System as Governing Metaphor in Christian Systematic Theology

What is it about?

Instead of appealing to Divine Mystery to explain paradoxical Christian beliefs like human freedom and divine omnipotence, the reality of Jesus as fully divine and fully human, how the world exists in God and yet also follows its own laws and finite pattern of existence and activity, etc., one can turn to systems-oriented thinking with the presupposition of ongoing relationality and/or reciprocal causality between the parts or members of the system to explain all these paradoxical beliefs from a new socially-oriented perspective in which each part or member of the system contributes something to the lasting good of the system but does not exploit the system simply for personal gain.

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Why is it important?

Given the modern tendency to put more faith in the findings of science than in the received doctrines of the Church, it is useful to use the language of contemporary science to set forth traditional religious beliefs within a context already familiar to natural scientists for t he better understanding of physical reality. The mystery inevitably associated with belief in a transcendent divine reality is not therefore ignored but instead shown to be consonant with what is at least plausible from a purely rational perspective