Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 25:2 (May 1963)
Article: Systematic Theology—I
Author: John J. Murray

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Systematic Theology—I

John Murray

The task of systematic theology is to set forth in orderly and coherent manner the truth respecting God and his relations to men and the world. This truth is derived from the data of revelation, and revelation comprises all those media by which God makes himself and his will known to us men. God reveals himself in all the works of his hand with which we men have any encounter. It could not be otherwise. It was of his sovereign will that God created the universe and made us men in his image. But since creation is the product of his will and power the imprint of his glory is necessarily impressed upon his handiwork and since we are created in his image we cannot but be confronted with the display of that glory. Therefore what is called natural or general revelation comes within the scope of the data of revelation with which systematic theology deals. “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1). “The heavens declare his righteousness, and all the peoples have seen his glory” (Psalm 97:6). God himself is invisible, but phenomenal reality discloses what is invisible, and so “the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things which are made, even his eternal power and divinity” (Rom 1:20). It is counter to the import of such passages to suppose that what the work of creation reveals is a God merely commensurate with what is finite. It is “eternal power and divinity” that are clearly seen and it is for this reason that all men are unexcusable when they fail to worship God as God in the infinite and eternal majesty made known in the things that are seen.1 There is not only the creation externally visible; there is also the nature with which we are endowed and the work of the law written on our

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hearts (cf. Rom 2:15). It would be a mistake, therefore, to think that these aspects of revelation are the domain of philosophy and the sciences but not of theology. As will be noted presently, the chief source of revelation for theology is the special revelation incorporated in Holy Scripture. But the latter comes to us in the life which we live in this world and therefore in a context which is filled with the manifestation of the glory of the same God who specially reveals himself to us in his Word. It would be an abstraction to suppose that we could deal with special revelation and ignore the revelatory data with which the context of our life is replete.