Theological Method: How Should We Do Theology?

Theological method, sometimes called theological prolegomenon, is a formal account of how to do theology that pays attention to the objectives, categories of evidence, subdisciplines, and techniques of theology.

While this definition may sound dry, its importance becomes clear when we recognize that theological method develops tools to support evangelizing, teaching, exploring new questions, and resolving disputes. Without a clear method, theology can collapse into arbitrary assertions or illogical claims.

This article will explore fundamental dimensions of theological method.

The theologian and theological method

Before we begin to do theology, we must consider who we are as theologians. John Calvin famously explains, “Our wisdom … consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.”¹ Our self-reflection considers whether we have the character necessary to do theology while considering the questions that drive us to the task.

When the Lord calls Isaiah to proclaim the will of God, Isaiah responds: “Woe is me for I am ruined because I am a man of unclean lips” (Isa 6:5). The Lord provides atonement for Isaiah, cleanses him, and sends him to fulfill his prophetic vocation. Similarly, we who would speak of the infinitely holy God should recognize our own unworthiness and rely on God’s cleansing work in our lives to enable us to speak truthfully.

Teachers are held to a higher standard (Jas 3:1), so theology does well to proceed in prayer by asking God to give virtues like wisdom to discern the truth, or temperance to restrain ourselves from speaking about what we do not understand.

Theological method is especially guided by faith, hope, and love (1 Cor 13:13). Theology proceeds from a position of faith, pursuing what Anselm of Canterbury called “faith seeking understanding,” beginning with a commitment to the Bible, the gospel, and, above all, the triune God and his work for us, seeking to understand what we already believe. Theology ought to encourage our hopeful perseverance as we await the coming of the kingdom. Love enables us to read a breadth of theology charitably; but in love for our neighbor who might be misled, to also firmly stand for truth.

Self-reflection also leads us to consider what Mary Veeneman calls the orienting question, “the questions that drive a particular thinker’s theological approach.”² Our cultural background, personal faith journeys, denominational commitments, or family of origin may drive us to make certain questions central to our theological pursuits. While God can speak through Scripture into these contexts, we can also distort our theology by centering issues important to us that may not be central to the biblical witness.

Sources in theological method

While secular societies increasingly view religion as mere opinion, it is a fundamental conviction of theologians that our claims rely on evidence which can be evaluated. Theological method requires presenting and synthesizing evidence to establish claims which lead to our understanding of God, often under the direction of an orienting question.

Sources for theology

Traditionally, Christians drew evidence from four sources of what has been called the Wesleyan Quadrilateral: Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience.

1. Scripture: Because God reveals himself through inspired Scripture, the Bible is crucial theological evidence, though we must be careful to properly interpret it.
2. Tradition: The Holy Spirit has directed the church across history (John 16:13–15), so we can expect tradition (councils, creeds, historical figures, etc.) to help guide us in the interpretation of Scripture and in the use of reason and experience.
3. Reason: Something of God is known in creation (Rom 1:19–20) through general revelation, and God is clear that the renewed mind can discern God’s will (Rom 12:2) while “hollow and deceptive philosophy” (Col 2:8) can mislead us. Therefore, theology must attend to reason as used in such disciplines as history, the social and natural sciences, and especially philosophy.
4. Experience: Experience plays an important role by connecting theology to real life. Considering the diverse experiences of others can also help us check for biases in our own thinking.

Synthesizing sources

Though theologians affirm the same categories of evidence, theological methods can be distinguished based on how they synthesize, emphasize, and prioritize these categories.

First, different emphases distinguish theological disciplines. Broadly, the discipline of theology can be divided into other subdisciplines, such as:

• Biblical theology focuses on Scripture, attending to theological themes and issues within specific texts, genres, or historical periods.
• Historical theology focuses on tradition, considering the context, meaning, and development of ideas and disputes across history.
• Philosophical theology relies especially on reason, using philosophy to understand concepts, relationships between concepts, and the truth or falsity of theological claims.
• Systematic theology proper tends to synthesize the work of these other disciplines for use in a particular context.

Second, Christians have prioritized different categories of evidence, leading to different denominational emphases. Historically, Protestants (including evangelicals) have affirmed sola scriptura. This method treats the Scriptures as the only infallible source of theology, so when another category of evidence appears to contradict the Bible, this method accepts the Bible and rejects or reinterprets other evidence. Protestant theology inescapably draws on the other categories of evidence, since all readings of the Bible are influenced by tradition and experience, making hermeneutics, a discipline shaped by reason, quite important.

Christians have understood tradition through both single-source and dual-source theories.³ Single-source theories often treat tradition as a fixed way of interpreting the Bible or as its continual unfolding. Dual-source theories, on the other hand, understand tradition to be a source that can provide additional truths beyond those disclosed in Scripture. The Roman Catholic Church relied on this method at the Council of Trent when it rejected many Protestant teachings. This reminds us of how important theological method can be, since it can lie beneath some of the sharpest divisions within Christianity.

This reminds us how important theological method can be, since it can lie beneath some of the sharpest divisions within Christianity.

While most Christians prioritize either Scripture or a combination of Scripture and tradition, rationalists prioritize reason as the top authority, sometimes even rejecting those principles from Scripture that cannot be demonstrated rationally. Experience can be the most important source for spiritualists, who value direct encounter with God, or for some forms of contextual theology, a topic discussed below.

Goal(s) of theological method

Theological methods can differ based on the way theologians prioritize evidence. But theologians may also pursue different goals:

1. Some methods emphasize orthodoxy, centering the importance of right knowledge about God.
2. Others emphasize orthopraxis, or right action in light of who God is.
3. Finally, some emphasize proper spiritual experience of God, or orthopathy.⁴

Given the importance of faith, hope, and love (1 Cor 13:13), as noted above, there is reason to balance pursuit of all three goals.

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Hermeneutical disputes in theological method

Even if two theologians share the same orienting question, agree about the relative weight of categories of evidence, and prioritize the same goals, further methodological disagreements on hermeneutics can result in important theological differences.

Broadly speaking, theological methods rely on three methods of interpreting the Bible:

1. Historical criticism explores the sources behind the Bible and the influence of surrounding cultures, treating Scripture as a historical text like any other. Extensive use of this approach can lead to substantial revisions in traditional theology. For this reason, many conservative theologians are suspicious of this method, particularly if used in isolation.
2. Historical–grammatical interpretation relies on the literal sense of Scripture, considering what the human author meant to say to the original audience in its original context.⁵
3. Theological interpretation of Scripture explores how divine authorship of Scripture may allow for multiple layers of meaning that may exceed what was understood or known by the original human author and/or audience.⁶

Diverging hermeneutical methods have played an important role in debates on Christian doctrines like the Trinity, where eternal generation of the Son often includes a theological interpretation of Proverbs 8, and Christ’s work, such as whether he descended to the dead.

Contextualization in theological method

All theology is contextual in the sense that all theologians write from a specific cultural and historical context and are influenced in their thinking by their personal background and identity. We cannot think that these factors are so strong that they prevent us from knowing God truly, because he is revealing himself to all nations (Ezek 38:23; Mal 1:11; Rev 15:4). Nevertheless, it is also true that context matters for theology, as we shall see.

The need for contextualization arises from the text of Scripture itself. The Great Commission clearly calls us to make disciples of all nations (Matt 28:18–20). We could fulfill this mandate by first making potential converts learn Greek and follow Mediterranean culture from the time of Christ. However, the Bible gives two reasons to instead present the gospel so that it fits new cultural contexts.

First, the New Testament uses the Hebrew Old Testament in a form translated into Greek, a canonical endorsement of continued translation work. This separates Christianity from a religion like Islam, where the Quran is to be kept in Arabic.

Second, particularly Paul’s letters but also the Jerusalem Council emphasize that Christian converts were not required to adopt the entirety of Jewish custom and practice to become Christians (Acts 15:23–29). Combined, these principles shape what Lamin Sanneh calls the “translation principle,” where gospel presentation allows us to present Christian faith in a new cultural idiom.⁷

Once the gospel is received in a new culture, it will require theology to explain, defend, and teach it. Contextualization involves decisions about which vocabulary in a new language appropriately reflects theological truth. Careful discernment may also identify philosophical frameworks within the recipient culture that could be fruitful for use in theology. New orienting questions may arise as theologians grapple with challenges from culture, other religions, or the moral context in which theology is done. For example, if theological method did not attend to difference in Chinese Christianity from other contexts, it would not address key disputes about the veneration of ancestors,⁸ the relevance of Confucianism to philosophical theology, or the appropriate theological response to Communist restrictions on freedom of worship, to name only three examples.

Sound theological method would therefore do well to always pay attention to contextualization.

Major theological methods today

Now that we have explored the foundations of theological method, I can briefly introduce some of the most influential theological methods today:

• Analytic theology: This method draws on analytic philosophy and emphasizes clear thinking, precise terminology, and logically coherent accounts of Christian doctrine. Analytic theology can be philosophical theology or a more integrated systematic theology.⁹
• Classical–evangelical: A classical–evangelical method often attends to “systematizing and codifying” the Bible’s teaching into distinct doctrines.¹⁰
• Contextual theology: Contextual theologies consciously attend to the issues of contextualization addressed above. This approach can emphasize specific categories such as race, ethnicity, nationality, or gender, among many others.¹¹
• Liberation theology: This method focuses on the context of the poor, developing a theology with a specific focus on orthopraxis, understood as standing in solidarity with and learning from the poor.¹²
• Natural theology: Natural theology emphasizes general revelation, such as philosophy, psychology, or science, in order to deduce information about our Creator and his intentions for creation.¹³
• Retrieval theology: This is a term for methods focusing on recovering classical Reformation, medieval, or early Christian tradition as a source for theological truth (or as a guide for reading Scripture), sometimes called theologies of retrieval.¹⁴

Theological method and preaching

While some might think that theological method is best suited for the academy, it also matters for the pulpit. Preaching is, after all, both shaped by theology and a form of (pastoral) theology in its own right.

• Theological method is important for crafting a sermon. Though rooted in biblical exegesis, the sermon also addresses a congregation in a particular context, a fact that requires attending to contextualization or using reason to explain or defend the Bible’s claims.
• Preaching can take many forms, but those sermons that focus on teaching may center certain doctrines like the resurrection, the Trinity, or the virginal conception on Easter, Trinity Sunday, or Christmas. Here, theological method shapes how the pastor teaches sound doctrine.
• Similarly, when developing a sermon, the preacher would do well to consider whether theological evidence supports whatever claims that the sermon makes.
• Finally, though advanced methods like analytic theology or liberation theology may not enter the content of the sermon, the pastor who has attended to a wide range of theological methods can discern which commentaries align with the convictions of the denomination or church in which the sermon is delivered.

Theological method is therefore essential for the development and delivery of the sermon and the practical life of local congregations.

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Glenn Butner’s suggested resources

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1. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Hendrickson, 2008),I.1.1.
2. Mary M. Veeneman, Introducing Theological Method: A Survey of Contemporary Theologians and Approaches(Baker Academic, 2017), 13.
3. See Alister E. McGrath, Christian Theology: An Introduction, 3rd ed. (Blackwell, 2001), 186–87.
4. I explore these three goals in D. Glenn Butner Jr., Christological Dogmatics: A Theological Witness to the Person and Work of Christ(Baker Academic, 2026), 8.
5. See Walter C. Kaiser Jr., Toward an Exegetical Theology: Biblical Exegesis for Preaching and Teaching(Baker, 1981), 87–88.
6. See Daniel J. Treier, Introducing Theological Interpretation of Scripture: Recovering a Christian Practice(Baker Academic, 2008).
7. Lamin Sanneh, Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture, rev. ed. (Orbis, 2009).
8. The so-called Chinese Rites controversy.
9. See Thomas H. McCall, An Invitation to Analytic Christian Theology(InterVarsity, 2015).
10. See Sung Wook Chung, “Bible Doctrines/Conservative Theology: Codifying God’s Word,” in Evangelical Theological Method: Five Views, ed. Stanley E. Porter and Steven M. Studebaker (InterVarsity, 2018).
11. See Simon Chan, Grassroots Asian Theology: Thinking the Faith from the Ground Up(InterVarsity Academic, 2014).
12. The classic text is Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics and Salvation, trans. and ed. Caridad Inda and John Eagleson (Orbis, 1971).
13. See James K. Dew Jr. and Ronnie J. Campbell Jr., Natural Theology: Five Views (Baker Academic, 2024).
14. See Michael Allen and Scott R. Swain, Reformed Catholicity: The Promise of Retrieval for Theology and Biblical Interpretation (Baker Academic, 2015).