1. DOING SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY
From Grant Osborne's Hermeneutical Spiral
By Kevin G. Smith

2. The Nine Steps
1. Consciously reconstruct your preunderstanding.
2. Gather all the passages which address the topic.
3. Exegete each relevant passage in its context.
4. Collate all the passages into a biblical theology.
5. Trace the contextualisation of the topic through church
history.
6. Study competing models of the doctrine.
7. Recontextualise the traditional model for your context.
8. Revise our theological systems.
9. Work out the implications for churches and Christians.
Grant Osborne: Systematic Theology

3. 1. Preunderstanding
Consciously reconstruct our preunderstanding.
1. We must define where we and our tradition stand on the
doctrine before we begin our study. This needs to happen at
three levels: individual, church, and denomination.
2. Unless we do this consciously, our preunderstanding will
dominate and skew our conclusions, for we naturally want our
study to confirm rather than challenge our beliefs.
3. Placing our preunderstanding in front of the biblical data helps
us to use it positive (to analyse the evidence) rather than
negatively (to shape our conclusions).
Grant Osborne: Systematic Theology

4. 2. Passages
We must gather all the passages of scripture which address our
topic.
1. We should make use of a concordance approach to identify
the texts.
2. We should consult books and articles on the topic to see
which passages are discussed.
3. We should pay particular attention to passages which
seem to disagree with tradition's position.
Grant Osborne: Systematic Theology

5. 3. Exegesis
We must exegete all the relevant passages in their context.
1. This is seldom possible for practical reasons of space and
time, but it remains the only right way to formulate sound
doctrine.
2. There is a danger in placing scriptural texts side by side, since it
can distort their intended meaning, which is a variation of the
facility called “illegitimate totality transfer”.
3. We must discover what aspect of the topic a text addresses in its
context before bring it into dialogue with other texts, that
is, before we consider the larger theological truth that emerges
when we bring all the texts together.
Grant Osborne: Systematic Theology

6. 4. Biblical Theology
We must collate all the passages into a biblical theology.
1. Diachronic: We need to see to the diachronic development of
the doctrine in scripture, using the history of salvation as our
framework.
2. Synchronic: We need to understand the beliefs of Israel or the
early church with respect to the doctrine, and viewed on their
own terms.
3. We can think of this as a systematic theology of the biblical
writers’ beliefs. We must understand what they believed before
we can contextualise or reconstruct it for the contemporary
church.
Grant Osborne: Systematic Theology

7. 5. Historical Theology
We must trace the developing contextualisation of the doctrine
through church history.
1. We should study how the church has restated and applied
the doctrine to meet different situations and needs.
2. We learn from both negative restatements (heresy) and
positive restatements (creeds; confessions).
3. We should pay particular attention to the development of
our own tradition to see where it fits into the development
of doctrine.
Grant Osborne: Systematic Theology

8. 6. Doctrinal Models
We must study competing models of the doctrine.
1. Our own models of theological truth are influenced by our
tradition, community, and experience. We need to critique
them in the light of alternative models.
2. Giving serious and continuous consideration to alternative
models of constructing the doctrine will help to keep us
intellectually honest by pinpointing the weaknesses in our
model.
Grant Osborne: Systematic Theology

9. 7. Recontextualisation
We must reformulate or recontextualise the traditional model of
the doctrine for the contemporary context.
1. The biblical content of a doctrine does not change, but the
way it is stated and applied varies by generation and
culture.
2. In this sense, it is appropriate to speak of African theology.
We need to contextualise the changeless truths of God's
word for African people and contexts.
Grant Osborne: Systematic Theology

10. 8. Systemic Models
We must collate the reformulated doctrines into revised
theological systems which present the relationships between
doctrines.
1. The ultimate objective of studying doctrine goes beyond
clarifying our understanding of a single doctrine.
2. When we have recontextualised various doctrines, we
must fine tune our theological system and tradition.
Grant Osborne: Systematic Theology

11. 9. Application
We must work out the implications for the community of God
and for the daily life of the believer.
1. Theology is not for the scholar or the classroom; it is for
the church and the disciple of Jesus.
2. If a theology is not lived, then in God's economy it has not
been heard or believed (John 14:15, 21, 23; 15:10).
3. Belief is a community thing that must be worked out in
community life. It is more practical than theoretical, more
illocutionary than locutionary.
Grant Osborne: Systematic Theology