C. Michael Patton and Rhome Dyke · The Theology Program · 80 minutes
Lecture by C. Michael Patton, Th.M., and Rhome Dyke, Th.M., from The Theology Program, published on their public channel. Study notes below from Medina Community Church.
This session hands out the map and the toolbox: the categories in which theology is done, the names of its disciplines, and, most valuable of all, the theological process, the path a text must travel from what it meant then to what it requires now. Patton calls this process the most valuable thing he received in all of seminary. Watch for the ways the process short-circuits, several of which may feel uncomfortably familiar.
The teachers open with their own posture: they do not have it all figured out, they wrestle with some doctrines more than others, and they learn most in the give and take of the classroom. A theme is named that will run through the whole program: in contrast there is clarity. False views will be set up and examined honestly, not because all views are valid, but because watching them crumble clarifies what is right. And a sobering reminder returns from last session: every heresy in church history has come from reading the Bible, the same Bible we read, often by well-meaning people wrestling with real difficulties, which is why what makes a Christian is not church attendance or Bible reading or experience but a common belief.
Systematic theology takes a subject, Jesus Christ for instance, and gathers everything Scripture says about it from Genesis to Revelation, comparing scripture with scripture. But in its truest sense it draws on more than the Bible: on nature, on experience, on reason, and on history. Everyone uses experience and emotion in building theology; the honest theologian admits it, and only the naive one claims pure objectivity. Patton points to C. S. Lewis after his wife's death, not doubting that God is but confronting who God really is. The Protestant claim, to be justified as the program proceeds, is sola scriptura rightly understood: Scripture is the only infallible source of theology, which is a very different thing from being the only source.
Who cares how Augustine handled Christology? The lecture's answer: the same Holy Spirit. The Spirit who led believers in the fourth century has not grown in knowledge since, so those he led are worth hearing. Dyke walks the chain of discipleship, John taught by Christ, Polycarp of Smyrna taught by John, Irenaeus taught by Polycarp, and asks who really knows more about Christ, they or we. Every generation imagines it finally has the corner on truth; a society that does not know its history puts far too little weight on those who came before, whose walk was less tainted by our culture than ours is. History is not always right, and Patton adds that we learn from its failures as well as its successes, but it is a major source.
The class learns the names: prolegomena, the things said beforehand, the foundational issues that must be settled before theology can be done, which is what this whole course technically is; bibliology, the study of the nature, transmission, canonization, and purpose of Scripture; theology proper, the study of God, with patriology, Christology, and pneumatology for the Father, the Son, and the Spirit; anthropology, the study of humanity; hamartiology, the study of sin; angelology, the study of angels and demons, on which Scripture says so little that the teachers declined to build a course, since nine sessions of ten would be spent dispelling folk theology; soteriology, the study of salvation; ecclesiology, the study of the church; and eschatology, the study of the last things.
A distinction the lecture leans on hard: the articulation of a truth and the reality of a truth are two different things. The vicarious substitutionary view of the atonement, Christ actually bearing your exact penalty in your place, was not articulated in that form until the twelfth century; for much of the church's first centuries the ransom-to-Satan theory prevailed. Sola fide, justification by faith alone, was not articulated until the sixteenth. That does not mean no one was saved before Anselm or Luther; it means God clarifies doctrine over time, and the early church, often running for its life, was devoted to Christ without having systematized what that little preposition, died for us, contains. The same distinction answers the Jehovah's Witness argument that the Trinity did not exist until the fourth century: its articulation is fourth century, its reality was in the sources all along.
Biblical theology restricts the formulation of theology to Scripture alone, and often to its parts: Pauline theology, Johannine theology, Old Testament theology, even the theology of Moses. Historical theology restricts itself to how doctrine actually developed, honestly appraised, without an agenda to make the past look like us. Philosophical theology restricts itself to what reason can assert, Descartes reasoning his way to God without Scripture; its practitioners, the lecture names Geisler, Sproul, Schaeffer, and Lewis, often work hand in hand with apologetics, meeting people on the common ground of reason. Creedal or dogmatic theology formulates the beliefs of a particular institution, and studying the creeds, Apostles', Nicene, Chalcedon, Athanasian, down through Trent and Augsburg, shows the church's belief developing. Apologetic theology formulates theology to explain and defend the faith to those outside it.
The chart Patton calls the most valuable thing he received at seminary: theology moves from the ancient audience, through the timeless, to the contemporary. The first question is never what does it mean to you; it is what did it mean then. The circle Bible study that passes a verse around asking what it means to each reader has turned Scripture into a wax nose, subjective and shapeable. Historical, grammatical, literary interpretation starts with the author, the audience, the occasion, and the purpose, because the meaning lives inside the purpose for which each book was written, and inspiration does not license subjective reading; otherwise Moby Dick read devotionally would serve as well.
The Bible was not written to us: Ephesians to the church at Ephesus, Luke to Theophilus, Matthew to Jews. It is inspired and useful for all time, but its context is not ours; nothing in it alludes to Texas. Dyke's illustration: say 9/11 today and everyone pictures the towers, but a few years earlier the same syllables meant a Porsche or an emergency call, because events give words their meaning. So the interpreter's job is to enter the world the text was written in. The Bible does not mean whatever you want it to mean; it generally has one meaning, though many applications, and it must be understood as it was intended.
Different kinds of text follow different rules, in Scripture as in the paper: the front page reports facts, the editorial argues opinion, the classified ad selling a like-new sofa for thirty dollars invites healthy suspicion. The Bible records lies without endorsing them. A proverb is a general statement of truth, not a promise for every case: train up a child in the way he should go follows the rules of a proverb, so a wayward child does not mean the word of God failed or the parents are condemned. And hyperbole is hyperbole: when Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount that the eye which causes sin should be put out, either no one in the room has sinned, or everyone is disobedient, or that is not what he was teaching.
Between then and now stands the crucial step: after the exegetical statement, what it meant then, and the analogy of Scripture, comparing text with text, the interpreter extracts the timeless principle and only then contextualizes it for today. The worked example is head coverings: if the covering addressed wives rebelling against their God-given roles, or immodest provocation in that culture, then the principle carries over, modesty and honored roles, while the expression, a covered head, does not, and a church that skips the step and simply re-imposes the expression has enforced something now meaningless. Some expressions are themselves principles that carry over, baptism for instance; some commands were for their day alone, as when the seventy were sent out to heal. One interpretation, many applications.
The chart also maps the failures. Staying in the ancient audience alone, reading Scripture as one reads Shakespeare with no timeless truth and no authority, is the path of liberal theology, though the lecture credits liberals with driving conservatives back to the text. Theology with no scriptural root and no application is hypocritical folk theology, loved but idle. Jumping straight from the reader's situation to meaning is reader-response, wholly subjective. Jumping straight from the ancient practice to today without extracting principles is irrelevant theology. Theology applied but never justified from Scripture is folk theology, God helps those who help themselves. Everything done right but never applied is short-circuit theology. And starting from one's own situation, bending theology to fit it, and then making the Bible read accordingly is eisegesis, reading into the text, the opposite of exegesis, drawing out of the text what it says.
The closing chart assembles the categories into a working order: begin with Scripture, form biblical theology, test and enrich it against historical theology, wrestle it through philosophically, and from all of that build systematic theology, which in turn produces apologetic and creedal theology. The order is not mechanical, but it is the shape of doing theology well, and the program will follow it.
Each opens the chapter in your ESV app or on esv.org.
Key TermsTap an answer. A wrong guess points you back to the outline; when all sixteen are right, the lecture is marked complete on this device.
1. What does the lecture mean by saying that in contrast there is clarity?
2. What is systematic theology's relationship to sources beyond the Bible?
3. What does the lecture call a theologian who claims to work with pure objectivity, untouched by experience?
4. Why does the same Holy Spirit give weight to the theologians of the past?
5. What chain of discipleship does Dyke trace to humble the present generation?
6. Why did the teachers decline to build a course on angelology?
7. What distinction explains how substitutionary atonement can be true even though it was not articulated until the twelfth century?
8. How does that same distinction answer the claim that the Trinity did not exist until the fourth century?
9. What does biblical theology do, in the lecture's taxonomy?
10. Why must the interpreter's first question be what did it mean then, rather than what does it mean to you?
11. What is the point of the 9/11 illustration?
12. How should the proverb about training up a child be read?
13. In the head-coverings example, what carries over to today and what does not?
14. What is eisegesis?
15. What surprising credit does the lecture give liberal theology?
16. What working order does the closing chart give for doing theology?
All sixteen correct. Lecture 3 is complete.
The lecture insists that what you feel and what you have lived through are already at work in your theology, and that only the naive deny it. Where can you see your experience coloring how you read a particular passage, for better or for worse?
Think of a Bible study habit you have seen or practiced, the circle where each reader says what the verse means to them. Using the theological process, how would you lead that same group through the same passage?
Which short circuit on the chart is the one you are most prone to, and what would the corrective step look like in your actual week?
The claim of 2 Timothy 3 as the lecture handles it: all Scripture is breathed out by God and useful for all time, which is exactly why it must first be understood in the time and context in which God gave it.
The lecture's own assignment is the process chart itself: take one familiar passage this week and walk it through every station, what it meant then, the analogy of Scripture, the timeless principle, the contextualization, the application, without skipping a step. The teachers also flag where the questions raised here will be answered in full: the rules of interpretation belong to the Bibliology and Hermeneutics course ahead. Next session, they warn, is a doozy: postmodern epistemology.