangelism. Don’t give me your logical dichotomies if at the end of the day they are deployed so as to discount the evidence of the Word of God. There is something wrong with the function of these things.

My point, then, at the end of the last day was this: In areas where there are deep mysteries bound up with the very character and person of God, be careful what inferences you draw from biblical truth. You can draw inferences that cancel out other biblical truths, and thus deny the truth.

Well, enough of that. Let me come to some matters to do with structure and genre and the like. First of all, let me say some things about structure. It is very helpful in biblical interpretation to recognize a number of fairly elementary literary structures. They crop up in different forms. One could spend a lot of time on this. Let me mention just a few.

First, the inclusion, or the inclusio, as people sometimes say when they prefer Latin. Matthew, chapter 5, the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. Take a look at the Beatitudes, verses 3 to 12. Now, the NIV helps a little bit by printing verses 3 to 10 in poetic format and verses 11 to 12 in paragraph form. That’s not a bad idea, because you see, both by content and form, that things change a bit.

Verses 11 and 12 are not in the brief, clipped, parallel structures of verses 3 to 10, and, moreover, in terms of content, verse 11 and verse 12 constitute an expansion on the last beatitude, verse 10, “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

That’s an expansion of verse 10, “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Now, the reason it’s worth noting that is because this means that the last beatitude here is not verse 12, but verse 10. Verses 11 and 12 are an expansion of 10, so the first beatitude is in verse 3; the last is in verse 10.

Now then, work through those beatitudes and examine how the blessing is related to the description. Examine how the first clause is related to the second clause. In most cases, there is some obvious tie, “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled,” that is, with righteousness.

Then you notice that the first beatitude and the last beatitude have the same ending, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Those are the only two that have that end. What that does, from a literary point of view, is constitute an inclusion, an inclusio, if you prefer, a kind of literary envelope that marks out the beginning and the end and which is, in fact, saying, “This is important.”

We move from the kingdom to the kingdom. Everything is wrapped up in the kingdom. I am talking about the kingdom. Understand me. That is the theme of this passage: the kingdom. You see? In that framework, then, the Beatitudes themselves constitute the norms of the kingdom. Then you read on and you discover the salt and light metaphors of verses 13 and following, then verse 17, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law and the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them,” and so forth.

Then you get the antitheses, “You have heard that it was said, but I say unto you …” and then a whole lot more material. Then the Sermon on the Mount runs all the way to the end of chapter 7, but as you’re winding up to the end of chapter 7 you discover, in verse 12, the so-called Golden Rule, “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”

You say, “The Law and the Prophets? I’ve seen that before. Where have I seen that?” You go back to chapter 5, verse 17. These are the only two places in the entire Sermon on the Mount where the Law and the Prophets have been introduced as such. You start thinking about it and examining how the whole thing is put together, and you discover that you have another literary inclusion.

That is to say, all the material down to 5:16 constitutes part of a long introduction. The body of the Sermon on the Mount runs from 5:17 all the way to 7:12, with this Law and the Prophets bracket. Inclusion. Envelope. After 7:12, from 7:13 to the end, what you have, then, is four brief metaphors that demand choice. This is the conclusion, what older homileticians would have called the prayer oration, that is to say, the kind of bringing things to a summation that demands decision.

So you have these pictures of houses built on sand or on rock, or different kinds of growths, of thorns and proper bushes, and so forth. “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter into the kingdom, but only those who do the will of my Father.” You get these two different kinds of people, and so forth, but until then you have a sustained argument that is climaxed, that is brought to an end, rather, with this expression, “In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”

Now, if this is a literary conclusion, this means that whatever else the Sermon on the Mount is doing, and it is doing a lot, in part what it is doing is finding Jesus articulating his whole understanding of his instruction, relationship, authority, person, ministry, with respect to the Law and the Prophets. He is laying out here some fundamental ways in which his followers are to read the Law and the Prophets.

So now you have an ordered structure, with an introduction with its own inclusion, with a final prayer oration, with its demands for decision, and, in between, a whole sustained argument which is nicely marked out for you by this clause, this phrase, the Law and the Prophets. That’s the literary inclusion, and clearly it helps, in following the flow of the argument, to spot these things when they show up.