davidould wrote

I’m not sure how I can restate my position on Hosea

Not sure you need to. But if you were to qualify it by allowing the following

a. that the use of Hosea 11:1 in Mt 2:15 would have seemed, if not wrong, initially surprising to Hosea’s original audience, until they realized the deeper theological fulfilment that Mt drives at.
b. that the “obvious” reference of Hosea 11:1 to Israel at the time of the Exodus is not negated by the Mt 2:15 reference, but remains one legitimate meaning of the Hosea text

then I think it would be possible to reconcile your view with mine and those of others who’ve been contributing here (but I don’t speak for them).

It was nice to meet you and catch up this am, by the way and also helped clarify some areas, thanks for making the effort!

hi Matt,

[quote author="Matthew Williams"]
But systematic theology faces a further problem than exegesis in that it is an attempt to grapple with the whole logic of God - not just to know those truths or aspects of himself God has revealed to us, but to actually grasp all of God - to repackage God’s self-disclosure into our categories. Obviously good theologians acknowledge our limitations even as they try to push our limits. But it is a problem that adds itself to all the minefields facing exegesis and biblical theology.

The thing about systematic theologies, though, is that we have quite a few good off-the-shelf ones for those of us whose minds are not powerful enough to get them hammered out without a great deal of assistance from others (I include myself in that category). There’s Calvin’s Institutes, there’s Louis Berkhof; and you can start to feed in other things like the Nicene Creed, the Athanasian Creed, the Second Helvetic Confession, Westminster Conf, and the AFES/IFES doctrinal basis. I’d even be prepared to throw Barth’s Church Dogmatics or Luther’s Works, although I realize that starts to stretch the bounds of the word ‘systematic’ beyond credulity.

Recognising input from these sources also does justice to the idea that God in his grace gifts certain people as integrative thinkers, and allows them to use their gifts to benefit the churches.

I don’t say that any of these systematized statements are beyond criticism or reflection. Under pressure from the exegetes I think it’s quite right that “he descended into hell” has been dropped from some versions of the Apostle’s Creed. And the discussion of ‘begottenness’ over on the Trinity thread is another eg of how the creative tension between exegesis and systematics works to produce fruitful conversation with God’s word and each other.

So the only claim I’d really want to stand up for is that the absolutely necessary starting point in the process is that God in his sovereign and free grace must freely choose to reveal Himself—understanding that one word ‘must’ as in no way making any comment on what God is compelled to do, but only as a statement of our utter inability to understand anything rightly by our own effort.

Too much time in Torrance; my words are becoming Torrential.

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although I gotta put this in, from my reading on the bus this morning:

In theology the observation that ‘one has to start somewhere’ is simply a descriptive truism, which means that one has to have started somewhere. It may not serve as a prescriptive ratification which endorses whatever starting-point suits the ends of the enquirer! Properly interpreted by the theologian it means that ‘one finds oneself having started somewhere but that this somewhere is now acknowledged as having possessed provisional, incidental or contingent status’.

I reckon Torrance writes like a grown ups’ A.A. Milne. that was from Persons in Communion p 52 (footnote)

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