One of Beresford’s major concerns has always been the way in which believers often end up putting various theological and doctrinal systems above scripture itself, thereby reading the Bible through the grid of their systematic theologies rather than the other way round. The result is that rather than testing their systematic theologies by the Word of God they are instead, without realising it, testing the Word of God by their doctrinal systems. Or, to put it another way, the problem with systematic theologies is that they have a definite tendency to not let the Bible get in the way of a good doctrine. The following two talks address this issue with a major example of how the problem manifests itself.