Seminaries and their Choice of Systematic Theologians2 min read

I was perusing the internet, and came upon a thread on PuritanBoard.com, in which various seminarians were discussing which systematic theology authors were used at their schools. I tallied up the responses and made the charts herein. Certainly, this survey is not representative, since those who peruse a Puritan-oriented site are probably of a Reformed Theology perspective, but this is just to start a discussion. How does our narrowness, or choice of theologian guide our systematics? Even more interesting, how does this affect our orthopraxis (how we live and teach others to live)? ¹

The chart shows that Calvin is still king among evangelical seminaries, but Burkhof, Bavnick, Barth, and Turretin are also popular.

If we surveyed more reformed seminaries, I think we’d see Grudem much more popular, though at my seminary (Fuller), Grudem is generally reviled as too conservative, political, and ignorant of such things as the New Perspective on Paul and other more modern centrist approaches to Pauline theology.²

Resources

Here are few nice lists of Systematic Theologies:

• Amazon Best Sellers: Christian Systematic Theology (amazon.com)
• The Best Systematic Theologies to Have (whatsbestnext.com)
• Top Ten Systematic Theologies (reclaimingthemind.com)
• Ten Systematic Theology Resources (thegospelcoalition.org)
• Best Books in Systematic Theology (douggeivett.com)
• Top ten systematic theologies (faith-theology.com)

Wonder what seminaries were in my survey? Here you go. Please submit your own data, would love to hear it.