D.A Carson writes, "...systematic theology will seek to be faithful to Scripture. That means careful exegesis is essential, along with the panoply of the interpreter’s tools. But because the ordering vision is not dictated by inductive study of the text within the categories of the text, corpus by corpus, the danger of simplistic proof texting becomes proportionately greater, and the difficulty of deciding which ordering principles will control the system correspondingly greater and more disputable. Moreover, most systematic theology includes some sort of canvassing of earlier work by seminal theologians (Irenaeus, Anselm, Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, and so forth). That means that many of the categories, not to mention the priorities for discussion and reflection on how various theological strands cohere, have been laid down by the ecclesiastical tradition, and it is very hard work to be informed by them without being controlled by them. Further, systematic theology worthy of the name, more so than biblical theology, seeks to articulate what the Bible says in a way that is culturally telling, culturally prophetic. The alternative is to write a systematic theology that is of merely antiquarian interest, or that appeals to the most traditionalist voices in the culture. Such concerns for contemporaneity and relevance, entirely legitimate, may nevertheless cast more influence than is sometimes recognized on the shape of the systematic theology, such that the concern for relevance and prophetic voice may unwittingly distance it from a faithful portrayal of what the Bible says.There are deeper issues. The Bible speaks in highly diverse literary genres that play upon our hearts and minds in a great variety of speech acts. To encapsulate this diversity and power within the form of a systematic theology is to demand too much of the discipline. But the systematic theologian can mitigate the most obvious dangers by wide reading in the literature of exegesis and by delving deeply into biblical theology as a mediating discipline. The systematician must recognize, further, the inherent limitations of systematic theology. For all its strengths, there are many things it cannot do. It can analyse a lament within the biblical corpus, but it cannot evoke a heart-felt lament in the way a lament itself can. It may expound the meanings of some parables, but it cannot explode the reader’s worldview in the way the most striking of the narrative parables can.Still more importantly, systematic theology, precisely by its efforts at systemic wholeness and by its engagement with the culture, openly attempts worldview formation, worldview transformation. (Something of the same can be accomplished by steady, thoughtful, repeated Bible reading, but in that case there is obviously no attempt in the text to address this particular culture as opposed to some other.) Thus unlike biblical theology, systematic theology is not so much a mediating discipline as a culminating discipline. Nevertheless, once a particular systematic theology has been deeply absorbed, precisely because it is worldview forming it is likely to exercise significant influence on the disciplines that nurture it: exegesis, biblical theology, historical theology. The hermeneutical circle is joined, but not vicious."