What is the relationship between various fields of knowledge with theology? And what is the relationship between different disciplines of theology? Prominent theologians have articulated the idea of theology. Below is a survey of some examples (quotes in red). This article will be expanded periodically.
Francis Turretin: Institutes of Elenctic Theology, Topic 1, Question 2, Section IX (P&R, 1992, translated by Giger and Dennison). Turretin presented the classic view.
As there is a threefold school of God (that of nature, grace and glory), and a threefold of book (that of creature, of Scripture and of life), so theology has usually been divided into three parts: the first of which is natural, the second supernatural and the third beatific; the first from the light of reason, the second from the light of faith, the third from the light of glory. The first belongs to men in the world, the second to believers in the church and the last to the saints in Heaven.
This division can be presented in the chart below:
B. B Warfield: The Idea of Systematic Theology in Studies in Theology. The Works of Benjamin B Warfield. Volume IX. Baker Books. 2003. Page 73-74.
The essence of the matter is here admirably set forth, though as connected with some points of view which may require modification. It would seem to be a mistake, for example, to conceive of scientific theology as the immediate and direct synthesis of the three sources — Natural Theology, Biblical Theology, and Comparative Theology — so that it would be considered the product in like degree or even in similar manner of the three. All three furnish data for the completed structure; but if what has been said in an earlier connection has any validity, Natural and Comparative Theology should stand in a somewhat different relation to Scientific Theology from that which Biblical Theology occupies — a relation not less organic indeed, but certainly less direct. The true representation seems to be that Scientific Theology is related to the natural and historical sciences, not immediately and independently for itself, but only indirectly, that is, through the mediation of the preliminary theological discipline of Apologetics. The work of Apologetics in its three branches of Philosophical, Psychological, and Historical, results not only in presenting the Bible to the theological student, but also in presenting to him God, Religion, and Christianity. And in so doing, it supplies him with the total material of Natural and Comparative Theology as well as with the foundation on which exegesis is to raise the structure of Biblical Theology. The materials thus provided Scientific Theology utilizes, just as it utilizes the results of exegesis through Biblical Theology, and the results of the age-long life of men under Christianity through Historical Theology. Scientific Theology rests, therefore, most directly on the results of Biblical exegesis as provided in Biblical Theology; but avails itself likewise of all the material furnished by all the preceding disciplines, and, in the results of Apologetics as found in Natural Theology and Comparative Theology, of all the data bearing on its problems, supplied by all the sciences. But it does not make its direct appeal crudely and independently to these sciences, any more than to exegesis and Christian history, but as it receives the one set of results from the hands of Exegetics and Historics, so it receives the others from the hand of Apologetics. Systematic Theology is fundamentally one of the theological disciplines, and bears immediate relation only to its sister disciplines; it is only through them that it reaches further out and sets its roots in more remote sources of information.
Warfield presented this view in the chart below (italics added by the current author):
Cornelius Van Til: An Introduction to Systematic Theology, Second Edition. P&R 2007, edited by Edgar. Page 121-122.
Man might receive revelation (a) about nature, (b) about man, and (c) about God. He might, moreover, receive such revelation from three distinct sources, that is, from three distinct immediate sources, namely, from nature, from man, and from God. The matter may be schematically presented as follows. Man might receive revelation:
As it stands, this scheme contemplates the created universe and its relationship to God in stationary fashion. It therefore represents the object-object, the subject-object, and the subject-subject relation as it first came forth from the hand of God.
Van Til’s view can be presented in the chart below:
D. A. Carson: The Bible and Theology in NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible. Zondervan, 2018. Carson here only discussed the relationship between disciplines of theology. (The charts are original[1]; bolded original)
Some might think it convenient if we could order these disciplines along a straight line: Exegesis→BT→[HT]→ST→PT. (The brackets around HT suggest that HT directly contributes to the development from BT to ST and PT but is not itself a part of that line.) But this neat paradigm is naive because no exegesis is ever done in a vacuum. Before we ever start doing exegesis, we already have a ST-framework that influences our exegesis. So are we locked into a hermeneutical circle? See Hermeneutical Circle.
No; there is a better way. We might diagram it like this. See Feedback Loop. In other words, there are always feedback loops — information loops that go back and reshape how one does any exegesis or theology. The loops should not take over the final voice, but they shape the process whether one likes it or not. It is absurd to claim that one’s ST does not affect one’s exegesis. But the line of final control is the straight line from exegesis right through BT and HT to ST and PT. The final authority is the Bible and the Bible alone.
[1] https://www.zondervan.com/p/biblical-theology/what-is-copy/#theology
