Systematic theology
Systematic theology organizes a religious tradition’s doctrines into a coherent account and examines how those teachings relate to one another.
Doctrine: A teaching or set of teachings held by a religious community. Systematic theology takes doctrines as its units and examines their meaning and relations.
Loci theologici: A method that organizes theology by topics, or loci, such as God, creation, and salvation. It provides a recognizable architecture for arranging a systematic account.
Biblical theology: The study of theological themes as they develop within biblical texts and their historical settings. It follows scripture’s historical and literary patterns rather than beginning with a full doctrinal arrangement.
Thomas Aquinas: A medieval Dominican theologian whose works integrated Christian doctrine with Aristotelian philosophy. His Summa theologiae became a landmark model of ordered doctrinal exposition.
Christian theology: The study and formulation of claims about God, Christ, salvation, and the Christian tradition. Systematic theology is a major mode of organizing Christian theological claims.
Sacred tradition: A community’s inherited religious teachings, practices, and interpretations transmitted across generations. Tradition supplies authoritative material alongside or through which doctrines are formulated.
Theological method: The procedures and standards used to formulate, interpret, and assess theological claims. It determines how sources and arguments are brought together in a system.
Historical theology: The study of how religious ideas and doctrines have changed across history. It traces doctrines through time, while systematic theology organizes their claims into a coherent account.
John Calvin: A sixteenth-century Protestant reformer and theologian, best known for Institutes of the Christian Religion. His Institutes presents a wide-ranging and influential Reformed account of Christian doctrine.
Catechism: A summary of religious teachings, often arranged as questions and answers for instruction. Catechisms translate organized doctrine into a concise form for teaching.