Systematic Theology: Berkhof Review

well hello and welcome to petra publications i'm davis and today we're going to be reviewing this massive volume this is the expanded edition of louis berkoff's systematic theology and i um i i have been studying this for about six months now and i just finished it the other day um and it is just fantastic um i sort of broke this into sections um where there were chapters he had kind of broken it interestingly in a very readable fashion i thought and if you break it up you're looking at anywhere between five and 25 pages a day which is a lot but um you know you just do what you can and uh you get through it but it took me about six months to get through it and i uh i studied this um very intensely i marked every page um carefully studied each section and yes i got kind of you know bogged down at different times and thought there's no way i'm going to finish this i'm just sort of reading this for no reason but overall um this was a great a great read and i forgot to mention this in the actual review i'm recording this in post but berkoff at the end of each chapter includes questions that relate to the the chapter that you've just read so if you're reading if you're really paying attention you have all these questions at the end to answer about that content which is why i've marked so much in the book in the like within the chapter because i'm trying to uh have the answers underlined or notes added in the margins for reference after i've read the chapter for the questions at the end but anyway back to the review there's a lot of stuff in here that is just fantastic there was nothing that i directly disagreed with or didn't think was you know not biblical necessarily there were a few things that i didn't personally hold to but i could see how he came to the conclusions that he came to but overall oh and also because this was six months six months worth um that it that i spent to to read this so many different theological changes in my theology had just just took place during those six months and god's been working a lot in me and teaching me a lot and i've been studying a lot and so um as i've gone through this things that like um uh berkoff's amillennialism or um or his infant baptism you know those are things that that i've been dealing with personally outside of berkoff and so when i got to them by the time i got to them because when i started i was completely opposed and by the time i got to them you know my eyes had sort of been opened to those things not not saying that i fully hold to those or anything like that but i i'm seeing them in a different way so um you know probably if i read it again it would benefit me to see those things again just because i i have changed so much since i started the book but there's literally um also sorry before i get to that um this is the expanded edition so there's an introduction um to systematic theology which is dogmatics and dogmatics um i didn't know anything about dogmatics a great introduction to dogmatics great introduction to systematic theology and very concise i thought it was 200 pages of the introduction and then 800 pages of the systematic theology so all in one volume which is amazing very readable format enough room to write you know not too long of sections i didn't think chapters were relatively short but what i was going to say before i got thought of that was nothing is left out in this systematic it's one volume and i know there are systematics that dwarf this this book but nothing is left out um everything is in it from uh from from beginning to end you know um doctrine of god god's existence the communicable the incommunicable attributes of god um all the way to the doctrines doctrine of the end times eschatology all the eschatological views um everything i mean literally everything you could possibly talk about in the bible is in this volume and and that's one thing too is this is forever going to be a fantastic resource if you if you need to study um a particular doctrine or you just need a quick reference remind yourself what does this mean what does that look like what did that look like in history burkhoff does a fantastic job of going into the history of the doctrine every new doctrine he introduces he says here's the history here are the opposing views and how they got there and it's just a fantastic way to look at uh look at everything so you get a historical view you get the biblical view old and new testament then you get the applications of that doctrine and literally everything that you could possibly want in a systematic i think but um yeah if i ever need to reference any of those things this one volume you know it's all there so um that's that's great um and i think that's pretty much it i do absolutely recommend this this is going on to my favorite books list this is not just probably probably not just maybe it is but probably not a book that you would just sit down and read for enjoyment purposes but it is a fantastic book it's not too hard to comprehend it's it's not too far out there he writes in a very cohesive uh way and it's very very easy to understand what he's saying lots of greek lots of hebrew lots of latin but you can follow him it's not not too difficult but that is pretty much all i have for today i hope that that was a blessing to you in some shapewear form if it was please let me know in the comments down below i would really appreciate that just to know that these videos are helping anyone if you need prayer or anything also please feel free to comment that down below i've got a website you can reach me privately through there or my email which is available on my about page until next time thanks for watching god bless

Channel: Petra Publications

Views: 4,276

Keywords: Reformed, reformed theology, davis l moore, davis moore, reformed library, library, berkhof, louis berkhof, systematic theology, theology, theological book, book, book review, theology review, louis

Id: 5dV898s8K2w

Length: 7min 15sec (435 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 10 2022