Kethuvim

For those of you that don't know what systematic theology is, let me sum it up for you: it's a system of theology.  Thank you and good night.  Just kidding.  Basically, it is a system of figuring out who God is and how he works.  Systematic theology tries to have a coherent thought of God from Genesis through Revelation of the Bible.  I'm sure that explanation clears everything up for you.  Moving on.  

I remember my systematic theology class in college.  It was at 7:30 am on Tuesdays and Thursdays (I just threw up in my mouth as I typed that) and it was taught by an incredibly wonderful, but incredibly dry 75 year old man.  He basically started the semester in Genesis talking about the nature of God and then proceeded to work his way through the Bible toward Revelation.  I always hated that class, not because of the professor, not because it was boring or early in the morning (although I loathed getting up that early for it).  I hated it because it never seemed right to me.  It never seemed right that you could make God so neat and tidy and fit him into a system.  

Systematic theology grew out of the Enlightenment, the "Age of Reason."  Everyone started seeking to make everything rational and ordered.  This age was a great one for science, but it was devastating to theology.  In science, the more order and system, the better; science is designed to work that way.  In theology, however, the more systemic and ordered it becomes, the more problems you run into.  You run into problems because you can't fit an infinite, limitless Being into a mold based on reason.  

The end result of all of this is in 1920, you get someone (after 2500 years of biblical study where no one lent this view any credence at all) saying that the earth was created in six literal days, because reason says that if the Bible says six days, then it must be six literal days. (Editorial tangent: Quick, what do humans use to measure a 24 hour day?  The sun and moon you say?  Correct.  When was the sun and moon created according to Genesis?  The fourth day you say?  How was time kept on the first three days then?  Game over.)  The end result of that is an argument with a high school student about dinosaurs where he claims that Satan planted dinosaur bones in the ground to tempt Christians away from believing the Bible (I wish I was making that up).  Do you see where a purely rational system of theology results in a completely unreasonable thought?