People not familiar with the term or discipline often ask me what systematic theology is. Now, after reading an essay in Colin Gunton’s Theology Through The Theologians, I feel as though I might actually have an intelligble response. Gunton’s great summary statement reads as follows:
Simply, we can say that systematic theology is the articulation of truth claims of Christianity, with an eye to internal consistency, on the hand; and, on the other, to their coherence with Scripture, the Christian tradition, and other truth- philosophical, scientific, moral and artistic.
Gunton claims that it is possible to profess Christian doctrine as a discipline, and yet not be concerned with being a systematic theologian. Christian doctrine could be taught as an authoritative given as a physicist might handle the theory of relativity. Or one could treat Christian doctrine as a historical fact from a previous era. But neither of these will do because of the post-Christian nature of our culture, or at least the post Christian sensibilities of our culture’s prevailing intellectual presuppositions. Our modern western context requires “some account, certainly from the university theologian, but also from the Church, of the intellectual credentials of what they profess.”
But the need for a systematic account of the faith doesn’t just arise from exterior cultural pressure. There is an internal demand as well. The Gospel claims to make universal truth claims about God, the world and the nature of human being. “It therefore requires that attention be given to its systematic structure, that is to the interrelation of the various levels and dimensions of its truth.”
Gunton points to Anselm as an example for systematicians to emulate. First because engages the sceptic who finds the claims the Gospel makes intellectually dubious. Second, particularly important Gunton thinks in his own English context, is Anselm’s willingness to adopt a conversational approach to the relationship between theology and philosophy, as opposed to seeing them as related in a parallel fashion or compartmentalizing them, in effect separating them. In Anselm, theology and philosophy are integrated into a “unified approach to theological truth.” This results in an essay on the nature of the atonement, generally conceived of in contemporary theology as something “strictly doctrinal”, bearing a striking resemblance in form to Anslem’s discussion of the proof for God’s existence, which today is treated in philosophy of religion.
Another important insight Gunton gleans from Anselm is that theology can be systematic without aiming at creating a grandiose system. Anselm treats the topics of theology “in relative independence of of one another.” That is, one can think carefully and systematically about about baptism, the atonement, the existence of God, or the nature of the future life without trying to connect them all by means of a unifiying principle which would rationally illuminate them all, as in Spinoza’s geometrically ordered philosophy. Anselm, like Irenaeus before him, and like all great theologians, doesn’t feel the need to say everything every time. But he does keep in mind the implications of what he is saying on one occassion for future statements on other occassions.