Systematic Theology (Volume 1 of 3)
by Augustus Hopkins Strong · English · Gutenberg #44035 · 1,800,030 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Systematic Theology (Volume 1 of 3)
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: Systematic Theology (Volume 1 of 3)
Author: Augustus Hopkins Strong
Release date: October 25, 2013 [eBook #44035]
Most recently updated: June 15, 2020
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44035
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY (VOLUME 1 OF 3) ***
Systematic Theology
A Compendium and Commonplace-Book
Designed For The Use Of Theological Students
By
Augustus Hopkins Strong, D.D., LL.D.
President and Professor of Biblical Theology in the Rochester Theological
Seminary
Revised and Enlarged
In Three Volumes
Volume 1
The Doctrine of God
The Judson Press
Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, St. Louis, Los Angeles, Kansas City,
Seattle, Toronto
1907
CONTENTS
Preface
Part I. Prolegomena.
Chapter I. Idea Of Theology.
I. Definition of Theology.
II. Aim of Theology.
III. Possibility of Theology.
1. The existence of a God.
2. Man’s capacity for the knowledge of God
3. God’s revelation of himself to man.
IV. Necessity of Theology.
V. Relation of Theology to Religion.
1. Derivation.
2. False Conceptions.
3. Essential Idea.
4. Inferences.
Chapter II. Material of Theology.
I. Sources of Theology.
1. Scripture and Nature.
2. Scripture and Rationalism.
3. Scripture and Mysticism.
4. Scripture and Romanism.
II. Limitations of Theology.
III. Relations of Material to Progress in Theology.
Chapter III. Method Of Theology.
I. Requisites to the study of Theology.
II. Divisions of Theology.
III. History of Systematic Theology.
IV. Order of Treatment in Systematic Theology.
V. Text-Books in Theology.
Part II. The Existence Of God.
Chapter I. Origin Of Our Idea Of God’s Existence.
I. First Truths in General.
II. The Existence of God a first truth.
1. Its universality.
2. Its necessity.
3. Its logical independence and priority.
III. Other Supposed Sources of our Idea of God’s Existence.
IV. Contents of this Intuition.
Chapter II. Corroborative Evidences Of God’s Existence.
I. The Cosmological Argument, or Argument from Change in Nature.
II. The Teleological Argument, or Argument from Order and Useful
Collocation in Nature.
III. The Anthropological Argument, or Argument from Man’s Mental and
Moral Nature.
IV. The Ontological Argument, or Argument from our Abstract and
Necessary Ideas.
Chapter III. Erroneous Explanations, And Conclusion.
I. Materialism.
II. Materialistic Idealism.
III. Idealistic Pantheism.
IV. Ethical Monism.
Part III. The Scriptures A Revelation From God.
Chapter I. Preliminary Considerations.
I. Reasons _a priori_ for expecting a Revelation from God.
II. Marks of the Revelation man may expect.
III. Miracles, as attesting a Divine Revelation.
1. Definition of Miracle.
2. Possibility of Miracle.
3. Probability of Miracles.
4. Amount of Testimony necessary to prove a Miracle.
5. Evidential force of Miracles.
6. Counterfeit Miracles.
IV. Prophecy as Attesting a Divine Revelation.
V. Principles of Historical Evidence applicable to the Proof of a
Divine Revelation.
1. As to documentary evidence.
2. As to testimony in general.
Chapter II. Positive Proofs That The Scriptures Are A Divine
Revelation.
I. Genuineness of the Christian Documents.
1. Genuineness of the Books of the New Testament.
1st. The Myth-theory of Strauss (1808-1874).
2nd. The Tendency-theory of Baur (1792-1860).
3d. The Romance-theory of Renan (1823-1892).
4th. The Development-theory of Harnack (born 1851).
2. Genuineness of the Books of the Old Testament.
II. Credibility of the Writers of the Scriptures.
III. The Supernatural Character of the Scripture Teaching.
1. Scripture teaching in general.
2. Moral System of the New Testament.
3. The person and character of Christ.
4. The testimony of Christ to himself—as being a messenger from
God and as being one with God.
IV. The Historical Results of the Propagation of Scripture Doctrine.
Chapter III. Inspiration Of The Scriptures.
I. Definition of Inspiration.
II. Proof of Inspiration.
III. Theories of Inspiration.
1. The Intuition-theory.
2. The Illumination Theory.
3. The Dictation-theory.
4. The Dynamical Theory.
IV. The Union of the Divine and Human Elements in Inspiration.
V. Objections to the Doctrine of Inspiration.
1. Errors in matters of Science.
2. Errors in matters of History.
3. Errors in Morality.
4. Errors of Reasoning.
5. Errors in quoting or interpreting the Old Testament.
6. Errors in Prophecy.
7. Certain books unworthy of a place in inspired Scripture.
8. Portions of the Scripture books written by others than the
persons to whom they are ascribed.
9. Sceptical or fictitious Narratives.
10. Acknowledgment of the non-inspiration of Scripture
teachers and their writings.
Part IV. The Nature, Decrees, And Works Of God.
Chapter I. The Attributes Of God.
I. Definition of the term Attributes.
II. Relation of the divine Attributes to the divine Essence.
III. Methods of determining the divine Attributes.
IV. Classification of the Attributes.
V. Absolute or Immanent Attributes.
First division.—Spirituality, and attributes therein involved.
1. Life.
2. Personality.
Second Division.—Infinity, and attributes therein involved.
1. Self-existence.
2. Immutability.
3. Unity.
Third Division.—Perfection, and attributes therein involved.
1. Truth.
2. Love.
3. Holiness.
VI. Relative or Transitive Attributes.
First Division.—Attributes having relation to Time and Space.
1. Eternity.
2. Immensity.
Second Division.—Attributes having relation to Creation.
1. Omnipresence.
2. Omniscience.
3. Omnipotence.
Third Division.—Attributes having relation to Moral Beings.
1. Veracity and Faithfulness, or Transitive Truth.
2. Mercy and Goodness, or Transitive Love.
3. Justice and Righteousness, or Transitive Holiness.
VII. Rank and Relations of the several Attributes.
1. Holiness the fundamental attribute in God.
2. The holiness of God the ground of moral obligation.
Chapter II. Doctrine Of The Trinity.
I. In Scriptures there are Three who are recognized as God.
1. Proofs from the New Testament.
A. The Father is recognized as God.
B. Jesus Christ is recognized as God.
C. The Holy Spirit is recognized as God.
2. Intimations of the Old Testament.
A. Passages which seem to teach plurality of some sort in the
Godhead.
B. Passages relating to the Angel of Jehovah.
C. Descriptions of the divine Wisdom and Word.
D. Descriptions of the Messiah.
II. These Three are so described in Scripture that we are compelled
to conceive of them as distinct Persons.
1. The Father and the Son are persons distinct from each other.
2. The Father and the Son are persons distinct from the Spirit.
3. The Holy Spirit is a person.
III. This Tripersonality of the Divine Nature is not merely economic
and temporal, but is immanent and eternal.
1. Scripture proof that these distinctions of personality are
eternal.
2. Errors refuted by the foregoing passages.
A. The Sabellian.
B. The Arian.
IV. This Tripersonality is not Tritheism; for, while there are three
Persons, there is but one Essence.
V. The Three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are equal.
1. These titles belong to the Persons.
2. Qualified sense of these titles.
3. Generation and procession consistent with equality.
VI. Inscrutable, yet not self-contradictory, this Doctrine furnishes
the Key to all other Doctrines.
1. The mode of this triune existence is inscrutable.
2. The Doctrine of the Trinity is not self-contradictory.
3. The doctrine of the Trinity has important relations to other
doctrines.
Chapter III. The Decrees Of God.
I. Definition of Decrees.
II. Proof of the Doctrine of Decrees.
1. From Scripture.
2. From Reason.
A. From the Divine Foreknowledge.
B. From the Divine Wisdom.
C. From the Divine Immutability.
D. From the Divine Benevolence.
III. Objections to the Doctrine of Decrees.
1. That they are inconsistent with the free agency of man.
2. That they take away all motive for human exertion.
3. That they make God the author of sin.
IV. Concluding Remarks.
1. Practical uses of the doctrine of decrees.
2. True method of preaching the doctrine.
[Cover Art]
[Transcriber’s Note: The above cover image was produced by the submitter
at Distributed Proofreaders, and is being placed into the public domain.]
Christo Deo Salvatori.
“THE EYE SEES ONLY THAT WHICH IT BRINGS WITH IT THE POWER OF
SEEING.”—_Cicero._
“OPEN THOU MINE EYES, THAT I MAY BEHOLD WONDROUS THINGS OUT OF THY
LAW.”—_Psalm 119:18._
“FOR WITH THEE IS THE FOUNTAIN OF LIFE: IN THY LIGHT SHALL WE SEE
LIGHT.”—_Psalm 36:9._
“FOR WE KNOW IN PART, AND WE PROPHESY IN PART; BUT WHEN THAT WHICH IS
PERFECT IS COME, THAT WHICH IS IN PART SHALL BE DONE AWAY.”—_1 Cor. 13:9,
10._
PREFACE
The present work is a revision and enlargement of my “Systematic
Theology,” first published in 1886. Of the original work there have been
printed seven editions, each edition embodying successive corrections and
supposed improvements. During the twenty years which have intervened since
its first publication I have accumulated much new material, which I now
offer to the reader. My philosophical and critical point of view meantime
has also somewhat changed. While I still hold to the old doctrines, I
interpret them differently and expound them more clearly, because I seem
to myself to have reached a fundamental truth which throws new light upon
them all. This truth I have tried to set forth in my book entitled “Christ
in Creation,” and to that book I refer the reader for further information.
That Christ is the one and only Revealer of God, in nature, in humanity,
in history, in science, in Scripture, is in my judgment the key to
theology. This view implies a monistic and idealistic conception of the
world, together with an evolutionary idea as to its origin and progress.
But it is the very antidote to pantheism, in that it recognizes evolution
as only the method of the transcendent and personal Christ, who fills all
in all, and who makes the universe teleological and moral from its centre
to its circumference and from its beginning until now.
Neither evolution nor the higher criticism has any terrors to one who
regards them as parts of Christ’s creating and educating process. The
Christ in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge himself
furnishes all the needed safeguards and limitations. It is only because
Christ has been forgotten that nature and law have been personified, that
history has been regarded as unpurposed development, that Judaism has been
referred to a merely human origin, that Paul has been thought to have
switched the church off from its proper track even before it had gotten
fairly started on its course, that superstition and illusion have come to
seem the only foundation for the sacrifices of the martyrs and the
triumphs of modern missions. I believe in no such irrational and atheistic
evolution as this. I believe rather in him in whom all things consist, who
is with his people even to the end of the world, and who has promised to
lead them into all the truth.
Philosophy and science are good servants of Christ, but they are poor
guides when they rule out the Son of God. As I reach my seventieth year
and write these words on my birthday, I am thankful for that personal
experience of union with Christ which has enabled me to see in science and
philosophy the teaching of my Lord. But this same personal experience has
made me even more alive to Christ’s teaching in Scripture, has made me
recognize in Paul and John a truth profounder than that disclosed by any
secular writers, truth with regard to sin and atonement for sin, that
satisfies the deepest wants of my nature and that is self-evidencing and
divine.
I am distressed by some common theological tendencies of our time, because
I believe them to be false to both science and religion. How men who have
ever felt themselves to be lost sinners and who have once received pardon
from their crucified Lord and Savior can thereafter seek to pare down his
attributes, deny his deity and atonement, tear from his brow the crown of
miracle and sovereignty, relegate him to the place of a merely moral
teacher who influences us only as does Socrates by words spoken across a
stretch of ages, passes my comprehension. Here is my test of orthodoxy: Do
we pray to Jesus? Do we call upon the name of Christ, as did Stephen and
all the early church? Is he our living Lord, omnipresent, omniscient,
omnipotent? Is he divine only in the sense in which we are divine, or is
he the only-begotten Son, God manifest in the flesh, in whom is all the
fulness of the Godhead bodily? What think ye of the Christ? is still the
critical question, and none are entitled to the name of Christian who, in
the face of the evidence he has furnished us, cannot answer the question
aright.
Under the influence of Ritschl and his Kantian relativism, many of our
teachers and preachers have swung off into a practical denial of Christ’s
deity and of his atonement. We seem upon the verge of a second Unitarian
defection, that will break up churches and compel secessions, in a worse
manner than did that of Channing and Ware a century ago. American
Christianity recovered from that disaster only by vigorously asserting the
authority of Christ and the inspiration of the Scriptures. We need a new
vision of the Savior like that which Paul saw on the way to Damascus and
John saw on the isle of Patmos, to convince us that Jesus is lifted above
space and time, that his existence antedated creation, that he conducted
the march of Hebrew history, that he was born of a virgin, suffered on the
cross, rose from the dead, and now lives forevermore, the Lord of the
universe, the only God with whom we have to do, our Savior here and our
Judge hereafter. Without a revival of this faith our churches will become
secularized, mission enterprise will die out, and the candlestick will be
removed out of its place as it was with the seven churches of Asia, and as
it has been with the apostate churches of New England.
I print this revised and enlarged edition of my “Systematic Theology,” in
the hope that its publication may do something to stem this fast advancing
tide, and to confirm the faith of God’s elect. I make no doubt that the
vast majority of Christians still hold the faith that was once for all
delivered to the saints, and that they will sooner or later separate
themselves from those who deny the Lord who bought them. When the enemy
comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord will raise up a standard
against him. I would do my part in raising up such a standard. I would
lead others to avow anew, as I do now, in spite of the supercilious
assumptions of modern infidelity, my firm belief, only confirmed by the
experience and reflection of a half-century, in the old doctrines of
holiness as the fundamental attribute of God, of an original transgression
and sin of the whole human race, in a divine preparation in Hebrew history
for man’s redemption, in the deity, preëxistence, virgin birth, vicarious
atonement and bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord, and in his
future coming to judge the quick and the dead. I believe that these are
truths of science as well as truths of revelation; that the supernatural
will yet be seen to be most truly natural; and that not the open-minded
theologian but the narrow-minded scientist will be obliged to hide his
head at Christ’s coming.
The present volume, in its treatment of Ethical Monism, Inspiration, the
Attributes of God, and the Trinity, contains an antidote to most of the
false doctrine which now threatens the safety of the church. I desire
especially to call attention to the section on Perfection, and the
Attributes therein involved, because I believe that the recent merging of
Holiness in Love, and the practical denial that Righteousness is
fundamental in God’s nature, are responsible for the utilitarian views of
law and the superficial views of sin which now prevail in some systems of
theology. There can be no proper doctrine of the atonement and no proper
doctrine of retribution, so long as Holiness is refused its preëminence.
Love must have a norm or standard, and this norm or standard can be found
only in Holiness. The old conviction of sin and the sense of guilt that
drove the convicted sinner to the cross are inseparable from a firm belief
in the self-affirming attribute of God as logically prior to and as
conditioning the self-communicating attribute. The theology of our day
needs a new view of the Righteous One. Such a view will make it plain that
God must be reconciled before man can be saved, and that the human
conscience can be pacified only upon condition that propitiation is made
to the divine Righteousness. In this volume I propound what I regard as
the true Doctrine of God, because upon it will be based all that follows
in the volumes on the Doctrine of Man, and the Doctrine of Salvation.
The universal presence of Christ, the Light that lighteth every man, in
heathen as well as in Christian lands, to direct or overrule all movements
of the human mind, gives me confidence that the recent attacks upon the
Christian faith will fail of their purpose. It becomes evident at last
that not only the outworks are assaulted, but the very citadel itself. We
are asked to give up all belief in special revelation. Jesus Christ, it is
said, has come in the flesh precisely as each one of us has come, and he
was before Abraham only in the same sense that we were. Christian
experience knows how to characterize such doctrine so soon as it is
clearly stated. And the new theology will be of use in enabling even
ordinary believers to recognize soul-destroying heresy even under the mask
of professed orthodoxy.
I make no apology for the homiletical element in my book. To be either
true or useful, theology must be a passion. _Pectus est quod theologum
facit_, and no disdainful cries of “Pectoral Theology!” shall prevent me
from maintaining that the eyes of the heart must be enlightened in order
to perceive the truth of God, and that to know the truth it is needful to
do the truth. Theology is a science which can be successfully cultivated
only in connection with its practical application. I would therefore, in
every discussion of its principles, point out its relations to Christian
experience, and its power to awaken Christian emotions and lead to
Christian decisions. Abstract theology is not really scientific. Only that
theology is scientific which brings the student to the feet of Christ.
I would hasten the day when in the name of Jesus every knee shall bow. I
believe that, if any man serve Christ, him the Father will honor, and that
to serve Christ means to honor him as I honor the Father. I would not
pride myself that I believe so little, but rather that I believe so much.
Faith is God’s measure of a man. Why should I doubt that God spoke to the
fathers through the prophets? Why should I think it incredible that God
should raise the dead? The things that are impossible with men are
possible with God. When the Son of man comes, shall he find faith on the
earth? Let him at least find faith in us who profess to be his followers.
In the conviction that the present darkness is but temporary and that it
will be banished by a glorious sunrising, I give this new edition of my
“Theology” to the public with the prayer that whatever of good seed is in
it may bring forth fruit, and that whatever plant the heavenly Father has
not planted may be rooted up.
ROCHESTER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY,
ROCHESTER, N. Y., AUGUST 3, 1906.
PART I. PROLEGOMENA.
Chapter I. Idea Of Theology.
I. Definition of Theology.
Theology is the science of God and of the relations between God and the
universe.
Though the word “theology” is sometimes employed in dogmatic
writings to designate that single department of the science which
treats of the divine nature and attributes, prevailing usage,
since Abelard (A. D. 1079-1142) entitled his general treatise
“Theologia Christiana,” has included under that term the whole
range of Christian doctrine. Theology, therefore, gives account,
not only of God, but of those relations between God and the
universe in view of which we speak of Creation, Providence and
Redemption.
John the Evangelist is called by the Fathers “the theologian,”
because he most fully treats of the internal relations of the
persons of the Trinity. Gregory Nazianzen (328) received this
designation because he defended the deity of Christ against the
Arians. For a modern instance of this use of the term “theology”
in the narrow sense, see the title of Dr. Hodge’s first volume:
“Systematic Theology, Vol. I: _Theology_.” But theology is not
simply “the science of God,” nor even “the science of God and
man.” It also gives account of the relations between God and the
universe.
If the universe were God, theology would be the only science.
Since the universe is but a manifestation of God and is distinct
from God, there are sciences of nature and of mind. Theology is
“the science of the sciences,” not in the sense of including all
these sciences, but in the sense of using their results and of
showing their underlying ground; (see Wardlaw, Theology, 1:1, 2).
Physical science is not a part of theology. As a mere physicist,
Humboldt did not need to mention the name of God in his “Cosmos”
(but see Cosmos, 2:418, where Humboldt says: “Psalm 104 presents
an image of the whole Cosmos”). Bishop of Carlisle: “Science is
atheous, and therefore cannot be atheistic.”
Only when we consider the relations of finite things to God, does
the study of them furnish material for theology. Anthropology is a
part of theology, because man’s nature is the work of God and
because God’s dealings with man throw light upon the character of
God. God is known through his works and his activities. Theology
therefore gives account of these works and activities so far as
they come within our knowledge. All other sciences require
theology for their complete explanation. Proudhon: “If you go very
deeply into politics, you are sure to get into theology.” On the
definition of theology, see Luthardt, Compendium der Dogmatik,
1:2; Blunt, Dict. Doct. and Hist. Theol., art.: Theology; H. B.
Smith, Introd. to Christ. Theol., 44; cf. Aristotle, Metaph., 10,
7, 4; 11, 6, 4; and Lactantius, De Ira Dei, 11.
II. Aim of Theology.
The aim of theology is the ascertainment of the facts respecting God and
the relations between God and the universe, and the exhibition of these
facts in their rational unity, as connected parts of a formulated and
organic system of truth.
In defining theology as a science, we indicate its aim. Science
does not create; it discovers. Theology answers to this
description of a science. It discovers facts and relations, but it
does not create them. Fisher, Nature and Method of Revelation,
141—“Schiller, referring to the ardor of Columbus’s faith, says
that if the great discoverer had not found a continent, he would
have created one. But faith is not creative. Had Columbus not
found the land—had there been no real object answering to his
belief—his faith would have been a mere fancy.” Because theology
deals with objective facts, we refuse to define it as “the science
of religion”; _versus_ Am. Theol. Rev., 1850:101-126, and
Thornwell, Theology, 1:139. Both the facts and the relations with
which theology has to deal have an existence independent of the
subjective mental processes of the theologian.
Science is not only the observing, recording, verifying, and
formulating of objective facts; it is also the recognition and
explication of the relations between these facts, and the
synthesis of both the facts and the rational principles which
unite them in a comprehensive, rightly proportioned, and organic
system. Scattered bricks and timbers are not a house; severed
arms, legs, heads and trunks from a dissecting room are not living
men; and facts alone do not constitute science. Science = facts +
relations; Whewell, Hist. Inductive Sciences, I, Introd.,
43—“There may be facts without science, as in the knowledge of the
common quarryman; there may be thought without science, as in the
early Greek philosophy.” A. MacDonald: “The _a priori_ method is
related to the _a posteriori_ as the sails to the ballast of the
boat: the more philosophy the better, provided there are a
sufficient number of facts; otherwise, there is danger of
upsetting the craft.”
President Woodrow Wilson: “ ‘Give us the facts’ is the sharp
injunction of our age to its historians ... But facts of
themselves do not constitute the truth. The truth is abstract, not
concrete. It is the just idea, the right revelation, of what
things mean. It is evoked only by such arrangements and orderings
of facts as suggest meanings.” Dove, Logic of the Christian Faith,
14—“The pursuit of science is the pursuit of relations.” Everett,
Science of Thought, 3—“Logy” (_e. g._, in “theology”), from λόγος,
= word + reason, expression + thought, fact + idea; _cf._ _John
1:1—_“In the beginning was the Word.”
As theology deals with objective facts and their relations, so its
arrangement of these facts is not optional, but is determined by
the nature of the material with which it deals. A true theology
thinks over again God’s thoughts and brings them into God’s order,
as the builders of Solomon’s temple took the stones already hewn,
and put them into the places for which the architect had designed
them; Reginald Heber: “No hammer fell, no ponderous axes rung;
Like some tall palm, the mystic fabric sprung.” Scientific men
have no fear that the data of physics will narrow or cramp their
intellects; no more should they fear the objective facts which are
the data of theology. We cannot make theology, any more than we
can make a law of physical nature. As the natural philosopher is
“Naturæ minister et interpres,” so the theologian is the servant
and interpreter of the objective truth of God. On the Idea of
Theology as a System, see H. B. Smith, Faith and Philosophy,
126-166.
III. Possibility of Theology.
The possibility of theology has a threefold ground: 1. In the existence of
a God who has relations to the universe; 2. In the capacity of the human
mind for knowing God and certain of these relations; and 3. In the
provision of means by which God is brought into actual contact with the
mind, or in other words, in the provision of a revelation.
Any particular science is possible only when three conditions
combine, namely, the actual existence of the object with which the
science deals, the subjective capacity of the human mind to know
that object, and the provision of definite means by which the
object is brought into contact with the mind. We may illustrate
the conditions of theology from selenology—the science, not of
“lunar politics,” which John Stuart Mill thought so vain a
pursuit, but of lunar physics. Selenology has three conditions: 1.
the objective existence of the moon; 2. the subjective capacity of
the human mind to know the moon; and 3. the provision of some
means (_e. g._, the eye and the telescope) by which the gulf
between man and the moon is bridged over, and by which the mind
can come into actual cognizance of the facts with regard to the
moon.
1. The existence of a God.
_In the existence of a God who has relations to the universe._—It has been
objected, indeed, that since God and these relations are objects
apprehended only by faith, they are not proper objects of knowledge or
subjects for science. We reply:
A. Faith is knowledge, and a higher sort of knowledge.—Physical science
also rests upon faith—faith in our own existence, in the existence of a
world objective and external to us, and in the existence of other persons
than ourselves; faith in our primitive convictions, such as space, time,
cause, substance, design, right; faith in the trustworthiness of our
faculties and in the testimony of our fellow men. But physical science is
not thereby invalidated, because this faith, though unlike
sense-perception or logical demonstration, is yet a cognitive act of the
reason, and may be defined as certitude with respect to matters in which
verification is unattainable.
The objection to theology thus mentioned and answered is expressed
in the words of Sir William Hamilton, Metaphysics, 44,
531—“Faith—belief—is the organ by which we apprehend what is
beyond our knowledge.” But science is knowledge, and what is
beyond our knowledge cannot be matter for science. Pres. E. G.
Robinson says well, that knowledge and faith cannot be severed
from one another, like bulkheads in a ship, the first of which may
be crushed in, while the second still keeps the vessel afloat. The
mind is one,—“it cannot be cut in two with a hatchet.” Faith is
not antithetical to knowledge,—it is rather a larger and more
fundamental sort of knowledge. It is never opposed to reason, but
only to sight. Tennyson was wrong when he wrote: “We have but
faith: we cannot know; For knowledge is of things we see” (In
Memoriam, Introduction). This would make sensuous phenomena the
only objects of knowledge. Faith in supersensible realities, on
the contrary, is the highest exercise of reason.
Sir William Hamilton consistently declares that the highest
achievement of science is the erection of an altar “To the Unknown
God.” This, however, is not the representation of Scripture. _Cf._
_John 17:3—_“this is life eternal, that they should know thee, the
only true God”; and _Jer. 9:24—_“let him that glorieth glory in
that he hath understanding and knoweth me.” For criticism of
Hamilton, see H. B. Smith, Faith and Philosophy, 297-336. Fichte:
“We are born in faith.” Even Goethe called himself a believer in
the five senses. Balfour, Defence of Philosophic Doubt, 277-295,
shows that intuitive beliefs in space, time, cause, substance,
right, are presupposed in the acquisition of all other knowledge.
Dove, Logic of the Christian Faith, 14—“If theology is to be
overthrown because it starts from some primary terms and
propositions, then all other sciences are overthrown with it.”
Mozley, Miracles, defines faith as “unverified reason.” See A. H.
Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 19-30.
B. Faith is a knowledge conditioned by holy affection.—The faith which
apprehends God’s being and working is not opinion or imagination. It is
certitude with regard to spiritual realities, upon the testimony of our
rational nature and upon the testimony of God. Its only peculiarity as a
cognitive act of the reason is that it is conditioned by holy affection.
As the science of æsthetics is a product of reason as including a power of
recognizing beauty practically inseparable from a love for beauty, and as
the science of ethics is a product of reason as including a power of
recognizing the morally right practically inseparable from a love for the
morally right, so the science of theology is a product of reason, but of
reason as including a power of recognizing God which is practically
inseparable from a love for God.
We here use the term “reason” to signify the mind’s whole power of
knowing. Reason in this sense includes states of the sensibility,
so far as they are indispensable to knowledge. We cannot know an
orange by the eye alone; to the understanding of it, taste is as
necessary as sight. The mathematics of sound cannot give us an
understanding of music; we need also a musical ear. Logic alone
cannot demonstrate the beauty of a sunset, or of a noble
character; love for the beautiful and the right precedes knowledge
of the beautiful and the right. Ullman draws attention to the
derivation of _sapientia_, wisdom, from _sapĕre_, to taste. So we
cannot know God by intellect alone; the heart must go with the
intellect to make knowledge of divine things possible. “Human
things,” said Pascal, “need only to be known, in order to be
loved; but divine things must first be loved, in order to be
known.” “This [religious] faith of the intellect,” said Kant, “is
founded on the assumption of moral tempers.” If one were utterly
indifferent to moral laws, the philosopher continues, even then
religious truths “would be supported by strong arguments from
analogy, but not by such as an obstinate, sceptical heart might
not overcome.”
Faith, then, is the highest knowledge, because it is the act of
the integral soul, the insight, not of one eye alone, but of the
two eyes of the mind, intellect and love to God. With one eye we
can see an object as flat, but, if we wish to see around it and
get the stereoptic effect, we must use both eyes. It is not the
theologian, but the undevout astronomer, whose science is one-eyed
and therefore incomplete. The errors of the rationalist are errors
of defective vision. Intellect has been divorced from heart, that
is, from a right disposition, right affections, right purpose in
life. Intellect says: “I cannot know God”; and intellect is right.
What intellect says, the Scripture also says: _1 Cor. 2:14—_“the
natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for
they are foolishness unto him; and he cannot know them, because
they are spiritually judged”_; 1:21—_“in the wisdom of God the
world through its wisdom knew not God.”
The Scripture on the other hand declares that “by faith we know”_
(Heb. 11:3)_. By “heart” the Scripture means simply the governing
disposition, or the sensibility + the will; and it intimates that
the heart is an organ of knowledge: _Ex. 35:25—_“the women that
were wise-hearted”; _Ps. 34:8—_“O taste and see that Jehovah is
good” = a right taste precedes correct sight; _Jer. 24:7—_“I will
give them a heart to know me”; _Mat. 5:8—_“Blessed are the pure in
heart; for they shall see God”; _Luke 24:25—_“slow of heart to
believe”; _John 7:17—_“If any man willeth to do his will, he shall
know of the teaching, whether it is of God, or whether I speak
from myself”; _Eph. 1:18—_“having the eyes of your heart
enlightened, that ye may know”; _1 John 4:7, 8—_“Every one that
loveth is begotten of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not
knoweth not God.” See Frank, Christian Certainty, 303-324; Clarke,
Christ. Theol., 362; Illingworth, Div. and Hum. Personality,
114-137; R. T. Smith, Man’s Knowledge of Man and of God, 6;
Fisher, Nat. and Method of Rev., 6; William James, The Will to
Believe, 1-31; Geo. T. Ladd, on Lotze’s view that love is
essential to the knowledge of God, in New World, Sept.
1895:401-406; Gunsaulus, Transfig. of Christ, 14, 15.
C. Faith, therefore, can furnish, and only faith can furnish, fit and
sufficient material for a scientific theology.—As an operation of man’s
higher rational nature, though distinct from ocular vision or from
reasoning, faith is not only a kind, but the highest kind, of knowing. It
gives us understanding of realities which to sense alone are inaccessible,
namely, God’s existence, and some at least of the relations between God
and his creation.
Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 1:50, follows Gerhard in making faith the
joint act of intellect and will. Hopkins, Outline Study of Man,
77, 78, speaks not only of “the æsthetic reason” but of “the moral
reason.” Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith, 91, 109, 145,
191—“Faith is the certitude concerning matter in which
verification is unattainable.” Emerson, Essays, 2:96—“Belief
consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul—unbelief in
rejecting them.” Morell, Philos. of Religion, 38, 52, 53, quotes
Coleridge: “Faith consists in the synthesis of the reason and of
the individual will, ... and by virtue of the former (that is,
reason), faith must be a light, a form of knowing, a beholding of
truth.” Faith, then, is not to be pictured as a blind girl
clinging to a cross—faith is not blind—“Else the cross may just as
well be a crucifix or an image of Gaudama.” “Blind unbelief,” not
blind faith, “is sure to err, And scan his works in vain.” As in
conscience we recognize an invisible authority, and know the truth
just in proportion to our willingness to “do the truth,” so in
religion only holiness can understand holiness, and only love can
understand love (_cf._ _John 3:21—_“he that doeth the truth cometh
to the light”).
If a right state of heart be indispensable to faith and so to the
knowledge of God, can there be any “theologia irregenitorum,” or
theology of the unregenerate? Yes, we answer; just as the blind
man can have a science of optics. The testimony of others gives it
claims upon him; the dim light penetrating the obscuring membrane
corroborates this testimony. The unregenerate man can know God as
power and justice, and can fear him. But this is not a knowledge
of God’s inmost character; it furnishes some material for a
defective and ill-proportioned theology; but it does not furnish
fit or sufficient material for a correct theology. As, in order to
make his science of optics satisfactory and complete, the blind
man must have the cataract removed from his eyes by some competent
oculist, so, in order to any complete or satisfactory theology,
the veil must be taken away from the heart by God himself (_cf._
_2 Cor. 3:15, 16_—“_a veil lieth upon their heart. But whensoever
it_ [marg. ‘a man’] _shall turn to the Lord, the veil is taken
away_”).
Our doctrine that faith is knowledge and the highest knowledge is
to be distinguished from that of Ritschl, whose theology is an
appeal to the heart to the _exclusion_ of the head—to _fiducia_
without _notitia_. But _fiducia_ includes _notitia_, else it is
blind, irrational, and unscientific. Robert Browning, in like
manner, fell into a deep speculative error, when, in order to
substantiate his optimistic faith, he stigmatized human knowledge
as merely apparent. The appeal of both Ritschl and Browning from
the head to the heart should rather be an appeal from the narrower
knowledge of the mere intellect to the larger knowledge
conditioned upon right affection. See A. H. Strong, The Great
Poets and their Theology, 441. On Ritschl’s postulates, see
Stearns, Evidence of Christian Experience, 274-280, and
Pfleiderer, Die Ritschl’sche Theologie. On the relation of love
and will to knowledge, see Kaftan, in Am. Jour. Theology,
1900:717; Hovey, Manual Christ. Theol., 9; Foundations of our
Faith, 12, 13; Shedd, Hist. Doct., 1:154-164; Presb. Quar., Oct.
1871, Oct. 1872, Oct. 1873; Calderwood, Philos. Infinite, 99, 117;
Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 2-8; New Englander, July, 1873:481;
Princeton Rev., 1864:122; Christlieb, Mod. Doubt, 124, 125; Grau,
Glaube als höchste Vernunft, in Beweis des Glaubens, 1865:110;
Dorner, Gesch. prot. Theol., 228; Newman, Univ. Sermons, 206;
Hinton, Art of Thinking, Introd. by Hodgson, 5.
2. Man’s capacity for the knowledge of God
_In the capacity of the human mind for knowing God and certain of these
relations._—But it has urged that such knowledge is impossible for the
following reasons:
A. Because we can know only phenomena. We reply: (_a_) We know mental as
well as physical phenomena. (_b_) In knowing phenomena, whether mental or
physical, we know substance as underlying the phenomena, as manifested
through them, and as constituting their ground of unity. (_c_) Our minds
bring to the observation of phenomena not only this knowledge of
substance, but also knowledge of time, space, cause, and right, realities
which are in no sense phenomenal. Since these objects of knowledge are not
phenomenal, the fact that God is not phenomenal cannot prevent us from
knowing him.
What substance is, we need not here determine. Whether we are
realists or idealists, we are compelled to grant that there cannot
be phenomena without noumena, cannot be appearances without
something that appears, cannot be qualities without something that
is qualified. This something which underlies or stands under
appearance or quality we call substance. We are Lotzeans rather
than Kantians, in our philosophy. To say that we know, not the
self, but only its manifestations in thought, is to confound self
with its thinking and to teach psychology without a soul. To say
that we know no external world, but only its manifestations in
sensations, is to ignore the principle that binds these sensations
together; for without a somewhat in which qualities inhere they
can have no ground of unity. In like manner, to say that we know
nothing of God but his manifestations, is to confound God with the
world and practically to deny that there is a God.
Stählin, in his work on Kant, Lotze and Ritschl, 186-191, 218,
219, says well that “limitation of knowledge to phenomena involves
the elimination from theology of all claim to know the objects of
the Christian faith as they are in themselves.” This criticism
justly classes Ritschl with Kant, rather than with Lotze who
maintains that knowing phenomena we know also the noumena
manifested in them. While Ritschl professes to follow Lotze, the
whole drift of his theology is in the direction of the Kantian
identification of the world with our sensations, mind with our
thoughts, and God with such activities of his as we can perceive.
A divine nature apart from its activities, a preexistent Christ,
an immanent Trinity, are practically denied. Assertions that God
is self-conscious love and fatherhood become judgments of merely
subjective value. On Ritschl, see the works of Orr, of Garvie, and
of Swing; also Minton, in Pres. and Ref. Rev., Jan. 1902:162-169,
and C. W. Hodge, _ibid._, Apl. 1902:321-326; Flint, Agnosticism,
590-597; Everett, Essays Theol. and Lit., 92-99.
We grant that we can know God only so far as his activities reveal
him, and so far as our minds and hearts are receptive of his
revelation. The appropriate faculties must be exercised—not the
mathematical, the logical, or the prudential, but the ethical and
the religious. It is the merit of Ritschl that he recognizes the
practical in distinction from the speculative reason; his error is
in not recognizing that, when we do thus use the proper powers of
knowing, we gain not merely subjective but also objective truth,
and come in contact not simply with God’s activities but also with
God himself. Normal religious judgments, though dependent upon
subjective conditions, are not simply “judgments of worth” or
“value-judgments,”—they give us the knowledge of “things in
themselves.” Edward Caird says of his brother John Caird (Fund.
Ideas of Christianity, Introd. cxxi)—“The conviction that God can
be known and is known, and that, in the deepest sense, all our
knowledge is knowledge of him, was the corner-stone of his
theology.”
Ritschl’s phenomenalism is allied to the positivism of Comte, who
regarded all so-called knowledge of other than phenomenal objects
as purely negative. The phrase “Positive Philosophy” implies
indeed that all knowledge of mind is negative; see Comte, Pos.
Philosophy, Martineau’s translation, 26, 28, 33—“In order to
observe, your intellect must pause from activity—yet it is this
very activity you want to observe. If you cannot effect the pause,
you cannot observe; if you do effect it, there is nothing to
observe.” This view is refuted by the two facts; (1)
consciousness, and (2) memory; for consciousness is the knowing of
the self side by side with the knowing of its thoughts, and memory
is the knowing of the self side by side with the knowing of its
past; see Martineau, Essays Philos. and Theol., 1:24-40, 207-212.
By phenomena we mean “facts, in distinction from their ground,
principle, or law”; “neither phenomena nor qualities, as such, are
perceived, but objects, percepts, or beings; and it is by an
after-thought or reflex process that these are connected as
qualities and are referred to as substances”; see Porter, Human
Intellect, 51, 238, 520, 619-637, 640-645.
Phenomena may be internal, _e. g._, thoughts; in this case the
noumenon is the mind, of which these thoughts are the
manifestations. Or, phenomena may be external, _e. g._, color,
hardness, shape, size; in this case the noumenon is matter, of
which these qualities are the manifestations. But qualities,
whether mental or material, imply the existence of a substance to
which they belong: they can no more be conceived of as existing
apart from substance, than the upper side of a plank can be
conceived of as existing without an under side; see Bowne, Review
of Herbert Spencer, 47, 207-217; Martineau, Types of Ethical
Theory, 1; 455, 456—“Comte’s assumption that mind cannot know
itself or its states is exactly balanced by Kant’s assumption that
mind cannot know anything outside of itself.... It is precisely
because all knowledge is of relations that it is not and cannot be
of phenomena alone. The absolute cannot _per se_ be known, because
in being known it would _ipso facto_ enter into relations and be
absolute no more. But neither can the phenomenal _per se_ be
known, _i. e._, be known as phenomenal, without simultaneous
cognition of what is non-phenomenal.” McCosh, Intuitions, 138-154,
states the characteristics of substance as (1) being, (2) power,
(3) permanence. Diman, Theistic Argument, 337, 363—“The theory
that disproves God, disproves an external world and the existence
of the soul.” We know something beyond phenomena, viz.: law,
cause, force,—or we can have no science; see Tulloch, on Comte, in
Modern Theories, 53-73; see also Bib. Sac., 1874:211; Alden,
Philosophy, 44; Hopkins, Outline Study of Man, 87; Fleming, Vocab.
of Philosophy, art.: Phenomena; New Englander, July, 1875:537-539.
B. Because we can know only that which bears analogy to our own nature or
experience. We reply: (_a_) It is not essential to knowledge that there be
similarity of nature between the knower and the known. We know by
difference as well as by likeness. (_b_) Our past experience, though
greatly facilitating new acquisitions, is not the measure of our possible
knowledge. Else the first act of knowledge would be inexplicable, and all
revelation of higher characters to lower would be precluded, as well as
all progress to knowledge which surpasses our present attainments. (_c_)
Even if knowledge depended upon similarity of nature and experience, we
might still know God, since we are made in God’s image, and there are
important analogies between the divine nature and our own.
(_a_) The dictum of Empedocles, “Similia similibus percipiuntur,”
must be supplemented by a second dictum, “Similia dissimilibus
percipiuntur.” All things are alike, in being objects. But knowing
is distinguishing, and there must be contrast between objects to
awaken our attention. God knows sin, though it is the antithesis
to his holy being. The ego knows the non-ego. We cannot know even
self, without objectifying it, distinguishing it from its
thoughts, and regarding it as another.
(_b_) _Versus_ Herbert Spencer, First Principles, 79-82—“Knowledge
is recognition and classification.” But we reply that a thing must
first be perceived in order to be recognized or compared with
something else; and this is as true of the first sensation as of
the later and more definite forms of knowledge,—indeed there is no
sensation which does not involve, as its complement, an at least
incipient perception; see Sir William Hamilton, Metaphysics, 351,
352; Porter, Human Intellect, 206.
(_c_) Porter, Human Intellect, 486—“Induction is possible only
upon the assumption that the intellect of man is a reflex of the
divine intellect, or that man is made in the image of God.” Note,
however, that man is made in God’s image, not God in man’s. The
painting is the image of the landscape, not, _vice versa_, the
landscape the image of the painting; for there is much in the
landscape that has nothing corresponding to it in the painting.
Idolatry perversely makes God in the image of man, and so deifies
man’s weakness and impurity. Trinity in God may have no exact
counterpart in man’s present constitution, though it may disclose
to us the goal of man’s future development and the meaning of the
increasing differentiation of man’s powers. Gore, Incarnation,
116—“If anthropomorphism as applied to God is false, yet
theomorphism as applied to man is true; man is made in God’s
image, and his qualities are, not the measure of the divine, but
their counterpart and real expression.” See Murphy, Scientific
Bases, 122; McCosh, in Internat. Rev., 1875:105; Bib. Sac.,
1867:624; Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory, 2:4-8, and Study of
Religion, 1:94.
C. Because we know only that of which we can conceive, in the sense of
forming an adequate mental image. We reply: (_a_) It is true that we know
only that of which we can conceive, if by the term “conceive” we mean our
distinguishing in thought the object known from all other objects. But,
(_b_) The objection confounds conception with that which is merely its
occasional accompaniment and help, namely, the picturing of the object by
the imagination. In this sense, conceivability is not a final test of
truth. (_c_) That the formation of a mental image is not essential to
conception or knowledge, is plain when we remember that, as a matter of
fact, we both conceive and know many things of which we cannot form a
mental image of any sort that in the least corresponds to the reality; for
example, force, cause, law, space, our own minds. So we may know God,
though we cannot form an adequate mental image of him.
The objection here refuted is expressed most clearly in the words
of Herbert Spencer, First Principles, 25-36, 98—“The reality
underlying appearances is totally and forever inconceivable by
us.” Mansel, Prolegomena Logica, 77, 78 (_cf._ 26) suggests the
source of this error in a wrong view of the nature of the concept:
“The first distinguishing feature of a concept, viz.: that it
cannot in itself be depicted to sense or imagination.” Porter,
Human Intellect, 392 (see also 429, 656)—“The _concept_ is not a
mental image”—only the _percept_ is. Lotze: “Color in general is
not representable by any image; it looks neither green nor red,
but has no look whatever.” The generic horse has no particular
color, though the individual horse may be black, white, or bay. So
Sir William Hamilton speaks of “the unpicturable notions of the
intelligence.”
Martineau, Religion and Materialism, 39, 40—“This doctrine of
Nescience stands in exactly the same relation to causal power,
whether you construe it as Material Force or as Divine Agency.
Neither can be _observed_; one or the other must be _assumed_. If
you admit to the category of knowledge only what we learn from
observation, particular or generalized, then is Force unknown; if
you extend the word to what is imported by the intellect itself
into our cognitive acts, to make them such, then is God known.”
Matter, ether, energy, protoplasm, organism, life,—no one of these
can be portrayed to the imagination; yet Mr. Spencer deals with
them as objects of Science. If these are not inscrutable, why
should he regard the Power that gives unity to all things as
inscrutable?
Herbert Spencer is not in fact consistent with himself, for in
divers parts of his writings he calls the inscrutable Reality back
of phenomena the one, eternal, ubiquitous, infinite, ultimate,
absolute Existence, Power and Cause. “It seems,” says Father
Dalgairns, “that a great deal is known about the Unknowable.”
Chadwick, Unitarianism, 75—“The beggar phrase ‘Unknowable’
becomes, after Spencer’s repeated designations of it, as rich as
Croesus with all saving knowledge.” Matheson: “To know that we
know nothing is already to have reached a fact of knowledge.” If
Mr. Spencer intended to exclude God from the realm of Knowledge,
he should first have excluded him from the realm of Existence; for
to grant that he is, is already to grant that we not only may know
him, but that we actually to some extent do know him; see D. J.
Hill, Genetic Philosophy, 22; McCosh, Intuitions, 186-189 (Eng.
ed., 214); Murphy, Scientific Bases, 133; Bowne, Review of
Spencer, 30-34; New Englander, July, 1875:543, 544; Oscar Craig,
in Presb. Rev., July, 1883:594-602.
D. Because we can know truly only that which we know in whole and not in
part. We reply: (_a_) The objection confounds partial knowledge with the
knowledge of a part. We know the mind in part, but we do not know a part
of the mind. (_b_) If the objection were valid, no real knowledge of
anything would be possible, since we know no single thing in all its
relations. We conclude that, although God is a being not composed of
parts, we may yet have a partial knowledge of him, and this knowledge,
though not exhaustive, may yet be real, and adequate to the purposes of
science.
(_a_) The objection mentioned in the text is urged by Mansel,
Limits of Religious Thought, 97, 98, and is answered by Martineau,
Essays, 1:291. The mind does not exist in space, and it has no
parts: we cannot speak of its south-west corner, nor can we divide
it into halves. Yet we find the material for mental science in
partial knowledge of the mind. So, while we are not “geographers
of the divine nature” (Bowne, Review of Spencer, 72), we may say
with Paul, not “now know we a part of God,” but “now I know [God],
in part”_ (1 Cor. 13:12)_. We may know truly what we do not know
exhaustively; see _Eph. 3:19—_“to know the love of Christ which
passeth knowledge.” I do not perfectly understand myself, yet I
know myself in part; so I may know God, though I do not perfectly
understand him.
(_b_) The same argument that proves God unknowable proves the
universe unknowable also. Since every particle of matter in the
universe attracts every other, no one particle can be exhaustively
explained without taking account of all the rest. Thomas Carlyle:
“It is a mathematical fact that the casting of this pebble from my
hand alters the centre of gravity of the universe.” Tennyson,
Higher Pantheism: “Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of
the crannies; Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little
flower; but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and
all in all, I should know what God and man is.” Schurman,
Agnosticism, 119—“Partial as it is, this vision of the divine
transfigures the life of man on earth.” Pfleiderer, Philos.
Religion, 1:167—“A faint-hearted agnosticism is worse than the
arrogant and titanic gnosticism against which it protests.”
E. Because all predicates of God are negative, and therefore furnish no
real knowledge. We answer: (_a_) Predicates derived from our
consciousness, such as spirit, love, and holiness, are positive. (_b_) The
terms “infinite” and “absolute,” moreover, express not merely a negative
but a positive idea—the idea, in the former case, of the absence of all
limit, the idea that the object thus described goes on and on forever; the
idea, in the latter case, of entire self-sufficiency. Since predicates of
God, therefore, are not merely negative, the argument mentioned above
furnishes no valid reason why we may not know him.
_Versus_ Sir William Hamilton, Metaphysics, 530—“The absolute and
the infinite can each only be conceived as a negation of the
thinkable; in other words, of the absolute and infinite we have no
conception at all.” Hamilton here confounds the infinite, or the
absence of _all_ limits, with the indefinite, or the absence of
all _known_ limits. _Per contra_, see Calderwood, Moral
Philosophy, 248, and Philosophy of the Infinite, 272—“Negation of
one thing is possible only by affirmation of another.” Porter,
Human Intellect, 652—“If the Sandwich Islanders, for lack of name,
had called the ox a _not-hog_, the use of a negative appellation
would not necessarily authorize the inference of a want of
definite conceptions or positive knowledge.” So with the infinite
or not-finite, the unconditioned or not-conditioned, the
independent or not-dependent,—these names do not imply that we
cannot conceive and know it as something positive. Spencer, First
Principles, 92—“Our consciousness of the Absolute, indefinite
though it is, is positive, and not negative.”
Schurman, Agnosticism, 100, speaks of “the farce of nescience
playing at omniscience in setting the bounds of science.” “The
agnostic,” he says, “sets up the invisible picture of a _Grand
Être_, formless and colorless in itself, absolutely separated from
man and from the world—blank within and void without—its very
existence indistinguishable from its non-existence, and, bowing
down before this idolatrous creation, he pours out his soul in
lamentations over the incognizableness of such a mysterious and
awful non-entity.... The truth is that the agnostic’s abstraction
of a Deity is unknown, only because it is unreal.” See McCosh,
Intuitions, 194, note; Mivart, Lessons from Nature, 363. God is
not necessarily infinite in every respect. He is infinite only in
every excellence. A plane which is unlimited in the one respect of
length may be limited in another respect, such as breadth. Our
doctrine here is not therefore inconsistent with what immediately
follows.
F. Because to know is to limit or define. Hence the Absolute as unlimited,
and the Infinite as undefined, cannot be known. We answer: (_a_) God is
absolute, not as existing in _no_ relation, but as existing in no
_necessary_ relation; and (_b_) God is infinite, not as excluding all
coexistence of the finite with himself, but as being the ground of the
finite, and so unfettered by it. (_c_) God is actually limited by the
unchangeableness of his own attributes and personal distinctions, as well
as by his self-chosen relations to the universe he has created and to
humanity in the person of Christ. God is therefore limited and defined in
such a sense as to render knowledge of him possible.
_Versus_ Mansel, Limitations of Religious Thought, 75-84, 93-95;
_cf._ Spinoza: “Omnis determinatio est negatio;” hence to define
God is to deny him. But we reply that perfection is inseparable
from limitation. Man can be other than he is: not so God, at least
internally. But this limitation, inherent in his unchangeable
attributes and personal distinctions, is God’s perfection.
Externally, all limitations upon God are self-limitations, and so
are consistent with his perfection. That God should not be able
thus to limit himself in creation and redemption would render all
self-sacrifice in him impossible, and so would subject him to the
greatest of limitations. We may say therefore that God’s 1.
_Perfection_ involves his limitation to (_a_) personality, (_b_)
trinity, (_c_) righteousness; 2. _Revelation_ involves his
self-limitation in (_a_) decree, (_b_) creation, (_c_)
preservation, (_d_) government, (_e_) education of the world; 3.
_Redemption_ involves his infinite self-limitation in the (_a_)
person and (_b_) work of Jesus Christ; see A. H. Strong, Christ in
Creation, 87-101, and in Bap. Quar. Rev., Jan. 1891:521-532.
Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 135—“The infinite is not the
quantitative all; the absolute is not the unrelated.... Both
absolute and infinite mean only the independent ground of things.”
Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, Introduc., 10—“Religion has to do, not
with _an_ Object that must let itself be known because its very
existence is contingent upon its being known, but with _the_
Object in relation to whom we are truly subject, dependent upon
him, and waiting until he manifest himself.” James Martineau,
Study of Religion, 1:346—“We must not confound the _infinite_ with
the _total_.... The self-abnegation of infinity is but a form of
self-assertion, and the only form in which it can reveal
itself.... However instantaneous the omniscient thought, however
sure the almighty power, the execution has to be distributed in
time, and must have an order of successive steps; on no other
terms can the eternal become temporal, and the infinite
articulately speak in the finite.”
Perfect personality excludes, not _self_-determination, but
determination _from without_, determination _by another_. God’s
self-limitations are the self-limitations of love, and therefore
the evidences of his perfection. They are signs, not of weakness
but of power. God has limited himself to the method of evolution,
gradually unfolding himself in nature and in history. The
government of sinners by a holy God involves constant
self-repression. The education of the race is a long process of
divine forbearance; Herder: “The limitations of the pupil are
limitations of the teacher also.” In inspiration, God limits
himself by the human element through which he works. Above all, in
the person and work of Christ, we have infinite self-limitation:
Infinity narrows itself down to a point in the incarnation, and
holiness endures the agonies of the Cross. God’s promises are also
self-limitations. Thus both nature and grace are self-imposed
restrictions upon God, and these self-limitations are the means by
which he reveals himself. See Pfleiderer, Die Religion, 1:189,
195; Porter, Human Intellect, 653; Murphy, Scientific Bases, 130;
Calderwood, Philos. Infinite, 168; McCosh, Intuitions, 186;
Hickok, Rational Cosmology, 85; Martineau, Study of Religion,
2:85, 86, 362; Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 1:189-191.
G. Because all knowledge is relative to the knowing agent; that is, what
we know, we know, not as it is objectively, but only as it is related to
our own senses and faculties. In reply: (_a_) We grant that we can know
only that which has relation to our faculties. But this is simply to say
that we know only that which we come into mental contact with, that is, we
know only what we know. But, (_b_) We deny that what we come into mental
contact with is known by us as other than it is. So far as it is known at
all, it is known as it is. In other words, the laws of our knowing are not
merely arbitrary and regulative, but correspond to the nature of things.
We conclude that, in theology, we are equally warranted in assuming that
the laws of our thought are laws of God’s thought, and that the results of
normally conducted thinking with regard to God correspond to the objective
reality.
_Versus_ Sir Wm. Hamilton, Metaph., 96-116, and Herbert Spencer,
First Principles, 68-97. This doctrine of relativity is derived
from Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, who holds that _a priori_
judgments are simply “regulative.” But we reply that when our
primitive beliefs are found to be simply regulative, they will
cease to regulate. The forms of thought are also facts of nature.
The mind does not, like the glass of a kaleidoscope, itself
furnish the forms; it recognizes these as having an existence
external to itself. The mind reads its ideas, not _into_ nature,
but _in_ nature. Our intuitions are not green goggles, which make
all the world _seem_ green: they are the lenses of a microscope,
which enable us to see what is objectively _real_ (Royce, Spirit
of Mod. Philos., 125). Kant called our understanding “the
legislator of nature.” But it is so, only as discoverer of
nature’s laws, not as creator of them. Human reason does impose
its laws and forms upon the universe; but, in doing this, it
interprets the real meaning of the universe.
Ladd, Philos. of Knowledge: “All judgment implies an objective
truth according to which we judge, which constitutes the standard,
and with which we have something in common, _i. e._, our minds are
part of an infinite and eternal Mind.” French aphorism: “When you
are right, you are more right than you think you are.” God will
not put us to permanent intellectual confusion. Kant vainly wrote
“No thoroughfare” over the reason in its highest exercise.
Martineau, Study of Religion, 1:135, 136—“Over against Kant’s
assumption that the mind cannot know anything outside of itself,
we may set Comte’s equally unwarrantable assumption that the mind
cannot know itself or its states. We cannot have philosophy
without assumptions. You dogmatize if you say that the forms
correspond with reality; but you equally dogmatize if you say that
they do not.... 79—That our cognitive faculties correspond to
things _as they are_, is much less surprising than that they
should correspond to things _as they are not_.” W. T. Harris, in
Journ. Spec. Philos., 1:22, exposes Herbert Spencer’s
self-contradiction: “All knowledge is, not absolute, but relative;
our knowledge of this fact however is, not relative, but
absolute.”
Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, 3:16-21, sets out with
a correct statement of the nature of knowledge, and gives in his
adhesion to the doctrine of Lotze, as distinguished from that of
Kant. Ritschl’s statement may be summarized as follows: “We deal,
not with the abstract God of metaphysics, but with the God
self-limited, who is revealed in Christ. We do not know either
things or God _apart from_ their phenomena or manifestations, as
Plato imagined; we do not know phenomena or manifestations
_alone_, without knowing either things or God, as Kant supposed;
but we do know both things and God _in_ their phenomena or
manifestations, as Lotze taught. We hold to no mystical union with
God, back of all experience in religion, as Pietism does; soul is
always and only active, and religion is the activity of the human
spirit, in which feeling, knowing and willing combine in an
intelligible order.”
But Dr. C. M. Mead, Ritschl’s Place in the History of Doctrine,
has well shown that Ritschl has not followed Lotze. His
“value-judgments” are simply an application to theology of the
“regulative” principle of Kant. He holds that we can know things
not as they are in themselves, but only as they are for us. We
reply that what things are worth for us depends on what they are
in themselves. Ritschl regards the doctrines of Christ’s
preexistence, divinity and atonement as intrusions of metaphysics
into theology, matters about which we cannot know, and with which
we have nothing to do. There is no propitiation or mystical union
with Christ; and Christ is our Example, but not our atoning
Savior. Ritschl does well in recognizing that love in us gives
eyes to the mind, and enables us to see the beauty of Christ and
his truth. But our judgment is not, as he holds, a merely
subjective value-judgment,—it is a coming in contact with
objective fact. On the theory of knowledge held by Kant, Hamilton
and Spencer, see Bishop Temple, Bampton Lectures for 1884:13; H.
B. Smith, Faith and Philosophy, 297-336; J. S. Mill, Examination,
1:113-134; Herbert, Modern Realism Examined; M. B. Anderson, art.:
“Hamilton,” in Johnson’s Encyclopædia; McCosh, Intuitions,
139-146, 340, 341, and Christianity and Positivism, 97-123;
Maurice, What is Revelation? Alden, Intellectual Philosophy,
48-79, esp. 71-79; Porter, Hum. Intellect, 523; Murphy, Scientific
Bases, 103; Bib. Sac. April, 1868:341; Princeton Rev., 1864:122;
Bowne, Review of Herbert Spencer, 76; Bowen, in Princeton Rev.,
March, 1878:445-448; Mind, April, 1878:257; Carpenter, Mental
Physiology, 117; Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism, 109-113;
Iverach, in Present Day Tracts, 5: No. 29; Martineau, Study of
Religion, 1:79, 120, 121, 135, 136.
3. God’s revelation of himself to man.
_In God’s actual revelation of himself and certain of these relations._—As
we do not in this place attempt a positive proof of God’s existence or of
man’s capacity for the knowledge of God, so we do not now attempt to prove
that God has brought himself into contact with man’s mind by revelation.
We shall consider the grounds of this belief hereafter. Our aim at present
is simply to show that, granting the fact of revelation, a scientific
theology is possible. This has been denied upon the following grounds:
A. That revelation, as a making known, is necessarily internal and
subjective—either a mode of intelligence, or a quickening of man’s
cognitive powers—and hence can furnish no objective facts such as
constitute the proper material for science.
Morell, Philos. Religion, 128-131, 143—“The Bible cannot in strict
accuracy of language be called a revelation, since a revelation
always implies an actual process of intelligence in a living
mind.” F. W. Newman, Phases of Faith, 152—“Of our moral and
spiritual God we know nothing without—everything within.” Theodore
Parker: “Verbal revelation can never communicate a simple idea
like that of God, Justice, Love, Religion”; see review of Parker
in Bib. Sac., 18:24-27. James Martineau, Seat of Authority in
Religion: “As many minds as there are that know God at first hand,
so many revealing acts there have been, and as many as know him at
second hand are strangers to revelation”; so, assuming external
revelation to be impossible, Martineau subjects all the proofs of
such revelation to unfair destructive criticism. Pfleiderer,
Philos. Religion, 1:185—“As all revelation is originally an
_inner_ living experience, the springing up of religious truth in
the heart, no external event can belong in itself to revelation,
no matter whether it be naturally or supernaturally brought
about.” Professor George M. Forbes: “Nothing can be revealed to us
which we do not grasp with our reason. It follows that, so far as
reason acts normally, it is a part of revelation.” Ritchie, Darwin
and Hegel, 30—“The revelation of God is the growth of the idea of
God.”
In reply to this objection, urged mainly by idealists in philosophy, (_a_)
We grant that revelation, to be effective, must be the means of inducing a
new mode of intelligence, or in other words, must be understood. We grant
that this understanding of divine things is impossible without a
quickening of man’s cognitive powers. We grant, moreover, that revelation,
when originally imparted, was often internal and subjective.
Matheson, Moments on the Mount, 51-53, on _Gal. 1:16—_“to reveal
his Son in me”: “The revelation on the way to Damascus would not
have enlightened Paul, had it been merely a vision to his eye.
Nothing can be revealed _to_ us which has not been revealed _in_
us. The eye does not see the beauty of the landscape, nor the ear
hear the beauty of music. So flesh and blood do not reveal Christ
to us. Without the teaching of the Spirit, the external facts will
be only like the letters of a book to a child that cannot read.”
We may say with Channing: “I am more sure that my rational nature
is from God, than that any book is the expression of his will.”
(_b_) But we deny that external revelation is therefore useless or
impossible. Even if religious ideas sprang wholly from within, an external
revelation might stir up the dormant powers of the mind. Religious ideas,
however, do not spring wholly from within. External revelation can impart
them. Man can reveal himself to man by external communications, and, if
God has equal power with man, God can reveal himself to man in like
manner.
Rogers, in his Eclipse of Faith, asks pointedly: “If Messrs.
Morell and Newman can teach by a book, cannot God do the same?”
Lotze, Microcosmos, 2:660 (book 9, chap. 4), speaks of revelation
as “either contained in some divine act of historic occurrence, or
continually repeated in men’s hearts.” But in fact there is no
alternative here; the strength of the Christian creed is that
God’s revelation is both external and internal; see Gore, in Lux
Mundi, 338. Rainy, in Critical Review, 1:1-21, well says that
Martineau unwarrantably _isolates_ the witness of God to the
individual soul. The inward needs to be combined with the outward,
in order to make sure that it is not a vagary of the imagination.
We need to distinguish God’s revelations from our own fancies.
Hence, before giving the internal, God commonly gives us the
external, as a standard by which to try our impressions. We are
finite and sinful, and we need authority. The external revelation
commends itself as authoritative to the heart which recognizes its
own spiritual needs. External authority evokes the inward witness
and gives added clearness to it, but only historical revelation
furnishes indubitable proof that God is love, and gives us
assurance that our longings after God are not in vain.
(_c_) Hence God’s revelation may be, and, as we shall hereafter see, it
is, in great part, an external revelation in works and words. The universe
is a revelation of God; God’s works in nature precede God’s words in
history. We claim, moreover, that, in many cases where truth was
originally communicated internally, the same Spirit who communicated it
has brought about an external record of it, so that the internal
revelation might be handed down to others than those who first received
it.
We must not limit revelation to the Scriptures. The eternal Word
antedated the written word, and through the eternal Word God is
made known in nature and in history. Internal revelation is
preceded by, and conditioned upon, external revelation. In point
of time earth comes before man, and sensation before perception.
Action best expresses character, and historic revelation is more
by deeds than by words. Dorner, Hist. Prot. Theol., 1:231-264—“The
Word is not in the Scriptures alone. The whole creation reveals
the Word. In nature God shows his power; in incarnation his grace
and truth. Scripture testifies of these, but Scripture is not the
essential Word. The Scripture is truly apprehended and
appropriated when in it and through it we see the living and
present Christ. It does not bind men to itself alone, but it
points them to the Christ of whom it testifies. Christ is the
authority. In the Scriptures he points us to himself and demands
our faith in him. This faith, once begotten, leads us to new
appropriation of Scripture, but also to new criticism of
Scripture. We find Christ more and more in Scripture, and yet we
judge Scripture more and more by the standard which we find in
Christ.”
Newman Smyth, Christian Ethics, 71-82: “There is but one
authority—Christ. His Spirit works in many ways, but chiefly in
two: first, the inspiration of the Scriptures, and, secondly, the
leading of the church into the truth. The latter is not to be
isolated or separated from the former. Scripture is law to the
Christian consciousness, and Christian consciousness in time
becomes law to the Scripture—interpreting, criticizing, verifying
it. The word and the spirit answer to each other. Scripture and
faith are coördinate. Protestantism has exaggerated the first;
Romanism the second. Martineau fails to grasp the coördination of
Scripture and faith.”
(_d_) With this external record we shall also see that there is given
under proper conditions a special influence of God’s Spirit, so to quicken
our cognitive powers that the external record reproduces in our minds the
ideas with which the minds of the writers were at first divinely filled.
We may illustrate the need of internal revelation from Egyptology,
which is impossible so long as the external revelation in the
hieroglyphics is uninterpreted; from the ticking of the clock in a
dark room, where only the lit candle enables us to tell the time;
from the landscape spread out around the Rigi in Switzerland,
invisible until the first rays of the sun touch the snowy mountain
peaks. External revelation (φανέρωσις, _Rom. 1:19, 20_) must be
supplemented by internal revelation (ἀποκάλυψις, _1 Cor. 2:10,
12_). Christ is the organ of external, the Holy Spirit the organ
of internal, revelation. In Christ (_2 Cor. 1:20_) are “the yea”
and “the Amen”—the objective certainty and the subjective
certitude, the reality and the realization.
Objective certainty must become subjective certitude in order to
be a scientific theology. Before conversion we have the first, the
external truth of Christ; only at conversion and after conversion
do we have the second, “Christ formed in us”_ (Gal. 4:19)_. We
have objective revelation at Sinai (_Ex. 20:22_); subjective
revelation in Elisha’s knowledge of Gehazi (_2 K. 5:26_). James
Russell Lowell, Winter Evening Hymn to my Fire: “Therefore with
thee I love to read Our brave old poets: at thy touch how stirs
Life in the withered words! how swift recede Time’s shadows! and
how glows again Through its dead mass the incandescent verse, As
when upon the anvil of the brain It glittering lay, cyclopically
wrought By the fast throbbing hammers of the poet’s thought!”
(_e_) Internal revelations thus recorded, and external revelations thus
interpreted, both furnish objective facts which may serve as proper
material for science. Although revelation in its widest sense may include,
and as constituting the ground of the possibility of theology does
include, both insight and illumination, it may also be used to denote
simply a provision of the external means of knowledge, and theology has to
do with inward revelations only as they are expressed in, or as they agree
with, this objective standard.
We have here suggested the vast scope and yet the insuperable
limitations of theology. So far as God is revealed, whether in
nature, history, conscience, or Scripture, theology may find
material for its structure. Since Christ is not simply the
incarnate Son of God but also the eternal Word, the only Revealer
of God, there is no theology apart from Christ, and all theology
is Christian theology. Nature and history are but the dimmer and
more general disclosures of the divine Being, of which the Cross
is the culmination and the key. God does not intentionally conceal
himself. He wishes to be known. He reveals himself at all times
just as fully as the capacity of his creatures will permit. The
infantile intellect cannot understand God’s boundlessness, nor can
the perverse disposition understand God’s disinterested affection.
Yet all truth is in Christ and is open to discovery by the
prepared mind and heart.
The Infinite One, so far as he is unrevealed, is certainly
unknowable to the finite. But the Infinite One, so far as he
manifests himself, is knowable. This suggests the meaning of the
declarations: _John 1:18—_“No man hath seen God at any time; the
only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath
declared him”; _14:9—_“he that hath seen me hath seen the Father”;
_1 Tim. 6:16—_“whom no man hath seen, nor can see.” We therefore
approve of the definition of Kaftan, Dogmatik, 1—“Dogmatics is the
science of the Christian truth which is believed and acknowledged
in the church upon the ground of the divine revelation”—in so far
as it limits the scope of theology to truth revealed by God and
apprehended by faith. But theology presupposes both God’s external
and God’s internal revelations, and these, as we shall see,
include nature, history, conscience and Scripture. On the whole
subject, see Kahnis, Dogmatik, 3:37-43; Nitzsch, System Christ.
Doct., 72; Luthardt, Fund. Truths, 193; Auberlen, Div. Rev.,
Introd., 29; Martineau, Essays, 1:171, 280; Bib. Sac., 1867:593,
and 1872:428; Porter, Human Intellect, 373-375; C. M. Mead, in
Boston Lectures, 1871:58.
B. That many of the truths thus revealed are too indefinite to constitute
the material for science, because they belong to the region of the
feelings, because they are beyond our full understanding, or because they
are destitute of orderly arrangement.
We reply:
(_a_) Theology has to do with subjective feelings only as they can be
defined, and shown to be effects of objective truth upon the mind. They
are not more obscure than are the facts of morals or of psychology, and
the same objection which would exclude such feelings from theology would
make these latter sciences impossible.
See Jacobi and Schleiermacher, who regard theology as a mere
account of devout Christian feelings, the grounding of which in
objective historical facts is a matter of comparative indifference
(Hagenbach, Hist. Doctrine, 2:401-403). Schleiermacher therefore
called his system of theology “Der Christliche Glaube,” and many
since his time have called their systems by the name of
“Glaubenslehre.” Ritschl’s “value-judgments,” in like manner,
render theology a merely subjective science, if any subjective
science is possible. Kaftan improves upon Ritschl, by granting
that we know, not only Christian feelings, but also Christian
facts. Theology is the science of God, and not simply the science
of faith. Allied to the view already mentioned is that of
Feuerbach, to whom religion is a matter of subjective fancy; and
that of Tyndall, who would remit theology to the region of vague
feeling and aspiration, but would exclude it from the realm of
science; see Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity, translated by
Marian Evans (George Eliot); also Tyndall, Belfast Address.
(_b_) Those facts of revelation which are beyond our full understanding
may, like the nebular hypothesis in astronomy, the atomic theory in
chemistry, or the doctrine of evolution in biology, furnish a principle of
union between great classes of other facts otherwise irreconcilable. We
may define our concepts of God, and even of the Trinity, at least
sufficiently to distinguish them from all other concepts; and whatever
difficulty may encumber the putting of them into language only shows the
importance of attempting it and the value of even an approximate success.
Horace Bushnell: “Theology can never be a science, on account of
the infirmities of language.” But this principle would render void
both ethical and political science. Fisher, Nat. and Meth. of
Revelation, 145—“Hume and Gibbon refer to faith as something too
sacred to rest on proof. Thus religious beliefs are made to hang
in mid-air, without any support. But the foundation of these
beliefs is no less solid for the reason that empirical tests are
not applicable to them. The data on which they rest are real, and
the inferences from the data are fairly drawn.” Hodgson indeed
pours contempt on the whole intuitional method by saying:
“Whatever you are totally ignorant of, assert to be the
explanation of everything else!” Yet he would probably grant that
he begins his investigations by assuming his own existence. The
doctrine of the Trinity is not wholly comprehensible by us, and we
accept it at the first upon the testimony of Scripture; the full
proof of it is found in the fact that each successive doctrine of
theology is bound up with it, and with it stands or falls. The
Trinity is rational because it explains Christian experience as
well as Christian doctrine.
(_c_) Even though there were no orderly arrangement of these facts, either
in nature or in Scripture, an accurate systematizing of them by the human
mind would not therefore be proved impossible, unless a principle were
assumed which would show all physical science to be equally impossible.
Astronomy and geology are constructed by putting together multitudinous
facts which at first sight seem to have no order. So with theology. And
yet, although revelation does not present to us a dogmatic system
ready-made, a dogmatic system is not only implicitly contained therein,
but parts of the system are wrought out in the epistles of the New
Testament, as for example in Rom. 5:12-19; 1 Cor. 15:3, 4; 8:6; 1 Tim.
3:16; Heb. 6:1, 2.
We may illustrate the construction of theology from the dissected
map, two pieces of which a father puts together, leaving his child
to put together the rest. Or we may illustrate from the physical
universe, which to the unthinking reveals little of its order.
“Nature makes no fences.” One thing seems to glide into another.
It is man’s business to distinguish and classify and combine.
Origen: “God gives us truth in single threads, which we must weave
into a finished texture.” Andrew Fuller said of the doctrines of
theology that “they are united together like chain-shot, so that,
whichever one enters the heart, the others must certainly follow.”
George Herbert: “Oh that I knew how all thy lights combine, And
the configuration of their glory; Seeing not only how each verse
doth shine, But all the constellations of the story!”
Scripture hints at the possibilities of combination, in _Rom.
5:12-19_, with its grouping of the facts of sin and salvation
about the two persons, Adam and Christ; in _Rom. 4:24, 25_, with
its linking of the resurrection of Christ and our justification;
in _1 Cor. 3:6_, with its indication of the relations between the
Father and Christ; in _1 Tim. 3:16_, with its poetical summary of
the facts of redemption (see Commentaries of DeWette, Meyer,
Fairbairn); in _Heb. 6:1, 2_, with its statement of the first
principles of the Christian faith. God’s furnishing of concrete
facts in theology, which we ourselves are left to systematize, is
in complete accordance with his method of procedure with regard to
the development of other sciences. See Martineau, Essays, 1:29,
40; Am. Theol. Rev., 1859:101-126—art. on the Idea, Sources and
Uses of Christian Theology.
IV. Necessity of Theology.
The necessity of theology has its grounds:
(_a_) _In the organizing instinct of the human mind._ This organizing
principle is a part of our constitution. The mind cannot endure confusion
or apparent contradiction in known facts. The tendency to harmonize and
unify its knowledge appears as soon as the mind becomes reflective; just
in proportion to its endowments and culture does the impulse to
systematize and formulate increase. This is true of all departments of
human inquiry, but it is peculiarly true of our knowledge of God. Since
the truth with regard to God is the most important of all, theology meets
the deepest want of man’s rational nature. Theology is a rational
necessity. If all existing theological systems were destroyed to-day, new
systems would rise to-morrow. So inevitable is the operation of this law,
that those who most decry theology show nevertheless that they have made a
theology for themselves, and often one sufficiently meagre and blundering.
Hostility to theology, where it does not originate in mistaken fears for
the corruption of God’s truth or in a naturally illogical structure of
mind, often proceeds from a license of speculation which cannot brook the
restraints of a complete Scriptural system.
President E. G. Robinson: “Every man has as much theology as he
can hold.” Consciously or unconsciously, we philosophize, as
naturally as we speak prose. “Se moquer de la philosophie c’est
vraiment philosopher.” Gore, Incarnation, 21—“Christianity became
metaphysical, only because man is rational. This rationality means
that he must attempt ‘to give account of things,’ as Plato said,
‘because he was a man, not merely because he was a Greek.’ ” Men
often denounce systematic theology, while they extol the sciences
of matter. Has God then left only the facts with regard to himself
in so unrelated a state that man cannot put them together? All
other sciences are valuable only as they contain or promote the
knowledge of God. If it is praiseworthy to classify beetles, one
science may be allowed to reason concerning God and the soul. In
speaking of Schelling, Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 173,
satirically exhorts us: “Trust your genius; follow your noble
heart; change your doctrine whenever your heart changes, and
change your heart often,—such is the practical creed of the
romanticists.” Ritchie, Darwin and Hegel, 3—“Just those persons
who disclaim metaphysics are sometimes most apt to be infected
with the disease they profess to abhor—and not to know when they
have it.” See Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 27-52; Murphy,
Scientific Bases of Faith, 195-199.
(_b_) _In the relation of systematic truth to the development of
character._ Truth thoroughly digested is essential to the growth of
Christian character in the individual and in the church. All knowledge of
God has its influence upon character, but most of all the knowledge of
spiritual facts in their relations. Theology cannot, as has sometimes been
objected, deaden the religious affections, since it only draws out from
their sources and puts into rational connection with each other the truths
which are best adapted to nourish the religions affections. On the other
hand, the strongest Christians are those who have the firmest grasp upon
the great doctrines of Christianity; the heroic ages of the church are
those which have witnessed most consistently to them; the piety that can
be injured by the systematic exhibition of them must be weak, or mystical,
or mistaken.
Some knowledge is necessary to conversion—at least, knowledge of
sin and knowledge of a Savior; and the putting together of these
two great truths is a beginning of theology. All subsequent growth
of character is conditioned upon the increase of this knowledge.
_Col. 1:10—αὐξανόμενοι τῇ ἐπιγνώσει τοῦ Θεοῦ [omit ἐν] =
_“increasing by the knowledge of God”—the instrumental dative
represents the knowledge of God as the dew or rain which nurtures
the growth of the plant; _cf._ _3 Pet. 3:18—_“grow in the grace
and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” For texts
which represent truth as nourishment, see _Jer. 3:15—_“feed you
with knowledge and understanding”; _Mat. 4:4—_“Man shall not live
by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth
of God”; _1 Cor. 3:1, 2—_“babes in Christ ... I fed you with milk,
not with meat”; _Heb. 5:14—_“but solid food is for full-grown
men.” Christian character rests upon Christian truth as its
foundation; see _1 Cor. 3:10-15—_“I laid a foundation, and another
buildeth thereon.” See Dorus Clarke, Saying the Catechism; Simon,
on Christ Doct. and Life, in Bib. Sac., July, 1884:433-439.
Ignorance is the mother of superstition, not of devotion. Talbot
W. Chambers:—“Doctrine without duty is a tree without fruits; duty
without doctrine is a tree without roots.” Christian morality is a
fruit which grows only from the tree of Christian doctrine. We
cannot long keep the fruits of faith after we have cut down the
tree upon which they have grown. Balfour, Foundations of Belief,
82—“Naturalistic virtue is parasitic, and when the host perishes,
the parasite perishes also. Virtue without religion will die.”
Kidd, Social Evolution, 214—“Because the fruit survives for a time
when removed from the tree, and even mellows and ripens, shall we
say that it is independent of the tree?” The twelve manner of
fruits on the Christmas-tree are only tacked on,—they never grew
there, and they can never reproduce their kind. The withered apple
swells out under the exhausted receiver, but it will go back again
to its former shrunken form; so the self-righteousness of those
who get out of the atmosphere of Christ and have no divine ideal
with which to compare themselves. W. M. Lisle: “It is the mistake
and disaster of the Christian world that effects are sought
instead of causes.” George A. Gordon, Christ of To-day,
28—“Without the historical Christ and personal love for that
Christ, the broad theology of our day will reduce itself to a
dream, powerless to rouse a sleeping church.”
(_c_) _In the importance to the preacher of definite and just views of
Christian doctrine._ His chief intellectual qualification must be the
power clearly and comprehensively to conceive, and accurately and
powerfully to express, the truth. He can be the agent of the Holy Spirit
in converting and sanctifying men, only as he can wield “the sword of the
Spirit, which is the word of God” (Eph. 6:17), or, in other language, only
as he can impress truth upon the minds and consciences of his hearers.
Nothing more certainly nullifies his efforts than confusion and
inconsistency in his statements of doctrine. His object is to replace
obscure and erroneous conceptions among his hearers by those which are
correct and vivid. He cannot do this without knowing the facts with regard
to God in their relations—knowing them, in short, as parts of a system.
With this truth he is put in trust. To mutilate it or misrepresent it, is
not only sin against the Revealer of it,—it may prove the ruin of men’s
souls. The best safeguard against such mutilation or misrepresentation, is
the diligent study of the several doctrines of the faith in their
relations to one another, and especially to the central theme of theology,
the person and work of Jesus Christ.
The more refined and reflective the age, the more it requires
reasons for feeling. Imagination, as exercised in poetry and
eloquence and as exhibited in politics or war, is not less strong
than of old,—it is only more rational. Notice the progress from
“Buncombe”, in legislative and forensic oratory, to sensible and
logical address. Bassanio in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice,
1:1:113—“Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing.... His
reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff.”
So in pulpit oratory, mere Scripture quotation and fervid appeal
are no longer sufficient. As well be a howling dervish, as to
indulge in windy declamation. Thought is the staple of preaching.
Feeling must be roused, but only by bringing men to “the knowledge
of the truth”_ (2 Tim. 2:25)_. The preacher must furnish the basis
for feeling by producing intelligent conviction. He must instruct
before he can move. If the object of the preacher is first to know
God, and secondly to make God known, then the study of theology is
absolutely necessary to his success.
Shall the physician practice medicine without study of physiology,
or the lawyer practice law without study of jurisprudence?
Professor Blackie: “One may as well expect to make a great patriot
out of a fencing-master, as to make a great orator out of a mere
rhetorician.” The preacher needs doctrine, to prevent his being a
mere barrel-organ, playing over and over the same tunes. John
Henry Newman: “The false preacher is one who has to say something;
the true preacher is one who has something to say.” Spurgeon,
Autobiography, 1:167—“Constant change of creed is sure loss. If a
tree has to be taken up two or three times a year, you will not
need to build a very large loft in which to store the apples. When
people are shifting their doctrinal principles, they do not bring
forth much fruit.... We shall never have great preachers till we
have great divines. You cannot build a man of war out of a
currant-bush, nor can great soul-moving preachers be formed out of
superficial students.” Illustrate the harmfulness of ignorant and
erroneous preaching, by the mistake in a physician’s prescription;
by the wrong trail at Lake Placid which led astray those ascending
Whiteface; by the sowing of acorns whose crop was gathered only
after a hundred years. Slight divergences from correct doctrine on
our part may be ruinously exaggerated in those who come after us.
Though the moth-miller has no teeth, its offspring has. _2 Tim.
2:2—_“And the things which thou hast heard from me among many
witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able
to teach others also.”
(_d_) _In the intimate connection between correct doctrine and the safety
and aggressive power of the church._ The safety and progress of the church
is dependent upon her “holding the pattern of sound words” (2 Tim. 1:13),
and serving as “pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15). Defective
understanding of the truth results sooner or later in defects of
organization, of operation, and of life. Thorough comprehension of
Christian truth as an organized system furnishes, on the other hand, not
only an invaluable defense against heresy and immorality, but also an
indispensable stimulus and instrument in aggressive labor for the world’s
conversion.
The creeds of Christendom have not originated in mere speculative
curiosity and logical hair-splitting. They are statements of
doctrine in which the attacked and imperiled church has sought to
express the truth which constitutes her very life. Those who
deride the early creeds have small conception of the intellectual
acumen and the moral earnestness which went to the making of them.
The creeds of the third and fourth centuries embody the results of
controversies which exhausted the possibilities of heresy with
regard to the Trinity and the person of Christ, and which set up
bars against false doctrine to the end of time. Mahaffy: “What
converted the world was not the example of Christ’s life,—it was
the dogma of his death.” Coleridge: “He who does not withstand,
has no standing ground of his own.” Mrs. Browning: “Entire
intellectual toleration is the mark of those who believe nothing.”
E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 360-362—“A doctrine is but a
precept in the style of a proposition; and a precept is but a
doctrine in the form of a command.... Theology is God’s garden;
its trees are trees of his planting; and ‘all the trees of the
Lord are full of sap’_ (Ps. 104:16)._”
Bose, Ecumenical Councils: “A creed is not catholic because a
council of many or of few bishops decreed it, but because it
expresses the common conviction of entire generations of men and
women who turned their understanding of the New Testament into
those forms of words.” Dorner: “The creeds are the precipitate of
the religious consciousness of mighty men and times.” Foster,
Christ. Life and Theol., 162—“It ordinarily requires the shock of
some great event to startle men into clear apprehension and
crystallization of their substantial belief. Such a shock was
given by the rough and coarse doctrine of Arius, upon which the
conclusion arrived at in the Council of Nice followed as rapidly
as in chilled water the crystals of ice will sometimes form when
the containing vessel receives a blow.” Balfour, Foundations of
Belief, 287—“The creeds were not explanations, but rather denials
that the Arian and Gnostic explanations were sufficient, and
declarations that they irremediably impoverished the idea of the
Godhead. They insisted on preserving that idea in all its
inexplicable fulness.” Denny, Studies in Theology, 192—“Pagan
philosophies tried to capture the church for their own ends, and
to turn it into a school. In self-defense the church was compelled
to become somewhat of a school on its own account. It had to
assert its facts; it had to define its ideas; it had to interpret
in its own way those facts which men were misinterpreting.”
Professor Howard Osgood: “A creed is like a backbone. A man does
not need to wear his backbone in front of him; but he must have a
backbone, and a straight one, or he will be a flexible if not a
humpbacked Christian.” Yet we must remember that creeds are
_credita_, and not _credenda_; historical statements of what the
church _has_ believed, not infallible prescriptions of what the
church _must_ believe. George Dana Boardman, The Church,
98—“Creeds are apt to become cages.” Schurman, Agnosticism,
151—“The creeds were meant to be defensive fortifications of
religion; alas, that they should have sometimes turned their
artillery against the citadel itself.” T. H. Green: “We are told
that we must be loyal to the beliefs of the Fathers. Yes, but who
knows what the Fathers believe now?” George A. Gordon, Christ of
To-day, 60—“The assumption that the Holy Spirit is not concerned
in the development of theological thought, nor manifest in the
intellectual evolution of mankind, is the superlative heresy of
our generation.... The metaphysics of Jesus are absolutely
essential to his ethics.... If his thought is a dream, his
endeavor for man is a delusion.” See Schaff, Creeds of
Christendom, 1:8, 15, 16; Storrs, Div. Origin of Christianity,
121; Ian Maclaren (John Watson), Cure of Souls, 152; Frederick
Harrison, in Fortnightly Rev., Jan. 1889.
(_e_) _In the direct and indirect injunctions of Scripture._ The Scripture
urges upon us the thorough and comprehensive study of the truth (John
5:39, marg.,—“Search the Scriptures”), the comparing and harmonizing of
its different parts (1 Cor. 2:13—“comparing spiritual things with
spiritual”), the gathering of all about the great central fact of
revelation (Col. 1:27—“which is Christ in you, the hope of glory”), the
preaching of it in its wholeness as well as in its due proportions (2 Tim.
4:2—“Preach the word”). The minister of the Gospel is called “a scribe who
hath been made a disciple to the kingdom of heaven” (Mat. 13:52); the
“pastors” of the churches are at the same time to be “teachers” (Eph.
4:11); the bishop must be “apt to teach” (1 Tim. 3:2), “handling aright
the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15), “holding to the faithful word which is
according to the teaching, that he may be able both to exhort in the sound
doctrine and to convict the gainsayers” (Tit. 1:9).
As a means of instructing the church and of securing progress in
his own understanding of Christian truth, it is well for the
pastor to preach regularly each month a doctrinal sermon, and to
expound in course the principal articles of the faith. The
treatment of doctrine in these sermons should be simple enough to
be comprehensible by intelligent youth; it should be made vivid
and interesting by the help of brief illustrations; and at least
one-third of each sermon should be devoted to the practical
applications of the doctrine propounded. See Jonathan Edwards’s
sermon on the Importance of the Knowledge of Divine Truth, in
Works, 4:1-15. The actual sermons of Edwards, however, are not
models of doctrinal preaching for our generation. They are too
scholastic in form, too metaphysical for substance; there is too
little of Scripture and too little of illustration. The doctrinal
preaching of the English Puritans in a similar manner addressed
itself almost wholly to adults. The preaching of our Lord on the
other hand was adapted also to children. No pastor should count
himself faithful, who permits his young people to grow up without
regular instruction from the pulpit in the whole circle of
Christian doctrine. Shakespeare, K. Henry VI, 2nd part,
4:7—“Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge the wing wherewith
we fly to heaven.”
V. Relation of Theology to Religion.
Theology and religion are related to each other as effects, in different
spheres, of the same cause. As theology is an effect produced in the
sphere of systematic thought by the facts respecting God and the universe,
so religion is an effect which these same facts produce in the sphere of
individual and collective life. With regard to the term “religion”,
notice:
1. Derivation.
(_a_) The derivation from _religāre_, “to bind back” (man to God), is
negatived by the authority of Cicero and of the best modern etymologists;
by the difficulty, on this hypothesis, of explaining such forms as
_religio_, _religens_; and by the necessity, in that case, of presupposing
a fuller knowledge of sin and redemption than was common to the ancient
world.
(_b_) The more correct derivation is from _relegĕre_, “to go over again,”
“carefully to ponder.” Its original meaning is therefore “reverent
observance” (of duties due to the gods).
For advocacy of the derivation of _religio_, as meaning “binding
duty,” from _religāre_, see Lange, Dogmatik, 1:185-196. This
derivation was first proposed by Lactantius, Inst. Div., 4:28, a
Christian writer. To meet the objection that the form _religio_
seems derived from a verb of the third conjugation, Lange cites
_rebellio_, from _rebellāre_, and _optio_, from _optāre_. But we
reply that these verbs of the first conjugation, like many others,
are probably derived from obsolete verbs of the third conjugation.
For the derivation favored in the text, see Curtius, Griechische
Etymologie, 5te Aufl., 364; Fick, Vergl. Wörterb. der indoger.
Spr., 2:227; Vanicek, Gr.-Lat. Etym. Wörterb., 2:829; Andrews,
Latin Lexicon, _in voce_; Nitzsch, System of Christ. Doctrine, 7;
Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 75-77; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 1:6;
Kahnis, Dogmatik, 3:18; Menzies, History of Religion, 11; Max
Müller, Natural Religion, lect. 2.
2. False Conceptions.
(_a_) Religion is not, as Hegel declared, a kind of knowing; for it would
then be only an incomplete form of philosophy, and the measure of
knowledge in each case would be the measure of piety.
In a system of idealistic pantheism, like that of Hegel, God is
the subject of religion as well as its object. Religion is God’s
knowing of himself through the human consciousness. Hegel did not
utterly ignore other elements in religion. “Feeling, intuition,
and faith belong to it,” he said, “and mere cognition is
one-sided.” Yet he was always looking for the movement of
_thought_ in all forms of life; God and the universe were but
developments of the primordial _idea_. “What knowledge is worth
knowing,” he asked, “if God is unknowable? To know God is eternal
life, and thinking is also true worship.” Hegel’s error was in
regarding life as a process of thought, rather than in regarding
thought as a process of life. Here was the reason for the
bitterness between Hegel and Schleiermacher. Hegel rightly
considered that feeling must become intelligent before it is truly
religious, but he did not recognize the supreme importance of love
in a theological system. He gave even less place to the will than
he gave to the emotions, and he failed to see that the knowledge
of God of which Scripture speaks is a knowing, not of the
intellect alone, but of the whole man, including the affectional
and voluntary nature.
Goethe: “How can a man come to know himself? Never by thinking,
but by doing. Try to do your duty, and you will know at once what
you are worth. You cannot play the flute by blowing alone,—you
must use your fingers.” So we can never come to know God by
thinking alone. _John 7:17—_“If any man willeth to do his will, he
will know of the teaching, whether it is of God.” The Gnostics,
Stapfer, Henry VIII, all show that there may be much theological
knowledge without true religion. Chillingworth’s maxim, “The Bible
only, the religion of Protestants,” is inadequate and inaccurate;
for the Bible, without faith, love, and obedience, may become a
fetich and a snare: _John 5:39,40—_“Ye search the Scriptures, ...
and ye will not come to me, that ye may have life.” See Sterrett,
Studies in Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion; Porter, Human
Intellect, 59, 60, 412, 525-536, 589, 650; Morell, Hist. Philos.,
476, 477; Hamerton, Intel. Life, 214; Bib. Sac., 9:374.
(_b_) Religion is not, as Schleiermacher held, the mere feeling of
dependence; for such feeling of dependence is not religious, unless
exercised toward God and accompanied by moral effort.
In German theology, Schleiermacher constitutes the transition from
the old rationalism to the evangelical faith. “Like Lazarus, with
the grave clothes of a pantheistic philosophy entangling his
steps,” yet with a Moravian experience of the life of God in the
soul, he based religion upon the inner certainties of Christian
feeling. But, as Principal Fairbairn remarks, “Emotion is impotent
unless it speaks out of conviction; and where conviction is, there
will be emotion which is potent to persuade.” If Christianity is
religious feeling alone, then there is no essential difference
between it and other religions, for all alike are products of the
religious sentiment. But Christianity is distinguished from other
religions by its peculiar religious conceptions. Doctrine precedes
life, and Christian doctrine, not mere religious feeling, is the
cause of Christianity as a distinctive religion. Though faith
begins in feeling, moreover, it does not end there. We see the
worthlessness of mere feeling in the transient emotions of
theatre-goers, and in the occasional phenomena of revivals.
Sabatier, Philos. Relig., 27, adds to Schleiermacher’s passive
element of _dependence_, the active element of _prayer_. Kaftan,
Dogmatik, 10—“Schleiermacher regards God as the _Source_ of our
being, but forgets that he is also our _End_.” Fellowship and
progress are as important elements in religion as is dependence;
and fellowship must come before progress—such fellowship as
presupposes pardon and life. Schleiermacher apparently believed in
neither a personal God nor his own personal immortality; see his
Life and Letters, 2:77-90; Martineau, Study of Religion, 2:357.
Charles Hodge compares him to a ladder in a pit—a good thing for
those who wish to get out, but not for those who wish to get in.
Dorner: “The Moravian brotherhood was his mother; Greece was his
nurse.” On Schleiermacher, see Herzog, Realencyclopädie, _in
voce_; Bib. Sac., 1852:375; 1883:534; Liddon, Elements of
Religion, lect. I; Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:14; Julius Müller, Doctrine
of Sin, 1:175; Fisher, Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 563-570;
Caird, Philos. Religion, 160-186.
(_c_) Religion is not, as Kant maintained, morality or moral action; for
morality is conformity to an abstract law of right, while religion is
essentially a relation to a person, from whom the soul receives blessing
and to whom it surrenders itself in love and obedience.
Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, Beschluss: “I know of but
two beautiful things, the starry heavens above my head, and the
sense of duty within my heart.” But the mere sense of duty often
distresses. We object to the word “obey” as the imperative of
religion, because (1) it makes religion a matter of the will only;
(2) will presupposes affection; (3) love is not subject to will;
(4) it makes God all law, and no grace; (5) it makes the Christian
a servant only, not a friend; _cf._ _John 15:15—_“No longer do I
call you servants ... but I have called you friends”—a relation
not of service but of love (Westcott, Bib. Com., _in loco_). The
voice that speaks is the voice of love, rather than the voice of
law. We object also to Matthew Arnold’s definition: “Religion is
ethics heightened, enkindled, lit up by feeling; morality touched
with emotion.” This leaves out of view the receptive element in
religion, as well as its relation to a personal God. A truer
statement would be that religion is morality toward God, as
morality is religion toward man. Bowne, Philos. of Theism,
251—“Morality that goes beyond mere conscientiousness must have
recourse to religion”; see Lotze, Philos. of Religion, 128-142.
Goethe: “Unqualified activity, of whatever kind, leads at last to
bankruptcy”; see also Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:65-69;
Shedd, Sermons to the Natural Man, 244-246; Liddon, Elements of
Religion, 19.
3. Essential Idea.
Religion in its essential idea is a life in God, a life lived in
recognition of God, in communion with God, and under control of the
indwelling Spirit of God. Since it is a life, it cannot be described as
consisting solely in the exercise of any one of the powers of intellect,
affection, or will. As physical life involves the unity and coöperation of
all the organs of the body, so religion, or spiritual life, involves the
united working of all the powers of the soul. To feeling, however, we must
assign the logical priority, since holy affection toward God, imparted in
regeneration, is the condition of truly knowing God and of truly serving
him.
See Godet, on the Ultimate Design of Man—“God in man, and man in
God”—in Princeton Rev., Nov. 1880; Pfleiderer, Die Religion, 5-79,
and Religionsphilosophie, 255—Religion is “Sache des ganzen
Geisteslebens”: Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 4—“Religion is the
personal influence of the immanent God”; Sterrett, Reason and
Authority in Religion, 31, 32—“Religion is the reciprocal relation
or communion of God and man, involving (1) revelation, (2) faith”;
Dr. J. W. A. Stewart: “Religion is fellowship with God”; Pascal:
“Piety is God sensible to the heart”; Ritschl, Justif. and
Reconcil., 13—“Christianity is an ellipse with two foci—Christ as
Redeemer and Christ as King, Christ for us and Christ in us,
redemption and morality, religion and ethics”; Kaftan, Dogmatik,
8—“The Christian religion is (1) the _kingdom of God_ as a goal
above the world, to be attained by moral development here, and (2)
_reconciliation with God_ permitting attainment of this goal in
spite of our sins. Christian theology once grounded itself in
man’s natural knowledge of God; we now start with religion, _i.
e._, that Christian knowledge of God which we call faith.”
Herbert Spencer: “Religion is an _a priori_ theory of the
universe”; Romanes, Thoughts on Religion, 43, adds: “which assumes
intelligent personality as the originating cause of the universe,
science dealing with the _How_, the phenomenal process, religion
dealing with the _Who_, the intelligent Personality who works
through the process.” Holland, in Lux Mundi, 27—“Natural life is
the life in God which has not yet arrived at this recognition”—the
recognition of the fact that God is in all things—“it is not yet,
as such, religious; ... Religion is the discovery, by the son, of
a Father who is in all his works, yet is distinct from them all.”
Dewey, Psychology, 283—“Feeling finds its absolutely universal
expression in religious emotion, which is the finding or
realization of self in a completely realized personality which
unites in itself truth, or the complete unity of the relations of
all objects, beauty or the complete unity of all ideal values, and
rightness or the complete unity of all persons. The emotion which
accompanies the religious life is that which accompanies the
complete activity of ourselves; the self is realized and finds its
true life in God.” Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 262—“Ethics is simply
the growing insight into, and the effort to actualize in society,
the sense of fundamental kinship and identity of substance in all
men; while religion is the emotion and the devotion which attend
the realization in our self-consciousness of an inmost spiritual
relationship arising out of that unity of substance which
constitutes man the true son of the eternal Father.” See Van
Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 81-85; Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:227;
Nitzsch, Syst. of Christ. Doct., 10-28; Luthardt, Fund. Truths,
147; Twesten, Dogmatik, 1:12.
4. Inferences.
From this definition of religion it follows:
(_a_) That in strictness there is but one religion. Man is a religious
being, indeed, as having the capacity for this divine life. He is actually
religious, however, only when he enters into this living relation to God.
False religions are the caricatures which men given to sin, or the
imaginations which men groping after light, form of this life of the soul
in God.
Peabody, Christianity the Religion of Nature, 18—“If Christianity
be true, it is not _a_ religion, but _the_ religion. If Judaism be
also true, it is so not as distinct from but as coincident with
Christianity, the one religion to which it can bear only the
relation of a part to the whole. If there be portions of truth in
other religious systems, they are not portions of other religions,
but portions of the one religion which somehow or other became
incorporated with fables and falsities.” John Caird, Fund. Ideas
of Christianity, 1:25—“You can never get at the true idea or
essence of religion merely by trying to find out something that is
common to all religions; and it is not the lower religions that
explain the higher, but conversely the higher religion explains
all the lower religions.” George P. Fisher: “The recognition of
certain elements of truth in the ethnic religions does not mean
that Christianity has defects which are to be repaired by
borrowing from them; it only means that the ethnic faiths have in
fragments what Christianity has as a whole. Comparative religion
does not bring to Christianity new truth; it provides
illustrations of how Christian truth meets human needs and
aspirations, and gives a full vision of that which the most
spiritual and gifted among the heathen only dimly discerned.”
Dr. C. H. Parkhurst, sermon on _Proverbs 20:27—_“The spirit of man
is the lamp of Jehovah”—“a lamp, but not necessarily lighted; a
lamp that can be lit only by the touch of a divine flame”—man has
naturally and universally a capacity for religion, but is by no
means naturally and universally religious. All false religions
have some element of truth; otherwise they could never have gained
or kept their hold upon mankind. We need to recognize these
elements of truth in dealing with them. There is some silver in a
counterfeit dollar, else it would deceive no one; but the thin
washing of silver over the lead does not prevent it from being bad
money. Clarke, Christian Theology, 8—“See Paul’s methods of
dealing with heathen religion, in Acts 14 with gross paganism and
in Acts 17 with its cultured form. He treats it with sympathy and
justice. Christian theology has the advantage of walking in the
light of God’s self-manifestation in Christ, while heathen
religions grope after God and worship him in ignorance”; _cf._
_Acts 14:16—_“We ... bring you good tidings, that ye should turn
from these vain things unto a living God”_;_ _17:22—_“I perceive
that ye are more than usually reverent toward the divinities....
What therefore ye worship in ignorance, this I set forth unto
you.”
Matthew Arnold: “Children of men! the unseen Power whose eye
Forever doth accompany mankind, Hath looked on no religion
scornfully That man did ever find. Which has not taught weak wills
how much they can? Which has not fallen on the dry heart like
rain? Which has not cried to sunk, self-weary man, Thou must be
born again?” Christianity is absolutely exclusive, because it is
absolutely inclusive. It is not an amalgamation of other
religions, but it has in it all that is best and truest in other
religions. It is the white light that contains all the colored
rays. God may have made disclosures of truth outside of Judaism,
and did so in Balaam and Melchisedek, in Confucius and Socrates.
But while other religions have a relative excellence, Christianity
is the absolute religion that contains all excellencies. Matheson,
Messages of the Old Religions, 328-342—“Christianity is
reconciliation. Christianity includes the aspiration of Egypt; it
sees, in this aspiration, God in the soul (Brahmanism); recognizes
the evil power of sin with Parseeism; goes back to a pure
beginning like China; surrenders itself to human brotherhood like
Buddha; gets all things from within like Judaism; makes the
present life beautiful like Greece; seeks a universal kingdom like
Rome; shows a growth of divine life, like the Teuton. Christianity
is the manifold wisdom of God.” See also Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics,
88-93. Shakespeare: “There is some soul of goodness in things
evil, Would men observingly distill it out”
(_b_) That the content of religion is greater than that of theology. The
facts of religion come within the range of theology only so far as they
can be definitely conceived, accurately expressed in language, and brought
into rational relation to each other.
This principle enables us to define the proper limits of religious
fellowship. It should be as wide as is religion itself. But it is
important to remember what religion is. Religion is not to be
identified with the capacity for religion. Nor can we regard the
perversions and caricatures of religion as meriting our
fellowship. Otherwise we might be required to have fellowship with
devil-worship, polygamy, thuggery, and the inquisition; for all
these have been dignified with the name of religion. True religion
involves some knowledge, however rudimentary, of the true God, the
God of righteousness; some sense of sin as the contrast between
human character and the divine standard; some casting of the soul
upon divine mercy and a divine way of salvation, in place of
self-righteous earning of merit and reliance upon one’s works and
one’s record; some practical effort to realize ethical principle
in a pure life and in influence over others. Wherever these marks
of true religion appear, even in Unitarians, Romanists, Jews or
Buddhists, there we recognize the demand for fellowship. But we
also attribute these germs of true religion to the inworking of
the omnipresent Christ, “the light which lighteth every man”_
(John 1:9),_ and we see in them incipient repentance and faith,
even though the Christ who is their object is yet unknown by name.
_Christian_ fellowship must have a larger basis in accepted
Christian truth, and _Church_ fellowship a still larger basis in
common acknowledgment of N. T. teaching as to the church.
_Religious_ fellowship, in the widest sense, rests upon the fact
that “God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that
feareth him and worketh righteousness is acceptable to him”_ (Acts
10:34, 35)_.
(_c_) That religion is to be distinguished from formal worship, which is
simply the outward expression of religion. As such expression, worship is
“formal communion between God and his people.” In it God speaks to man,
and man to God. It therefore properly includes the reading of Scripture
and preaching on the side of God, and prayer and song on the side of the
people.
Sterrett, Reason and Authority in Religion, 166—“Christian worship
is the utterance (outerance) of the spirit.” But there is more in
true love than can be put into a love-letter, and there is more in
true religion than can be expressed either in theology or in
worship. Christian worship is communion between God and man. But
communion cannot be one-sided. Madame de Staël, whom Heine called
“a whirlwind in petticoats,” ended one of her brilliant
soliloquies by saying: “What a delightful conversation we have
had!” We may find a better illustration of the nature of worship
in Thomas à Kempis’s dialogues between the saint and his Savior,
in the Imitation of Christ. Goethe: “Against the great superiority
of another there is no remedy but love.... To praise a man is to
put one’s self on his level.” If this be the effect of loving and
praising man, what must be the effect of loving and praising God!
Inscription in Grasmere Church: “Whoever thou art that enterest
this church, leave it not without one prayer to God for thyself,
for those who minister, and for those who worship here.” In _James
1:27—_“Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is
this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and
to keep oneself unspotted from the world”—“_religion_,” θρησκεία,
is _cultus exterior_; and the meaning is that “the external
service, the outward garb, the very ritual of Christianity, is a
life of purity, love and self-devotion. What its true essence, its
inmost spirit may be, the writer does not say, but leaves this to
be inferred.” On the relation between religion and worship, see
Prof. Day, in New Englander, Jan. 1882; Prof. T. Harwood Pattison,
Public Prayer; Trench, Syn. N. T., 1; sec. 48; Coleridge, Aids to
Reflection, Introd., Aphorism 23; Lightfoot, Gal., 351, note 2.
Chapter II. Material of Theology.
I. Sources of Theology.
God himself, in the last analysis, must be the only source of knowledge
with regard to his own being and relations. Theology is therefore a
summary and explanation of the content of God’s self-revelations. These
are, first, the revelation of God in nature; secondly and supremely, the
revelation of God in the Scriptures.
Ambrose: “To whom shall I give greater credit concerning God than
to God himself?” Von Baader: “To know God without God is
impossible; there is no knowledge without him who is the prime
source of knowledge.” C. A. Briggs, Whither, 8—“God reveals truth
in several spheres: in universal nature, in the constitution of
mankind, in the history of our race, in the Sacred Scriptures, but
above all in the person of Jesus Christ our Lord.” F. H. Johnson,
What is Reality? 399—“The teacher intervenes when needed.
Revelation _helps_ reason and conscience, but is not a
_substitute_ for them. But Catholicism affirms this substitution
for the church, and Protestantism for the Bible. The Bible, like
nature, gives many free gifts, but more in the germ. Growing
ethical ideals must interpret the Bible.” A. J. F. Behrends: “The
Bible is only a telescope, not the eye which sees, nor the stars
which the telescope brings to view. It is your business and mine
to see the stars with our own eyes.” Schurman, Agnosticism,
178—“The Bible is a glass through which to see the living God. But
it is useless when you put your eyes out.”
We can know God only so far as he has revealed himself. The
immanent God is known, but the transcendent God we do not know any
more than we know the side of the moon that is turned away from
us. A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 118—“The word ‘authority’ is
derived from _auctor_, _augeo_, ‘to add.’ Authority adds something
to the truth communicated. The thing added is the personal element
of _witness_. This is needed wherever there is ignorance which
cannot be removed by our own effort, or unwillingness which
results from our own sin. In religion I need to add to my own
knowledge that which God imparts. Reason, conscience, church,
Scripture, are all delegated and subordinate authorities; the only
original and supreme authority is God himself, or Christ, who is
only God revealed and made comprehensible by us.” Gore,
Incarnation, 181—“All legitimate authority represents the reason
of God, educating the reason of man and communicating itself to
it.... Man is made in God’s image: he is, in his fundamental
capacity, a son of God, and he becomes so in fact, and fully,
through union with Christ. Therefore in the truth of God, as
Christ presents it to him, he can recognize his own better
reason,—to use Plato’s beautiful expression, he can salute it by
force of instinct as something akin to himself, before he can give
intellectual account of it.”
Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 332-337, holds that there is no
such thing as unassisted reason, and that, even if there were,
natural religion is not one of its products. Behind all evolution
of our own reason, he says, stands the Supreme Reason.
“Conscience, ethical ideals, capacity for admiration, sympathy,
repentance, righteous indignation, as well as our delight in
beauty and truth, are all derived from God.” Kaftan, in Am. Jour.
Theology, 1900; 718, 719, maintains that there is no other
principle for dogmatics than Holy Scripture. Yet he holds that
knowledge never comes directly from Scripture, but from faith. The
order is not: Scripture, doctrine, faith; but rather, Scripture,
faith, doctrine. Scripture is no more a direct authority than is
the church. Revelation is addressed to the whole man, that is, to
the _will_ of the man, and it claims _obedience_ from him. Since
all Christian knowledge is mediated through faith, it rests on
obedience to the authority of revelation, and revelation is
self-manifestation on the part of God. Kaftan should have
recognized more fully that not simply Scripture, but all knowable
truth, is a revelation from God, and that Christ is “the light
which lighteth every man”_ (John 1:9)_. Revelation is an organic
whole, which begins in nature, but finds its climax and key in the
historical Christ whom Scripture presents to us. See H. C.
Minton’s review of Martineau’s Seat of Authority, in Presb. and
Ref. Rev., Apr. 1900:203 _sq._
1. Scripture and Nature.
By nature we here mean not only physical facts, or facts with regard to
the substances, properties, forces, and laws of the material world, but
also spiritual facts, or facts with regard to the intellectual and moral
constitution of man, and the orderly arrangement of human society and
history.
We here use the word “nature” in the ordinary sense, as including
man. There is another and more proper use of the word “nature,”
which makes it simply a complex of forces and beings under the law
of cause and effect. To nature in this sense man belongs only as
respects his body, while as immaterial and personal he is a
supernatural being. Free will is not under the law of physical and
mechanical causation. As Bushnell has said: “Nature and the
supernatural together constitute the one system of God.” Drummond,
Natural Law in the Spiritual World, 232—“Things are natural or
supernatural according to where we stand. Man is supernatural to
the mineral; God is supernatural to the man.” We shall in
subsequent chapters use the term “nature” in the narrow sense. The
universal use of the phrase “Natural Theology,” however, compels
us in this chapter to employ the word “nature” in its broader
sense as including man, although we do this under protest, and
with this explanation of the more proper meaning of the term. See
Hopkins, in Princeton Review, Sept. 1882:183 _sq._
E. G. Robinson: “Bushnell separates nature from the supernatural.
Nature is a blind train of causes. God has nothing to do with it,
except as he steps into it from without. Man is supernatural,
because he is outside of nature, having the power of originating
an independent train of causes.” If this were the proper
conception of nature, then we might be compelled to conclude with
P. T. Forsyth, in Faith and Criticism, 100—“There is no revelation
in nature. There can be none, because there is no forgiveness. We
cannot be sure about her. She is only aesthetic. Her ideal is
harmony, not reconciliation.... For the conscience, stricken or
strong, she has no word.... Nature does not contain her own
teleology, and for the moral soul that refuses to be fancy-fed,
Christ is the one luminous smile on the dark face of the world.”
But this is virtually to confine Christ’s revelation to Scripture
or to the incarnation. As there was an astronomy without the
telescope, so there was a theology before the Bible. George
Harris, Moral Evolution, 411—“Nature is both evolution and
revelation. As soon as the question _How_ is answered, the
questions _Whence_ and _Why_ arise. Nature is to God what speech
is to thought.” The title of Henry Drummond’s book should have
been: “Spiritual Law in the Natural World,” for nature is but the
free though regular activity of God; what we call the supernatural
is simply his extraordinary working.
(_a_) Natural theology.—The universe is a source of theology. The
Scriptures assert that God has revealed himself in nature. There is not
only an outward witness to his existence and character in the constitution
and government of the universe (Ps. 19; Acts 14:17; Rom. 1:20), but an
inward witness to his existence and character in the heart of every man
(Rom. 1:17, 18, 19, 20, 32; 2:15). The systematic exhibition of these
facts, whether derived from observation, history or science, constitutes
natural theology.
Outward witness: _Ps.19:1-6—_“The heavens declare the glory of
God”; _Acts 14:17—_“he left not himself without witness, in that
he did good, and gave you from heaven rains and fruitful seasons”;
_Rom. 1:20—_“for the invisible things of him since the creation of
the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things
that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity.” Inward
witness: _Rom. 1:19—τὸ γνωστὸν τοῦ Θεοῦ = _“that which is known of
God is manifest in them.” Compare the ἀποκαλύπτεται of the gospel
in verse 17, with the ἀποκαλύπτεται of wrath in verse 18—two
revelations, one of ὀργή, the other of χάρις; see Shedd,
Homiletics, 11. _Rom. 1:32—_“knowing the ordinance of God”;
_2:15—_“they show the work of the law written in their hearts.”
Therefore even the heathen are “without excuse”_ (Rom. 1:20)_.
There are two books: Nature and Scripture—one written, the other
unwritten: and there is need of studying both. On the passages in
Romans, see the Commentary of Hodge.
Spurgeon told of a godly person who, when sailing down the Rhine,
closed his eyes, lest the beauty of the scene should divert his
mind from spiritual themes. The Puritan turned away from the
moss-rose, saying that he would count nothing on earth lovely. But
this is to despise God’s works. J. H. Barrows: “The Himalayas are
the raised letters upon which we blind children put our fingers to
spell out the name of God.” To despise the works of God is to
despise God himself. God is present in nature, and is now
speaking. _Ps. 19:1—_“The heavens declare the glory of God, and
the firmament showeth his handiwork”—present tenses. Nature is not
so much a _book_, as a _voice_. Hutton, Essays, 2:236—“The direct
knowledge of spiritual communion must be supplemented by knowledge
of God’s ways gained from the study of nature. To neglect the
study of the natural mysteries of the universe leads to an
arrogant and illicit intrusion of moral and spiritual assumptions
into a different world. This is the lesson of the book of Job.”
Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, 85—“Man, the servant and interpreter of
nature, is also, and is thereby, the servant and interpreter of
the living God.” Books of science are the record of man’s past
interpretations of God’s works.
(_b_) Natural theology supplemented.—The Christian revelation is the chief
source of theology. The Scriptures plainly declare that the revelation of
God in nature does not supply all the knowledge which a sinner needs (Acts
17:23; Eph. 3:9). This revelation is therefore supplemented by another, in
which divine attributes and merciful provisions only dimly shadowed forth
in nature are made known to men. This latter revelation consists of a
series of supernatural events and communications, the record of which is
presented in the Scriptures.
_Acts 17:23_—Paul shows that, though the Athenians, in the
erection of an altar to an unknown God, “acknowledged a divine
existence beyond any which the ordinary rites of their worship
recognized, that Being was still unknown to them; they had no just
conception of his nature and perfections” (Hackett, _in loco_).
_Eph. 3:9—_“the mystery which hath been hid in God”—this mystery
is in the gospel made known for man’s salvation. Hegel, in his
Philosophy of Religion, says that Christianity is the only
revealed religion, because the Christian God is the only one from
whom a revelation can come. We may add that as science is the
record of man’s progressive interpretation of God’s revelation in
the realm of nature, so Scripture is the record of man’s
progressive interpretation of God’s revelation in the realm of
spirit. The phrase “word of God” does not primarily denote a
_record_,—it is the _spoken_ word, the _doctrine_, the vitalizing
_truth_, disclosed by Christ; see _Mat. 13:19—_“heareth the word
of the kingdom”; _Luke 5:1—_“heard the word of God”; _Acts
8:25—_“spoken the word of the Lord”; _13:48, 49—_“glorified the
word of God: ... the word of the Lord was spread abroad”; _19:10,
20—_“heard the word of the Lord, ... mightily grew the word of the
Lord”; _1 Cor. 1:18—_“the word of the cross”—all designating not a
document, but an unwritten word; _cf.__ Jer. 1:4—_“the word of
Jehovah came unto me”; _Ez. 1:3—_“the word of Jehovah came
expressly unto Ezekiel, the priest.”
(_c_) The Scriptures the final standard of appeal.—Science and Scripture
throw light upon each other. The same divine Spirit who gave both
revelations is still present, enabling the believer to interpret the one
by the other and thus progressively to come to the knowledge of the truth.
Because of our finiteness and sin, the total record in Scripture of God’s
past communications is a more trustworthy source of theology than are our
conclusions from nature or our private impressions of the teaching of the
Spirit. Theology therefore looks to the Scripture itself as its chief
source of material and its final standard of appeal.
There is an internal work of the divine Spirit by which the outer
word is made an inner word, and its truth and power are manifested
to the heart. Scripture represents this work of the Spirit, not as
a giving of new truth, but as an illumination of the mind to
perceive the fulness of meaning which lay wrapped up in the truth
already revealed. Christ is “the truth”_ (John 14:6)_; “in whom
are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden”_ (Col.
2:3)_; the Holy Spirit, Jesus says, “shall take of mine, and shall
declare it unto you”_ (John 16:14)_. The incarnation and the Cross
express the heart of God and the secret of the universe; all
discoveries in theology are but the unfolding of truth involved in
these facts. The Spirit of Christ enables us to compare nature
with Scripture, and Scripture with nature, and to correct mistakes
in interpreting the one by light gained from the other. Because
the church as a whole, by which we mean the company of true
believers in all lands and ages, has the promise that it shall be
guided “into all the truth”_ (John 16:13)_, we may confidently
expect the progress of Christian doctrine.
Christian experience is sometimes regarded as an original source
of religious truth. Experience, however, is but a testing and
proving of the truth objectively contained in God’s revelation.
The word “experience” is derived from _experior_, to test, to try.
Christian consciousness is not “norma normans,” but “norma
normata.” Light, like life, comes to us through the mediation of
others. Yet the first comes from God as really as the last, of
which without hesitation we say: “God made me,” though we have
human parents. As I get through the service-pipe in my house the
same water which is stored in the reservoir upon the hillside, so
in the Scriptures I get the same truth which the Holy Spirit
originally communicated to prophets and apostles. Calvin,
Institutes, book I, chap. 7—“As nature has an immediate
manifestation of God in conscience, a mediate in his works, so
revelation has an immediate manifestation of God in the Spirit, a
mediate in the Scriptures.” “Man’s nature,” said Spurgeon, “is not
an organized lie, yet his inner consciousness has been warped by
sin, and though once it was an infallible guide to truth and duty,
sin has made it very deceptive. The standard of infallibility is
not in man’s consciousness, but in the Scriptures. When
consciousness in any matter is contrary to the word of God, we
must know that it is not God’s voice within us, but the devil’s.”
Dr. George A. Gordon says that “Christian history is a revelation
of Christ additional to that contained in the New Testament.”
Should we not say “illustrative,” instead of “additional”? On the
relation between Christian experience and Scripture, see Stearns,
Evidence of Christian Experience, 286-309: Twesten, Dogmatik,
1:344-348; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1:15.
H. H. Bawden: “God is the ultimate authority, but there are
delegated authorities, such as family, state, church; instincts,
feelings, conscience; the general experience of the race,
traditions, utilities; revelation in nature and in Scripture. But
the highest authority available for men in morals and religion is
the truth concerning Christ contained in the Christian Scriptures.
What the truth concerning Christ _is_, is determined by: (1) the
human reason, conditioned by a right attitude of the feelings and
the will; (2) in the light of all the truth derived from nature,
including man; (3) in the light of the history of Christianity;
(4) in the light of the origin and development of the Scriptures
themselves. The authority of the generic reason and the authority
of the Bible are co-relative, since they both have been developed
in the providence of God, and since the latter is in large measure
but the reflection of the former. This view enables us to hold a
rational conception of the function of the Scripture in religion.
This view, further, enables us to rationalize what is called the
inspiration of the Bible, the nature and extent of inspiration,
the Bible as history—a record of the historic unfolding of
revelation; the Bible as literature—a compend of life-principles,
rather than a book of rules; the Bible Christocentric—an
incarnation of the divine thought and will in human thought and
language.”
(_d_) The theology of Scripture not unnatural.—Though we speak of the
systematized truths of nature as constituting natural theology, we are not
to infer that Scriptural theology is unnatural. Since the Scriptures have
the same author as nature, the same principles are illustrated in the one
as in the other. All the doctrines of the Bible have their reason in that
same nature of God which constitutes the basis of all material things.
Christianity is a supplementary dispensation, not as contradicting, or
correcting errors in, natural theology, but as more perfectly revealing
the truth. Christianity is indeed the ground-plan upon which the whole
creation is built—the original and eternal truth of which natural theology
is but a partial expression. Hence the theology of nature and the theology
of Scripture are mutually dependent. Natural theology not only prepares
the way for, but it receives stimulus and aid from, Scriptural theology.
Natural theology may now be a source of truth, which, before the
Scriptures came, it could not furnish.
John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity. 23—“There is no such
thing as a natural religion or religion of reason distinct from
revealed religion. Christianity is more profoundly, more
comprehensively, rational, more accordant with the deepest
principles of human nature and human thought than is natural
religion; or, as we may put it, Christianity is natural religion
elevated and transmuted into revealed.” Peabody, Christianity the
Religion of Nature, lecture 2—“Revelation is the unveiling,
uncovering of what previously existed, and it excludes the idea of
newness, invention, creation.... The revealed religion of earth is
the natural religion of heaven.” Compare _Rev. 13:8—_“the Lamb
that hath been slain from the foundation of the world” = the
coming of Christ was no make-shift; in a true sense the Cross
existed in eternity; the atonement is a revelation of an eternal
fact in the being of God.
Note Plato’s illustration of the cave which can be easily threaded
by one who has previously entered it with a torch. Nature is the
dim light from the cave’s mouth; the torch is Scripture. Kant to
Jacobi, in Jacobi’s Werke, 3:523—“If the gospel had not previously
taught the universal moral laws, reason would not yet have
obtained so perfect an insight into them.” Alexander McLaren:
“Non-Christian thinkers now talk eloquently about God’s love, and
even reject the gospel in the name of that love, thus kicking down
the ladder by which they have climbed. But it was the Cross that
taught the world the love of God, and apart from the death of
Christ men may hope that there is a heart at the centre of the
universe, but they can never be sure of it.” The parrot fancies
that he taught men to talk. So Mr. Spencer fancies that he
invented ethics. He is only using the twilight, after his sun has
gone down. Dorner, Hist. Prot. Theol., 252, 253—“Faith, at the
Reformation, first gave scientific certainty; it had God sure:
hence it proceeded to banish scepticism in philosophy and
science.” See also Dove, Logic of Christian Faith, 333; Bowen,
Metaph. and Ethics, 442-463; Bib. Sac., 1874:436; A. H. Strong,
Christ in Creation, 226, 227.
2. Scripture and Rationalism.
Although the Scriptures make known much that is beyond the power of man’s
unaided reason to discover or fully to comprehend, their teachings, when
taken together, in no way contradict a reason conditioned in its activity
by a holy affection and enlightened by the Spirit of God. To reason in the
large sense, as including the mind’s power of cognizing God and moral
relations—not in the narrow sense of mere reasoning, or the exercise of
the purely logical faculty—the Scriptures continually appeal.
A. The proper office of reason, in this large sense, is: (_a_) To furnish
us with those primary ideas of space, time, cause, substance, design,
right, and God, which are the conditions of all subsequent knowledge.
(_b_) To judge with regard to man’s need of a special and supernatural
revelation. (_c_) To examine the credentials of communications professing
to be, or of documents professing to record, such a revelation. (_d_) To
estimate and reduce to system the facts of revelation, when these have
been found properly attested. (_e_) To deduce from these facts their
natural and logical conclusions. Thus reason itself prepares the way for a
revelation above reason, and warrants an implicit trust in such revelation
when once given.
Dove, Logic of the Christian Faith, 318—“Reason terminates in the
proposition: Look for revelation.” Leibnitz: “Revelation is the
viceroy who first presents his credentials to the provincial
assembly (reason), and then himself presides.” Reason can
recognize truth after it is made known, as for example in the
demonstrations of geometry, although it could never discover that
truth for itself. See Calderwood’s illustration of the party lost
in the woods, who wisely take the course indicated by one at the
tree-top with a larger view than their own (Philosophy of the
Infinite, 126). The novice does well to trust his guide in the
forest, at least till he learns to recognise for himself the marks
blazed upon the trees. Luthardt, Fund. Truths, lect. viii—“Reason
could never have invented a self-humiliating God, cradled in a
manger and dying on a cross.” Lessing, Zur Geschichte und
Litteratur, 6:134—“What is the meaning of a revelation that
reveals nothing?”
Ritschl denies the presuppositions of any theology based on the
Bible as the infallible word of God on the one hand, and on the
validity of the knowledge of God as obtained by scientific and
philosophic processes on the other. Because philosophers,
scientists, and even exegetes, are not agreed among themselves, he
concludes that no trustworthy results are attainable by human
reason. We grant that reason without love will fall into many
errors with regard to God, and that faith is therefore the organ
by which religious truth is to be apprehended. But we claim that
this faith includes reason, and is itself reason in its highest
form. Faith criticizes and judges the processes of natural science
as well as the contents of Scripture. But it also recognizes in
science and Scripture prior workings of that same Spirit of Christ
which is the source and authority of the Christian life. Ritschl
ignores Christ’s world-relations and therefore secularizes and
disparages science and philosophy. The faith to which he trusts as
the source of theology is unwarrantably sundered from reason. It
becomes a subjective and arbitrary standard, to which even the
teaching of Scripture must yield precedence. We hold on the
contrary, that there are ascertained results in science and in
philosophy, as well as in the interpretation of Scripture as a
whole, and that these results constitute an authoritative
revelation. See Orr, The Theology of Ritschl; Dorner, Hist. Prot.
Theol., 1:233—“The unreasonable in the empirical reason is taken
captive by faith, which is the nascent true reason that despairs
of itself and trustfully lays hold of objective Christianity.”
B. Rationalism, on the other hand, holds reason to be the ultimate source
of all religious truth, while Scripture is authoritative only so far as
its revelations agree with previous conclusions of reason, or can be
rationally demonstrated. Every form of rationalism, therefore, commits at
least one of the following errors: (_a_) That of confounding reason with
mere reasoning, or the exercise of the logical intelligence. (_b_) That of
ignoring the necessity of a holy affection as the condition of all right
reason in religious things. (_c_) That of denying our dependence in our
present state of sin upon God’s past revelations of himself. (_d_) That of
regarding the unaided reason, even its normal and unbiased state, as
capable of discovering, comprehending, and demonstrating all religious
truth.
Reason must not be confounded with ratiocination, or mere
reasoning. Shall we follow reason? Yes, but not individual
reasoning, against the testimony of those who are better informed
than we; nor by insisting on demonstration, where probable
evidence alone is possible; nor by trusting solely to the evidence
of the senses, when spiritual things are in question. Coleridge,
in replying to those who argued that all knowledge comes to us
from the senses, says: “At any rate we must bring to all facts the
light in which we see them.” This the Christian does. The light of
love reveals much that would otherwise be invisible. Wordsworth,
Excursion, book 5 (598)—“The mind’s repose On evidence is not to
be ensured By act of naked reason. Moral truth Is no mechanic
structure, built by rule.”
Rationalism is the mathematical theory of knowledge. Spinoza’s
Ethics is an illustration of it. It would deduce the universe from
an axiom. Dr. Hodge very wrongly described rationalism as “an
overuse of reason.” It is rather the use of an abnormal,
perverted, improperly conditioned reason; see Hodge, Syst. Theol.,
1:34, 39, 55, and criticism by Miller, in his Fetich in Theology.
The phrase “sanctified intellect” means simply intellect
accompanied by right affections toward God, and trained to work
under their influence. Bishop Butler: “Let reason be kept to, but
let not such poor creatures as we are go on objecting to an
infinite scheme that we do not see the necessity or usefulness of
all its parts, and call that reasoning.” Newman Smyth, Death’s
Place in Evolution, 86—“Unbelief is a shaft sunk down into the
darkness of the earth. Drive the shaft deep enough, and it would
come out into the sunlight on the earth’s other side.” The most
unreasonable people in the world are those who depend solely upon
reason, in the narrow sense. “The better to exalt reason, they
make the world irrational.” “The hen that has hatched ducklings
walks with them to the water’s edge, but there she stops, and she
is amazed when they go on. So reason stops and faith goes on,
finding its proper element in the invisible. Reason is the feet
that stand on solid earth; faith is the wings that enable us to
fly; and normal man is a creature with wings.” Compare γνῶσις (_1
Tim. 6:20—_“the knowledge which is falsely so called”) with
ἐπίγνωσις (_2 Pet. 1:2—_“the knowledge of God and of Jesus our
Lord” = full knowledge, or true knowledge). See Twesten, Dogmatik,
1:467-500; Julius Müller, Proof-texts, 4, 5; Mansel, Limits of
Religious Thought, 96; Dawson, Modern Ideas of Evolution.
3. Scripture and Mysticism.
As rationalism recognizes too little as coming from God, so mysticism
recognizes too much.
A. True mysticism.—We have seen that there is an illumination of the minds
of all believers by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit, however, makes no new
revelation of truth, but uses for his instrument the truth already
revealed by Christ in nature and in the Scriptures. The illuminating work
of the Spirit is therefore an opening of men’s minds to understand
Christ’s previous revelations. As one initiated into the mysteries of
Christianity, every true believer may be called a mystic. True mysticism
is that higher knowledge and fellowship which the Holy Spirit gives
through the use of nature and Scripture as subordinate and principal
means.
“Mystic” = one initiated, from μύω, “to close the eyes”—probably
in order that the soul may have inward vision of truth. But divine
truth is a “mystery,” not only as something into which one must be
initiated, but as ὑπερβάλλουσα τῆς γνώσεως (_Eph.
3:19_)—surpassing full knowledge, even to the believer; see Meyer
on _Rom. 11:25—_“I would not, brethren, have you ignorant of this
mystery.” The Germans have _Mystik_ with a favorable sense,
_Mysticismus_ with an unfavorable sense,—corresponding
respectively to our true and false mysticism. True mysticism is
intimated in _John 16:13—_“the spirit of truth ... shall guide you
into all the truth”; _Eph. 3:9—_“dispensation of the mystery”; _1
Cor. 2:10—_“unto us God revealed them through the Spirit.”
Nitzsch, Syst. of Christ. Doct., 35—“Whenever true religion
revives, there is an outcry against mysticism, _i. e._, higher
knowledge, fellowship, activity through the Spirit of God in the
heart.” Compare the charge against Paul that he was mad, in _Acts
26:24, 25_, with his self-vindication in _2 Cor. 5:13—_“whether we
are beside ourselves, it is unto God.”
Inge, Christian Mysticism, 21—“Harnack speaks of mysticism as
rationalism applied to a sphere above reason. He should have said
reason applied to a sphere above rationalism. Its fundamental
doctrine is the unity of all existence. Man can realize his
individuality only by transcending it and finding himself in the
larger unity of God’s being. Man is a microcosm. He recapitulates
the race, the universe, Christ himself.” _Ibid._, 5—Mysticism is
“the attempt to realize in thought and feeling the immanence of
the temporal in the eternal, and of the eternal in the temporal.
It implies (1) that the soul can see and perceive spiritual truth;
(2) that man, in order to know God, must be a partaker of the
divine nature; (3) that without holiness no man can see the Lord;
(4) that the true hierophant of the mysteries of God is love. The
‘scala perfectionis’ is (_a_) the purgative life; (_b_) the
illuminative life; (_c_) the unitive life.” Stevens, Johannine
Theology, 239, 240—“The mysticism of John ... is not a subjective
mysticism which absorbs the soul in self-contemplation and revery,
but an objective and rational mysticism, which lives in a world of
realities, apprehends divinely revealed truth, and bases its
experience upon it. It is a mysticism which feeds, not upon its
own feelings and fancies, but upon Christ. It involves an
acceptance of him, and a life of obedience to him. Its motto is:
Abiding in Christ.” As the power press cannot dispense with the
type, so the Spirit of God does not dispense with Christ’s
external revelations in nature and in Scripture. E. G. Robinson,
Christian Theology, 364—“The word of God is a form or mould, into
which the Holy Spirit delivers us when he creates us anew”; _cf.__
Rom. 6:17—_“ye became obedient from the heart to that form of
teaching whereunto ye were delivered.”
B. False mysticism.—Mysticism, however, as the term is commonly used, errs
in holding to the attainment of religious knowledge by direct
communication from God, and by passive absorption of the human activities
into the divine. It either partially or wholly loses sight of (_a_) the
outward organs of revelation, nature and the Scriptures; (_b_) the
activity of the human powers in the reception of all religious knowledge;
(_c_) the personality of man, and, by consequence, the personality of God.
In opposition to false mysticism, we are to remember that the Holy
Spirit works through the truth externally revealed in nature and
in Scripture (_Acts 14:17—_“he left not himself without witness”;
_Rom. 1:20—_“the invisible things of him since the creation of the
world are clearly seen”; _Acts 7:51—_“ye do always resist the Holy
Spirit: as your fathers did, so do ye”; _Eph. 6:17—_“the sword of
the Spirit, which is the word of God”). By this truth already
given we are to test all new communications which would contradict
or supersede it (_1 John 4:1—_“believe not every spirit, but prove
the spirits, whether they are of God”; _Eph. 5:10—_“proving what
is well pleasing unto the Lord”). By these tests we may try
Spiritualism, Mormonism, Swedenborgianism. Note the mystical
tendency in Francis de Sales, Thomas à Kempis, Madame Guyon,
Thomas C. Upham. These writers seem at times to advocate an
unwarrantable abnegation of our reason and will, and a “swallowing
up of man in God.” But Christ does not deprive us of reason and
will; he only takes from us the perverseness of our reason and the
selfishness of our will; so reason and will are restored to their
normal clearness and strength. Compare _Ps. 16:7—_“Jehovah, who
hath given me counsel; yea, my heart instructeth me in the night
seasons”—God teaches his people through the exercise of their own
faculties.
False mysticism is sometimes present though unrecognized. All
expectation of results without the use of means partakes of it.
Martineau, Seat of Authority, 288—“The lazy will would like to
have the vision while the eye that apprehends it sleeps.”
Preaching without preparation is like throwing ourselves down from
a pinnacle of the temple and depending on God to send an angel to
hold us up. Christian Science would trust to supernatural
agencies, while casting aside the natural agencies God has already
provided; as if a drowning man should trust to prayer while
refusing to seize the rope. Using Scripture “ad aperturam libri”
is like guiding one’s actions by a throw of the dice. Allen,
Jonathan Edwards, 171, note—“Both Charles and John Wesley were
agreed in accepting the Moravian method of solving doubts as to
some course of action by opening the Bible at hazard and regarding
the passage on which the eye first alighted as a revelation of
God’s will in the matter”; _cf._ Wedgwood, Life of Wesley, 193;
Southey, Life of Wesley, 1:216. J. G. Paton, Life, 2:74—“After
many prayers and wrestlings and tears, I went alone before the
Lord, and on my knees cast lots, with a solemn appeal to God, and
the answer came: ‘Go home!’ ” He did this only once in his life,
in overwhelming perplexity, and finding no light from human
counsel. “To whomsoever this faith is given,” he says, “let him
obey it.”
F. B. Meyer, Christian Living, 18—“It is a mistake to seek a sign
from heaven; to run from counsellor to counsellor; to cast a lot;
or to trust in some chance coincidence. Not that God may not
reveal his will thus; but because it is hardly the behavior of a
child with its Father. There is a more excellent way,”—namely,
appropriate Christ who is wisdom, and then go forward, sure that
we shall be guided, as each new step must be taken, or word
spoken, or decision made. Our service is to be “rational service”_
(Rom. 12:1)_; blind and arbitrary action is inconsistent with the
spirit of Christianity. Such action makes us victims of temporary
feeling and a prey to Satanic deception. In cases of perplexity,
waiting for light and waiting upon God will commonly enable us to
make an intelligent decision, while “whatsoever is not of faith is
sin”_ (Rom. 14:23)_.
“False mysticism reached its logical result in the Buddhistic
theosophy. In that system man becomes most divine in the
extinction of his own personality. Nirvana is reached by the
eightfold path of right view, aspiration, speech, conduct,
livelihood, effort, mindfulness, rapture; and Nirvana is the loss
of ability to say: ‘This is I,’ and ‘This is mine.’ Such was
Hypatia’s attempt, by subjection of self, to be wafted away into
the arms of Jove. George Eliot was wrong when she said: ‘The
happiest woman has no history.’ Self-denial is not
self-effacement. The cracked bell has no individuality. In Christ
we become our complete selves.” _Col 2:9, 10—_“For in him dwelleth
all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and in him ye are made
full.”
Royce, World and Individual, 2:248, 249—“Assert the spiritual man;
abnegate the natural man. The fleshly self is the root of all
evil; the spiritual self belongs to a higher realm. But this
spiritual self lies at first outside the soul; it becomes ours
only by grace. Plato rightly made the eternal Ideas the source of
all human truth and goodness. Wisdom comes into a man, like
Aristotle’s νοῦς.” A. H. Bradford, The Inner Light, in making the
direct teaching of the Holy Spirit the sufficient if not the sole
source of religious knowledge, seems to us to ignore the principle
of evolution in religion. God builds upon the past. His revelation
to prophets and apostles constitutes the norm and corrective of
our individual experience, even while our experience throws new
light upon that revelation. On Mysticism, true and false, see
Inge, Christian Mysticism, 4, 5, 11; Stearns, Evidence of
Christian Experience, 289-294; Dorner, Geschichte d. prot. Theol.,
48-59, 243; Herzog, Encycl., art.: Mystik, by Lange; Vaughan,
Hours with the Mystics, 1:199; Morell, Hist. Philos., 58, 191-215,
556-625, 726; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1:61-69, 97, 104; Fleming,
Vocab. Philos., _in voce_; Tholuck, Introd. to Blüthensammlung aus
der morgenländischen Mystik; William James, Varieties of Religious
Experience, 379-429.
4. Scripture and Romanism.
While the history of doctrine, as showing the progressive apprehension and
unfolding by the church of the truth contained in nature and Scripture, is
a subordinate source of theology, Protestantism recognizes the Bible as
under Christ the primary and final authority.
Romanism, on the other hand, commits the two-fold error (_a_) Of making
the church, and not the Scriptures, the immediate and sufficient source of
religious knowledge; and (_b_) Of making the relation of the individual to
Christ depend upon his relation to the church, instead of making his
relation to the church depend upon, follow, and express his relation to
Christ.
In Roman Catholicism there is a mystical element. The Scriptures
are not the complete or final standard of belief and practice. God
gives to the world from time to time, through popes and councils,
new communications of truth. Cyprian: “He who has not the church
for his mother, has not God for his Father.” Augustine: “I would
not believe the Scripture, unless the authority of the church also
influenced me.” Francis of Assisi and Ignatius Loyola both
represented the truly obedient person as one dead, moving only as
moved by his superior; the true Christian has no life of his own,
but is the blind instrument of the church. John Henry Newman,
Tracts, Theol. and Eccl., 287—“The Christian dogmas were in the
church from the time of the apostles,—they were ever in their
substance what they are now.” But this is demonstrably untrue of
the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary; of the treasury of
merits to be distributed in indulgences; of the infallibility of
the pope (see Gore, Incarnation, 186). In place of the true
doctrine, “Ubi Spiritus, ibi ecclesia,” Romanism substitutes her
maxim, “Ubi ecclesia, ibi Spiritus.” Luther saw in this the
principle of mysticism, when he said: “Papatus est merus
enthusiasmus.” See Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1:61-69.
In reply to the Romanist argument that the church was before the
Bible, and that the same body that gave the truth at the first can
make additions to that truth, we say that the unwritten word was
before the church and made the church possible. The word of God
existed before it was written down, and by that word the first
disciples as well as the latest were begotten (_1 Pet.
1:23—_“begotten again ... through the word of God”). The grain of
truth in Roman Catholic doctrine is expressed in _1 Tim.
3:15—_“the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the
truth” = the church is God’s appointed proclaimer of truth; _cf.__
Phil. 2:16—_“holding forth the word of life.” But the church can
proclaim the truth, only as it is built upon the truth. So we may
say that the American Republic is the pillar and ground of liberty
in the world; but this is true only so far as the Republic is
built upon the principle of liberty as its foundation. When the
Romanist asks: “Where was your church before Luther?” the
Protestant may reply: “Where yours is not now—in the word of God.
Where was your face before it was washed? Where was the fine flour
before the wheat went to the mill?” Lady Jane Grey, three days
before her execution, February 12, 1554, said: “I ground my faith
on God’s word, and not upon the church; for, if the church be a
good church, the faith of the church must be tried by God’s word,
and not God’s word by the church, nor yet my faith.”
The Roman church would keep men in perpetual childhood—coming to
her for truth instead of going directly to the Bible; “like the
foolish mother who keeps her boy pining in the house lest he stub
his toe, and would love best to have him remain a babe forever,
that she might mother him still.” Martensen, Christian Dogmatics,
30—“Romanism is so busy in building up a system of guarantees,
that she forgets the truth of Christ which she would guarantee.”
George Herbert: “What wretchedness can give him any room, Whose
house is foul while he adores his broom!” It is a semi-parasitic
doctrine of safety without intelligence or spirituality. Romanism
says: “Man for the machine!” Protestantism: “The machine for man!”
Catholicism strangles, Protestantism restores, individuality. Yet
the Romanist principle sometimes appears in so-called Protestant
churches. The Catechism published by the League of the Holy Cross,
in the Anglican Church, contains the following: “It is to the
priest only that the child must acknowledge his sins, if he
desires that God should forgive him. Do you know why? It is
because God, when on earth, gave to his priests and to them alone
the power of forgiving sins. Go to the priest, who is the doctor
of your soul, and who cures you in the name of God.” But this
contradicts _John 10:7_—where Christ says “I am the door”; and _1
Cor. 3:11—_“other foundation can no man lay than that which is
laid, which is Jesus Christ” = Salvation is attained by immediate
access to Christ, and there is no door between the soul and him.
See Dorner, Gesch. prot. Theol., 227; Schleiermacher,
Glaubenslehre, 1:24; Robinson, in Mad. Av. Lectures, 387; Fisher,
Nat. and Method of Revelation, 10; Watkins, Bampton Lect. for
1890:149; Drummond, Nat. Law in Spir. World, 327.
II. Limitations of Theology.
Although theology derives its material from God’s two-fold revelation, it
does not profess to give an exhaustive knowledge of God and of the
relations between God and the universe. After showing what material we
have, we must show what material we have not. We have indicated the
sources of theology; we now examine its limitations. Theology has its
limitations:
(_a_) _In the finiteness of the human understanding._ This gives rise to a
class of necessary mysteries, or mysteries connected with the infinity and
incomprehensibleness of the divine nature (Job 11:7; Rom. 11:33).
_Job 11:7—_“Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find
out the Almighty to perfection?” _Rom. 11:33—_“how unsearchable
are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!” Every doctrine,
therefore, has its inexplicable side. Here is the proper meaning
of Tertullian’s sayings: “Certum est, quia impossible est: quo
absurdius, eo verius”; that of Anselm: “Credo, ut intelligam”; and
that of Abelard: “Qui credit cito, levis corde est.” Drummond,
Nat. Law in Spir. World: “A science without mystery is unknown; a
religion without mystery is absurd.” E. G. Robinson: “A finite
being cannot grasp even its own relations to the Infinite.” Hovey,
Manual of Christ. Theol., 7—“To infer from the perfection of God
that all his works [nature, man, inspiration] will be absolutely
and unchangeably perfect: to infer from the perfect love of God
that there can be no sin or suffering in the world; to infer from
the sovereignty of God that man is not a free moral agent;—all
these inferences are rash; they are inferences from the cause to
the effect, while the cause is imperfectly known.” See Calderwood,
Philos. of Infinite, 491; Sir Wm. Hamilton, Discussions, 22.
(_b_) _In the imperfect state of science, both natural and metaphysical._
This gives rise to a class of accidental mysteries, or mysteries which
consist in the apparently irreconcilable nature of truths, which, taken
separately, are perfectly comprehensible.
We are the victims of a mental or moral astigmatism, which sees a
_single_ point of truth as _two_. We see God and man, divine
sovereignty and human freedom, Christ’s divine nature and Christ’s
human nature, the natural and the supernatural, respectively, as
two disconnected facts, when perhaps deeper insight would see but
one. Astronomy has its centripetal and centrifugal forces, yet
they are doubtless one force. The child cannot hold two oranges at
once in its little hand. Negro preacher: “You can’t carry two
watermelons under one arm.” Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra,
1:2—“In nature’s infinite book of secresy, A little I can read.”
Cooke, Credentials of Science, 34—“Man’s progress in knowledge has
been so constantly and rapidly accelerated that more has been
gained during the lifetime of men still living than during all
human history before.” And yet we may say with D’Arcy, Idealism
and Theology, 248—“Man’s position in the universe is eccentric.
God alone is at the centre. To him alone is the orbit of truth
completely displayed.... There are circumstances in which to us
the onward movement of truth may seem a retrogression.” William
Watson, Collected Poems, 271—“Think not thy wisdom can illume away
The ancient tanglement of night and day. Enough to acknowledge
both, and both revere: They see not clearliest who see all things
clear.”
(_c_) _In the inadequacy of language._ Since language is the medium
through which truth is expressed and formulated, the invention of a proper
terminology in theology, as in every other science, is a condition and
criterion of its progress. The Scriptures recognize a peculiar difficulty
in putting spiritual truths into earthly language (1 Cor. 2:13; 2 Cor.
3:6; 12:4).
_1 Cor. 2:13—_“not in words which man’s wisdom teacheth”; _2 Cor.
3:6—_“the letter killeth”; _12:4—_“unspeakable words.” God submits
to conditions of revelation; _cf.__ John 16:12—_“I have yet many
things to say into you, but ye cannot bear them now.” Language has
to be created. Words have to be taken from a common, and to be put
to a larger and more sacred, use, so that they “stagger under
their weight of meaning”—_e. g._, the word “day,” in _Genesis 1_,
and the word ἀγάπη in _1 Cor. 13_. See Gould, in Amer. Com., on _1
Cor. 13:12—_“now we see in a mirror, darkly”—in a metallic mirror
whose surface is dim and whose images are obscure = Now we behold
Christ, the truth, only as he is reflected in imperfect
speech—“but then face to face” = immediately, without the
intervention of an imperfect medium. “As fast as we tunnel into
the sandbank of thought, the stones of language must be built into
walls and arches, to allow further progress into the boundless
mine.”
(_d_) _In the incompleteness of our knowledge of the Scriptures._ Since it
is not the mere letter of the Scriptures that constitutes the truth, the
progress of theology is dependent upon hermeneutics, or the interpretation
of the word of God.
Notice the progress in commenting, from homiletical to
grammatical, historical, dogmatic, illustrated in Scott, Ellicott,
Stanley, Lightfoot. John Robinson: “I am verily persuaded that the
Lord hath more truth yet to break forth from his holy word.”
Recent criticism has shown the necessity of studying each portion
of Scripture in the light of its origin and connections. There has
been an evolution of Scripture, as truly as there has been an
evolution of natural science, and the Spirit of Christ who was in
the prophets has brought about a progress from germinal and
typical expression to expression that is complete and clear. Yet
we still need to offer the prayer of _Ps. 119:18—_“Open thou mine
eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.” On New
Testament Interpretation, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and
Religion, 334-336.
(_e_) _In the silence of written revelation._ For our discipline and
probation, much is probably hidden from us, which we might even with our
present powers comprehend.
Instance the silence of Scripture with regard to the life and
death of Mary the Virgin, the personal appearance of Jesus and his
occupations in early life, the origin of evil, the method of the
atonement, the state after death. So also as to social and
political questions, such as slavery, the liquor traffic, domestic
virtues, governmental corruption. “Jesus was in heaven at the
revolt of the angels, yet he tells us little about angels or about
heaven. He does not discourse about Eden, or Adam, or the fall of
man, or death as the result of Adam’s sin; and he says little of
departed spirits, whether they are lost or saved.” It was better
to inculcate principles, and trust his followers to apply them.
His gospel is not intended to gratify a vain curiosity. He would
not divert men’s minds from pursuing the one thing needful; _cf.__
Luke 13:23, 24—_“Lord, are they few that are saved? And he said
unto them, Strive to enter in by the narrow door; for many, I say
unto you, shall seek to enter in, and shall not be able.” Paul’s
silence upon speculative questions which he must have pondered
with absorbing interest is a proof of his divine inspiration. John
Foster spent his life, “gathering questions for eternity”; _cf.__
John 13:7—_“What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt
understand hereafter.” The most beautiful thing in a countenance
is that which a picture can never express. He who would speak well
must omit well. Story: “Of every noble work the silent part is
best; Of all expressions that which cannot be expressed.” _Cf.__ 1
Cor. 2:9—_“Things which eye saw not, and ear heard not, And which
entered not into the heart of man, Whatsoever things God prepared
for them that love him”; _Deut 29:29—_“The secret things belong
unto Jehovah our God: but the things that are revealed belong unto
us and to our children.” For Luther’s view, see Hagenbach, Hist.
Doctrine, 2:388. See also B. D. Thomas, The Secret of the Divine
Silence.
(_f_) _In the lack of spiritual discernment caused by sin._ Since holy
affection is a condition of religious knowledge, all moral imperfection in
the individual Christian and in the church serves as a hindrance to the
working out of a complete theology.
_John 3:3—_“Except one be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of
God.” The spiritual ages make most progress in theology,—witness
the half-century succeeding the Reformation, and the half-century
succeeding the great revival in New England in the time of
Jonathan Edwards. Ueberweg, Logic (Lindsay’s transl.),
514—“Science is much under the influence of the will; and the
truth of knowledge depends upon the purity of the conscience. The
will has no power to resist scientific evidence; but scientific
evidence is not obtained without the continuous loyalty of the
will.” Lord Bacon declared that man cannot enter the kingdom of
science, any more than he can enter the kingdom of heaven, without
becoming a little child. Darwin describes his own mind as having
become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large
collections of facts, with the result of producing “atrophy of
that part of the brain on which the higher tastes depend.” But a
similar abnormal atrophy is possible in the case of the moral and
religious faculty (see Gore, Incarnation, 37). Dr. Allen said in
his Introductory Lecture at Lane Theological Seminary: “We are
very glad to see you if you wish to be students; but the
professors’ chairs are all filled.”
III. Relations of Material to Progress in Theology.
(_a_) _A perfect system of theology is impossible._ We do not expect to
construct such a system. All science but reflects the present attainment
of the human mind. No science is complete or finished. However it may be
with the sciences of nature and of man, the science of God will never
amount to an exhaustive knowledge. We must not expect to demonstrate all
Scripture doctrines upon rational grounds, or even in every case to see
the principle of connection between them. Where we cannot do this, we
must, as in every other science, set the revealed facts in their places
and wait for further light, instead of ignoring or rejecting any of them
because we cannot understand them or their relation to other parts of our
system.
Three problems left unsolved by the Egyptians have been handed
down to our generation: (1) the duplication of the cube; (2) the
trisection of the angle; (3) the quadrature of the circle. Dr.
Johnson: “Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than
none; and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.” Hood
spoke of Dr. Johnson’s “Contradictionary,” which had both
“interiour” and “exterior.” Sir William Thompson (Lord Kelvin) at
the fiftieth anniversary of his professorship said: “One word
characterizes the most strenuous of the efforts for the
advancement of science which I have made perseveringly through
fifty-five years: that word is _failure_; I know no more of
electric and magnetic force, or of the relations between ether,
electricity and ponderable matter, or of chemical affinity, than I
knew and tried to teach my students of natural philosophy fifty
years ago in my first session as professor.” Allen, Religious
Progress, mentions three tendencies. “The first says: Destroy the
new! The second says: Destroy the old! The third says: Destroy
nothing! Let the old gradually and quietly grow into the new, as
Erasmus wished. We should accept contradictions, whether they can
be intellectually reconciled or not. The truth has never prospered
by enforcing some ’via media.’ Truth lies rather in the union of
opposite propositions, as in Christ’s divinity and humanity, and
in grace and freedom. Blanco White went from Rome to infidelity;
Orestes Brownson from infidelity to Rome; so the brothers John
Henry Newman and Francis W. Newman, and the brothers George
Herbert of Bemerton and Lord Herbert of Cherbury. One would
secularize the divine, the other would divinize the secular. But
if one is true, so is the other. Let us adopt both. All progress
is a deeper penetration into the meaning of old truth, and a
larger appropriation of it.”
(_b_) _Theology is nevertheless progressive._ It is progressive in the
sense that our subjective understanding of the facts with regard to God,
and our consequent expositions of these facts, may and do become more
perfect. But theology is not progressive in the sense that its objective
facts change, either in their number or their nature. With Martineau we
may say: “Religion has been reproached with not being progressive; it
makes amends by being imperishable.” Though our knowledge may be
imperfect, it will have great value still. Our success in constructing a
theology will depend upon the proportion which clearly expressed facts of
Scripture bear to mere inferences, and upon the degree in which they all
cohere about Christ, the central person and theme.
The progress of theology is progress in apprehension by man, not
progress in communication by God. Originality in astronomy is not
man’s creation of new planets, but man’s discovery of planets that
were never seen before, or the bringing to light of relations
between them that were never before suspected. Robert Kerr Eccles:
“Originality is a habit of recurring to origins—the habit of
securing personal experience by personal application to original
facts. It is not an eduction of novelties either from nature,
Scripture, or inner consciousness; it is rather the habit of
resorting to primitive facts, and of securing the personal
experiences which arise from contact with these facts.” Fisher,
Nat. and Meth. of Revelation, 48—“The starry heavens are now what
they were of old; there is no enlargement of the stellar universe,
except that which comes through the increased power and use of the
telescope.” We must not imitate the green sailor who, when set to
steer, said he had “sailed _by_ that star.”
Martineau, Types, 1:492, 493—“Metaphysics, so far as they are true
to their work, are stationary, precisely because they have in
charge, not what begins and ceases to be, but what always _is_....
It is absurd to praise motion for always making way, while
disparaging space for still being what it ever was: as if the
motion you prefer could be, without the space which you reproach.”
Newman Smyth, Christian Ethics, 45, 67-70, 79—“True conservatism
is progress which takes direction from the past and fulfils its
good; false conservatism is a narrowing and hopeless reversion to
the past, which is a betrayal of the promise of the future. So
Jesus came not ‘to destroy the law or the prophets’; he ‘came not
to destroy, but to fulfil’_ (Mat. 5:17)_.... The last book on
Christian Ethics will not be written before the Judgment Day.”
John Milton, Areopagitica: “Truth is compared in the Scripture to
a streaming fountain; if her waters flow not in a perpetual
progression, they sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and
tradition. A man may be a heretic in the truth.” Paul in _Rom.
2:16_, and in _2 Tim. 2:8_—speaks of “my gospel.” It is the duty
of every Christian to have his own conception of the truth, while
he respects the conceptions of others. Tennyson, Locksley Hall: “I
that rather held it better men should perish one by one, Than that
earth should stand at gaze like Joshua’s moon at Ajalon.” We do
not expect any new worlds, and we need not expect any new
Scriptures; but we may expect progress in the interpretation of
both. Facts are final, but interpretation is not.
Chapter III. Method Of Theology.
I. Requisites to the study of Theology.
The requisites to the successful study of theology have already in part
been indicated in speaking of its limitations. In spite of some
repetition, however, we mention the following:
(_a_) _A disciplined mind._ Only such a mind can patiently collect the
facts, hold in its grasp many facts at once, educe by continuous
reflection their connecting principles, suspend final judgment until its
conclusions are verified by Scripture and experience.
Robert Browning, Ring and Book, 175 (Pope, 228)—“Truth nowhere
lies, yet everywhere, in these; Not absolutely in a portion, yet
Evolveable from the whole: evolved at last Painfully, held
tenaciously by me.” Teachers and students may be divided into two
classes: (1) those who know enough already; (2) those wish to
learn more than they now know. Motto of Winchester School in
England: “Disce, aut discede.” Butcher, Greek Genius, 213,
230—“The Sophists fancied that they were imparting education, when
they were only imparting results. Aristotle illustrates their
method by the example of a shoemaker who, professing to teach the
art of making painless shoes, puts into the apprentice’s hand a
large assortment of shoes ready-made. A witty Frenchman classes
together those who would make science popular, metaphysics
intelligible, and vice respectable. The word σχόλη, which first
meant ‘leisure,’ then ‘philosophical discussion,’ and finally
‘school,’ shows the pure love of learning among the Greeks.”
Robert G. Ingersoll said that the average provincial clergyman is
like the land of the upper Potomac spoken of by Tom Randolph, as
almost worthless in its original state, and rendered wholly so by
cultivation. Lotze, Metaphysics, 1:16—“the constant whetting of
the knife is tedious, if it is not proposed to cut anything with
it.” “To do their duty is their only holiday,” is the description
of Athenian character given by Thucydides. Chitty asked a father
inquiring as to his son’s qualifications for the law: “Can your
son eat sawdust without any butter?” On opportunities for culture
in the Christian ministry, see New Englander, Oct. 1875:644; A. H.
Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 273-275; Christ in Creation,
318-320.
(_b_) _An intuitional as distinguished from a merely logical habit of
mind_,—or, trust in the mind’s primitive convictions, as well as in its
processes of reasoning. The theologian must have insight as well as
understanding. He must accustom himself to ponder spiritual facts as well
as those which are sensible and material; to see things in their inner
relations as well as in their outward forms; to cherish confidence in the
reality and the unity of truth.
Vinet, Outlines of Philosophy, 39, 40—“If I do not feel that good
is good, who will ever prove it to me?” Pascal: “Logic, which is
an abstraction, may shake everything. A being purely intellectual
will be incurably sceptical.” Calvin: “Satan is an acute
theologian.” Some men can see a fly on a barn door a mile away,
and yet can never see the door. Zeller, Outlines of Greek
Philosophy, 93—“Gorgias the Sophist was able to show
metaphysically that nothing can exist; that what does exist cannot
be known by us; and that what is known by us cannot be imparted to
others” (quoted by Wenley, Socrates and Christ, 28). Aristotle
differed from those moderate men who thought it impossible to go
over the same river twice,—he held that it could not be done even
once (_cf._ Wordsworth, Prelude, 536). Dove, Logic of the
Christian Faith, 1-29, and especially 25, gives a demonstration of
the impossibility of motion: A thing cannot move in the place
where it is; it cannot move in the places where it is not; but the
place where it is and the places where it is not are all the
places that there are; therefore a thing cannot move at all.
Hazard, Man a Creative First Cause, 109, shows that the bottom of
a wheel does not move, since it goes backward as fast as the top
goes forward. An instantaneous photograph makes the upper part a
confused blur, while the spokes of the lower part are distinctly
visible. Abp. Whately: “Weak arguments are often thrust before my
path; but, although they are most unsubstantial, it is not easy to
destroy them. There is not a more difficult feat known than to cut
through a cushion with a sword.” _Cf.__ 1 Tim. 6:20—_“oppositions
of the knowledge which is falsely so called”; _3:2—_“the bishop
therefore must be ... sober-minded”—σώφρων = “well balanced.” The
Scripture speaks of “sound [ὑγιής = healthful] doctrine”_ (1 Tim.
1:10)_. Contrast _1 Tim. 6:4—[νοσῶν = ailing] _“diseased about
questionings and disputes of words.”
(_c_) _An acquaintance with physical, mental, and moral science._ The
method of conceiving and expressing Scripture truth is so affected by our
elementary notions of these sciences, and the weapons with which theology
is attacked and defended are so commonly drawn from them as arsenals, that
the student cannot afford to be ignorant of them.
Goethe explains his own greatness by his avoidance of metaphysics:
“Mein Kind, Ich habe es klug gemacht: Ich habe nie über’s Denken
gedacht”—“I have been wise in never thinking about thinking”; he
would have been wiser, had he pondered more deeply the fundamental
principles of his philosophy; see A. H. Strong, The Great Poets
and their Theology, 296-299, and Philosophy and Religion, 1-18;
also in Baptist Quarterly, 2:393 _sq._ Many a theological system
has fallen, like the Campanile at Venice, because its foundations
were insecure. Sir William Hamilton: “No difficulty arises in
theology which has not first emerged in philosophy.” N. W. Taylor:
“Give me a young man in metaphysics, and I care not who has him in
theology.” President Samson Talbot: “I love metaphysics, because
they have to do with realities.” The maxim “Ubi tres medici, ibi
duo athei,” witnesses to the truth of Galen’s words: ἄριστος
ἰατρὸς καὶ φιλόσοφος—“the best physician is also a philosopher.”
Theology cannot dispense with science, any more than science can
dispense with philosophy. E. G. Robinson: “Science has not
invalidated any fundamental truth of revelation, though it has
modified the statement of many.... Physical Science will
undoubtedly knock some of our crockery gods on the head, and the
sooner the better.” There is great advantage to the preacher in
taking up, as did Frederick W. Robertson, one science after
another. Chemistry entered into his mental structure, as he said,
“like iron into the blood.”
(_d_) _A knowledge of the original languages of the Bible._ This is
necessary to enable us not only to determine the meaning of the
fundamental terms of Scripture, such as holiness, sin, propitiation,
justification, but also to interpret statements of doctrine by their
connections with the context.
Emerson said that the man who reads a book in a strange tongue,
when he can have a good translation, is a fool. Dr. Behrends
replied that he is a fool who is satisfied with the substitute. E.
G. Robinson: “Language is a great organism, and no study so
disciplines the mind as the dissection of an organism.”
Chrysostom: “This is the cause of all our evils—our not knowing
the Scriptures.” Yet a modern scholar has said: “The Bible is the
most dangerous of all God’s gifts to men.” It is possible to adore
the letter, while we fail to perceive its spirit. A narrow
interpretation may contradict its meaning. Much depends upon
connecting phrases, as for example, the διὰ τοῦτο and ἐφ᾽ ᾧ, in
_Rom. 5:12_. Professor Philip Lindsley of Princeton, 1813-1853,
said to his pupils: “One of the best preparations for death is a
thorough knowledge of the Greek grammar.” The youthful Erasmus:
“When I get some money, I will get me some Greek books, and, after
that, some clothes.” The dead languages are the only really living
ones—free from danger of misunderstanding from changing usage.
Divine Providence has put revelation into fixed forms in the
Hebrew and the Greek. Sir William Hamilton, Discussions, 330—“To
be a competent divine is in fact to be a scholar.” On the true
idea of a Theological Seminary Course, see A. H. Strong, Philos.
and Religion, 302-313.
(_e_) _A holy affection toward God._ Only the renewed heart can properly
feel its need of divine revelation, or understand that revelation when
given.
_Ps. 25:14—_“The secret of Jehovah is with them that fear him”;
_Rom. 12:2—_“prove what is the ... will of God”; _cf._ _Ps.
36:1—_“the transgression of the wicked speaks in his heart like an
oracle.” “It is the heart and not the brain That to the highest
doth attain.” To “learn by heart” is something more than to learn
by mind, or by head. All heterodoxy is preceded by heteropraxy. In
Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Faithful does not go through the
Sloug
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/44035