Is there a standard Systematic Theology for IBF churches then?

Ben1445 · Saturday at 8:46 AM

Craigbythesea said:
Indeed, some conservative evangelical Christians living in the mountainous regions of West Virginia still believe that Genesis 1-11 is an accurate, literal account of historic events.

Imagine those hillbillies who still believe the Bible!!! How base they are! They must have evolved from lower life forms to be so gullible.

Is this your life verse?
Luke 18:11
The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.

Try this one instead…

Matthew 11:25
At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.

It will do you a lot of good.

West Virginia in this respect is much closer to heaven than you are willing to admit.

I would rather be in the fellowship of the hill people of West Virginia than in the company of all your molding work eaten books. And I do like books. Yours seem to affect your view of people for the worse.

Alan Dale Gross · Saturday at 10:05 AM

JesusFan said:
Conservative and Evangelical still support Genesis account

As does our Creator God of the Universe, Who is All-Science Knowing, i.e., Omniscient. Since God Created and Invented All Scientific Knowledge, He was Able to Know everything He Revealed in His Holy Word would be Right, from the Day He first Wrote about all of what He'd Made in the Heaven and the Earth, including the Human Race, until the End of Time.

Unfortunately, our Greatgreatgreatgreastest Grand Grandad, Adam, caused each member of the Human Race to have nothing more to recommend ourselves to the God of Heaven and Earth any more than those Recorded in Genesis 6:5;
"And GOD Saw that the wickedness of man was great in the Earth,
and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually."

We are no less sinners, from the Perspective of our Maker.

To where the lot of us think life came from a rock and that we came from a monkey(?)

Somebody made a monkey out of them, I'll tell you that.

Craigbythesea said:
Indeed, some conservative evangelical Christians living in the mountainous regions of West Virginia still believe that Genesis 1-11 is an accurate, literal account of historic events.

That's one of the best things you could have ever said about them.

Craigbythesea · Saturday at 9:27 PM

Ben1445 said:
Imagine those hillbillies who still believe the Bible!!! How base they are! They must have evolved from lower life forms to be so gullible.

Is this your life verse?
Luke 18:11
The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.

Try this one instead…

Matthew 11:25
At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.

It will do you a lot of good.

West Virginia in this respect is much closer to heaven than you are willing to admit.

I would rather be in the fellowship of the hill people of West Virginia than in the company of all your molding work eaten books. And I do like books. Yours seem to affect your view of people for the worse.

“Those hillbillies,” as you so disrespectfully call them in your post, are precious saints of God in whom the fruits of the Spirit are gloriously manifested in their day-to-day lives and the gifts of the Holy Spirit are operational in and through their lives as they say “yes” to God and “no” to Satan. It is very unfortunate and inexcusable that they lack knowledge of such important and theologically pivotal Hebrew words as רָקִיעַ, but that does not excuse insulting them by calling them “hillbillies.”

Ben1445 · Saturday at 10:54 PM

Craigbythesea said:
“Those hillbillies,” as you so disrespectfully call them in your post, are precious saints of God in whom the fruits of the Spirit are gloriously manifested in their day-to-day lives and the gifts of the Holy Spirit are operational in and through their lives as they say “yes” to God and “no” to Satan. It is very unfortunate and inexcusable that they lack knowledge of such important and theologically pivotal Hebrew words as רָקִיעַ, but that does not excuse insulting them by calling them “hillbillies.”

That was what I got from your post. You didn’t say it out right, but there is no logical bridge from where a person lives to what they believe.

Go ahead and try to talk your way out of it. I’m much more a hillbilly than you know.
So go ahead and talk down those people who live in the mountains of West Virginia just because they believe the Bible. And you just go right on feeling justified because you didn’t say hillbillies even though your post was clear enough to mean it.

Craigbythesea · Saturday at 11:56 PM

Ben1445 said:
That was what I got from your post. You didn’t say it out right, but there is no logical bridge from where a person lives to what they believe.

Go ahead and try to talk your way out of it. I’m much more a hillbilly than you know.
So go ahead and talk down those people who live in the mountains of West Virginia just because they believe the Bible. And you just go right on feeling justified because you didn’t say hillbillies even though your post was clear enough to mean it.

Back in the old days of the Baptist Board, I had a good friend who was not only fluent in Hebrew and Greek, but he also kept up to date in biblical theology. We had some excellent conversations because we both loved God, the Bible, and experiencing the Holy Spirit ministering in and through our lives. This friend was a physician who lived and practiced medicine in the mountainous regions of West Virginia. You own both of us an apology!

Craigbythesea · Sunday at 1:05 AM

Back to systematic theologies.

I am surprised to see several or more Presbyterian and/or Reformed systematic theologies mentioned but no mention of the 8-volume dispensationalist Systematic Theology by Lewis Sperry Chafer, President and Professor of Systematic Theology, Dallas Theological Seminary.

Ben1445 · Sunday at 6:07 AM

Craigbythesea said:
Back in the old days of the Baptist Board, I had a good friend who was not only fluent in Hebrew and Greek, but he also kept up to date in biblical theology. We had some excellent conversations because we both loved God, the Bible, and experiencing the Holy Spirit ministering in and through our lives. This friend was a physician who lived and practiced medicine in the mountainous regions of West Virginia. You own both of us an apology!

I think the way you made your point you owe West Virginia an apology. I’ve been sticking up for them, and apparently your reading skills are not good enough to pick that up.
Or you are just projecting your error because you’re embarrassed about being called out.

But then I’m not sure why I expected you to own up to your statement. You never have owned your errors. But I am not the only person who saw what you did.

Craigbythesea · Sunday at 3:14 PM

Craigbythesea said:
Back to systematic theologies.

I am surprised to see several or more Presbyterian and/or Reformed systematic theologies mentioned but no mention of the 8-volume dispensationalist Systematic Theology by Lewis Sperry Chafer, President and Professor of Systematic Theology, Dallas Theological Seminary.

Freewill Baptists and Arminian Baptists may benefit from H. Orton Wiley’s Christian Theology published from 1940-1943 in three volumes (approximately 1,500 pages) by Beacon Hill Press. This classic has been translated into numerous languages and has been continuously in print in a hard cover edition for over 80 years.

A newer Wesleyan Theology edited by Charles W. Carter was published in 1983 by Francis Asbury Press in two volumes (1178 pages). It is no longer available in the hard cover edition, but is correctly available in a paperback edition. This “Biblical, Systematic, and Practical” theology devotes 41 pages to “cosmology” compared with Wiley’s 47 pages, but it is written from a much more recent perspective. It also includes a good and useful although seriously dated (1983) bibliography of cosmology. Wiley’s Christian Theology includes a somewhat briefer and more seriously dated (1940) bibliography of cosmology.

John of Japan · Sunday at 4:56 PM

DaveXR650 said:
Charles Ryrie had a systematic theology book that the kids at Cedarville in Ohio used to use for the beginning theology course. I used to be a fundy and I can say it looked pretty good. The problem is, most IFB used to at least, proudly claim they used no systematic theology at all. So we used to say our theology was: "We don't smoke and we don't chew. And we don't do out with girls that do".

I use Ryrie in my Bible Docterines course. I don't agree that most fundamentalists decry systematic theology. I've taken courses in 3 different IFB seminaries, and all use systematic theologies. The main one now is Erickson, 3rd ed.

DaveXR650 said:
But in all seriousness, they did just fine, and it could be argued that they did better than a lot of the more "theologically astute" groups around them in dealing with the modern age. They also had the best pot luck dinners, ever.

Amen!

John of Japan · Monday at 2:47 PM

Craigbythesea said:
Back to systematic theologies.

I am surprised to see several or more Presbyterian and/or Reformed systematic theologies mentioned but no mention of the 8-volume dispensationalist Systematic Theology by Lewis Sperry Chafer, President and Professor of Systematic Theology, Dallas Theological Seminary.

I have that one and it is useful. I consult it often, but at 7 volumes it's not meant to be a textbook.

jakethebaptist · 2026-05-20T08:08:42-0500

My textbook at Baptist Bible College, Springfield MO (now Mission University) was Ryrie's Basic Theology. For papers and projects, I also made heavy use of Chafer and Strong. Both were difficult to get through but contained much valuable information. For the graduate school, I think one class required Erickson's book, but outside of that there was no official theology textbook. I still did and still do make heavy use of Erickson's theology, though I still just have the 2nd edition and really should check out the 3rd edition.

Edit: Just another thought - it would likely be useful for the question to check out what the major fundamentalist seminaries are currently using. I earned my undergraduate in 2000, and took my last seminary theology class nearly 20 years ago, I'm not sure what is currently being used.

John of Japan · 2026-05-20T13:36:57-0500

jakethebaptist said:
My textbook at Baptist Bible College, Springfield MO (now Mission University) was Ryrie's Basic Theology. For papers and projects, I also made heavy use of Chafer and Strong. Both were difficult to get through but contained much valuable information. For the graduate school, I think one class required Erickson's book, but outside of that there was no official theology textbook. I still did and still do make heavy use of Erickson's theology, though I still just have the 2nd edition and really should check out the 3rd edition.

Edit: Just another thought - it would likely be useful for the question to check out what the major fundamentalist seminaries are currently using. I earned my undergraduate in 2000, and took my last seminary theology class nearly 20 years ago, I'm not sure what is currently being used.

Maranatha Baptist Seminary uses Erickson, and the seminary I teach in (Baptist Theological Seminary) uses Erickson, 3rd ed. Back in 1976 I took a systematic theology course at Temple Baptist Seminary before Erickson wrote his textbook (first ed. was 1981), and they used the one by old time Baptist Augustus Strong (1907). Having said that, Erickson was well known in 1976, though he had not written his systematic theology yet. I have a book by him from 1968, The New Evangelical Theology.

I think it likely that the great majority of fundamentalist seminaries use Erickson nowadays, because he is a Baptist and conservative. Also, his volume is quite up to date, with the 3rd ed. being 2013. Things are moving fast in theology nowadays!

Is there a standard Systematic Theology for IBF churches then?

Ben1445

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