A Theology of Everything

Part 1, Cleaning Up the Theological Garage

Welcome to a series with an overambitious title. 

There is a branch of theology called "systematic theology." The goal of systematic theology is exactly what you'd think, the attempt to pull diverse theological reflections into a coherent, consistent whole. A "system." A lot of theological reflection is topical in nature, reflecting on some particular issue, debate, or controversy. But some theologians aspire to write a "systematics," their big book (or books!) where they pull all their thoughts together to comment upon every major area of theological reflection. Writing a "systematics" is often considered to be the pinnacle of a theologian's career. To attempt a systematics is an ambitious undertaking. 

I'm a psychologist, so there's no way I would attempt a systematic theology. Being self-taught and eclectic in my theological reading, I have too many holes in my theological eduction to do systematic work. And yet, due to that very eclectic and topical approach, I've felt the need over the last few years to do some systematic work. My mind feels like a messy garage. I've collected a lot of theological tools over the years, each for very particular theological purposes, but these are scattered everywhere with no rhyme or reason. I need to clean up the garage and bring some order to this mess. 

More specifically, over the years I've thought a lot about a lot of different theological topics. Soteriology. Doctrine of creation. Eschatology. Theodicy. Pneumatology. Theological Anthropology. These have been the main areas, and they mark off much of what one would tackle in a systematic theology. Since 2007, I've shared here a lot of opinions about each these areas. And yet, I've often felt tensions and frictions between how my views in one area rub up against views I have about other things. Regular readers might also have noticed a lack of consistency in my thinking, ways I seem to contradict myself from post to post. 

Given this situation, for a while now I've been reaching for a "system," a theology of everything that can pull together all of my theological opinions into a consistent, coherent whole. This system has taken enough of a shape in my head that I'm going to work through it publicly in this series. 

In this series I will share my "theology of everything," my systematic attempt to pull together soteriology, doctrine of creation, eschatology, theodicy, pneumatology, and theological anthropology. This is a "sense-making" exercise, an attempt to clean up and organize the very messy theological garage in my head.

I hope you enjoy sorting out your own thoughts as you follow along.