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The Method of Theology · Reformed Thinking

• 0:00
  Welcome to Reformed thinking. It is good to have you with us
• 0:02
  today. We are shifting gears a bit.
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  Usually we pick a specific doctrine, maybe justification or
• 0:09
  the attributes of God, or we look at the covenants and we
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  pull it apart to see how it works.
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  But today we are we are going meta.
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  We are looking at the machine itself.
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  We are analyzing the mechanics of faith.
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  Specifically, how do we actually organize, understand, and build
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  the things we believe? Think of it as the difference
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  between enjoying a really nice dinner and understanding
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  chemistry. Most people just want to eat the
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  food, you know. They want the nutrition or the
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  flavor. But if you want to know why the
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  souffle rose, or I guess why it collapsed in the oven, you need
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  to understand the method behind the cooking.
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  Need to know the science? And to help us with this
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  culinary school for the soul, we are opening up a heavy one for
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  our deep dive. Today we are looking at
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  Christian Theology by Millard J Erickson.
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  Specifically, we are zooming in on his section regarding the
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  method of theology. Erickson is a heavy hitter in
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  the evangelical world, and the goal for this discussion is
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  crucial. We want to dismantle this really
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  pervasive idea that theology is just a random collection of
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  verses that you pick out of a hat or worse than it is just how
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  you feel about God on a Tuesday morning.
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  Right. Yeah, There is this sense that
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  theology is a rigorous structured discipline.
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  It is work. But before we get into the 10
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  steps he lays out, and yes there are 10 steps so maybe grab a
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  pen. I want to start with a question
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  that Ericsson raises right out of the gate.
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  It is an observation that I think we all feel, even if we
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  haven't put words to it. Why does it feel like
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  theological trends change as fast as fashion trends these
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  days? It is the feeling of whiplash,
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  honestly. It really is.
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  You look at church history and things seem stable for centuries
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  now. It feels like every five years
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  there's a new movement, a new buzzword or a new way of doing
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  church that everyone talks about for a minute and then just
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  forgets. It is not just your imagination.
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  Ericsson actually tracks this, and it is a fascinating, if
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  somewhat alarming, historical progression.
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  He talks about the half life of theology, the half life that is
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  a radioactive term. It fits perfectly, though.
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  It refers to how long a theological system stays potent,
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  how long it dominates the mindset of the church before it
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  decays or gets replaced. If you look back at the early
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  church, you have Augustine. He is the Titan.
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  He synthesized Platonic philosophy with Christian
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  theology in the city of God. That system, that way of
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  thinking about the world and God, dominated the landscape for
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  nearly 800 years. 800 years. That is mind boggling.
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  That is longer than the United States has existed times 3.
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  Right. It is empires rising and falling
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  and the theology stayed the same.
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  Then you get Thomas Aquinas in the 1200s.
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  He brings in Aristotle. His system holds the line for
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  the Catholic Church for about 300 years, right up until the
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  Reformation. OK.
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  So we dropped from 800 to 300. Then you have the Reformation.
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  You have Calvin, the Institute of the Christian Religion.
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  That becomes the gold standard for Protestants, specifically
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  our Reformed tradition for over 250 years.
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  I see the pattern 803 hundred 250.
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  The window is shrinking. But why?
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  Is it just that the theologians were getting worse, or that
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  people were getting more fickle? Well, no, it is not that simple.
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  You have to look at the context. Think about the speed of
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  information. In Augustine's Day, information
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  moved at the speed of a donkey. If you wrote a book, it took
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  months or years to be copied and distributed.
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  By Calvin's day, you have the printing press.
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  Ideas are spreading faster, but the real acceleration happens
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  when you hit the modern era. The Industrial Revolution.
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  That and the philosophical fracturing.
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  Erickson points out that Augusta and Aquinas hitched their wagons
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  to massive, slow moving philosophical systems.
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  Platonism and Aristotelianism were stable, but once you hit
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  the 19th century, philosophy starts splintering.
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  And if you tie your theology to a philosophy that dies in 10
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  years, your theology dies with it.
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  Precisely. Look at Friedrich
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  Schleiermacher. He is known as the father of
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  liberalism. In the 1800's the mood was
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  Romanticism, focusing on human feeling, emotion, the sublime.
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  Schleiermacher tried to save Christianity by marrying it.
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  To that mood, he said religion isn't about dogma, it is about
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  the feeling of absolute dependence.
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  And that worked for a while. It worked until the mood changed
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  and nothing changes a mood like a World War.
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  Right. It is hard to base your theology
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  on human feeling and optimism when millions of people are
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  dying in trenches in World War One.
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  That is the reality of what happened.
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  The optimism of the 19th century was shattered by the gas attacks
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  in France. And into that void sits Karl
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  Barth. In 1919, he drops his commentary
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  on Romans like a bomb. He says, no, it's not about
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  human feeling. It is about God speaking from
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  heaven. It was about the crisis.
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  Neo orthodoxy is born. Liberalism is out.
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  Barth is in. But Barth in the last 200 years?
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  Not even close. By 1941, Rudolf Boltman comes
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  along. He looks at the scientific world
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  and says modern people cannot believe in miracles.
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  So he introduces demythologization.
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  He wants to strip all the supernatural elements out to
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  make the Bible palatable for modern people.
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  That lasts maybe a generation. Then the mid 1960s you get the
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  death of God theology. I have read about that.
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  It sounds like a tabloid headline.
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  It practically was. It flourished for a few years
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  and then vanished. It evaporated.
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  Yeah. Erickson's point is that the
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  lifespan of these systems is getting shorter and shorter.
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  And there's a key take away here for us.
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  Any theology that ties itself too closely to the intellectual
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  mood of the moment is destined for obsolescence.
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  If you marry the spirit of the age, you are going to be a widow
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  in the next age. That is a haunting thought.
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  It creates the sense of instability and Erickson
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  mentions that it is not just the timelines that are changing, but
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  the teams are gone too. He uses an athletic metaphor
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  that I think is brilliant. In the past, the theological
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  playing field was occupied by clear teams.
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  You knew who the Calvinists were, who the Lutheran's were,
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  who the Armenians were. They were different uniforms.
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  You could spot them from the Nosebleed seats.
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  And now? Now it is like every player is
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  wearing a different uniform. It has a pickup game where
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  everyone designs their own jersey.
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  It is highly individualistic. Or to use his political
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  metaphor, there are no parties anymore.
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  Every participant is their own political party.
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  That sounds exhausting. It means you cannot just say I
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  hold to the Westminster Confession and have people
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  understand you. You have to explain every single
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  variable of your personal belief system.
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  And this is compounded by the loss of what Erickson calls the
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  Giants. In the early 20th century, you
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  had Titans, Barth, Brunner, Tillich.
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  In the conservative world you had Carl FH Henry.
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  These men built massive cathedral like systems of
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  thought they have passed on, and Ericsson notes that no single
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  figure dominates the landscape anymore.
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  Wait, I have to push back on that.
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  I see famous Christians all the time.
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  The best seller lists are full of them.
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  We have celebrity pastors filling stadiums.
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  That is the superstar problem. Ericsson distinguishes between a
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  giant and a superstore. A giant dominates because of
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  their intellectual contribution, their system.
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  A superstar dominates because of their personality.
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  Is that necessarily really bad? I mean, Luther was a
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  personality, Whitefield was a personality.
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  If a charismatic leader gets people interested in Jesus,
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  doesn't matter if the people are there for the charisma.
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  That is a fair question, and Erickson isn't saying charisma
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  is a sin. The problem is the basis of the
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  followers belief. It's a difference between
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  pedagogical authority and psychological authority.
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  Break that down for me. Pedagogical authority means you
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  follow someone because they are teaching you.
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  You are learning the arguments. You are learning the why.
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  If that teacher disappears, you still have the truth because you
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  learned it. Psychological authority means
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  you follow someone because of how they make you feel.
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  You trust them. So if the superstar falls or
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  changes their mind or just retires.
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  The followers are lost. They didn't learn the theology,
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  they just like the theologian, their critical thinking was
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  suspended. This leads to uncritical
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  discipleship. And just like the theological
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  fads, these stars rise and fall very quickly.
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  So we have a shrinking shelf life of ideas, a fragmentation
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  of schools of thought, and a shift towards celebrity over
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  substance. That sounds like a recipe for
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  chaos, but there's another factor.
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  Erickson mentions the knowledge explosion.
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  This is the problem of specialization.
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  There is simply too much information now for one person
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  to master it all. In the old days, a theologian
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  could be an expert in the Old Testament, the New Testament,
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  church history, and philosophy. Now, if you're a New Testament
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  scholar, you might only focus on the Gospels, or maybe just the
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  prepositional phrases in Paul's letters.
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  Right, You meet a historian and ask what do you know about the
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  Reformation and they say, oh sorry, I only studied the French
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  Reformation between 1520 and 1530.
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  That is a real scenario, and this makes systematic theology,
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  which is what we are talking about, the effort to connect all
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  the dots, incredibly difficult. The modern and postmodern mood
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  is atomistic. Atomistic, meaning we focus on
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  the atoms, the tiny parts. Yes, we see the details, but we
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  deny the whole. There's an aversion to Met
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  narratives, to the big story. People are suspicious of anyone
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  who claims to have a theory of everything.
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  Which is a huge problem for us as Reformed believers.
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  We believe the Bible is a coherent whole.
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  If you just have a pile of facts but no structure, you don't have
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  a building, you just have a messy construction site.
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  And the danger, as Erickson points out, is that we
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  substitute biblical theology for systematic theology.
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  Define the difference there. Biblical theology is
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  descriptive. It asks what did Paul think
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  about sin? Or what did Matthew think about
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  the Kingdom? It describes the history.
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  Systematic theology is normative.
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  It asks what is true about sin today.
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  We need both. But if you stop at biblical
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  theology, you were just a historian.
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  You weren't letting the text tell you what to do.
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  OK, so that is the scary landscape we are living in.
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  Shifting sands, no teams, too much data and a suspicion of big
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  systems. But Erickson doesn't leave us
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  there. He proposes a method, a way to
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  build a house that stands up to the storm.
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  He outlines 10 steps, and for the sake of our listeners, let's
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  use that house building metaphor.
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  Steps one through three are all about the bedrock, the Bible.
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  It has to start there. If the bass is cracked, the
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  house falls. Step one is the collection of
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  biblical materials. This sounds simple.
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  Just gather the verses. But Erickson warns us about the
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  tools we use. He talks about exegesis, digging
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  the meaning out of the text, but he warns that our shovels might
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  be dirty. Correct.
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  We often assume our Greek lexicons and commentaries are
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  neutral. They are not.
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  He brings up Kittle's Theological Dictionary of the
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  New Testament. It is a massive multi volume
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  set. It looks very authoritative.
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  I've seen it on shelves. It looks like the final word.
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  Is a great tool, but Erickson and scholars like James Barr
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  point out that it carries the theological presuppositions of
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  its contributors. If you don't know where the
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  author is coming from, you might swallow their bias along with
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  their definition. Erickson uses a navigation
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  metaphor here that I thought was perfect.
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  Dead reckoning, yes. Imagine a ship navigating by
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  dead reckoning. You start from a point and
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  travel at a certain speed in a certain direction.
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  If your compass is off by just one single degree, it doesn't
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  seem like a big deal in the harbor.
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  But after 100 miles, you are two miles off course.
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  And in theology, that 2 miles is the difference between orthodoxy
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  and heresy. It is.
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  Slight errors in your method at the start lead to massive
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  theological errors down the road.
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  For example, if your method assumes that miracles are
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  impossible, which is a naturalistic bias, then when you
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  come to the resurrection, your exegesis will force you to
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  explain it away as a myth or a hallucination.
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  You've decided the outcome before you even read the text.
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  On the flip side, he warns against hyper supernaturalism,
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  where we treat the Bible as if it is magic and ignore that it
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  is also a historical document written by real humans in real
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  languages. We need a balanced approach.
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  We need to determine what actually happened and what the
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  text meant to the original audience.
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  This is where he references Gettimer's concept of distance.
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  We have to respect the gap between US and the text.
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  We cannot just read the 21st century into the 1st century.
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  So we gather the materials, word studies, teaching passages, even
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  narratives. I loved his point about Genesis
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  22. The word faith isn't in the
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  chapter about Abraham sacrificing Isaac, but the
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  concept is screaming at you and Hebrews 11 confirms it.
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  That is why you cannot just do a keyword search and think you
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  have done theology. You have to read the stories.
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  You have to immerse yourself from the narrative to find a
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  doctrine. OK, so we have a pile of
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  verified, exaggerated verses. Step 2 is the unification of the
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  biblical materials. This is where the Reformed view
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  really kicks in. It is.
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  We operate on the presupposition of unity.
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  We believe the same spirit inspired Paul, Luke and John, so
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  our goal is to synthesize their diverse voices into a coherent
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  whole. We expect harmony.
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  We don't look for contradictions, we look for the
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  analogy of fide, the analogy of faith.
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  Scripture interprets Scripture. If we see a difficult passage,
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  we interpret it in light of the clear passages.
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  We don't pit James against Paul on justification.
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  We ask how they fit together. This is crucial.
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  If you don't assume unity, you will never build a systematic
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  theology. You will just have a theology of
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  Paul and a separate theology of James.
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  You will have a pile of bricks, not a ground level base.
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  Which brings us to step three, analysis of the meaning.
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  This is where we have to stop speaking Christianese.
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  We are all guilty of this. We use terms like born again or
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  body of Christ or justification of signals.
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  They're like passwords to get into the club.
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  But if you stop the average person in the Pew and ask, OK,
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  but what does justification actually mean, you often get a
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  blank stare. Or they give you a synonym that
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  is just as confusing. They say it means to be made
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  righteous. OK, but what does that mean?
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  Erickson says the theologian must be relentless here.
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  We have to ask, what does this mean until we strip away the
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  ambiguity? If we don't, we're just passing
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  around empty boxes with labels on them.
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  And if we don't understand the concepts clearly now, when we
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  try to explain them to the modern world in the later steps,
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  we are going to fail. You cannot translate what you do
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  not comprehend. Spot on.
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  So in our house metaphor, the groundwork is set.
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  We have gathered the materials in step one, we have cemented
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  them together into a unity in Step 2, and we have inspected
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  them to know what they actually are in Step 3.
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  Now we start building the walls, we have to look outside the
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  immediate construction site. Step 4 is the examination of
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  historical treatments, basically checking our work against the
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  class. This is an exercise in humility.
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  It prevents what CS Lewis called chronological snobbery, the idea
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  that because we have smartphones and the Internet, we are somehow
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  smarter or more spiritual than Augustine or Luther.
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  We are not. So if I come up with a brand new
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  interpretation of the Trinity that nobody in 2000 years has
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  seen? Then it is almost certainly a
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  heresy. Historical theology helps us see
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  how the Church has solved these problems before we look for
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  models in similar historical periods.
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  If the early Church dealt with Gnosticism and we see Gnostic
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  tendencies today, people saying the physical body is bad, only
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  the spirit matters, their solutions might help us.
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  It connects us to the great cloud of witnesses.
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  But Step 5 pushes us even further out.
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  Consultation of other cultural perspectives.
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  This is big in our globalized world.
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  It is vital we have to acknowledge that Western
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  theology, theology written by Europeans and N Americans, is
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  not the only valid perspective. It has blind spots.
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  Ericsson tells this great story about a Japanese pastor talking
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  to American professor. The pastor says your view of the
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  priesthood of the believer is based more on the American
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  Constitution than the New Testament.
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  That stings, doesn't it? But it is likely true.
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  We filter scripture through our cultural lens of individual
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  rights and democracy. We hear priesthood of the
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  believer and think, I don't need a priest, I am my own boss.
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  Someone from a collective culture might see it much more
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  corporately that we are a nation of priests serving one another.
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  We need those other eyes to help us spot our own cultural
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  baggage. Speaking of baggage step 6, this
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  is identification of the essence of doctrine.
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  This is the task of separating the message from the cultural
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  vehicle. You bring up Gabler's pure
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  biblical theology here. Yes.
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  What applies to all Christians versus what applied only to the
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  Corinthians? This is the hardest part.
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  What is the permanent truth and what is the temporary packaging?
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  Erickson uses the example of Old Testament sacrifice.
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  The form was killing lambs and doves.
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  That was the cultural vehicle, but the essence.
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  The essence is that sin requires A vicarious sacrifice.
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  Something must die so that I can live.
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  Correct. We don't kill lambs today, but
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  we must hold to the essence of vicarious atonement.
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  If we throw out the atonement because we don't like blood, we
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  have thrown out the doctrine. But if we just stop killing
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  lambs but keep the cross, we have preserved the essence while
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  changing the form. Now step 7 might make some of
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  our strict Bible only listeners nervous illumination from extra
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  biblical sources. I can hear the brake screeching
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  for some people. Wait, are we using science to
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  judge the Bible? Yes, that is the fear.
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  Are we putting psychology or history on the same level as
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  Scripture? That is the crucial question,
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  and Ericsson is very careful here.
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  He's not saying the Bible is insufficient for salvation or
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  for godliness. He's saying the Bible is not a
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  textbook on every single subject in the universe.
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  It is not a geology textbook. It is not a guide to molecular
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  structure. So where do those disciplines
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  come in? We believe in general
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  revelation. God wrote two books.
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  He wrote the Scriptures, and he wrote Nature.
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  The Reformed tradition has always honored general
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  revelation. If God made the human mind, then
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  psychology, when it observes the mind correctly, is observing
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  God's handiwork. So we use the Bible as the
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  spectacles. Yes, Calvin's metaphor.
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  You put on the glasses of scripture to look at the world,
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  but looking at the world through those glasses gives you a
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  sharper 3 dimensional picture of the truth.
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  You don't throw away the glasses, but you also don't
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  close your eyes to the world. Can you give us an example where
• 17:54
  this actually helps theology? Take the image of God.
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  The Bible says we have it, but it doesn't give us a biology
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  textbook breakdown of what that means.
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  So behavioral sciences and psychology can help us describe
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  what makes humans unique compared to animals, or capacity
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  for language, for abstract thought, for moral reasoning.
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  That data helps fill out the theological picture.
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  Or the creation account, the word Yom, the Hebrew word for
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  day. Right.
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  For centuries, most people assumed it meant 24 hours.
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  But as geology and science began to show the age of the earth,
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  theologians went back to the text.
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  They realized that Yom can mean a long period of time.
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  It wasn't that science corrected the Bible, it was that science
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  forced us to check our interpretation and we realized
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  the text actually allows for this.
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  But there is a caution here, Erickson says.
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  General and special revelation are harmonious because God is
• 18:44
  the author of both. But our interpretation of them
• 18:47
  often creates friction. That is the key.
• 18:50
  If science and scripture seem to conflict, it means we have
• 18:53
  either bad science or bad exegesis.
• 18:56
  We have to do the work to find the harmony.
• 18:59
  We don't just capitulate to whatever the latest scientific
• 19:01
  journal says, but we also don't ignore reality.
• 19:05
  OK, so the walls are up, We have checked history, we have checked
• 19:08
  culture, we have found the essence and we have brought in
• 19:11
  light from God's world. Now we are moving into the final
• 19:14
  phase, the interior design, making it livable.
• 19:19
  Step 8 is contemporary expression of the doctrine.
• 19:22
  This is the task of making the timeless truth understandable to
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  the modern year. Notice I said understandable,
• 19:28
  not necessarily acceptable. That is a huge distinction.
• 19:30
  We aren't trying to make the gospel cool.
• 19:32
  We are trying to make it clear. Ericsson brings up Paul
• 19:34
  Tillage's method of correlation, Tillage said.
• 19:37
  You have to analyze the situation, the art, politics and
• 19:40
  culture of the day to find the questions people are asking.
• 19:43
  Then the Bible provides the answers.
• 19:45
  That sounds good on paper. Listen to the culture answer
• 19:48
  with the Bible. It is a useful tool, but there
• 19:50
  is a warning. Modernism failed because it let
• 19:54
  the situation determine the content of the answer, not just
• 19:57
  the form. If the culture asks how can I
• 20:00
  feel good about my sin? And the Bible answers repent.
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  You cannot change the answer to self acceptance just to fit the
• 20:07
  question. But we do have to contextualize.
• 20:10
  Erickson breaks this down into 3 dimensions, length, breadth, and
• 20:14
  height. Let's drill down on these.
• 20:16
  Length is translating the 1st century to the 21st century.
• 20:20
  Breath is translating across cultures.
• 20:22
  This is where he gives the negative example of building
• 20:24
  little white chapels with Spires in the Orient.
• 20:26
  That is such a vivid picture of missing the point.
• 20:29
  You are exporting Western architecture, not Christian
• 20:32
  truth. It really is.
• 20:33
  You had missionaries singing German hymns translated
• 20:35
  literally into languages where the melody made no sense.
• 20:38
  They confuse the essence worship with the form European style.
• 20:42
  True contextualization asks what is the indigenous vehicle for
• 20:46
  reverence? OK, that is breath.
• 20:49
  What about height? That sounds hierarchical.
• 20:51
  It is in a way, it is about the complexity of the message.
• 20:55
  Ericsson points out that theology has to travel up and
• 20:57
  down a ladder. At the top you have the
• 20:59
  theological superstars, the academics, writing in Latin or
• 21:03
  technical German, crucial work, but inaccessible to most.
• 21:07
  Then you have the pastors. Who read the academics, then the
• 21:10
  lay people and finally the folk level.
• 21:14
  Kusuke Koyama, a Japanese theologian, said that in
• 21:16
  Thailand, theology must relate to sticky rice and water
• 21:19
  Buffalo. It has to be down to earth.
• 21:21
  So the goal is for the truth to be the same at the top and the
• 21:24
  bottom. Precisely.
• 21:25
  If your theology is so complex that it cannot be explained to a
• 21:28
  child, it is probably not the theology of Jesus.
• 21:32
  But if it's so simple that it falls apart under a microscope
• 21:35
  is not true. Contextualization is the
• 21:37
  elevator that moves the truth between those floors without
• 21:39
  breaking it. Step 9 is one of my favorites.
• 21:42
  Development of a central interpretive motif.
• 21:44
  Finding the handle on the basket.
• 21:46
  Every great theologian had one a central idea that organizes
• 21:50
  everything else. For Luther, the lens was
• 21:53
  justification by faith. Everything he read, he filtered
• 21:56
  through that. For Calvin, it was the siren T
• 21:59
  of God. For Barth, it was the word of
• 22:01
  God, specifically Christ. Erickson suggests his own motif
• 22:04
  here. He calls it the magnificence of
• 22:06
  God. He combines God's greatness and
• 22:09
  his goodness. It is a focus on God as the
• 22:12
  alpha and Omega. The reason this is valuable is
• 22:15
  that it gives your system unity. But Erickson advises using a
• 22:19
  soft motif rather than a hard motif.
• 22:21
  What is the difference? A hard motif forces every verse
• 22:24
  to fit the theme. If your theme is eschatology and
• 22:26
  you read a verse about being kind to your neighbor, a hard
• 22:29
  motif tries to force that into a timeline of the end times.
• 22:32
  It distorts the data. A soft motif is implicit.
• 22:35
  It guides the view but doesn't twist the text.
• 22:37
  Finally, step 10 stratification of the topics.
• 22:40
  This is basically theological triage.
• 22:42
  Not everything is of equal way. We have to prioritize.
• 22:45
  We need an outline major divisions like esotology, the
• 22:48
  study of last things versus sub points like the timing of the
• 22:51
  tribulation. This saves us from so many
• 22:53
  fights. It really does.
• 22:55
  It saves us from spending major energy on minor issues.
• 22:58
  Erickson notes that the doctrine of God is usually the framework
• 23:01
  doctrine. If you change your view of God,
• 23:04
  everything else shifts. If you change your view on the
• 23:07
  exact order of the resurrection, the rescue theology can usually
• 23:11
  survive intact. This leads perfectly into
• 23:13
  section six of our discussion, The authority of theological
• 23:17
  statements, because if we are stratifying topics, we also have
• 23:21
  to rank the authority of our statements.
• 23:23
  We cannot claim thus, saith the Lord, for everything.
• 23:26
  This is a crucial safeguard for the Reformed adherence to sola
• 23:29
  scriptura. We don't want to bind people's
• 23:32
  consciences where the Bible doesn't bind them.
• 23:34
  Erickson gives us a hierarchy of truth.
• 23:36
  Let's run through them level 1. Direct statements of Scripture.
• 23:40
  This is the highest authority. In the beginning, God created
• 23:43
  the heavens and the earth. That is the Word of God, period.
• 23:47
  We don't argue with level 1, Level 2 direct implications.
• 23:49
  These are high priority. If the Bible says God cannot lie
• 23:53
  and God spoke to Abraham, the direct implication is God told
• 23:56
  the truth to Abraham. It is logical, but because human
• 23:59
  logic is involved, there is a tiny, tiny chance.
• 24:02
  Of error Level 3 probable implications.
• 24:06
  These deserve respect, but we hold them tentatively.
• 24:09
  This is where a lot of our specific denominational
• 24:12
  distinctives might live. We think this is what it means.
• 24:15
  The evidence points this way, but we admit good Christians
• 24:18
  might disagree. Level 4.
• 24:19
  Inductive conclusions. This is based on probabilities.
• 24:22
  Most of the time in scripture this word means X.
• 24:25
  It is likely, but not certain. Level 5 inferences from General
• 24:29
  Revelation. This is science, history,
• 24:31
  psychology. It must always be subject to the
• 24:33
  clearer statements of the Bible. And finally, level 6
• 24:36
  speculations. Hypothesis.
• 24:38
  Maybe God did it this way. It is permissible to speculate,
• 24:41
  but, and this is the big warning, you must label it as
• 24:44
  speculation. The problem comes when a pastor
• 24:46
  presents a level 6 speculation with the authority of a level 1
• 24:48
  direct statement. That is how cults start.
• 24:51
  That is a sobering thought. We have to keep our label
• 24:53
  straight. And this brings us to Ericsson's
• 24:55
  final description of the method. He calls it adduction.
• 24:58
  I know induction, that is science.
• 25:00
  I know deduction, that is logic. What is Adduction?
• 25:02
  Think of it like a detective solving a crime or an artist
• 25:05
  painting a portrait. Deduction is mathematical, A + B
• 25:09
  = C Induction is gathering data. I see 10 white Swans, so all
• 25:14
  Swans must be white. Adduction is creative.
• 25:17
  You have scattered data points. Scripture, history, culture,
• 25:21
  nature. They don't form a straight line.
• 25:23
  Adduction is the process of testing a theory against the
• 25:26
  data. You say, what if the motif is
• 25:29
  God's sovereignty? Then you check the data.
• 25:32
  Does it fit? If there are anomalies, you
• 25:34
  adjust the theory. So it is active.
• 25:36
  It requires imagination. Disciplined imagination.
• 25:38
  It is looking at the scattered stars of biblical data and
• 25:41
  drawing the lines to see the constellation.
• 25:43
  It requires the mind and the heart.
• 25:44
  So we have gone from the chaos of modern fads, the shifting
• 25:49
  sands, the half life of theology to a disciplined ten step
• 25:53
  method. We gather the text to check
• 25:55
  history, we check culture, we find the essence, and we build a
• 25:59
  structure that gives glory to the magnificence of God.
• 26:02
  And this structure protects us. As the Apostle Paul said, it
• 26:05
  keeps us from being tossed to and fro by every wind of
• 26:08
  doctrine. The goal isn't just to be smart.
• 26:11
  It isn't just to win arguments. It is to know God correctly.
• 26:15
  That is the heart of Reformed thinking, to think God's
• 26:17
  thoughts after Him. I agree completely.
• 26:20
  I want to leave you, the listener, with a final thought.
• 26:22
  Today we talked about the central interpretive motif, the
• 26:26
  lens you use to read the Bible. Ericsson chose the magnificence
• 26:29
  of God. It's a solid choice.
• 26:31
  But I want to challenge you. What is your functional central
• 26:33
  interpretive motif? When you open your Bible?
• 26:36
  What is the lens you are subconsciously using?
• 26:38
  Is it God's love? Is it personal success?
• 26:40
  Is it social justice? Is it your political party?
• 26:42
  And the follow up question is, does that lens distort the text
• 26:45
  or does it clarify it? Are you finding what is there,
• 26:48
  or are you finding what you want to see?
• 26:50
  That is the question you need to wrestle with.
• 26:52
  Thank you for joining us on this deep dive into the method of
• 26:55
  theology it. Has been a pleasure.
• 26:57
  Keep thinking, keep reading, and we will see you next time on
• 27:00
  reformed thinking.