Soteriological Thesis Work

A new friend of mine, Nolan, posted something here that struck a nerv with me recently. He noted that a lot of my blog is polemic against various ideas that float around in Christendom. He noted that this was perfectly valid, and in my mind I noted that the topic of the discussion we were having was based on a most polemic document; the Second Synod of Dort.

Chasing bad, or thought to be bad, theology around isn't always helpful. In fact I think it is often anything but helpful. That was a large point I made in my book Fail-Safe for Fallacy.  The first time I looked at, and argued against, the "Doctrines of Grace" popularly called by the acrostic TULIP I made it clear that it is easy to argue against something but much harder to develop something that is true.

Over the last couple of years I've been feeling I should develop a Soteriological Thesis. The late Dr. Robb Lawson and I worked on a project together that we were calling The Grace Reformation. I believe it was a noble idea, but the perspective was too broad and so it was beyond my abilities and beyond Robb's ability to keep me motivated. :)

Over Christmas I have decided to limit the thesis to the methodology by which a person who is unsaved becomes eternally saved. I have a well-known dislike for systems that give answers to people who haven't (and so won't) read their bibles but I think the time has come to truly test what I believe.

This year I will be writing a book that introduces the thesis which is reasonably well developed in my mind, but has not been committed to writing as of yet.

Systematic Theology

I've often complained about Systematic Theology, and perhaps I'm not alone in this.  This week, I've been checking out a new-to-me blog called The Naked Bible. This quote from the blog's author,  Dr. Michael Heiser, sums up my thoughts about Systematic Theology very well near perfectly. I will be adopting his words.

I don’t really care too much about systematic theology; it’s almost always English Bible-driven and “top down.” I care about biblical theology. - From a comment in THIS DISCUSSION.

"top down" means that the System drives the understanding of the Bible not the other way around.  I believe that such systems give poor theologians false confidence in their doctrine. I also believe they all to often keep good theologians from teaching good doctrine while they correct bad doctrine. Truly talented teachers are able to do both at the same time but in my experience these men are rare and far between.

When Brother Lou was reviewing my book he reacted with grace to my stance on Systematic Theology, even though he has been a teacher of the subject himself. I almost felt bad for having this view expressed in the book. It's funny to me that out of all the things I wrote about in Fail-Safe this is the one topic that comes up most often when people criticize me.

So what are your thoughts about Systematic Theology?