Volume 11, No. 8 (August 2016)
The Bible is a collection of writings by authors inspired by God over the course of many centuries. These writings are of different genres: historical books, books of poetry and prophecy, letters, etc. And the Bible is not arranged thematically like a textbook would be.
The work of a theologian is to draw, from the different parts of the Bible, its teachings on a particular theme, and then to organize and summarize them. A “theology” is a summary of the Bible’s teaching about a particular subject. And so we have:
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a theology of scripture itself (also called bibliology)
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a theology of the Holy Spirit (or pneumatology)
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a theology of the person work of Christ (or Christology)
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a theology of salvation (or soteriology)