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Hello, I'm Kevin DeYoung, pastor at Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina, and you are listening to Doctrine Matters. Each week on Doctrine Matters, we explore the rich doctrine of the Christian faith. We'll pull from the church's long history, complex debates, and over the course of the year, the hope is that we'll begin to frame out what is a clear, accessible, systematic theology. Be looking at different Christian doctrines and their relationship to each other. And the hope, Lord willing, is we will grasp more and more the riches and the beauty of God's word. Thanks for listening. Let's turn to this week's Doctrine Matters. This is a podcast about doctrine or theology. And so we would do well to think about what is theology and why are we studying it in the first place? But you can break down the word with two Greek words. Theos means God, and logos means word or speech or statement. So most simply, we could say that theology is the study of God. But that's a little bland and boring. So we could think more carefully. What do we mean by theology? Some of the best theologians over the centuries have given some definitions. Here's one I like. William Perkins, defined theology as the science of living blessedly forever. Another theologian, Peter Van Maastricht, said, theology is the doctrine of living unto God through Christ. What I like about those definitions is they remind us that the goal of theology must never be simply to get right ideas in our head. Sometimes people talk that way. They'll be negative about doctrine and say, well, you're just getting God shrink wrapped, or you're putting him in a box, or you're just filling your head with propositional statements. Well, propositional statements do matter. But the reason we care about theology and people write theology and you're listening to a podcast about theology, is because we want to know God more deeply, enjoy him more fully, and walk with him more obediently. That's why we study theology. Let me mention four ways we can do this. One Biblically. So we want to test everything against the Scriptures. Experience matters, the history of the church matters, but ultimately, everything. The final say is the Bible. So we want to be biblical, too. We want to look at theology rationally. Now, that may sound like a surprising word. We don't mean that reason is the foundation of the faith. We don't just set aside everything else and act like we can just reason our way to God. But Paul reasoned daily in the lecture hall of Tyrannus. We read in Acts, chapter 19. He reasoned with Felix and Drusilla. He pleaded with Festus he said, I am speaking true and rational words in Acts 26. So the Bible understands that its revelation is to be understood through the organ of reason and understanding. These things are not nonsensical or irrational. Many things that we learn about God are beyond comprehension, but ultimately they are not illogical. They are not contrary to reason. So we do want to use our brains. We want to think rationally, biblically. Number three, humbly. We approach this task always dependent upon God, eager to learn from those who have gone before. So it's a spirit of humility toward God, and it's also a spirit of humility toward the past, as the cliche goes. You can see farther by standing on the shoulders of giants. Want to say, let's learn from those who have gone before, because the church has been thinking about these things for 2000 years and the church makes mistakes. That's true. But over time, the categories and the terms, the ones that stick, usually do because they prove really helpful. And it's a spirit of humility to say, let's ultimately be in a posture of humility to God, but also with some respect and humility toward the past. And then finally, doxologically, that's just a big word that means praise to God. The doxology. We want all of this good theology to lead us to see and to savor, to know and to worship more about God. In the course of this podcast, I hope there'll be some relevant applications at different points and things that you can take into your church and into your life. But sometimes the best application is simply to know God better. I mean, think if, if you're a husband and you were spending time with your wife and you had a lovely time together, and then before you left, you said, well, let me jot down a few points of application from our time together. Well, maybe if she had told you something specific, you want to jot it down, but that might feel a little off putting. What do you mean? You need relevance. It's not relevant enough. Just that we spent time together, that you love me, that you know me, that you see more of me. So it's the same with God. Of course, there are all sorts of millions of ways that doctrine is relevant for our lives, but perhaps the, the chief way is simply that we might know God better. Who wouldn't want to know more about God? Now, when we think about theology, what we're doing in this podcast is what is typically called systematic theology. Like the word suggest, it's how we study theology in a system now that can Sound bad, like we're putting an artificial construct on the Bible. But really we just mean, what does the whole Bible say about a particular topic? These are questions people ask all the time. You don't have to think about systematic theology. And you're asking systematic theology questions a child may ask you, mommy, Daddy, what do we believe about angels? Or you may think to yourself, what does the Bible say about sex? Or what does the Bible say about God? Or what should we believe about life after death? These are all questions that systematic theology tries to answer. It is a specific kind of theology. It has its own method, its own structure. Let's talk about some other kinds. Historical theology is looking at how doctrine has developed. And so maybe you take the doctrine of the atonement and you say, let's look at it in the early church and the medieval Scholastics and the Reformation, and you plot out over 20 centuries, what have people said about this doctrine? And that's important. And that ties in with systematic theology. But that's not exactly the same. You might also say there's biblical theology. You may think, well, I thought you already said what we're doing here is biblical. Yes, but as a specific discipline, biblical theology usually means tracing out the redemptive historical arc of the Bible's story. So in biblical theology, you might say, let's talk about the temple and creation, and the garden was a kind of temple, and then the tabernacle was a temporary temple, and our bodies are a temple to the Holy Spirit. And you trace this theme throughout the Bible and in particular its redemptive arc, to try to understand what the Bible has to say and how its unfolding revelation teaches us. Well, that's related as well. But systematic theology is doing something a little different. It's organizing doctrine around topics sometimes called loci. L, O, C, I, or probably pronounced loci in Latin simply means places. It's the plural of the word locus. Systematic theology is trying to look at these various topics, or loci. It goes back at least to the church father origin in the third century. People often say that Philip Melanchthon's book loci Komines in 1521 was the first Protestant systematic theology. But Christians from the very beginning have been doing this, try to understand what the Bible says about some topic. So we're going to be moving through over the course of the year in a traditional systematic theology approach. There's lots of different ways to do it, but I think this has proven to be somewhat intuitive and easy to follow. And that means dividing a number of topics into some big categories. So systematic theologies usually start with prolegomena. That's kind of the biggest word and the most unfamiliar word, but it literally means first words. That is, what do we have to say? What are the ground rules? This often you get into the doctrine of scripture or you talk about faith and reason. Just what are we doing when we're doing theology? And that's really what we're starting today with this first week from prolegomena, then to theology proper, which covers the doctrine of God, the Trinity, creation, providence, then to anthropology. That's man's creation, image of God, fall, sin, Christology. So the person of Christ, who is he? And then the work of Christ, what does he accomplish? Soteriology, how are we saved? And then what does it look like to live by the Spirit as saved people? And then ecclesiology. That's the doctrine of the church. And finally eschatology, the doctrine of last things. Systematic theology is not the only way that people can learn about God. You want to read your Bible day after day. That's the most important thing. But it has proven to be one invaluable way. And it learns from church history. It seeks to defend the faith. It relies on the tested formulas that have proved useful over 2000 years. And it brings together the whole counsel of God. What we want to do with doctrine is move from platitudes to particulars. We want to move from just general good sentiments to learn some technical terms and concepts. You could say we want to move from just seeing the hills to really seeing the mountains of God's glory. That's why we study, that's why we learn, and that's why doctrine matters. Thanks again for joining us on Doctrine Matters. I'm your host, Kevin DeYoung. Our hope and prayer is that this has been helpful to you as you look at Scripture and try to understand the best of our theological tradition as Christians. Please consider subscribing to doctor Matters. And if this has been encouraging, consider passing it on to others. If you'd like to learn more about this week's doctrine, you can ask your pastor for good resources or check out my year long mini systematic theology book called Daily Doctrine. It's available in print or audio from Crossway.org the Doctrine Matters podcast is produced by Crossway. To learn more, visit Crossway.org.