THEO 501 — Systematic Theology I: Prolegomena, Theology Proper, and Anthropology
THEO 501 is the first of three graduate courses in systematic theology, and it assumes the student already knows the doctrines in outline. Where the undergraduate courses teach what the church believes, this course weighs how well each belief is held and where it is still argued. The student learns one habit and practices it in every module: to weigh a doctrine by naming the question it answers, what Scripture and the tradition establish, the live positions at their best, and where the matter remains contested. The course walks the first division of the systematic field in turn: the method of theology itself — its sources in revelation, Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience; the doctrine of God — the divine attributes, classical theism, and its modern challengers in open and process theology; the Trinity, from its creedal ground to the twentieth-century renewal; creation out of nothing, providence, and the meeting of theology and the sciences; the created spiritual order of angels and the demonic; theological anthropology — the image of God, the constitution of the human person, and the meaning of male and female; and the doctrine of sin. Where the great public-domain systematicians stated a doctrine in their own words, the student reads them across the traditions — Reformed, Wesleyan, Catholic, Lutheran; the living theologians, whose works remain under copyright, are described in the course’s own voice. The course is written from within the Christian faith and is candid about it, but it is ecumenical and does not adjudicate. It presents every contested doctrine with the serious positions at their best — open theism and process theology, the social and the classical models of the Trinity, the dualist and physicalist accounts of the person — naming what each is trying to protect before weighing it, and it leaves the genuinely open questions open. On the meaning of male and female it stays at the level of theological anthropology and leaves the applied moral questions to Christian ethics. Its closing exercise hands the student an unseen doctrine — whether God suffers — to weigh by the method alone.
Learning outcomes
- Weigh any doctrine by the signature method: name the question it answers, what Scripture and the tradition establish, the live positions at their best, and where it remains contested — the signature method of the course.
- Explain the task and method of systematic theology: its sources in revelation, Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience, and how the traditions weight them (the Wesleyan Quadrilateral, sola Scriptura, and alternatives).
- Weigh the doctrine of God: the divine attributes and classical theism, and the live challengers in open theism and process theology.
- Weigh the doctrine of the Trinity: its biblical and creedal ground, the classical formulation, and the contemporary renewal (Rahner, Moltmann, Zizioulas, Volf — the social and psychological models).
- Weigh the doctrine of creation — creatio ex nihilo, providence, and the science–theology interface — and the created spiritual order of angels, Satan, and the demonic.
- Weigh theological anthropology: the image of God, the constitution of the person (dualism, physicalism, emergentism), and the meaning of male and female created in the image — at the systematic level, the applied ethics left to THEO 210.
- Weigh the doctrine of sin: its nature and origin, original sin, total depravity, structural sin, and the nature of evil.
- Weigh an unseen doctrine (whether God suffers — divine impassibility) by the method, ecumenically and without adjudicating, engaging the live positions at their best.
The Task and Sources of Theology
This opening module sets out what systematic theology is and how it differs from the biblical and historical study of the faith. It introduces the habit the course practices in every module that follows: weighing a doctrine by naming the question it answers, what Scripture and the tradition establish, the live positions at their best, and where the matter remains contested. It then turns to the sources of theological knowledge, revelation, Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience, and asks how the traditions weight them differently, from sola Scriptura to the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. Because this prolegomena shapes everything that comes after it, the module assumes the undergraduate foundation and presses toward the questions still under debate.
The Doctrine of God
This module takes up the doctrine of God, beginning with the divine attributes, aseity, simplicity, eternity, immutability, omniscience, omnipotence, goodness, and love, and the way classical theism holds them together. It reads Thomas Aquinas on the divine simplicity and Charles Hodge on the attributes, and it asks how human language can speak of God at all. It then takes up the live challengers to the classical account: open theism in its concern to protect genuine divine responsiveness and human freedom, and process theology in its concern for a God truly related to the world, each presented at its best before it is weighed. The module closes on the knowledge and will of God and the apophatic and cataphatic ways, with the contested question of whether God suffers named here and reserved for the capstone.
The Trinity
This module turns to the doctrine of the Trinity, the one God confessed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It begins from the biblical and creedal ground, reading the Athanasian Creed for what its careful language secures, and assumes the classical formulation of one essence in three persons. It then traces the twentieth-century Trinitarian renewal, described in the course’s own voice, from Rahner’s rule that the economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity to Moltmann’s social Trinity, Zizioulas on being as communion, and Volf, weighing the social and the psychological models at their best. It closes on the language of person and relation, the mutual indwelling of perichoresis, and the inseparable operations of the three.
Creation and Providence
This module treats the doctrine of creation and providence. It begins with creation out of nothing, the contingency of a world that need not have existed, set against the alternatives of emanation and eternal matter, and reads Aquinas on what it means to make from nothing. It then takes up providence, the conserving and ruling work by which God upholds and governs what he has made, weighing deism, occasionalism, and classical concurrence, with the Wesleyan voice of John Miley heard alongside the others. The module ends at the meeting of theology and the sciences, surveying the major models of their relation and holding the doctrine of creation beside evolutionary biology without ruling the matter.
Angels, Satan, and the Demonic
This module considers the created spiritual order, the part of the doctrine of creation that concerns angels and the demonic. It gathers the biblical data on the angels, their nature, ranks, and ministry, and reads Thomas Aquinas, the angelic doctor, on the existence of incorporeal creatures. It then turns to Satan and the demonic, the fall of the angels and the entry of evil into the spiritual creation, presenting fairly how the demonic is understood across the literal and the demythologizing readings. Throughout, the module marks what the doctrine guards and what it does not claim to settle.
Theological Anthropology
This module enters theological anthropology, the doctrine of the human creature made in the image of God. It begins with the image itself, weighing the substantive, relational, and functional interpretations at their best and asking what the image grounds in human dignity and vocation, reading Aquinas and Hodge alongside Genesis. It then takes up the constitution of the person, the contemporary debate among substance dualism, physicalism, and emergentism, asking what each protects of the biblical witness to the whole human being. It closes on humanity created male and female as the image of God and the theological meaning of embodiment, holding the major positions without a verdict and leaving the applied moral questions to Christian ethics.
Sin
This final module weighs the doctrine of sin and closes with the course’s capstone. It defines sin in its biblical depth and traces the question of original sin and its transmission, weighing the Augustinian account of inherited guilt and corruption, the Eastern view of ancestral sin, and the Pelagian and semi-Pelagian alternatives, each at its best, with the Augsburg Confession and Charles Hodge heard on the matter. It then takes up the extent of sin in the doctrine of total depravity, the structural and social dimensions of sin that liberation theology has pressed, and the nature of evil at the systematic level. The capstone hands the student an unseen doctrine, whether God suffers, to weigh by the method alone, ecumenically and without a verdict.