Systematic Theology attempts to unify scripture into a system of beliefs. A major issue is that at the core of Christianity is paradox.
Paradox is not contradiction. Paradox is difficult to understand and has a tension within but it can be seen to be potentially true.
The heart of the problem with systematic theology is the nature of God one of the studies of theology eclipses the grasp of the human mind to grasp.
Certain well known paradoxes such as the trinity and nature of Jesus as fully God and fully man are handled well in systematic theology.
Usually systematic theology tends to miss many central paradoxes of Christianity such as the freedom of man and sovereignty of God.
Typically this is a major divide in systematic and shifts theologians into a category. It is as if it could not be another paradox of scripture that man is free and God is sovereign.
The reality is that often Christianity exists in the both/and state and not the either/or. We pit the bible law against human happiness when the law is for human happiness.
Always the bible says something which is difficult to understand. Here a set of commandments and these commandments are in place to protect your happiness.
The nature of man always buckles against God. It cannot be as it is said.
The law clearly is a kill joy, but alas in the stream of broken marriages and heartbreak the comes from lawlessness if we are truthful we will find much of the bibles teaching in fact aims to protect happiness.
I suppose the bible is always terribly offensive like this. It tells us we do not know how to conduct our lives and suggests that it knows better than we do.
It is offensive to man that he does not know how to live in this world and how to be happy. I suppose we could dismiss the bible outright if it does not in fact appear that mankind has no sense of how to live well or to exist happily.
Men are often happy and yet throw it all way frequently at the drop of a hat. It is often that men meet their great demise in the midst of going against the suggested order for human happiness.
The bible always claims that it is on man’s side. God has seen the state of man and wishes to make peace with him and invite him into everlasting happiness.
God sits and looks and man and cries and wishes to reach out his hand to help and invite man into everlasting happiness.
Again it is always so offensive to ourselves. God meets us and suggest that we are not happy or not as happy as we should be and we are lost and need something.
Man always feels he is not in need and could not be in need. This is the heart of the problem. The first sin of man.
We do not need God and we suspect he is withholding something from us which is good. But always it is our search from good apart from God which is the issue. It is happiness found in God which is what is good.
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