Well Bill is kind of like a sporting event and there are people all over the nation, all over the world, who are keeping up with your riding of your systematic philosophical theology.

They wouldn't know how it's progressing, what the score is, what page you're on, where you are in the process.

But I want to begin like this Bill, lay people, we hear of scholars who write their systematic theology.

What does this mean when you write it all out?

Well, it sounds terribly self-important, doesn't it, and presumptuous to say, my systematic philosophical theology.

But all that means is that each individual scholar has particular theological persuasions that are probably shared by nobody else, given the whole body of systematic theology.

And so it gives a chance to the individual theology to lay out his perspectives on these great questions like the nature of faith, the existence of attributes of God, the incarnation and person of Christ, salvation, sin, and other subjects.

And so I'm attempting in this systematic philosophical theology to summarize my life's work on these various topics in one comprehensive treatment.

Bill, you've added philosophical to what you've made that distinction. I assume because you're a philosopher.

Yes, and also because Kevin, I believe that philosophical analysis is indispensable to doing good systematic theology.

When you read the great theologians of the past like St. Anselm and Thomas Aquinas, these men were steeped in the philosophical concept.

They were all concepts of their day and they brought them to bear in doing theology.

And I think it's a mistake to try to do good systematic theology without being equipped in philosophical analysis and logical argumentation.

It will make one systematic theology more complete, more penetrating, more accurate, and more coherent if one has this philosophical angle or component in doing theology.

I want to incorporate biblical theology. Each chapter will always begin with an exegetical study of that topic.

And then I'll look at historical figures in the past who have dealt with this topic. I want to do historical theology.

But then finally, I'll reflect on the issue philosophically myself and try to come to some philosophically plausible and biblically consistent view of the topic that's under discussion.

And so that makes this rather unusual on the contemporary scene. On the contemporary scene, there are almost no systematic philosophical theologies.

It's such an enormous task that few people have aspired to undertake such a thing.

So where are you, Bill, in the process right now?

I'm right at the beginning of the process. I wrote a prolegaminon to the theology, which is basically an introduction in which I lay out what I conceived systematic philosophical theology to be and how it differs from biblical theology, historical theology, dogmatics, fundamental theology,

apologetics, and especially philosophy of religion. And then in the first proper chapter of the book, I treat the doctrine of scripture.

...