Westminster Seminary California clark

r. scott clark
Associate Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology

Lecture 1: Orientation

Introduction
1. Syllabus
2. Readings
3. Paper
4. Exam
Vocabulary
Methods, Sources and Dialogue Partners
1. Scripture
2. Greater Christian Tradition
3. Classical Reformed Theology
4. Ecclesiastical Confessions
5. Contemporary Theology
Objectives: The Student Shall Be Able
1. To Understand the Theory and Practice of Reformed Theological Method
2. To Articulate the Articles of
  1. Catholic Christianity
  2. Evangelical (Protestant not Revivalist) Essentials
  3. Distinctives of Reformed Theology, Piet and Practice
    1. To Discern the Relations of Each Doctrinal Locus to the Others
      1. To be Able to Relate to One to the Many of Reformed Theology
      2. To be Able to Relate the Many to the One of Reformed Theology
    2. To Recognize the Architecture of of the Reformed System Well Enough to Stimulate Exegetical, Historical and Systematic Analysis and Critique
3. To Distinguish A Christian Ontology and Epistemology from Non-Christian Alternatives
4. To Explain the Orthodox Reformed Doctrine of Scripture in Relation to Other Views
5. To Understand the Theory and Practice of Distinctively Reformed Apologetics
Topics and Questions
1. Method
  1. What is Theology? (Definitions)
    1. Biblical terminology
    2. Extra-Biblical Terminology
    3. Anti-Intellectualism
    4. Loss of Authority
      1. In the Culture
      2. In the Church
    5. Departments
      1. Exegetical
      2. Theological
      3. Historical
      4. Ecclesiastical/Practical
    6. Relations of the Departments
      1. Biblical and Systematic Theology
      2. The Necessity of Systematic/Dogmatic Theology
    7. Loci
      1. Prolegomena
      2. God
      3. Man
      4. Christ
      5. Salvation
      6. Church and Sacraments
      7. Last Things
  2. How is it Done?
  3. Do We Know God and How?
    1. General Revelation
    2. Special Revelation
2. Scripture
  1. Nature
  2. Reliability
  3. Covenant and Canon
  4. Hermeneutics
3. Apologetics
  1. Definition
  2. The Necessity of Apologetics
  3. The Biblical Apologetic
  4. History of Apologetics
  5. The Theory of Apologetics
  6. The Practice of Apologetics
Theses
1. Theology requires proper distinctions.
2. The Protestant scholastics distinguished properly between archetypal (theology as God knows it in himself) and ectypal theology (theology as God reveals it to us).
3. Archetypal theology is the understanding which the Triune God has always had of himself, and of every other fact or possibility. Therefore God has a theology apart from our experience of him or his self-revelation to us.
4. Ectypal theology is God’s accommodated self-revelation in the Word of God written. Because of the ontological distinction between the Creator and the creature God’s self-revelation in the Bible is necessarily accommodated to human finitude.
5. Failure to distinquish between archetypal and ectypal theology necessarily leads either to fundamentalism (i.e., the illegitimate claim of certainty by identifying the mind of man with God's mind) or skepticism.
6. Because it is ectypal (revealed) theology, Scripture’s anthropomorphic language about God must be understood to be analogical.
7. Scripture, because it is the product of the Holy Spirit, is the infallible, inerrant, word of God written.
8. Pilgrim Theology is the apprehension, appropriation, and application of biblical (theologia ectypa) truth.
9. Revelation is twofold: natural and Scriptural.
10. Natural revelation is true but not saving.
11. Scripture is the primary and unique source of theology.
12. Study of general revelation must inform but not control our interpretation of Scripture.
13. Theology must always account for the one and the many.
14. The Christian faith is the most rational thing to believe but Christians do not believe it primarily because it is so.
15. The Christian must not integrate faith and life as much as refuse to disintegrate what God has already united.
16. Scripture is the primary and unique authority for faith and life, i.e., sola Scriptura is still the formal principle of Protestantism.
17. Scripture is composed of two words: Law and Gospel. The Law describes God's moral demands of his creatures and the Gospel describes God's gracious provision for sinners.
18. The Law-Gospel dichotomy is absolutely necessary for a genuinely Protestant and Reformed hermeneutic.
19. Scripture interprets Scripture, the new interprets the old, and the clear interprets the unclear.
20. Modernism is a competing sub-Christian religion.
21. Progressive neo-evangelicalism is a form of "soft" modernism.
22. Literal is not a synonym for true.
23. Everything which one must believe for salvation is clearly revealed in Scripture.
24. Karl Barth was a neo-Modernist, not neo-Orthodox, theologian, i.e., he was expressing Modernity in Christian terms, not Christianity in Modern terms.
25. Inasmuch as it is a revealed religion Christianity is not susceptible of human revision or rescue.
26. Progressive neo-evangelicals do not sufficiently value the orthodox Protestant tradition.
27. There are four necessary mysteries in the Christian faith: God is one in three persons; Christ is one person with two natures; God is absolutely sovereign yet human beings are morally liable for their actions; God reveals himself as desiring what he has not decreed.
28. The N.T. hermeneutic and interpretation of the O.T. norms our hermeneutic and use of Scripture.

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Email Dr Clark: rsclark at wscal dot edu
760.480.8474
Office Hours: Wed 10:40 AM-12:40 PM

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r. scott clark Associate Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology

r. scott clark
Associate Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology