Proclaimer Blog
Summer Systematics
Readers of this blog will know that here at PT we’re about expository preaching. As well as doing what Martin Luther said and ‘beating our heads against the text until it yields’, expository preachers need to have both a strong biblical theology and a clear systematic theology. My hunch is that here in the UK at least, we’re stronger on the former than the latter.
Perhaps part of the problem is that there still hasn’t been a show-stopping systematic theology since Louis Berkhof published his in 1932. In terms of good recent ones, the two main ones have been by Wayne Grudem (Systematic Theology) and Robert Reymond (A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith). If these were Bible translations, Grudem’s is like the NIV (very accessible but not altogether accurate), and Reymond’s is like the ESV (much safer and more consistently reformed, but less accessible).
Help may well have arrived in the shape of Michael Horton’s new systematic theology just released from Zondervan – The Christian Faith, a Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way. I am hoping to read it properly over the summer, but dipping in it seems both very reliable and highly readable. Two things have caught my attention so far. The first is that union with Christ – a strangely neglected Biblical theme – plays a prominent part in Horton’s scheme. And second that Horton has a great section on how Scripture is a covenant document.
I’ll let you know more fully how good this new systematic theology is once I have read it properly. But early indications are that it looks like it might be the Berkhof of the 21stCentury….