02.03. The Sources of Theology.
Chapter 03 The Sources of Theology A general definition of Theology, Chap. 1., Ques. 1.
1. What are the two great departments into which Theology is divided?
1st. Natural Theology, which is the science which proposes to itself these two questions:
(1.) Can the real objective existence of God as a personal extramundane Spirit be established by satisfactory evidence?
(2.) What may be legitimately ascertained concerning the true nature of God in himself and concerning his relations to the universe, and especially to man, by the light of nature alone. A distinction here must be carefully observed between that knowledge of God which can be reached from the evidences afforded in his works by the powers of human reason independently of all suggestions afforded by supernatural revelation, e. g., the theology of Plato and Cicero; and on the other hand, that knowledge of God which the human faculties are now able to deduce from the phenomena of nature under the borrowed, if unacknowledged light of a supernatural revelation, e. g.,., the theology of Modern Rationalists.
2nd. Revealed Theology is that science which, Natural Theology presupposed, comprehends as its province all that has been revealed to us concerning God and his relation to the universe, and especially to mankind, through supernatural channels.
2. What extreme views have been considered to explain the possibility and validity of Natural, and as distinguished from Revealed Theology?
1st. That of Deists or naturalistic Theists, who deny either the possibility or the historical fact of a supernatural revelation and maintain that Natural Theology discovers all that it is either possible or necessary for man now to know about God, or his relation to us. Many German supernaturalistic rationalists, while they admit the historical fact of a supernatural revelation, hold that its only office is to enforce and illustrate the truths already given in Natural Religion, which are sufficient in themselves, and need reinforcement only because they re not sufficiently attended to by men. This is disproved below, Ques. 7–10.
2nd. The opposite extreme has been held by some Christians, that Natural Theology has no real existence; but that we are indebted to supernatural revelation for our first valid information that God exists. This is disproved—
(1.) By the testimony of Scripture, Romans 1:20-24, and Romans 2:14-15, etc.
(2.) By the testimony of experience, e. g., the knowledge of God attained by the more eminent heathen philosophers, however imperfect.
(3.) The validity of the Theistic inference from the phenomena of consciousness and of the external world has been vindicated in Chapt. 2.
(4.) It is self–evident that some knowledge of God is logically presupposed in the recognition of a supernatural revelation as coming from him.
3. State the principal answers given to the question, “What is the Source or Standard of Knowledge in Theology?”
1st. The theory of Schleiermacher and the Transcendental school. He was preacher and professor in Halle and Berlin from 1796 to 1834, and was the author of the “Mediation Theology,” and inaugurated the movement by his “Discourses on Religion, addressed to the Educated among its Despisers,” 1799, and his “Christian Faith on the Principles of the Evangelical Church,” 1821.He considered religion to be a form of feeling, and to be grounded on our constitutional God–consciousness, which consists, on the intellectual side, of an intuition of God, and on the emotional side, of a feeling of absolute dependence. Christianity consists of that specific form of this constitutional religious consciousness which was generated in the bosom of his disciples by the God–man Christ. And as human consciousness in general is generated in every individual by his social relations, so Christian consciousness is generated in communion with that society (the Church) which Christ founded and of which he is the center of life. And as the common intuitions of men are the last appeal in all questions of natural knowledge, so the common Christian consciousness of the Church is the last appeal in all questions of Christian faith, which in its totality is the rule of Faith, and not the Scriptures.
OBJECTION.
(1.) This view is inconsistent with the nature of Christianity, which as a remedial scheme rests upon certain historical facts, which must be known in order to be effective, and which can be authoritatively made known only by means of a supernatural revelation. No form of intuition can reach them.
(2.) It is inconsistent with the uniform conviction of Christians that Christianity is a system of divinely revealed facts and principles.
(3.) It affords no criterion of truth. It must regard all the doctrines of the various Church parties as reconcilable variations of the same fundamental truth.
(4.) It is inconsistent with the claims of Scripture as the work of God, and with its explicit teaching, as to the nature of revelation communicating objective truth, and as to the necessity of the knowledge of the truth so conveyed in order to salvation.
2nd. The Mystic Doctrine of the Inner Light, or the General Inspiration of all Men, or at least all Christians, as held by the Quakers. This view differs from Rationalism because it makes the feelings rather than the understanding the organ of religious truth, and because it regards the “inward light ” as the testimony of God’s Spirit to and within the human spirit. It differs from our doctrine of Inspiration because it is the practical guidance and illumination of the divine Spirit in the hearts of all believing men, and not confined to the official Founders and First Teachers of the Church. It differs from spiritual illumination, which we believe to be experienced by all truly regenerated believers only, because (1) it leads to the knowledge of truth independently of its revelation in Scripture, and (2) it belongs to all men who are willing to attend to and obey it.
OBJECTION.
(1.) This view contradicts Scripture. (a.) Which never promises an illumination which will carry men beyond, or make men independent of its own teaching. (b.) They teach the absolute necessity for salvation of the objective revelation given in the written word (Romans 11:14-18).
(2.) Is disproved by experience, which (a) testifies that the “inner light” affords no criterion to determine the truth of different doctrines, (b) that it has never availed to lead any individual or community to the knowledge of saving truth independently of the objective revelation, and (c) that it has always led to an irreverent depreciation of the word, and in the long run to disorder and confusion.
III. The Theory of an Inspired Church, that is inspired in the persons, or at least the official teaching, of its chief pastors and teachers. This view is refuted Chapter 5.
IV. The common postulate of all Rationalists, that Reason is the source and measure of all our knowledge of God. This view is considered and refuted below, Questions 7–10.
V. The true and Protestant Doctrine. That the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, being given by the Inspiration of God, are his words to us, and an infallible and authoritative Rule of Faith and Practice, and to the exclusion of all others, the one source and standard of Christian Theology.
4. What is the precise sense in which the term “Reason” is used by those who contrast it to Faith as the source of Religious Knowledge? The term “Reason” is used in various senses by different classes of Rationalists. By some it is used as the organ of the higher institutions apprehending necessary and ultimate truth. By others “Reason” stands for the understanding, or logical faculty of observing judging, and drawing inferences in the sphere of experience. Hence it comprehends as its ground and standard the mass of the accredited knowledge and opinion of the day. Practically all men designate by the respectable name of reason their own permanent habit and attitude of mind, with the organized mass of knowledge, opinion, and prejudice with which their minds are full. That is said to stand to reason which is congruous to that habit, or to that mass of accepted opinion. In this controversy, however, we designate by the term , Reason “man’s entire natural faculty of ascertaining the truth, including intuitions, understandings, imagination affections and emotions, acting under natural conditions, and independently of supernatural assistance.”
5. What is Rationalism? A “Naturalist” is one who holds that Nature is a complete self–contained, self–supported sphere in itself; and hence denies either the reality of the supernatural, or that it can be an object of human knowledge; and hence denies the necessity, or possibility, or actual fact, of a supernatural revelation. The term “Rationalist” is more general. It includes the Naturalist of every grade, and also all those who while admitting the fact of a divine revelation, yet maintain that revelation, its doctrines and records, are all to be measured and accredited or rejected and interpreted by human reason as ultimate arbiter. With the Rationalists Reason is the ultimate ground and measure of faith. In its historical sense Rationalism, as a mode of freethinking springing up in the midst of the Christian Church itself; giving rise to an illegitimate use of reason in the interpretation of the Scriptures and their doctrines, has always been active in some form, and in one degree or another, and has been signally manifest in a class of the Mediaeval schoolmen, and in the disciples of Socinus. Its modern and most extreme form originated in Germany in the middle of the last century. The causes to which it is to be attributed were—(a.) The low state of religion pervading all Protestant countries. (b.) The influence of the formal philosophy and dogmatism of Wolf, the disciple of Leif. (c.) The influence of the English Deists. (d.) The influence of the French infidels collected at the court of Frederick the Great of Prussia. The father of critical rationalism was Semler, Prof. at Halle (b. 1725, and d. 1791). Although personally devout, he arbitrarily examined the canonicity of the books of Scripture neglecting historical evidence, and substituting his own subjective sense of fitness. He introduced the principle of “accommodation ” into Biblical interpretation, holding that besides much positive truth, Christ and his apostles taught many things in “accommodation” to the ideas prevailing among their contemporaries.—Hurst, “History of Rationalism.” This tendency, afterwards greatly aggravated through the influence of Lessing and Reimarus the Wolfenbüttel Fragmentist, penetrated the mass of German theological literature, and culminated in the last years of the eighteenth and first years of the nineteenth century. Several theologians of the day, while admitting the fact that Christianity is a supernatural revelation, yet maintained that it is merely a republication of the elements of natural religion, and that Reason is the supreme arbiter as to what books are to be received as canonical, and as to what they mean. Miracles were regarded as unworthy of belief. The narratives of miracles recorded in the Scriptures were referred to the ignorance, superstition, or partiality of the writers, and the miracles themselves were referred to natural causes. Jesus was regarded as a good man, and original Christianity as a sort of philosophical Socinianism. This is what has been historically designated in Germany by the title Rationalism and more specifically as the Rationalismus Vulgaris, the old, or common–sense Rationalism.
After the rise of the philosophies of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, a new impulse was given to theological speculation, and to Biblical interpretation. This gave rise on the one hand to a reaction towards orthodoxy through the “Mediation theology” of Schleiermacher, and on the other to a new school of Transcendental Rationalism, the basis of which is a pantheistic mode of thought. It necessarily denies the supernatural, and postulates the fundamental principle that miracles are impossible. This school, whose head–quarters was Tubingen, has been most prominently represented by Christian Baur with his Tendency Theory, Strauss with his Mythical theory, and Renan with his Legendary theory, to account for the origin of the New Testament writings, while denying their historical basis of fact. This tendency, in various degrees of force, is manifested in the state of theological opinion in England and America, principally in the School of Coleridge, Maurice, Stanley, Jowett and Williams, and the Broad Church party generally; in Scotland in Tulloch in America by the late Theodore Parker, the school of liberal Christians, and in the general relaxation of faith discernible on every side.
“German Rationalism,” Hagenbach, Clarke Edinburg Library; “History of German Protestantism,” Kahnis, Clarke Ed. Lib.; “Critical History of Free Thought,” A. S. Farrar, New York, D. Appleton & Co.; “Germany, its Universities, Theology, and Religion,” Philip Schaff, D.D.; “History of Rationalism,” President Hurst, C. Scribner, New York.
6. Into what two classes may all the argumentative grounds of opposition to historical Christianity be grouped?
1st. A priori grounds. These rest upon a false view of the being and nature of God, and of his relation to the world. Thus the Positivist, who confines man’s knowledge to Phenomena, and their laws of co–existence and sequence; the Deist, who denies the immanence of God in his works and denies or renders remote and obscure his relation to us as Moral Governor and spiritual Father; and the Pantheist, who denies his personality; and the scientific naturalist, who sees in nature only the operation of invariable self–executing physical laws—must all alike deny the possibility and credibility of miracles, must resolve inspiration into genius, and in some way or other explain away the Scriptures, as historical records of fact. This class of questions has been discussed above, Chapter 2.
2nd. Historical and Critical grounds. These all rest on the assumed defect in the historical evidence for the genuineness and authenticity of the several books of the canon, and in the alleged discrepancies, and historical and scientific inaccuracies, found in scripture. This class of questions must be met in the departments of Biblical Introduction, and Exegesis.
7. State the grounds upon which it is evident that Reason is not the ultimate source and measure of religions ideas.
These are in general three:
(1.) A priori. Reason, considering man’s present condition of ignorance, moral degradation, and guilt, has no qualities which render it competent to attain either (a) certainty or (b) sufficient information for man’s practical guidance, as to God’s existence, or character, or relation to us, or purposes with regard to us.
(2.) from universal experience:unassisted reason has never availed for these ends, but when unduly relied upon has always led men, in spite of a neglected revelation, to skepticism and confusion.
(3.) As a matter of fact an infallible record of a supernatural revelation has been given, which conveys, when interpreted with the illuminating assistance of the Holy Spirit, information, the knowledge of which is essential to salvation, which reason could by no means have anticipated. To establish this argument the following points must be separately established in their order:
1st. A supernatural revelation is necessary for man in his present condition.
2nd. A supernatural revelation is possible alike a parte Dei(part of God), and a parte hominis, (part of man).
3rd. From what Natural Theology reveals to us of the Attributes of God, of his relations to men, and of our moral condition, a supernatural revelation is antecedently probable.
4th. It is an historical fact that Christianity is just such a supernatural revelation.
5th. It is also an historical fact that the present Canon of the Old and New Testaments consists only of and contain all the extant authentic and genuine records of that revelation.
6th. That the books constituting this canon were supernaturally inspired, so as to be constituted the word of God, and an infallible and authoritative rule of faith and practice for men.
8. Prove that a supernatural revelation is necessary for men in their present condition.
1st. Reason itself teaches—(1) that as a matter of fact man’s moral nature is disordered, and (2) his relations to God disturbed by guilt and alienation. Reason is capable of discovering the fact of sin, but makes no suggestions as to its remedy. We can determine a priori God’s determination to punish sin, because that as a matter of justice rests on his unchangeable and necessary nature, but can so determine nothing with respect to his disposition to provide, or to allow a remedy, because that, as a matter of grace, rests on his simple volition.
2nd. A spontaneous religious yearning, natural and universal, for a divine self–revelation and intervention on the part of God. and manifest in all human history, proves its necessity.
3rd. Reason has never in the case of any historical community availed to lead men to certainty, to satisfy their wants or to rule their lives.
4th. Rationalism is strong only for attack and destruction. It has never availed in any considerable degree in the way of positive construction. No two prominent Rationalists agree as to what the positive and certain results of the teaching of reason are.
9. Prove that a supernatural revelation is possible botha parte Dei , anda parse hominis. As to its being possible on God’s side, if Theism be true, if God be an infinite extramundane person, who yet controls the operation of the laws he has ordained as his own methods and has subordinated the physical system to the higher interests of his moral government, then obviously to limit him as to the manner, character, or extent of his self–manifestations to his creatures is transcendently absurd. All the philosophical presumptions, which render a supernatural revelation on the part of God impossible, are based on Deistic, Materialistic or Pantheistic principles. We have exhibited the argument for Theism in Chapter 2. As to its being possible on man’s side, it has been argued by modern transcendental rationalists that the communication of new truth by means of a “book revelation” is impossible. That words are conventional signs which have power to excite in the mind only those ideas which having been previously apprehended, have been conventionally associated with those words.
WE ANSWER—
1st. We admit that simple ultimate ideas which admit of no analysis, must in the first instance be apprehended by an appropriate organ in an act of spontaneous intuition. No man can attain the idea of color except through the act of his own eyes, nor the idea of right except by an intuitive act of his own moral sense. But
2nd, the Christian revelation involves no new simple ultimate ideas incapable of analysis. They presuppose and involve the matter of all such natural intuitions, and they excite the rational and moral intuitions to a more active and normal exercise by association with new aspects of our divine relations, but for the most part they narrate objective and concrete facts, they explain the application of intuitive principles to our actual historical condition and relations; they state the purposes, requirements, and promises of God. But,
3rd, even new simple ideas may be excited in the mind by means of a supernatural inward spiritual illumination action on the minds of the subject of religious experience. The work of the Holy Spirit accompanying the written word completes the revelation. An experienced Christian under the teaching of the Holy Spirit through the word, has as clear and certain a knowledge of the matter involved in his new experience, as he has of the matter of his perceptions through his bodily senses.
10. Show from the data of Natural Theology that in the present state of human nature a supernatural revelation is antecedently probable. As shown in Chapt. 2., Natural Theology ascertains for us an infinite, eternal, wise, and absolutely righteous and benevolent personal God. It ascertains also that man created in the divine image is morally corrupt and judicially condemned. It reveals to us man needing divine help, yearning and hoping for it, and therefore not incapable of it, as are the finally lost demons. Therefore all the perfections of God, and all the miseries of men, lead to the rational hope that at some time and in some way God may be graciously disposed to intervene supernaturally for man’s help, and reveal his character and purposes more fully for man’s guidance.
11. How may it be proved that it is an historical fact that Christianity is such a supernatural revelation? The reader must here be referred to the many and excellent treatises on the Evidences of Christianity.
Paley’s, Chalmers’, Erskine’s, and Alexander’s works on the Evidences; A. S. Farrar’s “Critical History of Free Thought”; Hopkins’s “Evidences of Christianity”; Barnes’s “Evidences of Christianity in the Nineteenth Century”; G. Wardlaw’s “Leading Evidences of Christianity”; Hetherington’s “Apologetics of the Christian Faith”; Leathes’s “Grounds of Christian Hope”; Row’s “Supernatural in the New Testament”; Rogers’s “Superhuman Origin of the Bible”; Christlieb’s “Modern Doubt and Christian Belief”; Rawlinson’s “Historical Evidence of the Truth of the Scripture Records”; Wace’s “Christianity and Morality ”; Titcomb’s “Cautions for Doubters”; Pearson’s “Prize Essay on Infidelity”; F. W. Farrar’s “Witness of History to Christ.”
12. How can it be proved that the accepted Canon of the Old and New Testament consists only of and contains all the authentic and genuine records of the Christian Revelation?
Here also the reader must be referred to the best treatises on the Canon of holy Scriptures. B. F. Westcott, on “The Canon” and on “Introduction to the Study of the Gospels”; Tischendorf, “When were our Gospels composed?” E. Cone Bissell “Historic Origin of the Bible”; Prof. George P. Fisher, “The Supernatural Origin of Christianity,” and “The Beginnings of Christianity.”
13. What is the Nature and Extent of the Inspiration of the Christian Scriptures?
See below, Chapter 4.
14. What is the legitimate office of Reason in the sphere of Religion?
1st. Reason is the primary revelation God has made to man, necessarily presupposed in every subsequent revelation of whatever kind.
2nd. Hence Reason, including the moral and emotional nature, and experience, must be the organ by means of which alone all subsequent revelations can be apprehended and received. A revelation addressed to the irrational would be as inconsequent as light to the blind. This is the usus organicus of reason. 3rd. Hence no subsequent revelation can contradict reason acting legitimately within its own sphere. For then (1) God would contradict himself and (2) faith would be impossible. To believe is to assent to a thing as true, but to see that it contradicts reason, is to see that it is not true. Hence the Reason has the office in judging the Evidences or in interpreting the Records of a supernatural revelation, of exercising the judicium contradictionis. Reason has therefore to determine two questions:
1st. Does God speak?
2nd. What does God say? This, however, requires (a) the cooperation of all the faculties of knowing, moral as well as purely intellectual, (b) a modest and teachable spirit, (c) perfect candor and loyalty to truth, (d) willingness to put all known truth to practice, (e) the illumination and assistance of the promised Spirit of truth. This is the old distinction between what is contrary to reason, and what is above it. It is evident that it is the height of absurdity for reason to object to an otherwise accredited revelation that its teaching is incomprehensible, or that it involves elements apparently irreconcilable with other truths. Because—
(1.) This presumes that human reason is the highest form of intelligence, which is absurd.
(2.) In no other department do men limit their faith by their ability to understand. What do men of science understand as to the ultimate nature of atoms, of inertia, of gravity, of force, of life? They are every moment forced to assume the truth of the impossible, and acknowledge the inexplicability of the certain.
All speculative infidelity springs out of the insane pride of the human mind, the insatiate rage for explanation, and, above all, for the resolution of all knowledge to apparent logical unity. Common sense, and the habit of reducing opinions to actual practice, leads to health of mind and body, and to religious faith.
15. What is Philosophy and what is its relation to Theology?
Philosophy, in its wide sense, embraces all human knowledge acquired through the use of man’s natural faculties, and consists of that knowledge interpreted and systematized by the reason. Science is more specific, relating to some special department of knowledge thoroughly reduced to system. In later days the word Science is becoming more and more definitely appropriated to the knowledge of the physical phenomena of the universe. In this sense Science has for its task the determination of phenomena in their classifications of likeness and unlikeness, and their laws or order of co–existence and succession, and does not inquire into substance, or cause, or purpose, etc. Philosophy is presupposed, therefore, in science as the first and most general knowledge. It inquires into the soul and the laws of thought into intuition and ultimate truth, into substance and real being, into absolute cause, the ultimate nature of force and will, into conscience and duty. As to its relations to Theology it will be observed—
1st. The first principles of a true philosophy are presupposed in all theology, natural and revealed.
2nd. The Holy scriptures, although not designed primarily to teach philosophy, yet necessarily presuppose and involve the fundamental principles of a true philosophy. Not the inferences of these principles drawn out into a system, but the principles themselves, as to substance and cause, as to conscience and right, etc.
3rd. The philosophy prevalent in every age has always and will necessarily react upon the interpretation of Scripture and the formation of theological systems. This has been true as to the early Platonism, and the Neo–Platonism of the second age; as to the Aristotelian philosophy of the middle ages; as to the systems of Descartes and Leibnitz; of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel on the continent, and the systems of Locke, Reid, Coleridge, etc., in Britain.
4th. The devout believer, however, who is assured that the Bible is the very word of God, can never allow his philosophy, derived from human sources, to dominate his interpretation of the Bible, but will seek with a docile spirit and with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, to bring his own philosophy into perfect harmony with that which is implicitly contained in the word. He will by all means seek to realize a philosophy which proves itself to be the genuine and natural handmaid of the religion which the word reveals.
All human thought, and all human life, is one. If therefore God speaks for any purpose, his word must be supreme, and insofar as it has any bearing on any department of human opinion or action, it must therein be received as the most certain informant and the highest Law. The various departments of Christian Theology have been enumerated in Chapter 1.