Dr. Suess once wrote, “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn the more places you'll go.” How about relating this to church dogmatics? We could say, “The more church dogmatics you understand, the more you will know and love God. The more you know and love God, the more God will spread his glory through you.” Of course understanding church dogmatics in a way that leads you knowing and loving God is a work of God’s Spirit in us; and praise God he does this work. Also, praise God there is such a thing as church dogmatics!
Let’s begin by asking what are church dogmatics? Nope, this is not a new question. From Origen (185-254 a.d.) to today millions of paragraphs have been written to answer this question. Oh, by the way, the answers have been excellent and very helpful. Thank the Lord for the wonderful teachers he has given to the church. Of course people like Immanuel Kant, Adolph Harnack, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Rudolph Bultmann, and other German guys said we couldn’t really answer this question. Why did these people say no? Simply, because they did not believe Scripture set forth the true knowledge of God. They said Christian truth is a human invention, an act of the human will, a human experience, not truth given by God himself to reveal the truth about himself. This brings me to again, in hopefully understandable terms define what dogmatics is.
When you read a book on church dogmatics you are reading a book which has put what the Bible says about God, sin, salvation, Jesus, the Holy Spirit and other Christian topics, in an orderly way. The Bible has information about these subjects throughout its pages. Dogmatics studies the passages and puts the information together in an orderly way, and then declares… “God’s Word teaches that…”
One of the best books on church dogmatics is Herman Bavink’s, Reformed Dogmatics. A new edition of this great work was put out in 2003 by Baker Books. Bavink said, “Dogmatics is the laying out of the treasures of Sacred Scripture, a commitment to the standard of teaching [for the church, the Holy Bible], so that in it [dogmatics] we possess a form and image of the heavenly doctrine.” Herman Bavink, Reformed Dogmatics vol.1. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic), 55.
We will explore the features and task of dogmatics next time.
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