Theology Guide

What do you have to buy to get this Guide?

This guide seems to consistently display results from "Strongs" systematic theology. Will other systematic theologies be added eventually (Grudem?) 

No, when I click on the picture in the Theology Guide, it opens the same picture in a Media window. Not super helpful... I was expecting clicking on one of the other "stations" would bring up a Theology Guide of that other topic.

On a separate note, Kyle, under the "Recommended Reading" section, the entries are italicized. What does that mean? I was expecting them to be either "locked" (if I don't own the resource) or hyperlinked (if I own the resource). Please advise.

Very useful tool, nice job!

Peter

Graham Criddle said:

At the moment five systematic theology resources have been linked in:

1. Berkhof, Systematic Theology
2. Packer, Concise Theology
3. Ryrie, Basic Theology
4. Hodge, Systematic Theology
5. Strong, Systematic Theology

More are intended to be added over time.

Wow, only five so far? This is totally not ready for prime time.

MJ. Smith said:

Yes, and no ... and maybe maybe  By putting the framework out for us, they can roll out the dataset with more resources on a "whatever" schedule rather than being tied to a 6 week development schedule.

Well, because of this tool, FL will probably successfully extract a few hundred more dollars out of me than I had intended to spend on this upgrade cycle. I can understand not everything being in it yet, but it should be a little farther along than "barely started."

Graham Criddle said:

At the moment five systematic theology resources have been linked in:

Just to clarify this. There are several sections in the Theology Guide. Recommended Reading is a hand-curated bibliography for every theological topic. It will include resources you already own, and those you may not. It's is selective, broad and can be considered "finished".

There's also a section that searches your own library for tagged resources related to that topic. It's this section that only contains the small handful of systematic theologies that were referenced earlier.  But truthfully, it's possibly a less useful section because it's not hand-curated.

Graham Criddle said:

Mark Barnes said:

Just to clarify this.

Thanks for clarifying Mark. I had made some assumptions about what was being asked that might not have been correct!

I don’t think there was anything wrong with your answer. But I just wanted to make clear people who don’t yet have access to the Guide there were other sections in addition to the one Mike asked about.

Sean Boisen said:

While it's correct that we've only done comprehensive annotation on five systematic theologies so far, the Systematic Theologies section of the Theology Guide is not an automated search. Jessica Parks went through each of these five theologies for each of the 234 Systematic Theology topics and annotated the corresponding spans of text addressing these topics.

I would guess the bolded words here are the key ones, but what is the plan for this guide? How quickly can we expect this to get filled out further? (I know you guys are allergic to giving out dates, but some general idea would be nice.) I can understand starting with these selected works, with their detailed and fairly standard structures, as opposed to more creative works of systematics, but as it is, it seems very limited to me. (I have not purchased yet.)

I'd really like to get a better feel for the direction of this tool before I shell out a couple hundred dollars for it. I don't really need the full feature set otherwise; I want to know if this will really help me as an ecumenical theologian.

Thank you guys. The video says that all of the recommended resources are available in Logos,.... 

This explanation helps me.

Mark Barnes said:

Just to clarify this. There are several sections in the Theology Guide. Recommended Reading is a hand-curated bibliography for every theological topic. It will include resources you already own, and those you may not. It's is selective, broad and can be considered "finished".

Hi Mark

Is there a defined "tradition" for the hand curated lists? Or put another way, can you offer any insight to the criteria used to "recommend" a particular article, author or book.

Sean said:

but being indexed to only 5 very conservative North American evangelical theologies means that it's practically useless to me in its present state of development.

[:O]

Sean Boisen said:

Sean said:

Sean Boisen said:

You can expect that we'll annotate most major systematic theologies in Logos.

Could you elaborate more on your plans for this please? I know it's against policy to give a time frame, but a general idea of your plan would be nice. Right now, this tool is the deciding factor as to whether or not I'll go for an upgrade or just stay put with L7. It looks good with great potential, but being indexed to only 5 very conservative North American evangelical theologies means that it's practically useless to me in its present state of development. Please give me some concrete assurance that this is going to become useful in a reasonable span of time. (That is, not everything needs to be in it overnight, but it should be steadily improved at a rate that can be noticed and appreciated by the user. Months, not years, with recognition that some works like Barth's CD may well be impossible to integrate into such a system.)

I can give you concrete assurance that it's already useful for me, and i suspect, for many others

We currently have more than 300 systematic theologies on offer at logos.com, and there's no automated way to do this kind of annotation (that's part of what makes it especially valuable). Our highest priority will be those resources that impact most of our users, which is a combination of most owned, most used, and most important to the field (of course, that last attribute is hard to quantify objectively). How much effort this alignment will take depends greatly on the specific resource, as you suggest, and we have to weigh the cost of this annotation against the value of the book to our customers (one of many reasons Logos resources often cost more than Kindle editions). Some resources may have too few users to justify the cost.

I expect the progress will be noticeable on the scale of months. I also predict (with high confidence) it won't be fast enough to satisfy our users: it won't be fast enough to satisfy me, either. But we're committed to this project, and our goal is to annotate as many systematic theology resources as make sense.

Sean,

And if you don't get to those in the Wesleyan-Holiness Camp soon enough, I know how to find the sections I am looking for through search in Logos and having used the print version of the Logos resources, for years before having them in Logos.   Sometimes we just forget how to do things "old school". 

I love this new resource and look forward to using it as I teach Theology during the Spring term.

I am finding the Theology Guide very helpful.  Today I was reading the section on the Church and Israel in the Lexham Survey of Theology. I came upon this by Brian Collins, the author of this section: 

"While the church may have a Great Commission to declare the message of Jesus and the apostles, it does not have a commission to convert Jewish people away from their faith to that of a gentile church."

Guys, I wonder if this is true. From what I know, it isn't.

Is there a way to further dive into this to get a better idea where Brian got this????  Or to contact the author????    Or, am I just plain wrong?

Sean Boisen said:

That's a very positive suggestion, Mark. Feel free to join the Faithlife group for Lexham Survey of Theology and make recommendations for resources you'd like to see annotated, or add other suggestions for improvements. You could also post them on this forum thread.

Off the top of my head, as mentioned above, I'd suggest some of the 19th century Wesleyan Arminian theologians you have in Logos such as Miley and Pope. They would be good in comparison to the other theologians you already have. Also, their structures should lend themselves well to this task. Ditto for Orton Wiley.

From the continent, Bavinck should be a top priority. Berkouwer's Studies would be awesome to have in this, but I imagine it would take a lot more work than many others. Pannenberg would also be great.

Again from older theologies, Franics Hall and Joseph Pohl would be good additions.

Useful popular systematics would be Erickson and <gulp> Grudem.

Those would be excellent as a next step. Expanding in those directions should improve the tool's utility for comparative study of theology.

ETA: And Calvin's Institutes! How could I leave off that? How could you, for that matter? It should go in ASAP. [:P] Seriously, though, there's a lot of useful theology out there besides Princeton/Westminster and Dallas. Most of it doesn't bite. Why did you have to do both Hodge and Berkhof before getting to some of these others?

Mark Barnes said:

...you don't need to stop being Jewish to start being a Christian. All the earliest Christians were Jews and they would all have said that they retained their Jewish faith even as they stopped offering sacrifices, keeping Sabbath and food laws, and worshipping in the Temple.

[:S]

Rob Lambert said:

Now I understand what he was trying to communicate.

Really?? That's a trick! I can think of at least half-a-dozen to a dozen issues in that statement that are so mish-mashed and disputable that extricating anything worthwhile seems well-nigh impossible. For starters, there's the fact that Jews might not be Jewish. Let the slidy slope commence...

For the sake of clarity, I see problems with the original quote and Mark's "elucidation".

Let's please keep the thread on track discussing the Theology Guide, not forbidden theology topics. [:D][:#][A][;)]

scooter said:

Systematic theologies to consider: Ryrie   voigt   frame [systematic theology]   john macpherson   bloesch   berkhof [History of Christian Doctrines]   feinberg   beet

I strongly second Bloesch. Also, Thomas Oden's ST is excellent for the many links it has to other resources, especially the fathers, that otherwise wouldn't lend themselves to the Guide's structure.