Systematic Theology

This was required reading for my college theology class. I liked about a third of it, found another third dry, and disagreed with the other third. For instance, he does not believe in six-day creation, but leans toward a day-age theory, which seems to me to be a bow to evolution. I wish he had included more studies of things like prophecy and symbolism in the Bible; he barely mentioned them, and yet the fulfilled prophecies from the old testament are some of the greatest wonders and miracles of the Bible. Another thing I did not quite like was his attitude of “if __ parable means A, it cannot mean anything else.” To me, parables can be taken several ways; searching for a single coin out of ten could teach both the importance of a single soul in God's Kingdom and the blessings of perseverance.
In some places he was able to cut right to the point and say things quite profoundly. In others, he would oversimplify an argument, such as when he spoke of the Trinity. He basically said “we must take it on faith” and quoted a few verses...but there is so much symbolism in the old testament and so many other verses that could have backed up quite a logical argument for his point.
I have kept the book for reference purposes, but I would not recommend it to many people because without a large level of prior Bible knowledge it can be very confusing.
~Hannah

As an afterthought, I decided to add that my two favorite church luminaries are Matthew Henry and Charles Spurgeon. I feel that both of them exercised much more common sense and awareness of Bible history and verses than Grudem does. Added to that, they're positively exciting and inspiring. I am currently enjoying Henry's unedited commentary and Spurgeon's “Treasury of David”.