I need to point out an outstanding post by David Wayne regarding the intersection between systematic and Biblical theology, and the relationship of those ways of doing theology to other ways of reading the text. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such a wonderfully concise yet comprehensive summary of the landscape.
I don’t have time to dig too far into it now, but there’s an interesting point of contact here with some “emerging” ways of reading the text. In Beyond Foundationalism, for example, Grenz and Franke note that the emphasis on systematic theology had a paradoxical result:
In effect, the scholastic theological agenda meant that the ongoing task of readining the Bible as text was superceded by the publication of the skilled theologian’s magnum opus. If the goal of theological inquiry was to extrapolate the sytem of propositions the divine Communicator had inscripturated in the pages of the text, it would seem that systematic theology could — and eventually would — make the Bible superflous.
One of Grenz and Franke’s concerns in developing a post-foundationalist theology is to recognize the “second order” nature of systematic theology and even, I think, of Biblical theology. In other words, theological propositions that we derive from the text are not precisely the same thing as the Spirit speaking to the Church through the text, which is the first order of communication.
On the other hand, it seems to me that many “emergent” folks go beyond this recognition of the proper role of systematics in seeking to dismiss propositional statements altogether. The fact that systematic propositional statements are “second order” doesn’t mean they’re untrue or lacking in value. It simply means they’re subject to reevaluation as human statements about the divine first order Truth.