If Your Biblical Theology Contradicts Dogmatic Theology, It’s Bad Biblical Theology

One frustrating aspect of theological discussion is the opposition that we too often find between dogmatic theology and biblical theology. In some quarters, the legitimacy of dogmatic theology is often questioned, with some equating dogmatic theology with philosophical theology, or even philosophy period, and wanting to “subsume” it to biblical theology. I was reminded of it by Wesley Hill’s defense of the venerable doctrine of impassibility.

But here’s the thing: dogmatic theology is not a thing disconnected from the Bible. Dogmatic theology, like biblical theology, arises from the mind of the Church, by the Spirit, in a symphonic interplay. Dogmatic theology is drawn from Scripture by the mind of the Church. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is not a piece of metaphysical speculation, rather it is the product of the Church’s Spirit-filled meditation on the deposit of faith, at the center of which Scripture is. If your “Biblical theology” leads you to question the doctrine of the Trinity, the problem is not, or not fundamentally, that you’re “contradicting dogma”, the problem is that you’re doing bad Biblical theology. Truth cannot contradict truth, as Aquinas said.

Dogmatic theology is a guide for biblical theology, not because dogma is “above” the Bible, but because the Bible testifies to dogma, and so if you read the Bible in a way that contradicts dogma, you’re not understanding the Biblical testimony. This was hovering in the background of my polemic against the theory of penal substitutionary atonement (which I’ll return to in a followup post), a polemic done in the name of the Patristic and Medieval doctrine of sin as a privatio boni.