James Swan, Systematic Theology, and Catholicism

James Swan, one the members of the “Team Apologian” crew, put up this morning, what may very well be his most ill-conceived post (in my subjective opinion), on either the AOMIN blog, or his own Beggar’s All blog. James is reading through Cornelius Van Til’s An Introduction To Systematic Theology and takes a quote from the book which references some “fifty-seven varieties of heresies with which our country [USA] abounds” and then tries to apply it to Catholic converts! I kid you not; here is the greater context:

I've been reading Van Til's An Introduction To Systematic Theology. Van Til notes systematic theology seeks to offer an ordered presentation of what the Bible teaches about God. He says "the study of systematic theology will help men to preach theologically. It will help to make men proclaim the whole counsel of God. Many ministers never touch the greater part of the wealth of the revelation of God to man contained in Scripture. But systematics helps ministers to preach the whole counsel of God, and thus to make God central in their work."

Here was the point that I found most interesting:

"It is but natural to expect that, if the church is strong because its ministry understands and preaches the whole counsel of God, then the church will be able to protect itself best against false teaching of every sort. Non-indoctrinated Christians will easily fall prey to the peddlers of Russellism, spiritualism and all of the other fifty-seven varieties of heresies with which our country abounds. One-text Christians simply have no weapons of defense against these people. They may be able to quote many Scripture texts which speak, for instance, of eternal punishment, but the Russellite will be able to quote texts which, by the sound of them and taken individually, seem to teach annihilation. The net result is, at best, a loss of spiritual power because of loss of conviction. Many times, such one-text Christians themselves fall prey to the seducers voice."

Of course, I had the converts to Roman Catholicism in mind, rather than Russellites. I wonder how many of these Catholic converts actually attended churches that proclaimed the whole council of God? A question I would ask is how many Catholic converts previously went to churches with strong systematic confessions of faith, like the Westminster Confession, and how often were they taught the confession, like in a Sunday School class, and how well did their minister cover all the doctrines in the confession of faith? I would expect some rather weak answers. (James Swan, http://www.aomin.org/index.php?itemid=2270 - italics in the original post.)


My-oh-my, where to begin…

Has James so quickly forgotten the fairly recent converts to Catholicism who not only went to “went to churches with strong systematic confessions of faith”, but also received seminary training in conservative Reformed schools; some of whom went on to pastor the type of church James makes reference to! (E.g. Scott Hahn, James Akin, Robert Sungenis, Steve Wood, and Jerry Matatics.)

And then there is myself. I was mentored and discipled by a ruling elder of the ultra conservative Orthodox Presbyterian Church, who I had met at the Christian bookstore he was working in which specialized in classic Reformed works. After reading through the entire systematic theologies of Louis Berkhof, Charles Hodge, and W.G.T. Shedd (along with the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Longer and Shorter Catechisms, and numerous other Reformed works by such authors as B.B. Warfield, John Owen, John Murray, Jonathan Edwards, et al.), I became a member of the OPC. And my Reformed readings continued, but it was not long after my conversion that I began to see the incredible amount of schism that existed among the conservative Reformed churches. Their inability to exist together in ecclesiastical unity led to my deeper studies into history, including the early Church Fathers. (And we all know what Newman had to say about history!)


Now, I am certain that my response is not one of the “rather weak answers” James was hoping for when he penned his post. And I am quite sure that the examples of the Hahn, Akin, Sungenis, Wood, Matatics, and myself are not the only ones which make James’ post incredibly suspect.

But there is perhaps an even larger issue that needs to be addressed: the differing types of systematic theologies. Van Til (and James) acts as though the only systematic theologies that have been written are Reformed. Fact is there are Arminian, Lutheran, Pentecostal, and Catholic systematic theologies. And there is a considerable amount of diversity among the Reformed systematic theologies. How is the simply lay person going know which of the dozens of extant systematic theologies out there is one he needs to read and embrace?

I am not going to bore everyone with my personal favorites, but I would like to end this post on one important note: Van Til’s An Introduction To Systematic Theology is certainly not one of the better ones, even when we allow for the fact that it is only an “introduction”. Van Til was a brilliant philosopher, but not a great theologian; his teaching concerning the doctrine of the Trinity is but one example of his sometimes muddled thought. Van Til stated:

We do assert that God, that is the whole Godhead, is one person…He is one person. When we say that we believe in a personal God, we do not merely mean that we believe in a God to whom the adjective “personality” may be attached. God is not an essence that has personality; He is absolute personality. Yet, within, the being of the one person we are permitted and compelled by Scripture to make the distinction between a specific or generic type of being, and three personal subsistences. (Cornelius Van Til, An Introduction To Systematic Theology, pp. 229, 230.)

Me thinks I smell a whiff of modalism…


Grace and peace,

David