Gunton on Scripture and Systematic Theology

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"Systematic theology is the rational dimension of the conversation that is initiated by God at the creation and continued in the history of God's dealings with the world. The Bible's authority is that it represents the heart of that conversation, both its initiation and the particular human response that is Israel, Jesus, and the church. It sets the boundaries for the conversation, or the space within which human parrhesia is to make its response. But that response, too, is part of the work of God, for it is enabled to take place as the Spirit enables the earthen vessels of human language to become articulations in time both of the Word of God and of the human response to that Word. The conversation is incarnational and pneurnatological. As witness to the incarnation, Scripture is also witness both to the capacity of words to embody theological and other meaning and to a boundedness of content. With this word, theology is able to be Christian; without it, it ceases to be so. As sharing in the Spirit's constitution of a community of worship, life, and thought, theology is witness to the human imagination and reason's capacity to transform language so that it may by anticipation represent something of the truth that belongs to the end."

- Using and Being Used: Scripture and Systematic Theology by Colin Gunton