Together 4 the Gospel: Systematic Theology by Ligon Duncan

I have just returned from attending the second T4G conference and want to try to share a few quotes and thoughts from the conference. First, some may be interested to know that the sermons are available for free download. All were good but I would highly recommend Ligon Duncan’s, R.C. Sproul’s, and John MacArthur’s.

Ligon Duncan’s is a helpful examination of the need for a systematic theology. Not simply doctrine, but a systematic way of understanding that doctrine. For any struggling with the emergent movement I believe he rightfully points out some of the liberal backbone of that movement. One quote came from J Gresham Machen’s book “Christianity and Liberalsim”: “Christianity is a life not a doctrine.” Surprising to some maybe many evangelicals is that this quote is the wording from the 19th century liberals! Here is a fuller quote and response by Machen in his writing:

Christianity, according to that fashionable modern answer, is a life and not a doctrine, it is a life or an experience that has doctrine merely as its symbolic intellectual expression, so that while the life abides the doctrine must necessarily change from age to age.

That answer, of course, involves the most bottomless skepticism that could possibly be conceived; for if everything that we say about God or about Christ or about the future life has value merely for this generation, and if something contradictory to It may have equal value in some future generation, then the thing that we are saying is not true even here and now. A thing that is useful now may cease to be useful in some future generation, but a thing that is true now remains true beyond the end of time. To say, therefore, that doctrine is the necessarily changing expression of religious experience or religious life is simply to give up the search for truth altogether.

Was Christianity at the beginning in that sense a life as distinguished from a doctrine? At this point we desire to be perfectly clear. Christianity at the beginning certainly was a life, about that there can be no manner of doubt. The first Christians led lives very different from the lives of the people about them, and everything that did not conform to that peculiarly Christian type of life was rigidly excluded from the early Church. Let us be perfectly plain about that.

But how was that Christian type of life produced? There we come to the crux of the whole question. If one thing is clear to the historian it is that that type of life was not produced merely by exhortation or merely by the magic of personal contacts; if one thing is clear to the historian it is that earliest Christian missionaries did not go around the world saying. “We have been living in contact with a wonderful person, Jesus; contact with Him has changed our lives; and we call upon you our hearers, without asking puzzling questions, without settling the meaning of His death, without asking whether He rose from the dead, simply to submit yourselves to the contagion of that wonderful personality.”

Ligon went on to give advice for those that are opposed to systematic theology:

If someone tells you they don’t believe in systematic theology, look out! They are about to slip it in under the door without you looking.

He also addressed the notion that the bible is really a story, not doctrine, and that this too is on the slippery liberal slope. I was not quick enough to write down all the quote on this but he traced how the Bible is full of narrative, prophecy, wisdom literature, hymns and songs, letters, etc. not simply a story from which we pull some meaning. He even went to show how the stories that the scriptures use and that Christ used are “not to leave wiggle room. That is not how the Bible stories work. He (Christ) uses them to drive deep in our heart propositional truths and doctrine.”

I can only share bits and pieces. The whole context will make even these quotes more clear and powerful. If you enjoyed them or even if you disagreed with them, I would encourage you to listen to the entire message.