Contents

1. THE PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS OF THEOLOGY -- pg. 1

1.1 Some pro’s and con’s of philosophical foundations -- pg. 1

1.1.1 Liberal and conservative theology -- pg. 1

1.1.2 Suggestions for a sound meta-theology -- pg. 3

1.1.3 Some counter-arguments -- pg. 5

1.2 The dangers of scholasticism, biblicism, and humanism -- pg. 7

1.2 The dangers of scholasticism, biblicism, and humanism -- pg. 7

1.2.2 Biblicism, and irrationalism more generally -- pg. 11

1.2.3 Humanism -- pg. 18

1.3 A Christian-philosophical paradigm -- pg. 23

1.3.1 Where do we find one? -- pg. 23

1.3.2 Is a Christian theology at all possible or necessary? -- pg. 27

2. THE STUDY ‘OBJECT ’ OF THEOLOGY -- pg. 36

2.1 The fear of prolegomena -- pg. 36

2.1.1 The ‘threat’ of philosophy -- pg. 36

2.1.2 The prolegomena in recent dogmatic works -- pg. 38

2.2 What is theology? -- pg. 42

2.2.1 A theological or a philosophical question? -- pg. 42

2.2.2 Several definitions of theology -- pg. 45

2.3 Practical faith vs. theoretical theology -- pg. 54

2.3.1 A‘continuum’? -- pg. 54

2.3.2 Differences and correspondences -- pg. 60

2.4 The modal aspect of faith -- pg. 67

2.4.1 The Gegenstand relationship -- pg. 67

2.4.2 Why ‘the Bible’ is not theology’s field of research -- pg. 71

2.4.3 The current ‘theoreticalization’ of practical faith-knowledge -- pg. 75

3 THEOLOGY AND ITS RELATIONSHIPS -- pg. 86

3.1 The relationship between theology and philosophy -- pg. 86

3.1.1 Historical backgrounds -- pg. 86

3.1.2 The necessity of Christian-philosophical foundations -- pg. 93

3.1.3 The views of Brunner and Barth -- pg. 95

3.2 The relationship between theology and the other sciences -- pg. 99

3.2.1 Natural and supranatural theology -- pg. 99

3.2.2 Theology as one of the ‘special sciences’ -- pg. 103

3.3 The relationship between theology and confession -- pg. 105

3.3.1 Dogmatics and the church -- pg. 105

3.3.2 The meaning of dogma -- pg. 108

3.3.3 Reformational and Evangelical considerations -- pg. 110

3.3.4 Is dogmatics bound to creeds? -- pg. 114

3.3.5 Again: practical faith vs. theoretical theology -- pg. 118

4. THEOLOGICAL METHODOLOGY -- pg. 128

4.1 Analysis -- pg. 128

4.1.1 Abstraction: its general nature -- pg. 128

4.1.2 Substantialism -- pg. 131

4.1.3 Practical faith and theological analysis -- pg. 134

4.1.4 Systematic-theological abstraction -- pg. 137

4.2 Concepts, ideas, metaphors -- pg. 140

4.2.1 Theological concepts -- pg. 140

4.2.2 Theological ideas -- pg. 145

4.2.3 Theological metaphors -- pg. 150

4.2.4 Root-metaphors -- pg. 154

4.3 Theological criteria -- pg. 157

4.3.1 The ‘two worlds’ of the systematic theologian -- pg. 157

4.3.2 Modal criteria for theology -- pg. 160

4.3.3 Systematization -- pg. 167

4.4 Faith and reason -- pg. 171

4.4.1 Analogies in the pistical modality -- pg. 171

4.4.2 The logical in the pistical -- pg. 175

5. THEOLOGICAL PARADIGMS -- pg. 184

5.1 The concept of paradigm -- pg. 184

5.1.1 Kuhn on paradigms -- pg. 184

5.1.2 A Christian-philosophical paradigm -- pg. 187

5.1.3 Ground-motive and dogmatism -- pg. 191

5.2 Systematic-theological paradigms -- pg. 194

5.2.1 The doctrine of the religious ground-motives -- pg. 194

5.2.2 Three general paradigms -- pg. 197

5.2.3 Scientistic (sub)paradigms -- pg. 200

5.3 Bibliotropic (sub)paradigms -- pg. 209

5.3.1 The classical-Reformational and the Evangelical paradigm -- pg. 209

5.3.2 A closer comparison -- pg. 213

5.3.3 A confrontation of paradigms -- pg. 216

5.3.4 An example: Jonker on the covenant -- pg. 219

6. THEOLOGICAL THEORY FORMATION AND TRUTH -- pg. 228

6.1 The concept of truth -- pg. 228

6.1.1 The ‘relational’ concept of truth -- pg. 228

6.1.2 The Biblical notion of truth -- pg. 233

6.1.3 The theoretical concept of truth -- pg. 237

6.2 Scientific truth -- pg. 243

6.2.1 Realism and instrumentalism -- pg. 243

6.2.2 The conflict in recent times -- pg. 245

6.2.3 Present-day realism -- pg. 248

6.3 Theological truth -- pg. 252

6.3.1 Again: practical and theoretical thought -- pg. 252

6.3.2 The subject-object relationship -- pg. 256

6.4 Supra-theological truth -- pg. 261

6.4.1 Rational and supra-rational truth -- pg. 261

6.4.2 The fulness of Truth -- pg. 264

6.4.3 The apriori’s of Truth -- pg. 266

7. SUMMARY -- pg. 272

8. BIBLIOGRAPHY -- pg. 276

This second edition of "Christian Doctrine: The External Prolegomena" is published as a Syllabus for the students of the European School of Evangelical Theology, Heverlee (Belgium), with kind permission of the first editions publisher: Buijten and Schipperheijn, Amsterdam (Netherlands).