The Inescapable Inconsistency of Systematic Theology

I was born into the Christian faith and culture, and now consider myself a Christian. Despite a lifetime of exposure to this faith, I’m still defining what “Christianity” means for me.

My preferred technical term for this process is Systematic Theology. The goal is to take all the various inputs— the Bible, the world, science, my moral compass, etc— and generate a single cohesive system of beliefs, through which I can believe and live out my faith. At least in theory, a systematic theology has answers for everything: how old is the Earth? Is transubstantiation correct? What about the trinity? Annihilationism, or Christian Universalism? And so on. In this way, systematic theology is a framework through which a person sees and understands all the data available to them.

It shouldn’t be hard to imagine why this is an attractive thing. As humans, we crave certainty; we have all kinds of cognitive biases to ensure we feel overly confident about things. Confirmation bias skews us towards the beliefs we already hold. We selectively view information in light of what we already believe, and cognitive dissonance is evidence that we’re extremely uncomfortable when the world doesn’t match our inner model of it. As children of the enlightenment, we find comfort and security in rationalizing our beliefs.

Very few Christians are able to achieve a systematic theology in their lifetime; it is a monstrous task. At best, some Christians are able to answer some particular questions they’re interested in, but leaving the others out. It’s much easier to just passively consume Christianity from the pews.

Inconsistency

From the outside, cultural Christianity would have you believe that the process of systematic theologizing isn’t really necessary; we already have a cohesive systematic theology— it’s called “the Bible”. Duh!

The problem is, that’s just not true.¹ There is an abundance of evidence for this fact. As a starting point, just consider the existence of the different Christian denominations; or consider the fact that the Protestant Reformation, which initiated most of the core Christian beliefs of American Christianity, did not occur until 1500 years after Jesus.² 1500 years! Even in 2026, few Christians agree on everything, despite coming at their faith using the same basic resources.

Despite our best wishes, the Bible lacks univocality, or the idea of speaking with one voice. Quite to the contrary: it’s fairly straightforward to find instances of the Bible being internally inconsistent (aka “contradictory” or “discordant”). I’ve written about this before.

I recently read Thomas Talbott’s The Inescapable Love of God, in which he presents a great example of necessary inconsistency in action in systematic theology. Talbott himself is a Christian Universalist (i.e. he believes that, eventually, all people go to heaven). In the book, Talbott powerfully argues that the Bible presents the following three statements as fact— but if they are all correct, they create a logical inconsistency.

1. God wants to reconcile all people to himself.

2. God will triumph in the end and successfully reconcile to himself each person whose reconciliation he sincerely wills or desires.

3. Some human sinners will never be reconciled to God and will therefore remain separated from him forever.

There are various Christian positions that attempt to resolve this internal inconsistency by re-interpreting certain verses (e.g. “all people” doesn’t really mean “every person”, or God’s “hate” of Esau doesn’t really mean “hate”), but they’re just that— re-interpretations, motivated by preexisting beliefs (“this is what God’s love must mean!!!”). In extreme cases, Christians do what apologist Mike Licona calls “hermeneutic waterboarding”— you torture the text, until it tells you want you want to hear. The Bible resists unification; any systematic theology is forced to make tradeoffs.

It’s Inescapable

The idea of a systematic theology, or even a partial systematic theology, is extremely appealing to modern Christians (including myself). The desire to have all the answers is just too delicious to refuse. But the process of getting there— the process of sorting through and thinking about the abundance of data that surrounds us— is an incredibly difficult and dirty process, often full of unwanted nuance and uncertainty. Admitting this much is valuable. At a minimum, there are studies that show that being aware of cognitive biases can help overcome them; but more broadly, I value the intellectual honesty that comes along with this process. Ultimately, we should care less about maintaining a fragile “certain” worldview, and more about finding the truth.