At the two seminaries I attended as an undergraduate, the phrase “the Bible teaches” did a great deal of work. But what does it mean to say that the Bible teaches something?
As a philosophy major with severe ADHD, I found systematic theology eternally frustrating. I initially saw it as an effort to sort beliefs into discrete categories and keep them there. That was a juvenile caricature: serious systematic theology asks how doctrines relate to one another. Still, the impulse to systematize is easy to understand. A Christian begins with claims—Jesus died, he rose from the grave, I believe this—and then asks, “So what now?”
At the time, as a Southern Baptist, I was taught that systematic theology was “biblically based.” The implication, at least as I heard it, was that Scripture supplied the theology and the theologian simply organized what was already there.
That picture depends on what is often called biblical univocality: the assumption that the Bible, despite being composed over centuries by many authors, ultimately speaks with one coherent voice.
In fact, the moment you say, “This passage means something for us,” you are moving from interpretation into theology. Christians—and, really, any readers of the Bible—can read its books together as Scripture and draw theology from them.
Likewise, it’s not wrong to seek coherence. The moment you ask how one belief relates to another, some degree of systematization becomes unavoidable. A system may be valuable, but you can’t describe it as merely extracted from the Bible without acknowledging the interpretive framework that produced it.
I contend that the Bible does not contain a systematic theology. Rather, systematic theology is something some Christians do to contain the Bible.
How Christianity Became Systematic
The attempt to develop a systematic theology is nothing new. One of the earliest examples is Origen’s On First Principles, written in the third century. Origen drew on Scripture and a received rule of faith, a summary of teachings the church regarded as apostolic, and sought to construct a coherent body of doctrine from those principles.
The impulse did not end with the early church. In the Latin West, medieval universities intensified and institutionalized it. Scholastic theologians inherited Scripture, the Church Fathers, classical philosophy, earlier theological disputes, and ecclesial tradition, and sought to reconcile them into a coherent intellectual system. The Scholastic method relied on argument, codification, and synthesis.
Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae is a prime example. Scripture remained authoritative, but Aquinas also drew extensively on philosophical reasoning and on inherited theological authorities.
The Reformation did not end this process. Protestant scholasticism flourished, and the terms “systematic theology” and “dogmatics” emerged in the seventeenth century, especially in German-speaking contexts.
The practice, then, predates the label. Christianity did not begin with a systematic theology waiting in the Bible to be discovered. Systems arose historically as Christians sought to organize, reconcile, and explain the materials they had inherited.
A Tale of Two Systems
When discussing “systematic theology,” it helps to distinguish between two broad ways theologians describe their work. These are not airtight camps. Constructive theologians may regard Scripture as their highest authority, while “biblically based” systematists inevitably draw on reason, tradition, and inherited doctrine. The difference is not whether interpretation occurs. The difference is whether the resulting system is presented as a construction from acknowledged sources and commitments or simply as “what the Bible teaches.”
The Constructive Approach
Some theologians are candid that their theology draws on multiple sources and norms: revelation, Scripture, tradition, worship, reason, experience, philosophy, history, and sometimes science. This does not mean they treat all these sources as equally authoritative, much less that they deny revelation. It means they identify the materials they use and take responsibility for the judgments required to relate them.
The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology offers a useful example. Its section on theological sources includes revelation, Scripture, tradition, worship, reason, and experience. It then situates systematic theology in conversation with biblical studies, history, hermeneutics, philosophy, cultural theory, the natural sciences, and the arts.
A. N. Williams makes the relationship among these sources even clearer. Scripture remains theology’s primary warrant, but it never operates independently of tradition and reason: the church receives the canon through tradition, and every act of interpretation employs reason.
This approach is not my primary focus. The theologian is essentially saying:
“Here are the sources, authorities, and commitments from which I am developing Christian theology.”
I may disagree with the resulting theology—as I likely will—but the method at least makes its constructive judgments visible rather than attributing every conclusion directly to the Bible.
The “Biblically Based” Approach
A prominent approach in American evangelical Protestantism—and the one in which I was trained—treats Scripture as the final norm for doctrine. To state this view fairly, its proponents do not usually deny the roles of reason, tradition, the church, teachers, or prayer. They regard these as necessary but subordinate aids, all of which remain answerable to Scripture.
Wayne Grudem offers a clear formulation: systematic theology asks, “What does the whole Bible say to us today about any given topic?” In simplified form, the method is:
1. Identify the biblical texts relevant to a subject
2. Interpret them in context and in relation to the rest of the canon
3. Compare and synthesize their teaching
4. State the resulting doctrine as what Scripture teaches Christians today
This is often shortened to “the Bible says” or “the Bible teaches.” But the method rests on a further theological claim. It does not require every biblical author to use the same vocabulary, emphasize the same doctrines, or address the same circumstances. It does require the Bible’s diverse voices to ultimately form a single coherent divine revelation and not contradict one another. Difficulties may therefore be explained as differences of perspective, stages of progressive revelation, mysteries, or apparent contradictions—but not as genuine theological disagreements.
Historical criticism, by itself, does not disprove that theological claim. It does, however, give us good reason not to treat the claim as a conclusion simply extracted from the texts. That is where my critique begins.
Problem One: There Is No “The Bible”
The first problem with asking what “the whole Bible” teaches is that the phrase already assumes an answer to another question: Which Bible?
The Bible is not a single work written or compiled by its human authors. It is an anthology whose contents and boundaries took shape over long periods. The Hebrew Bible developed gradually through composition, transmission, editing, and collection. Even today, Jewish and Christian traditions do not organize the same writings identically, and Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox Christians do not share the same Old Testament canon.
This does not mean that no community possesses a recognized canon. It means that “the Bible” is not tradition-neutral. Before a systematic theologian can gather all the biblical texts relevant to a doctrine, a religious community has already made a historical, ecclesial, and theological judgment about which texts count as biblical. The individual books themselves do not supply the canon.
The New Testament canon likewise developed over several centuries. This does not mean Christians lacked authoritative writings until the fourth century. Paul’s letters were collected early, and by the late second century influential Christian leaders were defending the authority of the four Gospels. Nevertheless, the earliest surviving list that precisely includes the twenty-seven books of the present New Testament appears in Athanasius’s Easter letter of 367 CE.
Paul, then, was writing letters to churches, not chapters in a future New Testament. Mark was not knowingly contributing a volume to a four-Gospel collection. No individual human author could have intended the final canon, which included writings that did not yet exist. Later Christians collected these texts, placed them side by side, and received them as Scripture.
This is where historical criticism becomes essential. By historical criticism, I mean the family of methods that investigates how a text arose, developed, and functioned within its historical setting. Its first question is not how a passage can be reconciled with every other passage, but rather: “What is this particular text doing in this particular historical situation?”
The question brings the Bible’s diversity into focus. Stephen B. Chapman—himself sympathetic to canonical interpretation—calls historical criticism’s identification of diverse biblical traditions and their distinctive profiles one of its greatest contributions. He also warns that historical criticism’s drive toward differentiation can render questions of biblical unity illegitimate from the outset. The warning should be taken seriously. Historical criticism is not the only way to read Scripture, and identifying diversity does not, by itself, disprove canonical unity.
But canonical unity and historical authorial unity are not the same. A Christian may believe that God providentially brought these books together and speaks coherently through them. That is a coherent theological claim, and historical criticism cannot disprove it. Historical criticism cannot establish it either.
Once the unity of the Bible is grounded in a doctrine of providence, inspiration, or canon, the systematic theologian is no longer simply extracting a system from the biblical texts. The texts are read through a prior theological commitment. That is precisely my point.
Problem Two: The System Supplies What the Bible Does Not
The second problem is not that systematic categories are illegitimate. If Christians want to ask how their beliefs relate to one another, some form of organization is unavoidable. The problem arises when that organization is presented as though it were transparently supplied by Scripture rather than chosen by the theologian.
D. A. Carson—hardly an enemy of evangelical systematic theology—acknowledges that systematic theology must select topics, arrange them, and determine their relative importance. The traditional division of theology into separate subjects is not the only possible arrangement, and its structure is not transparently given by Scripture. Carson does not consider this a reason to abandon systematic theology. He considers it a reason for the discipline to recognize its limitations and remain self-correcting.
Common systems organize biblical material under headings such as bibliology (the doctrine of Scripture), theology proper, Christology, pneumatology, anthropology, hamartiology, soteriology, ecclesiology, and eschatology. The Bible clearly addresses Scripture, God, Christ, the Spirit, humanity, sin, salvation, the church, and the future. The question is not whether those subjects are biblical. The question is where the Bible provides this particular list, this order, or the boundaries that separate one topic from another.
It does not. That theological map has been shaped by centuries of church controversies, inherited doctrines, philosophical questions, and contemporary concerns. A system therefore does more than collect biblical statements. It determines which questions to ask, which texts belong together, and which concepts should govern their interpretation.
Those decisions become especially important when the passages seem to pull in different directions. The interpreter must decide which texts are clearer, which are metaphorical, which describe a particular situation, which prescribe more generally, and whether a later text develops, qualifies, or redirects an earlier one.
A responsible biblical systematizer does not pretend that such rules are unnecessary. The classic Protestant principle that “Scripture interprets Scripture,” articulated in both the Westminster Confession and the Second London Baptist Confession, holds that less-clear passages should be interpreted by clearer ones. That is a serious effort to keep the interpretive framework answerable to Scripture.
But that rule does not apply automatically. Someone must still decide which passage is clearer, how the passages relate, and whether their differences stem from genre, historical setting, progressive revelation, complementary perspectives, or genuine disagreement. These judgments may be careful and well supported, but they are still judgments.
In seminary, I was taught to avoid eisegesis—reading my own ideas into a text—and to practice exegesis—drawing the text’s meaning out. That distinction remains important because texts place real limits on responsible interpretation. But it becomes misleading when exegesis is imagined as interpretation without presuppositions.
As philosophical hermeneutics emphasizes, readers always approach texts from within a historically shaped horizon. Prior assumptions make understanding possible, but they can also be exposed, challenged, and revised through reading. We neither extract meaning without contributing to the process nor possess unlimited freedom to make a text mean whatever we want.
For that reason, saying “the Bible teaches this” is not necessarily false. It is incomplete. The fuller claim is: “The Bible, read within this canon and through these interpretive commitments, teaches this.”
Some circularity in that process is unavoidable. We understand individual passages in light of the whole, and we revise our understanding of the whole in light of those passages. Carson describes this as entering a hermeneutical circle that need not be vicious.
The circle becomes vicious when it closes:
1. Begin with the conviction that Scripture must teach a coherent doctrine.
2. Construct that doctrine by synthesizing selected texts.
3. Encounter a text that appears to conflict with the doctrine.
4. Interpret that text in whatever way keeps it consistent with the doctrine.
5. Cite the harmonized text as additional evidence that Scripture teaches the doctrine.
If no passage can ever count against the system because every apparent counterexample must be reinterpreted until it agrees, the system has become self-confirming. It may still be a defensible Christian theology, but it can no longer be described as merely extracted from the Bible.
At that point, the system is no longer simply contained within the Bible. The system has begun to contain the Bible.
A Case Study: Let James Disagree
By “let James disagree,” I do not mean that we should assume he does. I mean that genuine disagreement must remain a possible historical conclusion rather than being ruled out before we read the texts.
In Romans 3:28 and Galatians 2:16, Paul argues that a person is justified by faith apart from “works of the law.” James, however, writes:
“You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone” (James 2:24).
The verbal tension is difficult to miss. Both writers appeal to Abraham and Genesis 15:6, but they use Abraham differently. Paul emphasizes that Abraham was counted righteous through faith before circumcision and the Mosaic law. James connects that faith to Abraham’s later willingness to offer Isaac, arguing that his faith was “completed by his works” (James 2:22).
There is a serious exegetical case for reconciling them. Paul opposes reliance on works of the Mosaic law—especially circumcision—as the basis for justification and Gentile inclusion. James confronts someone who claims to have faith while refusing to act with mercy toward others. The “faith” James rejects is mere intellectual assent: even demons possess it. Paul, meanwhile, can speak positively of “faith working through love” (Galatians 5:6).
On this reading, Paul rejects works as the basis of justification, while James insists that genuine faith produces works. They use some of the same words while addressing different errors. Thomas Schreiner offers a strong evangelical defense of this interpretation, and the attempt to reconcile James with justification by faith predates the Reformation by centuries. Harmonization is not necessarily evasive or intellectually dishonest.
Historical-critical scholarship nevertheless permits other possibilities. Many scholars understand James as responding to Paul or to Pauline language, although that does not establish that James knew Paul personally or was attacking Paul’s actual teachings. James may instead be correcting a simplified Pauline slogan or responding to communities that had turned “faith apart from works” into an excuse for ethical indifference. Other scholars argue that James’s language may arise independently from Jewish traditions about faith, works, and righteousness.
The historical evidence leaves several possibilities open: James and Paul may be offering compatible answers to different questions; James may be correcting a distortion of Paul; or James may genuinely disagree with some form of Pauline teaching.
The point is not that historical criticism requires a third conclusion. It does not. The point is that historical criticism can consider it. A theological system committed in advance to biblical univocality cannot.
That does not mean the systematizer ignores all the evidence. The contextual distinctions between Paul and James are substantial and may ultimately be persuasive. But two different claims must be kept separate:
1. Paul and James can be reconciled because the historical and literary evidence supports that reading.
2. Paul and James must be reconciled because inspired Scripture cannot contain genuine theological disagreement.
The first is an exegetical conclusion. The second is a doctrine of Scripture that limits which exegetical conclusions are permitted.
An interpreter may reasonably conclude that James and Paul agree. But that conclusion should emerge from examining their language, arguments, audiences, and historical situations—not from deciding beforehand that disagreement is impossible.
Once “they cannot disagree” governs what either author is allowed to mean, the resulting harmony is no longer merely extracted from the Bible. The system has helped produce it.
Why an Agnostic Cares
This Was Twenty-Five Years of My Life
Some readers may reasonably wonder why an agnostic who left Christianity cares enough to argue about systematic theology. The shortest answer is that I spent roughly twenty-five years studying Christianity. I began reading Josh McDowell and other apologetic and theological works when I was twelve. Later, I studied the Bible and theology at the undergraduate level at two seminaries. Leaving the faith did not erase that history or make the Bible unimportant to me.
I still regard the Bible as one of the most historically consequential collections of writings ever assembled. People continue to derive theology, moral convictions, and meaning from it. I have spent too much of my life studying these texts to stop thinking about them simply because my conclusions changed.
My agnosticism does not make me presupposition-free, either. I bring my own experiences and humanist ethical commitments to the discussion. The point of this essay is not that I have escaped interpretation. It is that none of us has.
I am therefore not offering a neutral reading from outside Christianity. I am offering an argument shaped by years inside it, along with the historical-critical methods I learned after leaving the seminaries. Readers may reject my conclusions, but I have something to contribute to the conversation.
The Public Consequences of Interpretation
My second reason is less autobiographical. Christian interpretation in the United States extends beyond churches. Pew Research Center’s 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study found that 62% of American adults identify as Christian and 23% as evangelical Protestants. When the 119th Congress convened, 87% of its voting members identified as Christian. White evangelical Protestants also remain a cohesive political constituency: Pew’s analysis of validated voters found that 81% supported Donald Trump in 2024.
Those numbers do not mean that Christians or evangelicals are politically monolithic, and theology alone cannot explain how anyone votes. They do show that Christian communities possess substantial political power. Their interpretations of Scripture can influence elections and public policy on education, health care, sexuality, and civil rights. When theological claims enter public policy, non-Christians are not intruding by examining them. We live with their consequences, too.
Debates about LGBTQ people offer one example. I am a straight, cisgender man. This does not give me authority to speak for LGBTQ people, but neither does it absolve me of responsibility to care about what happens to them.
Historical criticism does not require a Christian to adopt an affirming sexual ethic. Kenneth A. Locke’s historical and literary analysis concludes that the Bible’s authors are silent on sexual orientation while expressing a negative view of at least some male same-sex encounters. A Christian might accept that distinction and still defend a traditional position.
The distinction nevertheless matters. Biblical authors knew about same-sex acts and desires but did not use the modern category of a homosexual person defined by an enduring sexual orientation. They addressed acts within the ancient assumptions about sex, gender, status, marriage, and reproduction. Historical context does not settle the contemporary ethical question. It does prevent us from claiming that the authors directly addressed every modern identity, relationship, or social arrangement now encompassed by the term homosexuality. At a minimum, that should produce greater interpretive humility. I would hope it would also produce less sweeping condemnation of the people involved.
The consequences are measurable. In PRRI’s 2023 survey, 47% of religiously unaffiliated Americans who had left a childhood religion said that negative teachings about or treatment of gay and lesbian people were an important reason for leaving. That figure has risen from 29% in 2016.
A Trevor Project analysis of responses from 25,896 LGBTQ young people found that those who had not heard their parents use religion to say negative things about being LGBTQ had about half the adjusted odds of attempting suicide in the previous year compared with those who had. A separate 2024 Trevor Project survey of 18,663 LGBTQ young people found that 39% had seriously considered suicide in the previous year and 12% had attempted it.
These surveys do not prove that a particular doctrine causes suicide. The studies are cross-sectional, and the 2024 survey used a nonprobability sample. The evidence supports a narrower but still serious conclusion: religiously framed rejection is associated with greater psychological risk for LGBTQ young people, and religious teachings are part of the environment in which they must live. Precision about causation should prevent exaggeration. It should not excuse indifference.
This is why the argument matters to me as more than an intellectual exercise. I am not asking evangelical Christians to become agnostic or to accept my ethical conclusions without argument. I am asking them to recognize that what is presented as the Bible’s uncomplicated judgment is already a theological interpretation, shaped by decisions about language, historical context, canon, and how different texts should be related.
Once those interpretations affect the lives and rights of people outside the church, those people have standing to challenge them. A theological tradition may still be defended as true. It should not be insulated from scrutiny by being labeled “what the Bible says.”
The Bible Does Not Systematize Itself
Historical criticism does not disprove Christianity, inspiration, or theology. It does something more limited and, for this argument, more disruptive: it returns biblical writings to their historical settings and allows their authors to speak before requiring them to agree.
Christians may still receive these writings as a canon, read them together as Scripture, and ask how their claims relate. They may formulate doctrines whose developed forms appear in no single biblical text. None of that is illegitimate. It is theology.
It is not, however, extraction. Before a system can announce what “the Bible teaches,” someone must decide which books constitute the Bible, which questions to ask, which passages belong together, which texts are clearest, and whether tensions reflect development, complementary perspectives, or genuine disagreement. The Bible does not provide those decisions as a completed system. Tradition, reason, historical judgment, and prior doctrine necessarily participate.
The James example makes the distinction concrete. Paul and James may be reconciled because careful attention to their arguments and circumstances can support that reading. But if they must agree because inspired Scripture cannot contain disagreement, univocality governs the interpretation. It is a theological premise, not a result extracted from the texts.
This is why the stronger form of “biblically based” systematic theology is logically impossible. If the phrase means a theology deeply informed by or answerable to Scripture, such systems plainly exist. If it means a coherent system derived from the Bible alone, without any substantive contribution from an interpretive tradition, it cannot exist. A system requires precisely the judgments the claim denies.
That does not make all traditions equal. A theology may be more coherent, better supported, more historically responsible, or more humane than its rivals. But it must defend those judgments as its own—especially when those judgments shape the lives of people inside and outside the church.
Theology can survive historical criticism. What cannot survive is the claim that theology is not theology.
The Bible does not contain a systematic theology. Christians construct systematic theology from the Bible. When that construction is concealed, the system begins to contain the Bible.