Ten years ago, had I been asked to write an essay on the value of systematic theology, I might have submitted a blank page.

Since then, I’ve had help from friends-and now can offer some explanation for a study of theology, not just for a future pastor or a candidate for the ministry, but for the lay person as well.

I’m coming from the perspective of an editorial writer for a daily newspaper. For several years, I’ve prayed for the ability to write on contemporary issues, applying the Scriptures and my personal commitment to Jesus Christ. Many of the answers to those prayers can be traced to my study of systematic theology.

For some time I had resisted the idea that I should study theology. God had to overcome several prejudices in my mind and heart.

I had to learn, first of all, that theology was not synonymous with the theological attacks on the Christian faith I had read in college. I remembered essays by Paul Tillich and other theologians, who seemed so unclear and confused in proclaiming anything about God or Jesus Christ. I assumed that theology belonged in the ivory tower and had little to do with the practical affairs that newspapers report and analyze-crime, politics, war and peace, famine , and fires.

I wanted to know the Bible, but I couldn’t see how theology would help me do that. Theology seemed abstract and not directly related to my pressing questions: Is God a conservative or a liberal? Which way should God’s person vote on a given bill before the legislature?

Then, reading church history began to help me gain a different perspective and removed some of those objections. Many of the people who made big differences for Christ’s kingdom, I tliscovered , were either theologians or had a good theological education. Augustine, John Calvin, Martin Luther, John Knox, John Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, Abraham Kuyper, and Charles Spurgeon all made their marks on history because they had studied theology. Certainly their achievements were never in spite of their theological education.

Gradually, I was convinced I needed to tackle systematic theology. I found special help through the lectures of R. C. Sproul of Ligonier Ministries; and through Systematic Theology by Louis Berkhof. Sproul and Berkhof provided quite a contrast. Sproul seemed able to make the dullest theological matter humorous and interesting, often with contemporary application. Berkhof could make even interesting issues a bit dry and abstract.

The Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin provided a lively approach to many of the same subjects. More briefly, James Boice’s four short volumes, Foundations of the Christian Faith, gave a good overview of theology, with very contemporary applications and comments. Boice’s emphasis on practical application is very important, and too often missing in other theological writing, with the outstanding exception of the Puritan writers. “All that is needed,” Boice suggests in The Sovereign God, the first volume in the series, “is that we take these truths down off the high shelf of theology and put them to work as we live our daily lives.”

The Puritans have given us a good emphasis on practical application in books like Body of Divinity by Thomas Watson and Mystery of Providence by John Flavel. The Atonement and Messiah the Prince, both by William Symington of Scotland, have helped me see how Christ and his redemptive work on the cross stand at the center of the Bible and any theology we seek to develop from God’s Word.

Has all this study made a difference in my understanding and my writing? Although there’s a lifetime ahead of me to keep on studying and reading, first the Bible and then these theologians who knew the Bible so well, I can find specific examples where the study I’ve done has helped.

Am I writing about crime? Augustine notes in The Confessions that sin is sometimes the only explanation for lawbreaking, despite all the modern efforts to develop a hundred other theories and never use the word sin at all. “I chose to steal not because I was compelled to by poverty or hunger, but just from a bellyful of sin and a contempt for justice,” he wrote. “I stole what I already had plenty of—and what I had was in better condition. I didn’t take any pleasure in what I stole—just enjoyed the stealing and the sinning.”

I find more generally that systematic theology touches (often indirectly) on many of the crucial issues I have to comment on. The early chapters of Berkhof’s Systematic Theology cover revelation and whether God can be known to us. I was getting bogged down and bored , wondering what in the world I was reading this for when the world is passing by, fires and murders are waiting to be written up, and labor strikes are starting and stopping.

Suddenly the significance of Berkhof’s commentary hit me. I realized he was describing one of the most crucial issues of our time. Does God reveal himself and his will clearly? Or is his revelation so hidden that we are left to guesswork, or perhaps to our own manmade laws? So many people assume the latter, in its varying forms. Perhaps most commonly in the U.S. today, people suppose that God reveals himself differently to different people. For some, he says adultery and abortion are permissible; to others, he may say no. For all such people, his revelation is subjective, changing from one person to another. We can’t really know what God is saying, at least with universal clarity. So we must be pluralistic and keep our religion private, never daring to know God’s will for anyone but ourselves. After all, the next fellow probably has gotten a different revelation from God, and it wouldn‘t be fair to impose a personal, private perspective on anyone else.

The Bible nowhere teaches this relativistic perspective, which creates a problem Boice identifies in The Sovereign God as the lack of unity of knowledge: “Much is known. In the sense of information or technical knowledge, more is known today than at any previous time in history. Yet the kind of knowledge that integrates information and therefore gives meaning· to life is strangely absent.”

There is an alternative to this sea of relativism. It is the classical Christian position that God and Jesus Christ have offered a clear revelation of their purposes and plans in the Scriptures. This position requires a thorough search of those Scriptures—and practical applications of them among Christians may still differ. But it would be arrogant to avoid systematic theology in such a study of Scripture.

Can you imagine a study of 20th century evangelism without familiarity with the work of Billy Graham? Or would you write a history of the United States without some study of the Founding Fathers and the Constitution and Declaration of Independence? But it is just as shortsighted to bypass the works of Augustine, Calvin, Luther, and other classic theologians while attempting to apply Romans 12:1–2 to contemporary issues. A study of systematic theology can help develop an eternal perspective in a fast-moving society looking for short-term results.

The author is on editorial writer for the ‘Indianapolis News.’ He worships in the Reformed Presbyterian Church (RPNA) at Indianapolis. Reprinted from the Jan. 14, 1987, Presbyterian Journal with which we hove a reciprocal arrangement.