“It strikes me how rare these kinds of words, outlines, and dissective ways of thinking are in the Bible, which preocupies itself with earthy stories rather than airy abstractions, wild poetry rather than tidy systems, personal and contextual letters rather than timeless, absolute pronouncements or propositions. I have often wondered, Why doesn’t the Bible consist of an ordered schema, like the average curriculum of a semenary? Of course, I’m not against our systematic theologies. I’m begining to see them as an artifact of worship from the modern era, no less sincere or magnificant than medieval cathedrals–in fact, you could call them modern conceptual cathedrals. Rather than condemning, I am simply noticing that our systematic theologies are themselves a modern phenomenon.” (>>)