What do you mean by Biblical theology?
High Resolution
- Some of the more unpopular Biblical doctrines (divine sovereignty, election) are often either explained away so as to remove all inherent offensiveness, or ignored all together by many pastors, thus obscuring the Bible's clarity in the eyes of God's people.
- When we obscure the Bible's clarity in this way, we erode the confidence of budding Christians in their own Spirit-given capability to profit from Scripture by themselves.
- This corporate erosion of the confidence of God's people in the clarity of God's Word weakens the local church by weakening the community's faith in the life-giving, sanctifying power of God's Word.
- Obscuring Scripture's clarity through the attempted removal of its inherent offensiveness also blurs the intentionally distinct lines between the theology of the Evangelical Church and the various theologies of the world.
- So in asking whether our theology is Biblical, we're really asking whether the theology we teach either clarifies or obscures the plain meaning of Scripture for the people of God.
- We're also asking whether the theology we teach helps distinguish the true gospel from other popular but less faithful teaching (cf. Gal 1:6-9).
