Systematic Theology

So, this summer, as some of you know, Corey and I like to go through a complicated book over the summer or something like that. And Pastor Steve stole our book. We talked about it, he didn't really steal it, but we were gonna go over Simply Trinity, but Pastor Steve wanted to go over that one.

I think the EFS, ESS thing is a big deal these days, so definitely wanna make sure that we have a well-educated pastoral perspective of that. Did anybody not get the handout? Lisa, do you want mine? I can, it's okay, I have the digital copy.

I'll just have to scroll a lot, so you'll have to be patient with me. It's yours, you can do whatever you want with it. Okay, so, is there, they should be right behind you. All right, so what we're gonna do, Corey and I have been negotiating, we've been deep in negotiations.

I don't know if you wanna be in the room where it happened or not, but what we figured out is that we're gonna look at systematic theology, and this is not the beginning of the summer series, this is kind of like a preview of what we're gonna be studying.

Pastor Steve is not here this week, but he's not quite done with what he's gonna be doing right now about Simply Trinity. So I figured that since I had the opportunity to fill in, I would get the summer brain squeeze started.

There's Latin on your sheets, if you don't have a worksheet, there's Latin on them. You can go find them, they're on both sides. I quizzed Anitra last night, she did okay. So, she is smart, she is smart, but I didn't give her any of the answers.

I'm gonna give you all the answers today, that's how this thing goes. So, okay, I don't think it'll be as intense as the Simply Trinity study. Again, like I said, systematic theology. Here's the, here's the thing.

So, Corey and I have kind of identified a couple of initial topics, but we, as you know, at Sunday School, like to encourage audience participation. So, if you look at the back of your bulletin, I think it's on the back, or maybe it's inside, my email address is there.

If there are subjects that you would like to talk about with regards to systematic theology, email them to me or to Corey, and we can talk about them. That's the goal, is that everybody's invested in what we're doing.

So, we'll pick some stuff, but this is a cornucopia. This is the buffet table of systematic theology this summer. All right, so our guidepost is going to be this book. This is Louis Burkhoff's Systematic Theology.

You can all view the masterpiece of cover design that we have here. It's lovely, it's in the bookstore, $31. This morning, we're gonna make it halfway through the introduction, which is about 100 pages.

I think it's an 800-page systematic theology with a 200-page introduction to systematic theology. And, please feel free to share this as well. We are going to have the high schoolers officially come to Sunday School down here for the summer to give some of the teachers a break, and all of the high schoolers will get a copy of, I don't remember the book, if Corey were here on time.

No, I'm kidding, Corey is doing public supply this week. But, it's like an intro to systematic theology book aimed at that high school to early college level with a workbook that goes along with it, and we'll provide those to high school students.

So, we really want to encourage this level of study. It is academic, it's a systematic theology, but we're gonna have high schoolers in here, and hopefully they'll speak up as well, and that'll be really good, that'll be really fun.

Okay, so this is a very foundational thing. My notes are shorter than usual because I always run over, so I'm encouraging audience participation, or you're gonna have some extra free time at the end. All right, here's kinda what we're gonna talk about today.

What is systematic theology? How do we know what we know? That's gonna be really the core of today. What is dogma? Anybody heard dogma? Like, other than my dogma, my karma ran over your dogma, like, I've seen that bumper sticker, but like, what is dogma?

How does dogma compare to dogmatics, which is obviously related but different? Why is theology theology? What does that even mean? And then, what is, this is the quiz question from last night for Aetra, principium cognoscente externum?

You can see that at the bottom of your worksheet. What does that even mean? All right, so again, this is all coming pretty much directly out of Burkhoff. There's a couple of other small quotes in here, but that's really where we're gonna spend a lot of our time as we look at this.

I think we'll be back in the introduction when we officially open this series for the summer, but let's just pray this morning and just pray that the Lord would open our eyes. Heavenly Father, we just thank you for today, for this opportunity to come together and to study your word.

Lord, your word is a beautiful gift to us. It is the way by which you have shared knowledge of yourself with us in words of accommodation, as we have said so many times. Father, I just thank you for this opportunity to look at your word in an academic way, in a thorough way, in a planned way.

I pray that you would help us open our minds, open our hearts, Lord, convict us even of our sin as we look at the truth of the truth that you have given to us. Help us, Lord, to just be joyful in the growing of our knowledge of you.

In your name we pray. Amen. Okay, so I mentioned this is a 200-page introduction of an 800-page systematic theology. If you look in the bookstore, Joel Beeky also wrote a systematic theology which has four 800-page volumes.

So this is not that bad. We'll be okay. Actually, in all honesty, I didn't really know when we got started, but I find this to be extremely readable. There's obviously complicated topics in it, but I would encourage you, again, it's $31 in the bookstore.

It is a very readable systematic theology, and I think that anybody can really get something from that. Okay, who wants to define for me what a systematic theology is? Look at all those hands. What is a systematic theology?

This is cool, okay? Systematically, imagine that. You're not supposed to use the words in the word that you're defining to define the definite, whatever. Yeah, okay, so I'm gonna cheat. I actually have a definition written down.

You're not gonna be able to write this down on your thing, so please keep this succinct in your notes, but Lexham Theological Dictionary. Anybody, any other thoughts on systematic theology? An approach to the Bible that seeks to draw biblical teachings and themes into a self-consistent, coherent whole in conversation with the history of Christian theological reflection and contemporary issues confronting the church.

This is distinct from yet related to the approach of biblical theology, which focuses on the development of theological themes within individual books of the Bible or across one or both Testaments. The practice of biblical theology is often more closely intertwined with the practice of biblical studies, whereas systematic theology is usually viewed as a discipline that goes beyond the scope of biblical studies into church history, philosophy, and pastoral application.

If you want my quotes, I will send them to you. It's okay. So, I mean, what does that really mean? Like, how do we break this thing down into something that is a little bit more complex? Well, here's an example.

We're studying the Trinity, right? So studying the Trinity in a systematic theology might include some details of some of the heresies that are common and why those heresies are bad, right? Biblical theology as a practicum, as an academic exercise, would not include those things.

It would merely speak to what the Bible explicitly says. It's also a way to refine our understanding because it does look at scriptural truth, but incorporates the doctrines and dogmas of the church as well.

So when we talk a lot about old church fathers, or we talk a lot about the Council of Trent or the Council of Nicaea and all of these things, it gives us context to help us understand why some of the exposition that we see over the corpus of human history in the church looks the way it does, right?

And you're not gonna get that if what you're doing is strictly studying the scriptures because our focus is to discern the truth of scripture. But as we look to all of church history to glean more understanding, because there's a lot of really smart people that have been men in the church and women in the church for a long time, those are different kinds of studies.

Does that make sense? That make sense? Okay. Oh, and this is not a new thing, by the way. Systematic theology, this way of sequencing things and ordering things correctly is not new. This has been going on for millennia.

In fact, tell me if this sounds familiar. If it doesn't, you need to pay more attention during the service. In as much as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.

Right? Where'd that come from, by the way? Okay, good. I'm just making sure. I know Pastor Mike has passed these verses in Luke, but I wanna make sure that there's some retention going on. Right, that is directly from scripture, an orderly understanding concerning the things that you have been taught.

Systematic theology. I mean, it's a little bit different for him. It's a narrative, right? Not an ordered treatise of doctrine. But Berkhoff, by the way, Berkhoff is long dead. I think 60s, something like that.

Berkhoff says, the church has never hesitated on this point, talking about systematic theology. From the beginning of the third century on, several works appeared, which aimed at giving a complete presentation of the doctrinal truths of scripture.

A complete presentation. So we have 2000 years of refined understanding of scripture that we can lean on, right? Obviously, of course, scripture is our primary authority, but it is instructive to see how it went.

That's why books about the history of the church are so important and so helpful for us. I mean, we all kind of know about the Reformation and the 95 Greeces, I'm sorry, Theses. You know, we know about all that, but what happened in between, right?

What's all this stuff? And a systematic theology is gonna help us understand that. Systematization is important. One of my favorite things to do, and if you've been in my home group, you know this, is to, especially when you're studying a Pauline epistle, is to flip back to Acts and figure out where in Acts Paul was when he wrote that epistle.

Because it gives us context. You can't always do that. You may be able to see, you have some insight as to where Timothy was, but Titus, you're not really gonna know. The writer of Hebrews, you don't know because you don't really know who he is.

But it's helpful to put the pieces of Scripture together in a way that you can kind of connect the pieces because it gives you a better idea of what's going on. When you understand the difference between 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy, to a young pastor, to an old pastor, all of this context, it helps us in our understanding.

But all of that is really a more academic systemization kind of an idea, right? It's also hard, and Pastor Mike did a masterful job of this, to have a complete understanding of the Old Testament and the way laws would work about certain things when reading Hebrews, right?

If anyone in this room right now were reading Hebrews, I mean, maybe when it talks about the order of Melchizedek, you can do like a little Bible search and find Melchizedek in the Old Testament. And then you'd be like, oh, okay, I can connect these two things.

Because there's not a lot of verses that say Melchizedek in them, right? Like it's not like it's a word that shows up 85 times in the Old Testament and you gotta try to figure it out and do all this stuff and do all this connecting and whatever.

But if you don't have a proper understanding of the Mosaic Covenant, it's very difficult to understand what the mind of a Jew is gonna be when they come to the book of Hebrews, right? How do you understand those things?

In a systematic way. Jews have certain thoughts and presuppositions, this kind of Eastern mindset as they come into this stuff, right? That's why we have commentaries to help us understand these things, but it's also why we have systematic theology.

Now, near the beginning of the book, people have been coming in, we're talking about systematic theology, largely signposted by Lewis Burkhoff's Systematic Theology. It is in the bookstore, I commend it to you.

We're gonna have a run on systematic theologies after this, maybe. At the beginning of the book, Burkhoff talks about systematic theology and dogmatics. And he kind of makes them synonyms, kind of. So I thought I'd take a step back and define some terms.

And pretty much for the rest of this class, we're gonna be defining terms and talking about what those terms mean. So, what is dogma? What is dogma? It's one of those things that are like, oh, we know what dogma is, but oh, you want an actual definition of dogma?

Like, I get the idea, right? And I will say this, dogma is a word that has been heavily, heavily co-opted by the Catholic Church. And it's hard for us in 2023 to think about dogma as something separate from the Catholic Church because it's part of their language.

It's part of the words that the Catholic Church uses, a lot more so than the Protestant Church. So, what is dogma? Anyone? Really well on the audience participation this morning. Okay. Dogma, an axiomatic or self-evident truth, an official ordinance, or a well-founded and formulated article of belief.

I don't love that last one, but you'll understand why. An axiomatic or self-evident truth. This is something where you look at it, and you're like, it is 9 .18 a .m., right? Time .gov, 9 .18 a .m., at least on the East Coast, not in the Atlantic time zone, just the Eastern time, whatever.

But you get, it's something that you're looking, there's no argument, there's no conversation about did it happen, did it not happen, at least in a conversation in good faith. Say that. Those are trigger words in 2023.

But it's not, dogma is not necessarily a theological thing. I use the example of the time. Burkhoff says, there are not only religious dogmas, but scientific, philosophical, and political dogmas as well.

And a lot of people will say, well, you don't have to be so dogmatic about it, right? And that's kind of another way of saying that you don't have to be quite as perspicuous, pedantic, about something, like really holding onto that truth and adhering to that truth beyond the point of reason, that's kind of what, when people say dogmatic in that sense, that's what they mean.

But you can let go of that definition because we'll get into this a little bit more. Interestingly, here's a cool one. The word dogma appears in the Greek New Testament. It appears in the Septuagint. And almost every single time, it is talking about governmental decree, or ordinance, or law.

You're not arguing about that. It is what it is. Talk about the Catholic Church. Catholic Church has kind of redefined what dogma is to mean something that is a truth that has been defined by an infallible teaching authority, namely, the Catholic Church.

Senor Pope, hello, Senor Pope. And that does affect our kind of modern comprehension of that term. There's a difference between defining things and recognizing them. Listen to Burkoff. Roman Catholics speak of dogmas in the strict sense of the word as truths contained in the word of God, good, written or unwritten, bad, and proposed by the church for the belief of the faithful.

Unwritten truths would be what? Tradition, totally. Like all that stuff that we apparently do in the Catholic Church. I don't know, I shouldn't say we. Burkoff goes on. Historical Protestantism, of course, does not thus coordinate scripture and tradition.

It maintains that the doctrinal truths embodied in dogma are either contained explicitly in scripture or are deduced from it by good and necessary consequence. Dogmas are not mere repetitions of scripture per se, but careful, albeit human and therefore fallible, formulations of doctrines contained in the word of God.

Their subject matter is derived from holy writ. If it were not so derived, they would not be dogmas. So, Burkoff, breaking this down, defines three main characteristics of religious dogma. It's on your sheet.

If you look down, you'll see this. Number one, their subject matter is directly derived from scripture. There should be worksheets over there and also worksheets over there if someone does not have worksheets.

Number one, their subject matter is derived from scripture. Number two, they are the fruit of the reflection of the church on the truth as it is revealed in the Bible. And, number three, they are officially adopted by some competent, I don't know that he uses the word competent, ecclesiastical body.

They are officially adopted by some competent ecclesiastical body. So, there is actually a formal position within the Catholic Church that Protestant dogma can't exist because there are so many different flavors of Protestantism.

There is no formal Protestant church writ large, so, therefore, there can't be Protestant dogma. It's a different conversation. We can have that at a different time when Corey's teaching. He's not here, so I can just kind of lob things over the fence to Corey.

It's like a pickleball. Okay, so, plainly, dogma is something that we look at in the scriptures, and it's undeniable. Jesus came, lived, died, rose again. Scripture, I mean, if you read it in good faith, it's there.

Dogma, there's a conversation about that, but how does that compare with doctrine? We've seen these words used like synonyms. Are they synonyms? People are quick to say no, but I'm gonna have you define doctrine, so.

False, okay. Doctrine is essentially a step back, okay, a gathering of dogmas to create a cohesive theological understanding. When we look at systematic theology, listen, this is important for your multiple choice question coming up.

Systematic theology is derived from a dogmatic assessment of the text, assessing those clear truths, and defining things like the doctrine of God, the doctrine of man in relation to God, the doctrine of Christ, et cetera.

Members of any denomination, and I know I keep saying in good faith, it's not capital F faith, this is just being honest. Members of any denomination looking at scripture in good faith would agree on dogmas.

It's in the scriptures. They would not necessarily agree on doctrines. Forth said that doctrine is truth about dogma. Dogma expanded. It is a secondary theology, or the church's grasp, as in the creeds.

And I think this is really interesting. I mean, this is really like, you know, we talk about it in programming terms. We say like, oh, you know, we wanna code close to the metal, right? And that kinda means there's no like, you have the processors here, and then there's programming close to the metal.

I'm not gonna give you languages and stuff, that's a different thing. But then you have all these different frameworks. Vadim's nodding, I'm sure. All these different frameworks, and then on top of it is like what you interact with on a daily basis.

You know, you're spending your time in the memory hog of Xcode, whatever it is. Dogma is close to the metal. We're right there, we're right next to the truth. Doctrine is actually a step back from that.

And we talk about doctrine as if doctrine is settled science. Jonathan said, would you say that dogma is data? And doctrine is, I'm gonna amend your definition a little bit, the collection and coalition of that data into something cohesive.

And when you do that on a large level, what do you get? You get a systematic theology. So, question three, false. This dives right into our next topic, which is dogmatic. Barkoff again, dogma forms the subject matter of dogmatics so that the latter might be called the science of Christian dogma.

Thus it may be said that dogmatics deals with the doctrinal truth of scripture in a systematic way. So that coalition part in your definition, so you've got dogma is data, doctrine is the end result of the coalition of that data.

That process in the middle is called what? Dogmatics. There you go, that's the whole thing. So if you look at the questions, I think it's A is the correct answer. I don't have a sheet in front of me anymore.

I can't even read to you the question. I should put the question in the notes. That actually would have been really smart, but I didn't do that. To borrow a Cooleyism, I will fire my editor. Lobstein expands on this idea.

This is translated German, bear with me. I can't read it yet. But I think this helps us connect the dots. He says, dogmatics is the scientific exposition of the Protestant faith. Dogmatics creates nothing.

It merely formulates the problems whose elements are given to it by the religious experience of the Christian in the presence of the living realities of the gospel. So we have these observable, undeniable truths.

How do we put those together? The observable, undeniable truths, we're gonna practice this again and again so we kind of get these down. What are the observable, undeniable truths called? Dogmas. Dogmatics is the process of looking at those dogmas and coallating them, putting them together to form doctrines, which together form a systemic theology.

From truths, dogmas, found through observation, dogmatics built into concrete ideas, dot-like doctrines, and presented as such. There we go. That's the chain of, what are we gonna call it? This, pfft, no.

It is not the Smith chain. We have Anitra's childhood best friend and her family at our house. Their last name is Smith also, courtesy of Mike. Thank you, Mike, appreciate it. Appreciate that. There are 11 of us in our house right now, 11 Smiths in my house.

Yeah, and that's only because my mom changed her last name after my dad died. So she's not 12, she's not. Anyway. Bavinck wrote that, Bavinck, he wasn't English. Dogmatics has exactly the task to reproduce intellectually that content of revelation that bears on the knowledge of God.

Shortly, our doctrines should reflect our observed dogmas. Very simple. So, we built this idea, we have observable truths, we have a process by which we observe those truths, and through this observation of truth, we build what are essentially theories, which we can then test through additional analysis of the truth.

Anybody lose me, got me? What does that sound like, by the way? Just generally. Science, it's a scientific process. It's science, the science of God. It kind of sounds like, weirdly, like oxymoronic, the science of God, it just sounds weird.

But when you understand that science is merely study, and then you can say that the study of God is called what? This is a much easier question than you think it is. Theology, the study of God. Some people take exception to the idea that theology is necessarily scientific.

Burkoff, again, many present-day scholars, especially in our country, regard the term science as a proper designation of what are usually called the natural sciences. Okay, I get that, fine, sure, whatever.

And of them only, since they are the only studies that deal with matters that can be observed and can be tested in the laboratory. Okay, the deciding question seems to be whether a study deals with facts of observation or not.

So, I'm gonna get ahead of myself, but if I were to push the envelope here, I would say, if we believe, if we believe that the scriptures are merely the writings of men, there's not a lot of reason to truly plumb their depths.

But if we believe it to be the living and active word of God then there is every reason to continue to believe and continue to study it much like any other science, to understand its depths. It's true that testing may not be as novel as the testing of the natural sciences, but it doesn't make it any less valid or scientific.

Eisler wrote about systematized knowledge being valid science. Experimental tests may and should be applied in the case of the natural sciences, rational tests in the case of the sciences of the mind, and scriptural tests in the case of theology.

Scriptural tests in the case of theology. Any questions so far? We're going pretty quick, so I'll make sure. Before we leave the topic of dogmatics behind, I do wanna pause for a moment to talk about the fact that there are many, many disciplines of dogmatism and how to execute a dogmatic study of scripture most appropriately, to put it simply.

You can think about the way people talk about preaching the gospel. How many ways are there to preach the gospel? The right way and the wrong way, okay, I like that. All right, you have the chronological method.

You start at the beginning of the Old Testament. You explain Mosaic law. You build up this understanding, this desperate need that the nation of Israel had for a savior. All of their continued falling away from God and falling away from his ways.

I mean, Ezra and Nehemiah and all of these things that happened, going through the Psalms, seeing David and his sin, and the picture. At that time, Jews might have thought he was the, I mean, he was very much this godly man who was the figurehead for Israel, and he fell, and the desperation that Israel would have had to the point where you have the Pharisees and the Sadducees who have an image of what the Messiah is supposed to be, and Jesus comes up on the scene, and they're like, what's this?

This isn't what we thought. And preaching the gospel that way, so that you have this crescendo, this desperate moment. That's the chronological method. Arguments against that. What if you're, I don't know, in South Africa at some place, you're teaching through the chronological method, and the Civil War breaks out, and you don't ever get to Jesus.

That's the argument against the chronological method. More simple ones, the four W's. Who knows what the four W's are, by the way? Any kids? Any students who know the four W's? Is this an old way? Am I out of touch now?

Four ways, isn't it? Fine. All right, how about the Roman's Road? That's kind of older than the four W's, right? Yeah. Who is God? Who is man? Why did Jesus have to die? What should our response be? Four W's.

Roman's Road is Romans 3 .23, Romans 6 .23, and then you kind of go on with the rest of Romans. All right, anyway, the point here is, there's these kind of different ways of doing this. There's different disciplines of dogmatism, different ways that you review the doctrines, the dogmas of scripture to build doctrines to understand different things.

There's different doctrines that get built up in this process, right? These are all ways of building up theology necessary to baseline what those truths are. Practitioners of dogmatics have different approaches on how to build up a system of doctrines that is internally consistent and builds on itself.

But there's an abstraction layer there, right? So dogmas, undeniable truth, doctrines, there's an abstraction layer there, which means that different people will have different perspectives on things.

And those doctrines that are formed are informed by the eisegesis that everybody does, whether they want to admit it or not. What they believe predisposes their take on a certain dogma, right? And so as those doctrines are built, they're abstracted a little bit.

And we have to be mindful of that. It's really important. And that's why doctrines being agreed on in council is such a good idea, generally speaking, because it is going to remove singular predispositions.

If one person takes a dogma a certain way, and then they sit in council and they discuss, it's gonna help, generally speaking, have a clearer understanding of the conclusion, of the co-related doctrine that comes from it.

Does that make sense? I saw funny looks. Right, it doesn't disagree with the other dogma, but it disagrees with the conclusion, right. Therefore. Mm-hmm, all right, so would it be accurate to say that doctrine has a context of peer review?

We're gonna really push this idea of the scientific method? Birkhoff, I will tell you this, this isn't even in your notes, because it didn't, whatever. Birkhoff uses what is called the synthetical method.

There you go, that's your 25 cent word for the day. We haven't even gotten to the Latin yet. Okay, so we have six doctrines that Birkhoff lists in the introduction. I'm going to call them out, and you can tell me which ology relates to them.

You have all of your ologies on your worksheet, and then you can draw lines. It's a good activity book. I wanna mix it up a little bit, so there's different, you got a table on there, you got some line drawing, whatever.

The doctrine of God is what? Theology, the doctrine of man, anthropology. See, I made Anitra do these without showing her the worksheet. So she got, what did you get, four out of six? That was pretty good, that was pretty good.

The doctrine of Christ, Christology. The doctrine of applied salvation, soteriology. The doctrine of the church, and there's only one left. The doctrine of the last things, or end times, eschatology. Well, it's Latin time.

This brings us to our last subject. We're doing okay, 9 .39, all right, which is the Principium Cognoscendi Externum. Principium Cognoscendi Externum. Has anybody even heard of this term before? You two don't count.

We talked about this last night. Has anybody heard of this term before? All right, so we're gonna work through it. That's okay, I didn't really expect anybody who heard it. The middle word, by the way, cognoscendi, is actually the hardest one to define because it's a derivation of a couple of different things.

Okay, the first one and the last one are pretty straightforward. No smiths are allowed to raise their hands. Principium, what does principium mean? Anybody have any guesses? Principle. Principle is probably the best way to understand this word.

It's where we get the word principle. It means first. All right, this is essentially the same word used of Jesus in Colossians 1 when he's described as what? The firstborn of all creation. I mean, Jesus was made incarnate.

He was begotten of the Father. He was born through Mary. Was he born first? No, Mary was born before Jesus was, obviously. So it doesn't mean first born, right? Jesus is also called the firstborn of the dead.

Well, that just is confusing. It means initial, leader. It's used of people. Here's a quote from Aristotle, that smart guy. What is common to all first principles is that they are the primary source from which anything is or becomes known.

The primary source, the one in charge. You are a principal engineer. You are the de facto leader. Principium, cognoscente, cognoscente. Interesting fact, the word cognos, not a Latin word. Also, IBM has completely co-opted it because of IBM Cognos, and it is impossible to find anything on the internet about Cognos in a Latin context because of IBM.

There's a free fact for you, trust me, I spent some time. Cognoscente, now some of these words should sound a little familiar, right? Any ideas, any thoughts? I don't wanna just give it to you. Cognitive, good, good.

Ascending, not so much, not so much. But thinking, that kind of cognitive idea, good, anything else? Knowledge, knowledge is excellent. And now we've got all the weird kind of conjugation-y kind of bits to this thing where it's like, oh well, it's an E instead of an I, which means it's they and not formal they, it's whatever, I don't know.

I'm using Duolingo for a language, can you tell? Anyway, cognoscente comes from cognosco, which means to learn. So this word is related to learning, knowledge. It basically means the way or the means by which we come to know something.

The way or the means by which we come to know something. So we're working our way through this definition, principium cognoscente, okay? Here's my example, this might be a bad example, but I'm gonna do the best I can.

Romans 10, 17, does anybody know it by heart? This is a good Iwana verse. So, I can tell you had kids in Iwana. So faith comes by hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. It could be said in this passage that the word of Christ, that preaching, is the cognoscente of faith, is the way by which, does that make sense?

Okay, but it's not the end of our definition here. We have this last part, externum. That's actually a pretty easy one. External, all right, outward. We were talking about homeschooling this morning too.

All right, so remember our context, we're talking about systematic theology, and today we're not even really getting into systematic theology, we're getting into this foundational definition, almost rubric-like kind of thing.

This is an exploration of knowledge and understanding. And what Burkhoff does here, and I think this is really interesting, it's very helpful for us to paint the picture of what these terms actually mean, is he breaks this in half, and he talks about the non-theological sciences, and he talks about theology.

And he talks about these terms, this principium cognoscente externum, in both contexts. And you can kind of tell, because it's at the bottom of your sheet. So, we have the principium ascendi, ascendi, essential, essence, being.

Quiddity would be another word that is used for this, the principal being. In the non-theological sciences, oh, I bet we're gonna get some wrong answers on this. In the non-theological sciences, again, this is from a Christian worldview, the principium ascendi is what?

Man, the principal being, Jesus, technically you're God. God is the principium ascendi, right? Again, Christian worldview, non-theological sciences. It is okay for Christians to study non-theological science.

It's okay. God is the, from a Christian worldview, God is the principal being over all things, non-theological and theological. Well, you're getting ahead of me, but yes. The principium ascendi of both theological and non-theological sciences is God.

We'll get there. Oh, Lisa's so smart. Quote, God is the source and fountain of all our knowledge. He possesses an archetypal knowledge of all created things, embracing all the ideas that are expressed in the works of his creation.

The fullness of the divine knowledge is the inexhaustible source of all our knowledge, and therefore God is the principium ascendi of all scientific knowledge, theological or non-theological. All things flow from him.

Okay. So now, again, Christian worldview. In the non-theological sciences, what would be the principium cognoscendi externum? Not the principium ascendi, the cognoscendi externum. Scripture is, in the theological context, getting ahead of me again, again, this is just to help us frame the way that we think about these things.

The world, the observable world. Think about Romans 1, right? God's revelation in nature. Burkhoff notes that instead of the world as God's creation, we might also say God's revelation in nature. Principium cognoscendi externum, the world.