Reading Biblical Themes as a Whole

Carson (Gagging of God, 285-6) highlights that very often, out treatment of certain biblical themes and topic can be reductionistic - in that, we isolate certain passages of Scripture, and 'add' them up together to produce the content of the topic or theme we are looking at, without seeing how the particular theme is teased out in light of the whole bible's redemptive historical plot-line. He states:

"One of the most important hermeneutical constraints one should adopt in order to avoid such reductionism is this: Permit the various attributes and characteristics of God to function in your theology only in the ways they function in Scripture; nerver permit them to function in your theology in such a way that the primary data, the data of Scripture, are contradicted. Thus one must not infer fatalism from the sweeping biblical data about God's sovereignty; one must not infer that God is finite from the constant biblical protrayal of God personally interacting with finite persons. From God's knowledge and sovereignty we must not justify praylessness; from the exhortations to pray and not give up, we must not suppose God is coerced by our speaking [...]. Precisely because God is so gloriously rich and complex a being, we must draw out the lessons the biblical writers draw out, and no others." (p.286)

What good advice for us as we try to do systematic theology! There is a need not only to be 'biblical' in our systematic theology, but to be 'biblical theological'!