Theological Method answers the question, “How do you do theology?”
This post will utilize the type of systematic theology described by Erickson, in his chapter “The Method of Theology” where Erickson discusses “the process of doing theology.”[1] That process generally moves from exegesis to biblical theology to systematic theology.[2] After discussing biblical theology, Erickson added that he places historical theology after biblical theology: “While the utilization of history may take place at any one of several stages in the methodological process, this seems to be a particularly appropriate point.”[3] Erickson instructed that the process of doing theology is to move from exegesis to biblical theology to historical theology to systemic theology.
Read moreTwo quotes from pastors came to my mind. Alexander MacLaren said when he was invited to lecture in the prestigious Yale Lecture series on preaching, that he turned it down. He turned it down because it would have taken him away from his preaching ministry at Union Chapel in Manchester. MacLaren put forty hours a week into the one sermon he preached. That means he said “No” frequently. Because of his dedication to preaching to his flock, we still read his sermons today in Expositions of Holy Scripture.
Read moreBe aware of Alphabetic acrostics as in Psalm 119. “The obvious structure of Psalm 119 is that it is an acrostic of twenty-two sections built upon the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. A pastor could give a sermon that reflects the meaning of the entire psalm but do a close exposition of only one of the twenty-two sections (one could focus, for example, on the beth section in verses 9-16)” (Duane A. Garrett, “Preaching from the Psalms and Proverbs” ed. Scott M. Gibson in Preaching the Old Testament, Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2006, 102).
Read moreI once said to a friend, “I’m reading the Psalms.” He replied, “I am living the Psalms.” My friend was a young preacher whose wife was divorcing him. He was going through deep waters and was finding comfort in the Psalms. David the main contributor to the Psalms wrote many of the Psalms out of great affliction, such as, when he was fleeing as a fugitive from jealous King Saul or dealing with the rebellion of his son Absalom.
Read moreThere was a little shoe repair store in the town we live near for fifteen years which we drove past many times. The owners had a small sign hanging outside their front door that I read very often: "If the shoe fits, repair it." That is an example of the genre of Hebrew Poetry that we are studying in the book of Proverbs.
Read moreI got the idea for “The Factual Data” sheet from reading that Warren W. Wiersbe’s homiletic teacher, Lloyd Perry used a generic “Factual Data” sheet for all sermon preparation. I have adapted “The Factual Data” sheet to the different genres of Scripture instead of one size fits all. I have a "The Factual Data" Sheet also for Pauline Epistles, Narratives (Genesis and Nehemiah), Gospels (Mark), and Hebrew Poetry (Psalms and Proverbs).
Read moreThere is an array of answers to this question from pastors and theologians.
1) Pastors who present Christianity as therapy and self-help do not present Christianity. They are like the liberals that J. Gresham Machen denounced. Machen said that people who don’t believe the Bible should be honest and stop calling themselves Christians because they have in fact created a new religion that is not to be identified with Christianity. Similarly, the promoters of the American religion of self-help and therapeutic pop psychology ought to be honest: they don’t believe the Bible is “useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness” (2 Tim 3:16) (9Marks Click to open).
Read moreWhen Job proves Satan wrong, Satan is no longer mentioned in the book of Job. In chapters 1 and 2, Satan is persistent in attacking Job's faith. But when Job's Christian critics take over in the next section, they do such a good job of verbally pounding on Job, perhaps Satan felt he could leave Job in the hands of his ash heap critics and go destroy some other believer's faith
Read moreChris Sheeter and I were students at BJU and friends in 1981. Chris was tall, handsome, musical, with a great personality. He also was a good preacher. Chris was studying to pastor. We attended the same church, Southside Baptist Church and worked as waiters at the same Seafood restaurant, Old Mill Stream Inn. I graduated one semester before he did and started pastoring in N.C.. I drove back to Greenville, S.C. just to fellowship with Chris. During his last semester, he was a lifeguard at a local hotel. At the end of a shift, he dove into the pool just to swim across and go home. As he was swimming across the bottom, his friends noticed he stopped about halfway. Chris drowned.
Chris studied for seven years, spent nearly $100,000 to prepare to pastor, and never got to pastor one day. I remember asking myself why did God lead him to go through the rigors of four years of undergraduate work and the even tougher studies of three years of seminary and then allow this tragedy to happen.
Read moreKurt Willems writes a post entitled “Why the Rapture isn’t Biblical … And Why it Matters at Patheos.” He has adamantly repudiated what he was taught at church as a child and is also disturbed by the success of the Left Behind series (65 million have been sold). I’m sure the new 2023 Left Behind movie only adds to his frustration.
Read moreMadonna stated in an interview, “I do believe that all paths lead to God. It’s a shame that we end up having religious wars because so many of the messages are the same.”[12] In other words, there are many religious roads up the mountain to God. In Do All Religious Roads Lead to Heaven, Part One, we discussed resortationaism, universalism, and annihilationism. In Part Two, we continue to move to the theological right.
Read moreYou have probably had a conversation with someone who believed that there are many ways of salvation and that there are many religious roads to heaven. I have had discussions with people who have strongly expressed this view. I was eating out with members of my extended family on this very subject. They described me as arrogant for believing that only my religion out of all the religions in the world today is the only correct way to heaven.
Read moreGary North and Gary DeMar in the Christian Reconstruction Movement take social justice to another level. They teach that the church should practice social justice to reconstruct society in order to bring in the kingdom.
Read moreSince the 1973 movie, The Exorcist, there has been one exorcist movie after the next. There are six installments in the Exorcist franchise. The latest is The Exorcist: Believer in 2023. One exorcist movie, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, produced by a Biola University graduate is based on the true exorcist tragedy of 24-year-old Anneliese Michel. Two Catholic priests performed 67 exorcism sessions, one or two each week, lasting up to four hours, over ten months in 1975–1976. Anneliese Michel died the next year and her parents and the two priests were found guilty of negligent homicide.
Read moreJesus said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel.” Jerry Vine and Jim Shaddix wrote: Without a doubt, something mysterious is at play when the Holy Spirit attends to the preaching event. This fact can make any attempt to describe the work of the Spirit in preaching very difficult. But in the area of speech communication—even among Christians—it seems that the gospel preacher has an advantage that separates him from all other public communicators. Even secular public speakers can be passionate about their subject matter, but one particular ingredient is reserved solely for those who speak the words of God. This ingredient enables the preachers’ words to be pointed and powerful. This ingredient has been called anointing. Some homileticians and preachers do not believe the anointing actually exists, contending it is an unnecessary and unbiblical notion that often weighs the preacher down with guilt (Vines is referring to Alex Montayo in his book Preaching with Passion, Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2000, 35). I agree Alex Montayo. (Jerry Vines; Shaddix, Jim. Power in the Pulpit: How to Prepare and Deliver Expository Sermons (p. 76). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition).
Read moreThe operative spiritual gifts for today
Every believer has a spiritual gift or gift/mix.
Peter in 1 Peter 4:10 confirmed this truth: “As every man has received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.” God in grace not only gave us the gift of eternal life but a spiritual gift to serve Him.
Read moreSpiritual gifts fall into two areas: Temporary sign gifts and permanent service gifts
Paul in 1 Corinthians 1:22 states that the Jews require a sign. There have been three periods in the history of Israel when there have been sign gifts performed because Israel refused to believe God’s messengers and their God-given message:
Read moreMichael Horton, a reformed theologian is a cessationist. A cessationist believes the sign gifts such as healing, prophesying, and speaking in tongues ceased with the passing of the apostles and the closing of the canon of Scripture. Horton corrects Wayne Grudem another reformed theologian who is a non-cessationist. I am posting Horton’s refutation of Grudem in Part One. I will follow up in Part Two with a further explanation of the differences between cessationism and non-cessationism. Michael Horton Refutes Grudem's Continuing Gift of Prophecy in his article Reformed and Charismatic (click to open):
Read moreThe late Zane C. Hodges proposed this dilemma in his famous desert illustration:
Let me begin with a strange scenario. Try to imagine an unsaved person marooned on a tiny, uninhabited island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. He has never heard about Christianity in his life. One day a wave washes a fragment of paper up onto the beach. It is wet but still partly readable. On that paper are the words of John 6:43-47. But the only readable portions are: “Jesus, therefore, answered and said to them” (v. 43) and “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has everlasting life” (v. 47). Now suppose that our unsaved man somehow becomes convinced that this person called Jesus can guarantee his eternal future since He promises everlasting life. In other words, he believes Jesus’ words in John 6:47. Is he saved?
Read moreOne reviewer said he would never read The Reformed Pastor again.[1] Another said, reading the table of contents could transform someone’s life.[2] Reformed theologians and pastors commend the practical writings of Baxter but critique aspects of his theology.
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