About this project

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.^[1]

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword . . .^[2]

The author

Hi, I’m Joey. I’m a Reformed Christian living in Salt Lake City, Utah. My family and I are members of Jordan Valley Church (PCA). I’m 40-something and currently a software engineer, but when I grow up I’d like to be a seminary professor.

The inception

This project came to life as a memo in my Palm PDA back in 2002. That early document was titled “Things that convince me,” and was created shortly after I was born again and joined my first Christian church. When my little memo started to become a big memo a few years later, I moved it over to a wiki I was using at the time for general note taking and thought collection. When that already overlong page became entirely unwieldy in 2009, I decided it deserved a site all its own, and here it is.

The focus

From the beginning of this project I’ve deliberately avoided interjecting any sort of running commentary or narrative into the topics, preferring instead to simply gather Scripture passages together topically and let them speak for themselves. I sometimes compare it to Nave’s Topical Bible for this reason.

But I’ve come to realize what I’m crafting here is more than just a concordance of the Bible. I’ve gone beyond merely collecting instances of specific words into the realm of synthesizing and drawing application from biblical concepts and ideas. Relative lack of commentary notwithstanding, the work I’m engaged in here is not unlike systematic theology.

In recent years this has led me to more careful introspection about what exactly an ideal topic page should look like here. In the past I was content if a topic had maybe a dozen verses—enough to seem convincing—but lately I’ve made a more conscious effort to lay open “the whole counsel of God”^[3]. I’m now aiming for completion, an exhaustive list of relevant Scripture passages for every topic I explore.

For example, one of my favorite topics here is God the Father, where I’ve cataloged the places in Scripture where God is called “Father” in one sense or another. This study has aided me immensely in understanding better the full nature of God the Father and how I relate to him both as part of his creation and as his adopted, spirit-born child.

The name

This new emphasis on completion is why I chose Tota Scriptura as the title for the project. Fitting nicely with the more well-known principle of sola Scriptura (Scripture alone), the reformation doctrine of tota Scriptura (all of Scripture) is about “embracing the whole counsel of God as it is revealed in the entirety of sacred Scripture”^[4].

. . . he [Jesus] interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.^[5]

. . . for I [Paul] did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.^[3]

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable . . .^[6]

The inspiration

Great encouragement for this project is found in the opening chapter of Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology:

A good theological analysis must find and treat fairly all the relevant Bible passages for each particular topic, not just some or a few of the relevant passages.^[7]

It would be a tremendous help to the church if Christians generally would give much more time to searching out topics in Scripture for themselves and drawing conclusions . . .^[8]

I’ve drawn real and important conclusions from the study I’ve done here, and through it God’s Word and Spirit have informed—even intruded into—my worldview and my practical life.

Grudem says this better than I can:

The study of theology is not merely a theoretical exercise of the intellect. It is a study of the living God, and of the wonders of all his works in creation and redemption. We cannot study this subject dispassionately! . . . In the study of the teachings of God’s Word, it should not surprise us if we often find our hearts spontaneously breaking forth in expressions of praise and delight . . .^[8]

My prayer as you browse these pages is that you, like me, will be “confronted with the total weight of the teaching of Scripture,”^[9] and that you would join me in rejoicing over God’s word “like one who finds great spoil.”^[10]

Soli Deo gloria!

Joey Day
February 2017

1. Psalm 119:105 #
2. Hebrews 4:12 #
3. Acts 20:26–27  # ^{3.0 3.1}
4. Sproul, R.C. “Tota Scriptura.” Tabletalk Magazine. Oct 2008 (pp. 4–7). #
5. Luke 24:27 #
6. 2 Timothy 3:16–17 #
7. Grudem, Wayne (2009). Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (p. 24). Zondervan. #
8. Ibid. (p. 37).  # ^{8.0 8.1}
9. Ibid. (p. 28). #
10. Psalm 119:162 #