Chapter III. Method Of Theology.

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[pg 039]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). Contrast1 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, 2:393sq.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, inRom. 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[pg 040]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 Slough of Despond, as Christian did; and it is by getting over the fence to find an easier road, that Christian and Hopeful get into Doubting Castle and the hands of Giant Despair.“Great thoughts come from the heart,”said Vauvenargues. The preacher cannot, like Dr. Kane, kindle fire with a lens of ice. Aristotle:“The power of attaining moral truth is dependent upon our acting rightly.”Pascal:“We know truth, not only by the reason, but by the heart.... The heart has its reasons, which the reason knows nothing of.”Hobbes:“Even the axioms of geometry would be disputed, if men's passions were concerned in them.”Macaulay:“The law of gravitation would still be controverted, if it interfered with vested interests.”Nordau, Degeneracy:“Philosophic systems simply furnish the excuses reason demands for the unconscious impulses of the race during a given period of time.”Lord Bacon:“A tortoise on the right path will beat a racer on the wrong path.”Goethe:“As are the inclinations, so also are the opinions.... A work of art can be comprehended by the head only with the assistance of the heart.... Only law can give us liberty.”Fichte:“Our system of thought is very often only the history of our heart.... Truth is descended from conscience.... Men do not will according to their reason, but they reason according to their will.”Neander's motto was:“Pectus est quod theologum facit”—“It is the heart that makes the theologian.”John Stirling:“That is a dreadful eye which can be divided from a living human heavenly heart, and still retain its all-penetrating vision,—such was the eye of the Gorgons.”But such an eye, we add, is not all-penetrating. E. G. Robinson:“Never study theology in cold blood.”W. C. Wilkinson:“The head is a magnetic needle with truth for its pole. But the heart is a hidden mass of magnetic iron. The head is drawn somewhat toward its natural pole, the truth; but more it is drawn by that nearer magnetism.”See an affecting instance of Thomas Carlyle's enlightenment, after the death of his wife, as to the meaning of the Lord's Prayer, in Fisher, Nat. and Meth. of Revelation, 165. On the importance of feeling, in association of ideas, see Dewey, Psychology, 106, 107.(f)The enlightening influence of the Holy Spirit.As only the Spirit fathoms the things of God, so only he can illuminate our minds to apprehend them.1 Cor. 2:11, 12—“the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God. But we received ... the Spirit which is from God; that we might know.”Cicero, Nat. Deorum, 66—“Nemo igitur vir magnus sine aliquo adfiatu divino unquam fuit.”Professor Beck of Tübingen:“For the student, there is no privileged path leading to the truth; the only one which leads to it is also that of the unlearned; it is that of regeneration and of gradual illumination by the Holy Spirit; and without the Holy Spirit, theology is not only a cold stone, it is a deadly poison.”As all the truths of the differential and integral calculus are wrapped up in the simplest mathematical axiom, so all theology is wrapped up in the declaration that God is holiness and love, or in the protevangelium uttered at the gates of Eden. But dull minds cannot of themselves evolve the calculus from the axiom, nor can sinful hearts evolve theology from the first prophecy. Teachers are needed to demonstrate geometrical theorems, and the Holy Spirit is needed to show us that the“new commandment”illustrated by the death of Christ is only an“old commandment which ye had from the beginning”(1 John 2:7). The Principia of Newton is a revelation of Christ, and so are the Scriptures. The Holy Spirit enables us to enter into the meaning of Christ's revelations[pg 041]in both Scripture and nature; to interpret the one by the other; and so to work out original demonstrations and applications of the truth;Mat. 13:52—“Therefore every scribe who hath been made a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a householder, who bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old.”See Adolph Monod's sermons on Christ's Temptation, addressed to the theological students of Montauban, in Select Sermons from the French and German, 117-179.II. Divisions of Theology.Theology is commonly divided into Biblical, Historical, Systematic, and Practical.1.Biblical Theologyaims to arrange and classify the facts of revelation, confining itself to the Scriptures for its material, and treating of doctrine only so far as it was developed at the close of the apostolic age.Instance DeWette, Biblische Theologie; Hofmann, Schriftbeweis; Nitzsch, System of Christian Doctrine. The last, however, has more of the philosophical element than properly belongs to Biblical Theology. The third volume of Ritschl's Justification and Reconciliation is intended as a system of Biblical Theology, the first and second volumes being little more than an historical introduction. But metaphysics, of a Kantian relativity and phenomenalism, enter so largely into Ritschl's estimates and interpretations, as to render his conclusions both partial and rationalistic. Notice a questionable use of the term Biblical Theology to designate the theology of a part of Scripture severed from the rest, as Steudel's Biblical Theology of the Old Testament; Schmidt's Biblical Theology of the New Testament; and in the common phrases: Biblical Theology of Christ, or of Paul. These phrases are objectionable as intimating that the books of Scripture have only a human origin. Upon the assumption that there is no common divine authorship of Scripture, Biblical Theology is conceived of as a series of fragments, corresponding to the differing teachings of the various prophets and apostles, and the theology of Paul is held to be an unwarranted and incongruous addition to the theology of Jesus. See Reuss, History of Christian Theology in the Apostolic Age.2.Historical Theologytraces the development of the Biblical doctrines from the time of the apostles to the present day, and gives account of the results of this development in the life of the church.By doctrinal development we mean the progressive unfolding and apprehension, by the church, of the truth explicitly or implicitly contained in Scripture. As giving account of the shaping of the Christian faith into doctrinal statements, Historical Theology is called the History of Doctrine. As describing the resulting and accompanying changes in the life of the church, outward and inward, Historical Theology is called Church History. Instance Cunningham's Historical Theology; Hagenbach's and Shedd's Histories of Doctrine; Neander's Church History. There is always a danger that the historian will see his own views too clearly reflected in the history of the church. Shedd's History of Christian Doctrine has been called“The History of Dr. Shedd's Christian Doctrine.”But if Dr. Shedd's Augustinianism colors his History, Dr. Sheldon's Arminianism also colors his. G. P. Fisher's History of Christian Doctrine is unusually lucid and impartial. See Neander's Introduction and Shedd's Philosophy of History.3.Systematic Theologytakes the material furnished by Biblical and by Historical Theology, and with this material seeks to build up into an organic and consistent whole all our knowledge of God and of the relations between God and the universe, whether this knowledge be originally derived from nature or from the Scriptures.Systematic Theology is therefore theology proper, of which Biblical and Historical Theology are the incomplete and preparatory stages. Systematic Theology is to be clearly distinguished from Dogmatic Theology. Dogmatic Theology is, in strict usage, the systematizing of the doctrines as expressed in the symbols of the church, together with the grounding of these in the Scriptures, and the exhibition, so far as may be, of their rational necessity. Systematic Theology begins, on the other hand, not with the[pg 042]symbols, but with the Scriptures. It asks first, not what the church has believed, but what is the truth of God's revealed word. It examines that word with all the aids which nature and the Spirit have given it, using Biblical and Historical Theology as its servants and helpers, but not as its masters. Notice here the technical use of the word“symbol,”from συμβάλλω, = a brief throwing together, or condensed statement of the essentials of Christian doctrine. Synonyms are: Confession, creed, consensus, declaration, formulary, canons, articles of faith.Dogmatism argues to foregone conclusions. The word is not, however, derived from“dog,”as Douglas Jerrold facetiously suggested, when he said that“dogmatism is puppyism full grown,”but from δοκέω to think, to opine. Dogmatic Theology has two principles: (1) The absolute authority of creeds, as decisions of the church: (2) The application to these creeds of formal logic, for the purpose of demonstrating their truth to the understanding. In the Roman Catholic Church, not the Scripture but the church, and the dogma given by it, is the decisive authority. The Protestant principle, on the contrary, is that Scripture decides, and that dogma is to be judged by it. Following Schleiermacher, Al. Schweizer thinks that the term“Dogmatik”should be discarded as essentially unprotestant, and that“Glaubenslehre”should take its place; and Harnack, Hist. Dogma, 6, remarks that“dogma has ever, in the progress of history, devoured its own progenitors.”While it is true that every new and advanced thinker in theology has been counted a heretic, there has always been a common faith—“the faith which was once for all delivered unto the saints”(Jude 3)—and the study of Systematic Theology has been one of the chief means of preserving this faith in the world.Mat. 15:13, 14—“Every plant which my heavenly Father planted not, shall be rooted up. Let them alone: they are blind guides”= there is truth planted by God, and it has permanent divine life. Human errors have no permanent vitality and they perish of themselves. See Kaftan, Dogmatik, 2, 3.4.Practical Theologyis the system of truth considered as a means of renewing and sanctifying men, or, in other words, theology in its publication and enforcement.To this department of theology belong Homiletics and Pastoral Theology, since these are but scientific presentations of the right methods of unfolding Christian truth, and of bringing it to bear upon men individually and in the church. See Van Oosterzee, Practical Theology; T. Harwood Pattison, The Making of the Sermon, and Public Prayer; Yale Lectures on Preaching by H. W. Beecher, R. W. Dale, Phillips Brooks, E. G. Robinson, A. J. F. Behrends, John Watson, and others; and the work on Pastoral Theology, by Harvey.It is sometimes asserted that there are other departments of theology not included in those above mentioned. But most of these, if not all, belong to other spheres of research, and cannot properly be classed under theology at all. Moral Theology, so called, or the science of Christian morals, ethics, or theological ethics, is indeed the proper result of theology, but is not to be confounded with it. Speculative theology, so called, respecting, as it does, such truth as is mere matter of opinion, is either extra-scriptural, and so belongs to the province of the philosophy of religion, or is an attempt to explain truth already revealed, and so falls within the province of Systematic Theology.“Speculative theology starts from certaina prioriprinciples, and from them undertakes to determine what is and must be. It deduces its scheme of doctrine from the laws of mind or from axioms supposed to be inwrought into its constitution.”Bib. Sac., 1852:376—“Speculative theology tries to show that the dogmas agree with the laws of thought, while the philosophy of religion tries to show that the laws of thought agree with the dogmas.”Theological Encyclopædia (the word signifies“instruction in a circle”) is a general introduction to all the divisions of Theology, together with an account of the relations between them. Hegel's Encyclopædia was an attempted exhibition of the principles and connections of all the sciences. See Crooks and Hurst, Theological Encyclopædia and Methodology; Zöckler, Handb. der theol. Wissenschaften, 2:606-769.The relations of theology to science and philosophy have been variously stated, but by none better than by H. B. Smith, Faith and Philosophy, 18—“Philosophy is a mode of human knowledge—not the whole of that knowledge, but a mode of it—the knowing of things rationally.”Science asks:“WhatdoI know?”Philosophy asks:“WhatcanI know?”William James, Psychology, 1:145—“Metaphysics means nothing[pg 043]but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.”Aristotle:“The particular sciences are toiling workmen, while philosophy is the architect. The workmen are slaves, existing for the free master. So philosophy rules the sciences.”With regard to philosophy and science Lord Bacon remarks:“Those who have handled knowledge have been too much either men of mere observation or abstract reasoners. The former are like the ant: they only collect material and put it to immediate use. The abstract reasoners are like spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes a middle course: it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and the field, while it transforms and digests what it gathers by a power of its own. Not unlike this is the work of the philosopher.”Novalis:“Philosophy can bake no bread; but it can give us God, freedom and immortality.”Prof. DeWitt of Princeton:“Science, philosophy, and theology are the three great modes of organizing the universe into an intellectual system. Science never goes below second causes; if it does, it is no longer science,—it becomes philosophy. Philosophy views the universe as a unity, and the goal it is always seeking to reach is the source and centre of this unity—the Absolute, the First Cause. This goal of philosophy is the point of departure for theology. What philosophy is striving to find, theology asserts has been found. Theology therefore starts with the Absolute, the First Cause.”W. N. Clarke, Christian Theology, 48—“Science examines and classifies facts; philosophy inquires concerning spiritual meanings. Science seeks to know the universe; philosophy to understand it.”Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 7—“Natural science has for its subject matter things and events. Philosophy is the systematic exhibition of the grounds of our knowledge. Metaphysics is our knowledge respecting realities which are not phenomenal,e. g., God and the soul.”Knight, Essays in Philosophy, 81—“The aim of the sciences is increase of knowledge, by the discovery of laws within which all phenomena may be embraced and by means of which they may be explained. The aim of philosophy, on the other hand, is to explain the sciences, by at once including and transcending them. Its sphere is substance and essence.”Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 3-5—“Philosophy =doctrine of knowledge(is mind passive or active in knowing?—Epistemology) +doctrine of being(is fundamental being mechanical and unintelligent, or purposive and intelligent?—Metaphysics). The systems of Locke, Hume, and Kant are preëminently theories of knowing; the systems of Spinoza and Leibnitz are preëminently theories of being. Historically theories of being come first, because the object is the only determinant for reflective thought. But the instrument of philosophy is thought itself. First then, we must study Logic, or the theory of thought; secondly, Epistemology, or the theory of knowledge; thirdly, Metaphysics, or the theory of being.”Professor George M. Forbes on the New Psychology:“Locke and Kant represent the two tendencies in philosophy—the empirical, physical, scientific, on the one hand, and the rational, metaphysical, logical, on the other. Locke furnishes the basis for the associational schemes of Hartley, the Mills, and Bain; Kant for the idealistic scheme of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. The two are not contradictory, but complementary, and the Scotch Reid and Hamilton combine them both, reacting against the extreme empiricism and scepticism of Hume. Hickok, Porter, and McCosh represented the Scotch school in America. It was exclusivelyanalytical; its psychology was the faculty-psychology; it represented the mind as a bundle of faculties. The unitary philosophy of T. H. Green, Edward Caird, in Great Britain, and in America, of W. T. Harris, George S. Morris, and John Dewey, was a reaction against this faculty-psychology, under the influence of Hegel. A second reaction under the influence of the Herbartian doctrine of apperception substituted function for faculty, making all processes phases of apperception. G. F. Stout and J. Mark Baldwin represent this psychology. A third reaction comes from the influence of physical science. All attempts to unify are relegated to a metaphysical Hades. There is nothing but states and processes. The only unity is the laws of their coëxistence and succession. There is nothinga priori. Wundt identifies apperception with will, and regards it as the unitary principle. Külpe and Titchener find no self, or will, or soul, but treat these as inferences little warranted. Their psychology is psychology without a soul. The old psychology was exclusivelystatic, while the new emphasizes the genetic point of view. Growth and development are the leading ideas of Herbert Spencer, Preyer, Tracy and Stanley Hall. William James is explanatory, while George T. Ladd is descriptive. Cattell, Scripture, and Münsterberg apply the methods of Fechner, and the Psychological[pg 044]Review is their organ. Their error is in their negative attitude. The old psychology is needed to supplement the new. It has greater scope and more practical significance.”On the relation of theology to philosophy and to science, see Luthardt, Compend. der Dogmatik, 4; Hagenbach, Encyclopädie, 109.

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[pg 039]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). Contrast1 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, 2:393sq.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, inRom. 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[pg 040]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 Slough of Despond, as Christian did; and it is by getting over the fence to find an easier road, that Christian and Hopeful get into Doubting Castle and the hands of Giant Despair.“Great thoughts come from the heart,”said Vauvenargues. The preacher cannot, like Dr. Kane, kindle fire with a lens of ice. Aristotle:“The power of attaining moral truth is dependent upon our acting rightly.”Pascal:“We know truth, not only by the reason, but by the heart.... The heart has its reasons, which the reason knows nothing of.”Hobbes:“Even the axioms of geometry would be disputed, if men's passions were concerned in them.”Macaulay:“The law of gravitation would still be controverted, if it interfered with vested interests.”Nordau, Degeneracy:“Philosophic systems simply furnish the excuses reason demands for the unconscious impulses of the race during a given period of time.”Lord Bacon:“A tortoise on the right path will beat a racer on the wrong path.”Goethe:“As are the inclinations, so also are the opinions.... A work of art can be comprehended by the head only with the assistance of the heart.... Only law can give us liberty.”Fichte:“Our system of thought is very often only the history of our heart.... Truth is descended from conscience.... Men do not will according to their reason, but they reason according to their will.”Neander's motto was:“Pectus est quod theologum facit”—“It is the heart that makes the theologian.”John Stirling:“That is a dreadful eye which can be divided from a living human heavenly heart, and still retain its all-penetrating vision,—such was the eye of the Gorgons.”But such an eye, we add, is not all-penetrating. E. G. Robinson:“Never study theology in cold blood.”W. C. Wilkinson:“The head is a magnetic needle with truth for its pole. But the heart is a hidden mass of magnetic iron. The head is drawn somewhat toward its natural pole, the truth; but more it is drawn by that nearer magnetism.”See an affecting instance of Thomas Carlyle's enlightenment, after the death of his wife, as to the meaning of the Lord's Prayer, in Fisher, Nat. and Meth. of Revelation, 165. On the importance of feeling, in association of ideas, see Dewey, Psychology, 106, 107.(f)The enlightening influence of the Holy Spirit.As only the Spirit fathoms the things of God, so only he can illuminate our minds to apprehend them.1 Cor. 2:11, 12—“the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God. But we received ... the Spirit which is from God; that we might know.”Cicero, Nat. Deorum, 66—“Nemo igitur vir magnus sine aliquo adfiatu divino unquam fuit.”Professor Beck of Tübingen:“For the student, there is no privileged path leading to the truth; the only one which leads to it is also that of the unlearned; it is that of regeneration and of gradual illumination by the Holy Spirit; and without the Holy Spirit, theology is not only a cold stone, it is a deadly poison.”As all the truths of the differential and integral calculus are wrapped up in the simplest mathematical axiom, so all theology is wrapped up in the declaration that God is holiness and love, or in the protevangelium uttered at the gates of Eden. But dull minds cannot of themselves evolve the calculus from the axiom, nor can sinful hearts evolve theology from the first prophecy. Teachers are needed to demonstrate geometrical theorems, and the Holy Spirit is needed to show us that the“new commandment”illustrated by the death of Christ is only an“old commandment which ye had from the beginning”(1 John 2:7). The Principia of Newton is a revelation of Christ, and so are the Scriptures. The Holy Spirit enables us to enter into the meaning of Christ's revelations[pg 041]in both Scripture and nature; to interpret the one by the other; and so to work out original demonstrations and applications of the truth;Mat. 13:52—“Therefore every scribe who hath been made a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a householder, who bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old.”See Adolph Monod's sermons on Christ's Temptation, addressed to the theological students of Montauban, in Select Sermons from the French and German, 117-179.II. Divisions of Theology.Theology is commonly divided into Biblical, Historical, Systematic, and Practical.1.Biblical Theologyaims to arrange and classify the facts of revelation, confining itself to the Scriptures for its material, and treating of doctrine only so far as it was developed at the close of the apostolic age.Instance DeWette, Biblische Theologie; Hofmann, Schriftbeweis; Nitzsch, System of Christian Doctrine. The last, however, has more of the philosophical element than properly belongs to Biblical Theology. The third volume of Ritschl's Justification and Reconciliation is intended as a system of Biblical Theology, the first and second volumes being little more than an historical introduction. But metaphysics, of a Kantian relativity and phenomenalism, enter so largely into Ritschl's estimates and interpretations, as to render his conclusions both partial and rationalistic. Notice a questionable use of the term Biblical Theology to designate the theology of a part of Scripture severed from the rest, as Steudel's Biblical Theology of the Old Testament; Schmidt's Biblical Theology of the New Testament; and in the common phrases: Biblical Theology of Christ, or of Paul. These phrases are objectionable as intimating that the books of Scripture have only a human origin. Upon the assumption that there is no common divine authorship of Scripture, Biblical Theology is conceived of as a series of fragments, corresponding to the differing teachings of the various prophets and apostles, and the theology of Paul is held to be an unwarranted and incongruous addition to the theology of Jesus. See Reuss, History of Christian Theology in the Apostolic Age.2.Historical Theologytraces the development of the Biblical doctrines from the time of the apostles to the present day, and gives account of the results of this development in the life of the church.By doctrinal development we mean the progressive unfolding and apprehension, by the church, of the truth explicitly or implicitly contained in Scripture. As giving account of the shaping of the Christian faith into doctrinal statements, Historical Theology is called the History of Doctrine. As describing the resulting and accompanying changes in the life of the church, outward and inward, Historical Theology is called Church History. Instance Cunningham's Historical Theology; Hagenbach's and Shedd's Histories of Doctrine; Neander's Church History. There is always a danger that the historian will see his own views too clearly reflected in the history of the church. Shedd's History of Christian Doctrine has been called“The History of Dr. Shedd's Christian Doctrine.”But if Dr. Shedd's Augustinianism colors his History, Dr. Sheldon's Arminianism also colors his. G. P. Fisher's History of Christian Doctrine is unusually lucid and impartial. See Neander's Introduction and Shedd's Philosophy of History.3.Systematic Theologytakes the material furnished by Biblical and by Historical Theology, and with this material seeks to build up into an organic and consistent whole all our knowledge of God and of the relations between God and the universe, whether this knowledge be originally derived from nature or from the Scriptures.Systematic Theology is therefore theology proper, of which Biblical and Historical Theology are the incomplete and preparatory stages. Systematic Theology is to be clearly distinguished from Dogmatic Theology. Dogmatic Theology is, in strict usage, the systematizing of the doctrines as expressed in the symbols of the church, together with the grounding of these in the Scriptures, and the exhibition, so far as may be, of their rational necessity. Systematic Theology begins, on the other hand, not with the[pg 042]symbols, but with the Scriptures. It asks first, not what the church has believed, but what is the truth of God's revealed word. It examines that word with all the aids which nature and the Spirit have given it, using Biblical and Historical Theology as its servants and helpers, but not as its masters. Notice here the technical use of the word“symbol,”from συμβάλλω, = a brief throwing together, or condensed statement of the essentials of Christian doctrine. Synonyms are: Confession, creed, consensus, declaration, formulary, canons, articles of faith.Dogmatism argues to foregone conclusions. The word is not, however, derived from“dog,”as Douglas Jerrold facetiously suggested, when he said that“dogmatism is puppyism full grown,”but from δοκέω to think, to opine. Dogmatic Theology has two principles: (1) The absolute authority of creeds, as decisions of the church: (2) The application to these creeds of formal logic, for the purpose of demonstrating their truth to the understanding. In the Roman Catholic Church, not the Scripture but the church, and the dogma given by it, is the decisive authority. The Protestant principle, on the contrary, is that Scripture decides, and that dogma is to be judged by it. Following Schleiermacher, Al. Schweizer thinks that the term“Dogmatik”should be discarded as essentially unprotestant, and that“Glaubenslehre”should take its place; and Harnack, Hist. Dogma, 6, remarks that“dogma has ever, in the progress of history, devoured its own progenitors.”While it is true that every new and advanced thinker in theology has been counted a heretic, there has always been a common faith—“the faith which was once for all delivered unto the saints”(Jude 3)—and the study of Systematic Theology has been one of the chief means of preserving this faith in the world.Mat. 15:13, 14—“Every plant which my heavenly Father planted not, shall be rooted up. Let them alone: they are blind guides”= there is truth planted by God, and it has permanent divine life. Human errors have no permanent vitality and they perish of themselves. See Kaftan, Dogmatik, 2, 3.4.Practical Theologyis the system of truth considered as a means of renewing and sanctifying men, or, in other words, theology in its publication and enforcement.To this department of theology belong Homiletics and Pastoral Theology, since these are but scientific presentations of the right methods of unfolding Christian truth, and of bringing it to bear upon men individually and in the church. See Van Oosterzee, Practical Theology; T. Harwood Pattison, The Making of the Sermon, and Public Prayer; Yale Lectures on Preaching by H. W. Beecher, R. W. Dale, Phillips Brooks, E. G. Robinson, A. J. F. Behrends, John Watson, and others; and the work on Pastoral Theology, by Harvey.It is sometimes asserted that there are other departments of theology not included in those above mentioned. But most of these, if not all, belong to other spheres of research, and cannot properly be classed under theology at all. Moral Theology, so called, or the science of Christian morals, ethics, or theological ethics, is indeed the proper result of theology, but is not to be confounded with it. Speculative theology, so called, respecting, as it does, such truth as is mere matter of opinion, is either extra-scriptural, and so belongs to the province of the philosophy of religion, or is an attempt to explain truth already revealed, and so falls within the province of Systematic Theology.“Speculative theology starts from certaina prioriprinciples, and from them undertakes to determine what is and must be. It deduces its scheme of doctrine from the laws of mind or from axioms supposed to be inwrought into its constitution.”Bib. Sac., 1852:376—“Speculative theology tries to show that the dogmas agree with the laws of thought, while the philosophy of religion tries to show that the laws of thought agree with the dogmas.”Theological Encyclopædia (the word signifies“instruction in a circle”) is a general introduction to all the divisions of Theology, together with an account of the relations between them. Hegel's Encyclopædia was an attempted exhibition of the principles and connections of all the sciences. See Crooks and Hurst, Theological Encyclopædia and Methodology; Zöckler, Handb. der theol. Wissenschaften, 2:606-769.The relations of theology to science and philosophy have been variously stated, but by none better than by H. B. Smith, Faith and Philosophy, 18—“Philosophy is a mode of human knowledge—not the whole of that knowledge, but a mode of it—the knowing of things rationally.”Science asks:“WhatdoI know?”Philosophy asks:“WhatcanI know?”William James, Psychology, 1:145—“Metaphysics means nothing[pg 043]but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.”Aristotle:“The particular sciences are toiling workmen, while philosophy is the architect. The workmen are slaves, existing for the free master. So philosophy rules the sciences.”With regard to philosophy and science Lord Bacon remarks:“Those who have handled knowledge have been too much either men of mere observation or abstract reasoners. The former are like the ant: they only collect material and put it to immediate use. The abstract reasoners are like spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes a middle course: it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and the field, while it transforms and digests what it gathers by a power of its own. Not unlike this is the work of the philosopher.”Novalis:“Philosophy can bake no bread; but it can give us God, freedom and immortality.”Prof. DeWitt of Princeton:“Science, philosophy, and theology are the three great modes of organizing the universe into an intellectual system. Science never goes below second causes; if it does, it is no longer science,—it becomes philosophy. Philosophy views the universe as a unity, and the goal it is always seeking to reach is the source and centre of this unity—the Absolute, the First Cause. This goal of philosophy is the point of departure for theology. What philosophy is striving to find, theology asserts has been found. Theology therefore starts with the Absolute, the First Cause.”W. N. Clarke, Christian Theology, 48—“Science examines and classifies facts; philosophy inquires concerning spiritual meanings. Science seeks to know the universe; philosophy to understand it.”Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 7—“Natural science has for its subject matter things and events. Philosophy is the systematic exhibition of the grounds of our knowledge. Metaphysics is our knowledge respecting realities which are not phenomenal,e. g., God and the soul.”Knight, Essays in Philosophy, 81—“The aim of the sciences is increase of knowledge, by the discovery of laws within which all phenomena may be embraced and by means of which they may be explained. The aim of philosophy, on the other hand, is to explain the sciences, by at once including and transcending them. Its sphere is substance and essence.”Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 3-5—“Philosophy =doctrine of knowledge(is mind passive or active in knowing?—Epistemology) +doctrine of being(is fundamental being mechanical and unintelligent, or purposive and intelligent?—Metaphysics). The systems of Locke, Hume, and Kant are preëminently theories of knowing; the systems of Spinoza and Leibnitz are preëminently theories of being. Historically theories of being come first, because the object is the only determinant for reflective thought. But the instrument of philosophy is thought itself. First then, we must study Logic, or the theory of thought; secondly, Epistemology, or the theory of knowledge; thirdly, Metaphysics, or the theory of being.”Professor George M. Forbes on the New Psychology:“Locke and Kant represent the two tendencies in philosophy—the empirical, physical, scientific, on the one hand, and the rational, metaphysical, logical, on the other. Locke furnishes the basis for the associational schemes of Hartley, the Mills, and Bain; Kant for the idealistic scheme of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. The two are not contradictory, but complementary, and the Scotch Reid and Hamilton combine them both, reacting against the extreme empiricism and scepticism of Hume. Hickok, Porter, and McCosh represented the Scotch school in America. It was exclusivelyanalytical; its psychology was the faculty-psychology; it represented the mind as a bundle of faculties. The unitary philosophy of T. H. Green, Edward Caird, in Great Britain, and in America, of W. T. Harris, George S. Morris, and John Dewey, was a reaction against this faculty-psychology, under the influence of Hegel. A second reaction under the influence of the Herbartian doctrine of apperception substituted function for faculty, making all processes phases of apperception. G. F. Stout and J. Mark Baldwin represent this psychology. A third reaction comes from the influence of physical science. All attempts to unify are relegated to a metaphysical Hades. There is nothing but states and processes. The only unity is the laws of their coëxistence and succession. There is nothinga priori. Wundt identifies apperception with will, and regards it as the unitary principle. Külpe and Titchener find no self, or will, or soul, but treat these as inferences little warranted. Their psychology is psychology without a soul. The old psychology was exclusivelystatic, while the new emphasizes the genetic point of view. Growth and development are the leading ideas of Herbert Spencer, Preyer, Tracy and Stanley Hall. William James is explanatory, while George T. Ladd is descriptive. Cattell, Scripture, and Münsterberg apply the methods of Fechner, and the Psychological[pg 044]Review is their organ. Their error is in their negative attitude. The old psychology is needed to supplement the new. It has greater scope and more practical significance.”On the relation of theology to philosophy and to science, see Luthardt, Compend. der Dogmatik, 4; Hagenbach, Encyclopädie, 109.

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[pg 039]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). Contrast1 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, 2:393sq.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, inRom. 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[pg 040]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 Slough of Despond, as Christian did; and it is by getting over the fence to find an easier road, that Christian and Hopeful get into Doubting Castle and the hands of Giant Despair.“Great thoughts come from the heart,”said Vauvenargues. The preacher cannot, like Dr. Kane, kindle fire with a lens of ice. Aristotle:“The power of attaining moral truth is dependent upon our acting rightly.”Pascal:“We know truth, not only by the reason, but by the heart.... The heart has its reasons, which the reason knows nothing of.”Hobbes:“Even the axioms of geometry would be disputed, if men's passions were concerned in them.”Macaulay:“The law of gravitation would still be controverted, if it interfered with vested interests.”Nordau, Degeneracy:“Philosophic systems simply furnish the excuses reason demands for the unconscious impulses of the race during a given period of time.”Lord Bacon:“A tortoise on the right path will beat a racer on the wrong path.”Goethe:“As are the inclinations, so also are the opinions.... A work of art can be comprehended by the head only with the assistance of the heart.... Only law can give us liberty.”Fichte:“Our system of thought is very often only the history of our heart.... Truth is descended from conscience.... Men do not will according to their reason, but they reason according to their will.”Neander's motto was:“Pectus est quod theologum facit”—“It is the heart that makes the theologian.”John Stirling:“That is a dreadful eye which can be divided from a living human heavenly heart, and still retain its all-penetrating vision,—such was the eye of the Gorgons.”But such an eye, we add, is not all-penetrating. E. G. Robinson:“Never study theology in cold blood.”W. C. Wilkinson:“The head is a magnetic needle with truth for its pole. But the heart is a hidden mass of magnetic iron. The head is drawn somewhat toward its natural pole, the truth; but more it is drawn by that nearer magnetism.”See an affecting instance of Thomas Carlyle's enlightenment, after the death of his wife, as to the meaning of the Lord's Prayer, in Fisher, Nat. and Meth. of Revelation, 165. On the importance of feeling, in association of ideas, see Dewey, Psychology, 106, 107.(f)The enlightening influence of the Holy Spirit.As only the Spirit fathoms the things of God, so only he can illuminate our minds to apprehend them.1 Cor. 2:11, 12—“the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God. But we received ... the Spirit which is from God; that we might know.”Cicero, Nat. Deorum, 66—“Nemo igitur vir magnus sine aliquo adfiatu divino unquam fuit.”Professor Beck of Tübingen:“For the student, there is no privileged path leading to the truth; the only one which leads to it is also that of the unlearned; it is that of regeneration and of gradual illumination by the Holy Spirit; and without the Holy Spirit, theology is not only a cold stone, it is a deadly poison.”As all the truths of the differential and integral calculus are wrapped up in the simplest mathematical axiom, so all theology is wrapped up in the declaration that God is holiness and love, or in the protevangelium uttered at the gates of Eden. But dull minds cannot of themselves evolve the calculus from the axiom, nor can sinful hearts evolve theology from the first prophecy. Teachers are needed to demonstrate geometrical theorems, and the Holy Spirit is needed to show us that the“new commandment”illustrated by the death of Christ is only an“old commandment which ye had from the beginning”(1 John 2:7). The Principia of Newton is a revelation of Christ, and so are the Scriptures. The Holy Spirit enables us to enter into the meaning of Christ's revelations[pg 041]in both Scripture and nature; to interpret the one by the other; and so to work out original demonstrations and applications of the truth;Mat. 13:52—“Therefore every scribe who hath been made a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a householder, who bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old.”See Adolph Monod's sermons on Christ's Temptation, addressed to the theological students of Montauban, in Select Sermons from the French and German, 117-179.II. Divisions of Theology.Theology is commonly divided into Biblical, Historical, Systematic, and Practical.1.Biblical Theologyaims to arrange and classify the facts of revelation, confining itself to the Scriptures for its material, and treating of doctrine only so far as it was developed at the close of the apostolic age.Instance DeWette, Biblische Theologie; Hofmann, Schriftbeweis; Nitzsch, System of Christian Doctrine. The last, however, has more of the philosophical element than properly belongs to Biblical Theology. The third volume of Ritschl's Justification and Reconciliation is intended as a system of Biblical Theology, the first and second volumes being little more than an historical introduction. But metaphysics, of a Kantian relativity and phenomenalism, enter so largely into Ritschl's estimates and interpretations, as to render his conclusions both partial and rationalistic. Notice a questionable use of the term Biblical Theology to designate the theology of a part of Scripture severed from the rest, as Steudel's Biblical Theology of the Old Testament; Schmidt's Biblical Theology of the New Testament; and in the common phrases: Biblical Theology of Christ, or of Paul. These phrases are objectionable as intimating that the books of Scripture have only a human origin. Upon the assumption that there is no common divine authorship of Scripture, Biblical Theology is conceived of as a series of fragments, corresponding to the differing teachings of the various prophets and apostles, and the theology of Paul is held to be an unwarranted and incongruous addition to the theology of Jesus. See Reuss, History of Christian Theology in the Apostolic Age.2.Historical Theologytraces the development of the Biblical doctrines from the time of the apostles to the present day, and gives account of the results of this development in the life of the church.By doctrinal development we mean the progressive unfolding and apprehension, by the church, of the truth explicitly or implicitly contained in Scripture. As giving account of the shaping of the Christian faith into doctrinal statements, Historical Theology is called the History of Doctrine. As describing the resulting and accompanying changes in the life of the church, outward and inward, Historical Theology is called Church History. Instance Cunningham's Historical Theology; Hagenbach's and Shedd's Histories of Doctrine; Neander's Church History. There is always a danger that the historian will see his own views too clearly reflected in the history of the church. Shedd's History of Christian Doctrine has been called“The History of Dr. Shedd's Christian Doctrine.”But if Dr. Shedd's Augustinianism colors his History, Dr. Sheldon's Arminianism also colors his. G. P. Fisher's History of Christian Doctrine is unusually lucid and impartial. See Neander's Introduction and Shedd's Philosophy of History.3.Systematic Theologytakes the material furnished by Biblical and by Historical Theology, and with this material seeks to build up into an organic and consistent whole all our knowledge of God and of the relations between God and the universe, whether this knowledge be originally derived from nature or from the Scriptures.Systematic Theology is therefore theology proper, of which Biblical and Historical Theology are the incomplete and preparatory stages. Systematic Theology is to be clearly distinguished from Dogmatic Theology. Dogmatic Theology is, in strict usage, the systematizing of the doctrines as expressed in the symbols of the church, together with the grounding of these in the Scriptures, and the exhibition, so far as may be, of their rational necessity. Systematic Theology begins, on the other hand, not with the[pg 042]symbols, but with the Scriptures. It asks first, not what the church has believed, but what is the truth of God's revealed word. It examines that word with all the aids which nature and the Spirit have given it, using Biblical and Historical Theology as its servants and helpers, but not as its masters. Notice here the technical use of the word“symbol,”from συμβάλλω, = a brief throwing together, or condensed statement of the essentials of Christian doctrine. Synonyms are: Confession, creed, consensus, declaration, formulary, canons, articles of faith.Dogmatism argues to foregone conclusions. The word is not, however, derived from“dog,”as Douglas Jerrold facetiously suggested, when he said that“dogmatism is puppyism full grown,”but from δοκέω to think, to opine. Dogmatic Theology has two principles: (1) The absolute authority of creeds, as decisions of the church: (2) The application to these creeds of formal logic, for the purpose of demonstrating their truth to the understanding. In the Roman Catholic Church, not the Scripture but the church, and the dogma given by it, is the decisive authority. The Protestant principle, on the contrary, is that Scripture decides, and that dogma is to be judged by it. Following Schleiermacher, Al. Schweizer thinks that the term“Dogmatik”should be discarded as essentially unprotestant, and that“Glaubenslehre”should take its place; and Harnack, Hist. Dogma, 6, remarks that“dogma has ever, in the progress of history, devoured its own progenitors.”While it is true that every new and advanced thinker in theology has been counted a heretic, there has always been a common faith—“the faith which was once for all delivered unto the saints”(Jude 3)—and the study of Systematic Theology has been one of the chief means of preserving this faith in the world.Mat. 15:13, 14—“Every plant which my heavenly Father planted not, shall be rooted up. Let them alone: they are blind guides”= there is truth planted by God, and it has permanent divine life. Human errors have no permanent vitality and they perish of themselves. See Kaftan, Dogmatik, 2, 3.4.Practical Theologyis the system of truth considered as a means of renewing and sanctifying men, or, in other words, theology in its publication and enforcement.To this department of theology belong Homiletics and Pastoral Theology, since these are but scientific presentations of the right methods of unfolding Christian truth, and of bringing it to bear upon men individually and in the church. See Van Oosterzee, Practical Theology; T. Harwood Pattison, The Making of the Sermon, and Public Prayer; Yale Lectures on Preaching by H. W. Beecher, R. W. Dale, Phillips Brooks, E. G. Robinson, A. J. F. Behrends, John Watson, and others; and the work on Pastoral Theology, by Harvey.It is sometimes asserted that there are other departments of theology not included in those above mentioned. But most of these, if not all, belong to other spheres of research, and cannot properly be classed under theology at all. Moral Theology, so called, or the science of Christian morals, ethics, or theological ethics, is indeed the proper result of theology, but is not to be confounded with it. Speculative theology, so called, respecting, as it does, such truth as is mere matter of opinion, is either extra-scriptural, and so belongs to the province of the philosophy of religion, or is an attempt to explain truth already revealed, and so falls within the province of Systematic Theology.“Speculative theology starts from certaina prioriprinciples, and from them undertakes to determine what is and must be. It deduces its scheme of doctrine from the laws of mind or from axioms supposed to be inwrought into its constitution.”Bib. Sac., 1852:376—“Speculative theology tries to show that the dogmas agree with the laws of thought, while the philosophy of religion tries to show that the laws of thought agree with the dogmas.”Theological Encyclopædia (the word signifies“instruction in a circle”) is a general introduction to all the divisions of Theology, together with an account of the relations between them. Hegel's Encyclopædia was an attempted exhibition of the principles and connections of all the sciences. See Crooks and Hurst, Theological Encyclopædia and Methodology; Zöckler, Handb. der theol. Wissenschaften, 2:606-769.The relations of theology to science and philosophy have been variously stated, but by none better than by H. B. Smith, Faith and Philosophy, 18—“Philosophy is a mode of human knowledge—not the whole of that knowledge, but a mode of it—the knowing of things rationally.”Science asks:“WhatdoI know?”Philosophy asks:“WhatcanI know?”William James, Psychology, 1:145—“Metaphysics means nothing[pg 043]but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.”Aristotle:“The particular sciences are toiling workmen, while philosophy is the architect. The workmen are slaves, existing for the free master. So philosophy rules the sciences.”With regard to philosophy and science Lord Bacon remarks:“Those who have handled knowledge have been too much either men of mere observation or abstract reasoners. The former are like the ant: they only collect material and put it to immediate use. The abstract reasoners are like spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes a middle course: it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and the field, while it transforms and digests what it gathers by a power of its own. Not unlike this is the work of the philosopher.”Novalis:“Philosophy can bake no bread; but it can give us God, freedom and immortality.”Prof. DeWitt of Princeton:“Science, philosophy, and theology are the three great modes of organizing the universe into an intellectual system. Science never goes below second causes; if it does, it is no longer science,—it becomes philosophy. Philosophy views the universe as a unity, and the goal it is always seeking to reach is the source and centre of this unity—the Absolute, the First Cause. This goal of philosophy is the point of departure for theology. What philosophy is striving to find, theology asserts has been found. Theology therefore starts with the Absolute, the First Cause.”W. N. Clarke, Christian Theology, 48—“Science examines and classifies facts; philosophy inquires concerning spiritual meanings. Science seeks to know the universe; philosophy to understand it.”Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 7—“Natural science has for its subject matter things and events. Philosophy is the systematic exhibition of the grounds of our knowledge. Metaphysics is our knowledge respecting realities which are not phenomenal,e. g., God and the soul.”Knight, Essays in Philosophy, 81—“The aim of the sciences is increase of knowledge, by the discovery of laws within which all phenomena may be embraced and by means of which they may be explained. The aim of philosophy, on the other hand, is to explain the sciences, by at once including and transcending them. Its sphere is substance and essence.”Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 3-5—“Philosophy =doctrine of knowledge(is mind passive or active in knowing?—Epistemology) +doctrine of being(is fundamental being mechanical and unintelligent, or purposive and intelligent?—Metaphysics). The systems of Locke, Hume, and Kant are preëminently theories of knowing; the systems of Spinoza and Leibnitz are preëminently theories of being. Historically theories of being come first, because the object is the only determinant for reflective thought. But the instrument of philosophy is thought itself. First then, we must study Logic, or the theory of thought; secondly, Epistemology, or the theory of knowledge; thirdly, Metaphysics, or the theory of being.”Professor George M. Forbes on the New Psychology:“Locke and Kant represent the two tendencies in philosophy—the empirical, physical, scientific, on the one hand, and the rational, metaphysical, logical, on the other. Locke furnishes the basis for the associational schemes of Hartley, the Mills, and Bain; Kant for the idealistic scheme of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. The two are not contradictory, but complementary, and the Scotch Reid and Hamilton combine them both, reacting against the extreme empiricism and scepticism of Hume. Hickok, Porter, and McCosh represented the Scotch school in America. It was exclusivelyanalytical; its psychology was the faculty-psychology; it represented the mind as a bundle of faculties. The unitary philosophy of T. H. Green, Edward Caird, in Great Britain, and in America, of W. T. Harris, George S. Morris, and John Dewey, was a reaction against this faculty-psychology, under the influence of Hegel. A second reaction under the influence of the Herbartian doctrine of apperception substituted function for faculty, making all processes phases of apperception. G. F. Stout and J. Mark Baldwin represent this psychology. A third reaction comes from the influence of physical science. All attempts to unify are relegated to a metaphysical Hades. There is nothing but states and processes. The only unity is the laws of their coëxistence and succession. There is nothinga priori. Wundt identifies apperception with will, and regards it as the unitary principle. Külpe and Titchener find no self, or will, or soul, but treat these as inferences little warranted. Their psychology is psychology without a soul. The old psychology was exclusivelystatic, while the new emphasizes the genetic point of view. Growth and development are the leading ideas of Herbert Spencer, Preyer, Tracy and Stanley Hall. William James is explanatory, while George T. Ladd is descriptive. Cattell, Scripture, and Münsterberg apply the methods of Fechner, and the Psychological[pg 044]Review is their organ. Their error is in their negative attitude. The old psychology is needed to supplement the new. It has greater scope and more practical significance.”On the relation of theology to philosophy and to science, see Luthardt, Compend. der Dogmatik, 4; Hagenbach, Encyclopädie, 109.

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[pg 039]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). Contrast1 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, 2:393sq.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, inRom. 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[pg 040]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 Slough of Despond, as Christian did; and it is by getting over the fence to find an easier road, that Christian and Hopeful get into Doubting Castle and the hands of Giant Despair.“Great thoughts come from the heart,”said Vauvenargues. The preacher cannot, like Dr. Kane, kindle fire with a lens of ice. Aristotle:“The power of attaining moral truth is dependent upon our acting rightly.”Pascal:“We know truth, not only by the reason, but by the heart.... The heart has its reasons, which the reason knows nothing of.”Hobbes:“Even the axioms of geometry would be disputed, if men's passions were concerned in them.”Macaulay:“The law of gravitation would still be controverted, if it interfered with vested interests.”Nordau, Degeneracy:“Philosophic systems simply furnish the excuses reason demands for the unconscious impulses of the race during a given period of time.”Lord Bacon:“A tortoise on the right path will beat a racer on the wrong path.”Goethe:“As are the inclinations, so also are the opinions.... A work of art can be comprehended by the head only with the assistance of the heart.... Only law can give us liberty.”Fichte:“Our system of thought is very often only the history of our heart.... Truth is descended from conscience.... Men do not will according to their reason, but they reason according to their will.”Neander's motto was:“Pectus est quod theologum facit”—“It is the heart that makes the theologian.”John Stirling:“That is a dreadful eye which can be divided from a living human heavenly heart, and still retain its all-penetrating vision,—such was the eye of the Gorgons.”But such an eye, we add, is not all-penetrating. E. G. Robinson:“Never study theology in cold blood.”W. C. Wilkinson:“The head is a magnetic needle with truth for its pole. But the heart is a hidden mass of magnetic iron. The head is drawn somewhat toward its natural pole, the truth; but more it is drawn by that nearer magnetism.”See an affecting instance of Thomas Carlyle's enlightenment, after the death of his wife, as to the meaning of the Lord's Prayer, in Fisher, Nat. and Meth. of Revelation, 165. On the importance of feeling, in association of ideas, see Dewey, Psychology, 106, 107.(f)The enlightening influence of the Holy Spirit.As only the Spirit fathoms the things of God, so only he can illuminate our minds to apprehend them.1 Cor. 2:11, 12—“the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God. But we received ... the Spirit which is from God; that we might know.”Cicero, Nat. Deorum, 66—“Nemo igitur vir magnus sine aliquo adfiatu divino unquam fuit.”Professor Beck of Tübingen:“For the student, there is no privileged path leading to the truth; the only one which leads to it is also that of the unlearned; it is that of regeneration and of gradual illumination by the Holy Spirit; and without the Holy Spirit, theology is not only a cold stone, it is a deadly poison.”As all the truths of the differential and integral calculus are wrapped up in the simplest mathematical axiom, so all theology is wrapped up in the declaration that God is holiness and love, or in the protevangelium uttered at the gates of Eden. But dull minds cannot of themselves evolve the calculus from the axiom, nor can sinful hearts evolve theology from the first prophecy. Teachers are needed to demonstrate geometrical theorems, and the Holy Spirit is needed to show us that the“new commandment”illustrated by the death of Christ is only an“old commandment which ye had from the beginning”(1 John 2:7). The Principia of Newton is a revelation of Christ, and so are the Scriptures. The Holy Spirit enables us to enter into the meaning of Christ's revelations[pg 041]in both Scripture and nature; to interpret the one by the other; and so to work out original demonstrations and applications of the truth;Mat. 13:52—“Therefore every scribe who hath been made a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a householder, who bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old.”See Adolph Monod's sermons on Christ's Temptation, addressed to the theological students of Montauban, in Select Sermons from the French and German, 117-179.II. Divisions of Theology.Theology is commonly divided into Biblical, Historical, Systematic, and Practical.1.Biblical Theologyaims to arrange and classify the facts of revelation, confining itself to the Scriptures for its material, and treating of doctrine only so far as it was developed at the close of the apostolic age.Instance DeWette, Biblische Theologie; Hofmann, Schriftbeweis; Nitzsch, System of Christian Doctrine. The last, however, has more of the philosophical element than properly belongs to Biblical Theology. The third volume of Ritschl's Justification and Reconciliation is intended as a system of Biblical Theology, the first and second volumes being little more than an historical introduction. But metaphysics, of a Kantian relativity and phenomenalism, enter so largely into Ritschl's estimates and interpretations, as to render his conclusions both partial and rationalistic. Notice a questionable use of the term Biblical Theology to designate the theology of a part of Scripture severed from the rest, as Steudel's Biblical Theology of the Old Testament; Schmidt's Biblical Theology of the New Testament; and in the common phrases: Biblical Theology of Christ, or of Paul. These phrases are objectionable as intimating that the books of Scripture have only a human origin. Upon the assumption that there is no common divine authorship of Scripture, Biblical Theology is conceived of as a series of fragments, corresponding to the differing teachings of the various prophets and apostles, and the theology of Paul is held to be an unwarranted and incongruous addition to the theology of Jesus. See Reuss, History of Christian Theology in the Apostolic Age.2.Historical Theologytraces the development of the Biblical doctrines from the time of the apostles to the present day, and gives account of the results of this development in the life of the church.By doctrinal development we mean the progressive unfolding and apprehension, by the church, of the truth explicitly or implicitly contained in Scripture. As giving account of the shaping of the Christian faith into doctrinal statements, Historical Theology is called the History of Doctrine. As describing the resulting and accompanying changes in the life of the church, outward and inward, Historical Theology is called Church History. Instance Cunningham's Historical Theology; Hagenbach's and Shedd's Histories of Doctrine; Neander's Church History. There is always a danger that the historian will see his own views too clearly reflected in the history of the church. Shedd's History of Christian Doctrine has been called“The History of Dr. Shedd's Christian Doctrine.”But if Dr. Shedd's Augustinianism colors his History, Dr. Sheldon's Arminianism also colors his. G. P. Fisher's History of Christian Doctrine is unusually lucid and impartial. See Neander's Introduction and Shedd's Philosophy of History.3.Systematic Theologytakes the material furnished by Biblical and by Historical Theology, and with this material seeks to build up into an organic and consistent whole all our knowledge of God and of the relations between God and the universe, whether this knowledge be originally derived from nature or from the Scriptures.Systematic Theology is therefore theology proper, of which Biblical and Historical Theology are the incomplete and preparatory stages. Systematic Theology is to be clearly distinguished from Dogmatic Theology. Dogmatic Theology is, in strict usage, the systematizing of the doctrines as expressed in the symbols of the church, together with the grounding of these in the Scriptures, and the exhibition, so far as may be, of their rational necessity. Systematic Theology begins, on the other hand, not with the[pg 042]symbols, but with the Scriptures. It asks first, not what the church has believed, but what is the truth of God's revealed word. It examines that word with all the aids which nature and the Spirit have given it, using Biblical and Historical Theology as its servants and helpers, but not as its masters. Notice here the technical use of the word“symbol,”from συμβάλλω, = a brief throwing together, or condensed statement of the essentials of Christian doctrine. Synonyms are: Confession, creed, consensus, declaration, formulary, canons, articles of faith.Dogmatism argues to foregone conclusions. The word is not, however, derived from“dog,”as Douglas Jerrold facetiously suggested, when he said that“dogmatism is puppyism full grown,”but from δοκέω to think, to opine. Dogmatic Theology has two principles: (1) The absolute authority of creeds, as decisions of the church: (2) The application to these creeds of formal logic, for the purpose of demonstrating their truth to the understanding. In the Roman Catholic Church, not the Scripture but the church, and the dogma given by it, is the decisive authority. The Protestant principle, on the contrary, is that Scripture decides, and that dogma is to be judged by it. Following Schleiermacher, Al. Schweizer thinks that the term“Dogmatik”should be discarded as essentially unprotestant, and that“Glaubenslehre”should take its place; and Harnack, Hist. Dogma, 6, remarks that“dogma has ever, in the progress of history, devoured its own progenitors.”While it is true that every new and advanced thinker in theology has been counted a heretic, there has always been a common faith—“the faith which was once for all delivered unto the saints”(Jude 3)—and the study of Systematic Theology has been one of the chief means of preserving this faith in the world.Mat. 15:13, 14—“Every plant which my heavenly Father planted not, shall be rooted up. Let them alone: they are blind guides”= there is truth planted by God, and it has permanent divine life. Human errors have no permanent vitality and they perish of themselves. See Kaftan, Dogmatik, 2, 3.4.Practical Theologyis the system of truth considered as a means of renewing and sanctifying men, or, in other words, theology in its publication and enforcement.To this department of theology belong Homiletics and Pastoral Theology, since these are but scientific presentations of the right methods of unfolding Christian truth, and of bringing it to bear upon men individually and in the church. See Van Oosterzee, Practical Theology; T. Harwood Pattison, The Making of the Sermon, and Public Prayer; Yale Lectures on Preaching by H. W. Beecher, R. W. Dale, Phillips Brooks, E. G. Robinson, A. J. F. Behrends, John Watson, and others; and the work on Pastoral Theology, by Harvey.It is sometimes asserted that there are other departments of theology not included in those above mentioned. But most of these, if not all, belong to other spheres of research, and cannot properly be classed under theology at all. Moral Theology, so called, or the science of Christian morals, ethics, or theological ethics, is indeed the proper result of theology, but is not to be confounded with it. Speculative theology, so called, respecting, as it does, such truth as is mere matter of opinion, is either extra-scriptural, and so belongs to the province of the philosophy of religion, or is an attempt to explain truth already revealed, and so falls within the province of Systematic Theology.“Speculative theology starts from certaina prioriprinciples, and from them undertakes to determine what is and must be. It deduces its scheme of doctrine from the laws of mind or from axioms supposed to be inwrought into its constitution.”Bib. Sac., 1852:376—“Speculative theology tries to show that the dogmas agree with the laws of thought, while the philosophy of religion tries to show that the laws of thought agree with the dogmas.”Theological Encyclopædia (the word signifies“instruction in a circle”) is a general introduction to all the divisions of Theology, together with an account of the relations between them. Hegel's Encyclopædia was an attempted exhibition of the principles and connections of all the sciences. See Crooks and Hurst, Theological Encyclopædia and Methodology; Zöckler, Handb. der theol. Wissenschaften, 2:606-769.The relations of theology to science and philosophy have been variously stated, but by none better than by H. B. Smith, Faith and Philosophy, 18—“Philosophy is a mode of human knowledge—not the whole of that knowledge, but a mode of it—the knowing of things rationally.”Science asks:“WhatdoI know?”Philosophy asks:“WhatcanI know?”William James, Psychology, 1:145—“Metaphysics means nothing[pg 043]but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.”Aristotle:“The particular sciences are toiling workmen, while philosophy is the architect. The workmen are slaves, existing for the free master. So philosophy rules the sciences.”With regard to philosophy and science Lord Bacon remarks:“Those who have handled knowledge have been too much either men of mere observation or abstract reasoners. The former are like the ant: they only collect material and put it to immediate use. The abstract reasoners are like spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes a middle course: it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and the field, while it transforms and digests what it gathers by a power of its own. Not unlike this is the work of the philosopher.”Novalis:“Philosophy can bake no bread; but it can give us God, freedom and immortality.”Prof. DeWitt of Princeton:“Science, philosophy, and theology are the three great modes of organizing the universe into an intellectual system. Science never goes below second causes; if it does, it is no longer science,—it becomes philosophy. Philosophy views the universe as a unity, and the goal it is always seeking to reach is the source and centre of this unity—the Absolute, the First Cause. This goal of philosophy is the point of departure for theology. What philosophy is striving to find, theology asserts has been found. Theology therefore starts with the Absolute, the First Cause.”W. N. Clarke, Christian Theology, 48—“Science examines and classifies facts; philosophy inquires concerning spiritual meanings. Science seeks to know the universe; philosophy to understand it.”Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 7—“Natural science has for its subject matter things and events. Philosophy is the systematic exhibition of the grounds of our knowledge. Metaphysics is our knowledge respecting realities which are not phenomenal,e. g., God and the soul.”Knight, Essays in Philosophy, 81—“The aim of the sciences is increase of knowledge, by the discovery of laws within which all phenomena may be embraced and by means of which they may be explained. The aim of philosophy, on the other hand, is to explain the sciences, by at once including and transcending them. Its sphere is substance and essence.”Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 3-5—“Philosophy =doctrine of knowledge(is mind passive or active in knowing?—Epistemology) +doctrine of being(is fundamental being mechanical and unintelligent, or purposive and intelligent?—Metaphysics). The systems of Locke, Hume, and Kant are preëminently theories of knowing; the systems of Spinoza and Leibnitz are preëminently theories of being. Historically theories of being come first, because the object is the only determinant for reflective thought. But the instrument of philosophy is thought itself. First then, we must study Logic, or the theory of thought; secondly, Epistemology, or the theory of knowledge; thirdly, Metaphysics, or the theory of being.”Professor George M. Forbes on the New Psychology:“Locke and Kant represent the two tendencies in philosophy—the empirical, physical, scientific, on the one hand, and the rational, metaphysical, logical, on the other. Locke furnishes the basis for the associational schemes of Hartley, the Mills, and Bain; Kant for the idealistic scheme of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. The two are not contradictory, but complementary, and the Scotch Reid and Hamilton combine them both, reacting against the extreme empiricism and scepticism of Hume. Hickok, Porter, and McCosh represented the Scotch school in America. It was exclusivelyanalytical; its psychology was the faculty-psychology; it represented the mind as a bundle of faculties. The unitary philosophy of T. H. Green, Edward Caird, in Great Britain, and in America, of W. T. Harris, George S. Morris, and John Dewey, was a reaction against this faculty-psychology, under the influence of Hegel. A second reaction under the influence of the Herbartian doctrine of apperception substituted function for faculty, making all processes phases of apperception. G. F. Stout and J. Mark Baldwin represent this psychology. A third reaction comes from the influence of physical science. All attempts to unify are relegated to a metaphysical Hades. There is nothing but states and processes. The only unity is the laws of their coëxistence and succession. There is nothinga priori. Wundt identifies apperception with will, and regards it as the unitary principle. Külpe and Titchener find no self, or will, or soul, but treat these as inferences little warranted. Their psychology is psychology without a soul. The old psychology was exclusivelystatic, while the new emphasizes the genetic point of view. Growth and development are the leading ideas of Herbert Spencer, Preyer, Tracy and Stanley Hall. William James is explanatory, while George T. Ladd is descriptive. Cattell, Scripture, and Münsterberg apply the methods of Fechner, and the Psychological[pg 044]Review is their organ. Their error is in their negative attitude. The old psychology is needed to supplement the new. It has greater scope and more practical significance.”On the relation of theology to philosophy and to science, see Luthardt, Compend. der Dogmatik, 4; Hagenbach, Encyclopädie, 109.

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[pg 039]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). Contrast1 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, 2:393sq.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, inRom. 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[pg 040]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 Slough of Despond, as Christian did; and it is by getting over the fence to find an easier road, that Christian and Hopeful get into Doubting Castle and the hands of Giant Despair.“Great thoughts come from the heart,”said Vauvenargues. The preacher cannot, like Dr. Kane, kindle fire with a lens of ice. Aristotle:“The power of attaining moral truth is dependent upon our acting rightly.”Pascal:“We know truth, not only by the reason, but by the heart.... The heart has its reasons, which the reason knows nothing of.”Hobbes:“Even the axioms of geometry would be disputed, if men's passions were concerned in them.”Macaulay:“The law of gravitation would still be controverted, if it interfered with vested interests.”Nordau, Degeneracy:“Philosophic systems simply furnish the excuses reason demands for the unconscious impulses of the race during a given period of time.”Lord Bacon:“A tortoise on the right path will beat a racer on the wrong path.”Goethe:“As are the inclinations, so also are the opinions.... A work of art can be comprehended by the head only with the assistance of the heart.... Only law can give us liberty.”Fichte:“Our system of thought is very often only the history of our heart.... Truth is descended from conscience.... Men do not will according to their reason, but they reason according to their will.”Neander's motto was:“Pectus est quod theologum facit”—“It is the heart that makes the theologian.”John Stirling:“That is a dreadful eye which can be divided from a living human heavenly heart, and still retain its all-penetrating vision,—such was the eye of the Gorgons.”But such an eye, we add, is not all-penetrating. E. G. Robinson:“Never study theology in cold blood.”W. C. Wilkinson:“The head is a magnetic needle with truth for its pole. But the heart is a hidden mass of magnetic iron. The head is drawn somewhat toward its natural pole, the truth; but more it is drawn by that nearer magnetism.”See an affecting instance of Thomas Carlyle's enlightenment, after the death of his wife, as to the meaning of the Lord's Prayer, in Fisher, Nat. and Meth. of Revelation, 165. On the importance of feeling, in association of ideas, see Dewey, Psychology, 106, 107.(f)The enlightening influence of the Holy Spirit.As only the Spirit fathoms the things of God, so only he can illuminate our minds to apprehend them.1 Cor. 2:11, 12—“the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God. But we received ... the Spirit which is from God; that we might know.”Cicero, Nat. Deorum, 66—“Nemo igitur vir magnus sine aliquo adfiatu divino unquam fuit.”Professor Beck of Tübingen:“For the student, there is no privileged path leading to the truth; the only one which leads to it is also that of the unlearned; it is that of regeneration and of gradual illumination by the Holy Spirit; and without the Holy Spirit, theology is not only a cold stone, it is a deadly poison.”As all the truths of the differential and integral calculus are wrapped up in the simplest mathematical axiom, so all theology is wrapped up in the declaration that God is holiness and love, or in the protevangelium uttered at the gates of Eden. But dull minds cannot of themselves evolve the calculus from the axiom, nor can sinful hearts evolve theology from the first prophecy. Teachers are needed to demonstrate geometrical theorems, and the Holy Spirit is needed to show us that the“new commandment”illustrated by the death of Christ is only an“old commandment which ye had from the beginning”(1 John 2:7). The Principia of Newton is a revelation of Christ, and so are the Scriptures. The Holy Spirit enables us to enter into the meaning of Christ's revelations[pg 041]in both Scripture and nature; to interpret the one by the other; and so to work out original demonstrations and applications of the truth;Mat. 13:52—“Therefore every scribe who hath been made a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a householder, who bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old.”See Adolph Monod's sermons on Christ's Temptation, addressed to the theological students of Montauban, in Select Sermons from the French and German, 117-179.

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.

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[pg 039]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). Contrast1 Tim. 6:4—[νοσῶν = ailing]“diseased about questionings and disputes of words.”

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[pg 039]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). Contrast1 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, 2:393sq.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.”

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, 2:393sq.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, inRom. 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[pg 040]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.

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, inRom. 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[pg 040]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 Slough of Despond, as Christian did; and it is by getting over the fence to find an easier road, that Christian and Hopeful get into Doubting Castle and the hands of Giant Despair.“Great thoughts come from the heart,”said Vauvenargues. The preacher cannot, like Dr. Kane, kindle fire with a lens of ice. Aristotle:“The power of attaining moral truth is dependent upon our acting rightly.”Pascal:“We know truth, not only by the reason, but by the heart.... The heart has its reasons, which the reason knows nothing of.”Hobbes:“Even the axioms of geometry would be disputed, if men's passions were concerned in them.”Macaulay:“The law of gravitation would still be controverted, if it interfered with vested interests.”Nordau, Degeneracy:“Philosophic systems simply furnish the excuses reason demands for the unconscious impulses of the race during a given period of time.”Lord Bacon:“A tortoise on the right path will beat a racer on the wrong path.”Goethe:“As are the inclinations, so also are the opinions.... A work of art can be comprehended by the head only with the assistance of the heart.... Only law can give us liberty.”Fichte:“Our system of thought is very often only the history of our heart.... Truth is descended from conscience.... Men do not will according to their reason, but they reason according to their will.”Neander's motto was:“Pectus est quod theologum facit”—“It is the heart that makes the theologian.”John Stirling:“That is a dreadful eye which can be divided from a living human heavenly heart, and still retain its all-penetrating vision,—such was the eye of the Gorgons.”But such an eye, we add, is not all-penetrating. E. G. Robinson:“Never study theology in cold blood.”W. C. Wilkinson:“The head is a magnetic needle with truth for its pole. But the heart is a hidden mass of magnetic iron. The head is drawn somewhat toward its natural pole, the truth; but more it is drawn by that nearer magnetism.”See an affecting instance of Thomas Carlyle's enlightenment, after the death of his wife, as to the meaning of the Lord's Prayer, in Fisher, Nat. and Meth. of Revelation, 165. On the importance of feeling, in association of ideas, see Dewey, Psychology, 106, 107.

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 Slough of Despond, as Christian did; and it is by getting over the fence to find an easier road, that Christian and Hopeful get into Doubting Castle and the hands of Giant Despair.“Great thoughts come from the heart,”said Vauvenargues. The preacher cannot, like Dr. Kane, kindle fire with a lens of ice. Aristotle:“The power of attaining moral truth is dependent upon our acting rightly.”Pascal:“We know truth, not only by the reason, but by the heart.... The heart has its reasons, which the reason knows nothing of.”Hobbes:“Even the axioms of geometry would be disputed, if men's passions were concerned in them.”Macaulay:“The law of gravitation would still be controverted, if it interfered with vested interests.”Nordau, Degeneracy:“Philosophic systems simply furnish the excuses reason demands for the unconscious impulses of the race during a given period of time.”

Lord Bacon:“A tortoise on the right path will beat a racer on the wrong path.”Goethe:“As are the inclinations, so also are the opinions.... A work of art can be comprehended by the head only with the assistance of the heart.... Only law can give us liberty.”Fichte:“Our system of thought is very often only the history of our heart.... Truth is descended from conscience.... Men do not will according to their reason, but they reason according to their will.”Neander's motto was:“Pectus est quod theologum facit”—“It is the heart that makes the theologian.”John Stirling:“That is a dreadful eye which can be divided from a living human heavenly heart, and still retain its all-penetrating vision,—such was the eye of the Gorgons.”But such an eye, we add, is not all-penetrating. E. G. Robinson:“Never study theology in cold blood.”W. C. Wilkinson:“The head is a magnetic needle with truth for its pole. But the heart is a hidden mass of magnetic iron. The head is drawn somewhat toward its natural pole, the truth; but more it is drawn by that nearer magnetism.”See an affecting instance of Thomas Carlyle's enlightenment, after the death of his wife, as to the meaning of the Lord's Prayer, in Fisher, Nat. and Meth. of Revelation, 165. On the importance of feeling, in association of ideas, see Dewey, Psychology, 106, 107.

(f)The enlightening influence of the Holy Spirit.As only the Spirit fathoms the things of God, so only he can illuminate our minds to apprehend them.

1 Cor. 2:11, 12—“the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God. But we received ... the Spirit which is from God; that we might know.”Cicero, Nat. Deorum, 66—“Nemo igitur vir magnus sine aliquo adfiatu divino unquam fuit.”Professor Beck of Tübingen:“For the student, there is no privileged path leading to the truth; the only one which leads to it is also that of the unlearned; it is that of regeneration and of gradual illumination by the Holy Spirit; and without the Holy Spirit, theology is not only a cold stone, it is a deadly poison.”As all the truths of the differential and integral calculus are wrapped up in the simplest mathematical axiom, so all theology is wrapped up in the declaration that God is holiness and love, or in the protevangelium uttered at the gates of Eden. But dull minds cannot of themselves evolve the calculus from the axiom, nor can sinful hearts evolve theology from the first prophecy. Teachers are needed to demonstrate geometrical theorems, and the Holy Spirit is needed to show us that the“new commandment”illustrated by the death of Christ is only an“old commandment which ye had from the beginning”(1 John 2:7). The Principia of Newton is a revelation of Christ, and so are the Scriptures. The Holy Spirit enables us to enter into the meaning of Christ's revelations[pg 041]in both Scripture and nature; to interpret the one by the other; and so to work out original demonstrations and applications of the truth;Mat. 13:52—“Therefore every scribe who hath been made a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a householder, who bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old.”See Adolph Monod's sermons on Christ's Temptation, addressed to the theological students of Montauban, in Select Sermons from the French and German, 117-179.

1 Cor. 2:11, 12—“the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God. But we received ... the Spirit which is from God; that we might know.”Cicero, Nat. Deorum, 66—“Nemo igitur vir magnus sine aliquo adfiatu divino unquam fuit.”Professor Beck of Tübingen:“For the student, there is no privileged path leading to the truth; the only one which leads to it is also that of the unlearned; it is that of regeneration and of gradual illumination by the Holy Spirit; and without the Holy Spirit, theology is not only a cold stone, it is a deadly poison.”As all the truths of the differential and integral calculus are wrapped up in the simplest mathematical axiom, so all theology is wrapped up in the declaration that God is holiness and love, or in the protevangelium uttered at the gates of Eden. But dull minds cannot of themselves evolve the calculus from the axiom, nor can sinful hearts evolve theology from the first prophecy. Teachers are needed to demonstrate geometrical theorems, and the Holy Spirit is needed to show us that the“new commandment”illustrated by the death of Christ is only an“old commandment which ye had from the beginning”(1 John 2:7). The Principia of Newton is a revelation of Christ, and so are the Scriptures. The Holy Spirit enables us to enter into the meaning of Christ's revelations[pg 041]in both Scripture and nature; to interpret the one by the other; and so to work out original demonstrations and applications of the truth;Mat. 13:52—“Therefore every scribe who hath been made a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a householder, who bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old.”See Adolph Monod's sermons on Christ's Temptation, addressed to the theological students of Montauban, in Select Sermons from the French and German, 117-179.

II. Divisions of Theology.Theology is commonly divided into Biblical, Historical, Systematic, and Practical.1.Biblical Theologyaims to arrange and classify the facts of revelation, confining itself to the Scriptures for its material, and treating of doctrine only so far as it was developed at the close of the apostolic age.Instance DeWette, Biblische Theologie; Hofmann, Schriftbeweis; Nitzsch, System of Christian Doctrine. The last, however, has more of the philosophical element than properly belongs to Biblical Theology. The third volume of Ritschl's Justification and Reconciliation is intended as a system of Biblical Theology, the first and second volumes being little more than an historical introduction. But metaphysics, of a Kantian relativity and phenomenalism, enter so largely into Ritschl's estimates and interpretations, as to render his conclusions both partial and rationalistic. Notice a questionable use of the term Biblical Theology to designate the theology of a part of Scripture severed from the rest, as Steudel's Biblical Theology of the Old Testament; Schmidt's Biblical Theology of the New Testament; and in the common phrases: Biblical Theology of Christ, or of Paul. These phrases are objectionable as intimating that the books of Scripture have only a human origin. Upon the assumption that there is no common divine authorship of Scripture, Biblical Theology is conceived of as a series of fragments, corresponding to the differing teachings of the various prophets and apostles, and the theology of Paul is held to be an unwarranted and incongruous addition to the theology of Jesus. See Reuss, History of Christian Theology in the Apostolic Age.2.Historical Theologytraces the development of the Biblical doctrines from the time of the apostles to the present day, and gives account of the results of this development in the life of the church.By doctrinal development we mean the progressive unfolding and apprehension, by the church, of the truth explicitly or implicitly contained in Scripture. As giving account of the shaping of the Christian faith into doctrinal statements, Historical Theology is called the History of Doctrine. As describing the resulting and accompanying changes in the life of the church, outward and inward, Historical Theology is called Church History. Instance Cunningham's Historical Theology; Hagenbach's and Shedd's Histories of Doctrine; Neander's Church History. There is always a danger that the historian will see his own views too clearly reflected in the history of the church. Shedd's History of Christian Doctrine has been called“The History of Dr. Shedd's Christian Doctrine.”But if Dr. Shedd's Augustinianism colors his History, Dr. Sheldon's Arminianism also colors his. G. P. Fisher's History of Christian Doctrine is unusually lucid and impartial. See Neander's Introduction and Shedd's Philosophy of History.3.Systematic Theologytakes the material furnished by Biblical and by Historical Theology, and with this material seeks to build up into an organic and consistent whole all our knowledge of God and of the relations between God and the universe, whether this knowledge be originally derived from nature or from the Scriptures.Systematic Theology is therefore theology proper, of which Biblical and Historical Theology are the incomplete and preparatory stages. Systematic Theology is to be clearly distinguished from Dogmatic Theology. Dogmatic Theology is, in strict usage, the systematizing of the doctrines as expressed in the symbols of the church, together with the grounding of these in the Scriptures, and the exhibition, so far as may be, of their rational necessity. Systematic Theology begins, on the other hand, not with the[pg 042]symbols, but with the Scriptures. It asks first, not what the church has believed, but what is the truth of God's revealed word. It examines that word with all the aids which nature and the Spirit have given it, using Biblical and Historical Theology as its servants and helpers, but not as its masters. Notice here the technical use of the word“symbol,”from συμβάλλω, = a brief throwing together, or condensed statement of the essentials of Christian doctrine. Synonyms are: Confession, creed, consensus, declaration, formulary, canons, articles of faith.Dogmatism argues to foregone conclusions. The word is not, however, derived from“dog,”as Douglas Jerrold facetiously suggested, when he said that“dogmatism is puppyism full grown,”but from δοκέω to think, to opine. Dogmatic Theology has two principles: (1) The absolute authority of creeds, as decisions of the church: (2) The application to these creeds of formal logic, for the purpose of demonstrating their truth to the understanding. In the Roman Catholic Church, not the Scripture but the church, and the dogma given by it, is the decisive authority. The Protestant principle, on the contrary, is that Scripture decides, and that dogma is to be judged by it. Following Schleiermacher, Al. Schweizer thinks that the term“Dogmatik”should be discarded as essentially unprotestant, and that“Glaubenslehre”should take its place; and Harnack, Hist. Dogma, 6, remarks that“dogma has ever, in the progress of history, devoured its own progenitors.”While it is true that every new and advanced thinker in theology has been counted a heretic, there has always been a common faith—“the faith which was once for all delivered unto the saints”(Jude 3)—and the study of Systematic Theology has been one of the chief means of preserving this faith in the world.Mat. 15:13, 14—“Every plant which my heavenly Father planted not, shall be rooted up. Let them alone: they are blind guides”= there is truth planted by God, and it has permanent divine life. Human errors have no permanent vitality and they perish of themselves. See Kaftan, Dogmatik, 2, 3.4.Practical Theologyis the system of truth considered as a means of renewing and sanctifying men, or, in other words, theology in its publication and enforcement.To this department of theology belong Homiletics and Pastoral Theology, since these are but scientific presentations of the right methods of unfolding Christian truth, and of bringing it to bear upon men individually and in the church. See Van Oosterzee, Practical Theology; T. Harwood Pattison, The Making of the Sermon, and Public Prayer; Yale Lectures on Preaching by H. W. Beecher, R. W. Dale, Phillips Brooks, E. G. Robinson, A. J. F. Behrends, John Watson, and others; and the work on Pastoral Theology, by Harvey.It is sometimes asserted that there are other departments of theology not included in those above mentioned. But most of these, if not all, belong to other spheres of research, and cannot properly be classed under theology at all. Moral Theology, so called, or the science of Christian morals, ethics, or theological ethics, is indeed the proper result of theology, but is not to be confounded with it. Speculative theology, so called, respecting, as it does, such truth as is mere matter of opinion, is either extra-scriptural, and so belongs to the province of the philosophy of religion, or is an attempt to explain truth already revealed, and so falls within the province of Systematic Theology.“Speculative theology starts from certaina prioriprinciples, and from them undertakes to determine what is and must be. It deduces its scheme of doctrine from the laws of mind or from axioms supposed to be inwrought into its constitution.”Bib. Sac., 1852:376—“Speculative theology tries to show that the dogmas agree with the laws of thought, while the philosophy of religion tries to show that the laws of thought agree with the dogmas.”Theological Encyclopædia (the word signifies“instruction in a circle”) is a general introduction to all the divisions of Theology, together with an account of the relations between them. Hegel's Encyclopædia was an attempted exhibition of the principles and connections of all the sciences. See Crooks and Hurst, Theological Encyclopædia and Methodology; Zöckler, Handb. der theol. Wissenschaften, 2:606-769.The relations of theology to science and philosophy have been variously stated, but by none better than by H. B. Smith, Faith and Philosophy, 18—“Philosophy is a mode of human knowledge—not the whole of that knowledge, but a mode of it—the knowing of things rationally.”Science asks:“WhatdoI know?”Philosophy asks:“WhatcanI know?”William James, Psychology, 1:145—“Metaphysics means nothing[pg 043]but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.”Aristotle:“The particular sciences are toiling workmen, while philosophy is the architect. The workmen are slaves, existing for the free master. So philosophy rules the sciences.”With regard to philosophy and science Lord Bacon remarks:“Those who have handled knowledge have been too much either men of mere observation or abstract reasoners. The former are like the ant: they only collect material and put it to immediate use. The abstract reasoners are like spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes a middle course: it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and the field, while it transforms and digests what it gathers by a power of its own. Not unlike this is the work of the philosopher.”Novalis:“Philosophy can bake no bread; but it can give us God, freedom and immortality.”Prof. DeWitt of Princeton:“Science, philosophy, and theology are the three great modes of organizing the universe into an intellectual system. Science never goes below second causes; if it does, it is no longer science,—it becomes philosophy. Philosophy views the universe as a unity, and the goal it is always seeking to reach is the source and centre of this unity—the Absolute, the First Cause. This goal of philosophy is the point of departure for theology. What philosophy is striving to find, theology asserts has been found. Theology therefore starts with the Absolute, the First Cause.”W. N. Clarke, Christian Theology, 48—“Science examines and classifies facts; philosophy inquires concerning spiritual meanings. Science seeks to know the universe; philosophy to understand it.”Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 7—“Natural science has for its subject matter things and events. Philosophy is the systematic exhibition of the grounds of our knowledge. Metaphysics is our knowledge respecting realities which are not phenomenal,e. g., God and the soul.”Knight, Essays in Philosophy, 81—“The aim of the sciences is increase of knowledge, by the discovery of laws within which all phenomena may be embraced and by means of which they may be explained. The aim of philosophy, on the other hand, is to explain the sciences, by at once including and transcending them. Its sphere is substance and essence.”Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 3-5—“Philosophy =doctrine of knowledge(is mind passive or active in knowing?—Epistemology) +doctrine of being(is fundamental being mechanical and unintelligent, or purposive and intelligent?—Metaphysics). The systems of Locke, Hume, and Kant are preëminently theories of knowing; the systems of Spinoza and Leibnitz are preëminently theories of being. Historically theories of being come first, because the object is the only determinant for reflective thought. But the instrument of philosophy is thought itself. First then, we must study Logic, or the theory of thought; secondly, Epistemology, or the theory of knowledge; thirdly, Metaphysics, or the theory of being.”Professor George M. Forbes on the New Psychology:“Locke and Kant represent the two tendencies in philosophy—the empirical, physical, scientific, on the one hand, and the rational, metaphysical, logical, on the other. Locke furnishes the basis for the associational schemes of Hartley, the Mills, and Bain; Kant for the idealistic scheme of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. The two are not contradictory, but complementary, and the Scotch Reid and Hamilton combine them both, reacting against the extreme empiricism and scepticism of Hume. Hickok, Porter, and McCosh represented the Scotch school in America. It was exclusivelyanalytical; its psychology was the faculty-psychology; it represented the mind as a bundle of faculties. The unitary philosophy of T. H. Green, Edward Caird, in Great Britain, and in America, of W. T. Harris, George S. Morris, and John Dewey, was a reaction against this faculty-psychology, under the influence of Hegel. A second reaction under the influence of the Herbartian doctrine of apperception substituted function for faculty, making all processes phases of apperception. G. F. Stout and J. Mark Baldwin represent this psychology. A third reaction comes from the influence of physical science. All attempts to unify are relegated to a metaphysical Hades. There is nothing but states and processes. The only unity is the laws of their coëxistence and succession. There is nothinga priori. Wundt identifies apperception with will, and regards it as the unitary principle. Külpe and Titchener find no self, or will, or soul, but treat these as inferences little warranted. Their psychology is psychology without a soul. The old psychology was exclusivelystatic, while the new emphasizes the genetic point of view. Growth and development are the leading ideas of Herbert Spencer, Preyer, Tracy and Stanley Hall. William James is explanatory, while George T. Ladd is descriptive. Cattell, Scripture, and Münsterberg apply the methods of Fechner, and the Psychological[pg 044]Review is their organ. Their error is in their negative attitude. The old psychology is needed to supplement the new. It has greater scope and more practical significance.”On the relation of theology to philosophy and to science, see Luthardt, Compend. der Dogmatik, 4; Hagenbach, Encyclopädie, 109.

Theology is commonly divided into Biblical, Historical, Systematic, and Practical.

1.Biblical Theologyaims to arrange and classify the facts of revelation, confining itself to the Scriptures for its material, and treating of doctrine only so far as it was developed at the close of the apostolic age.

Instance DeWette, Biblische Theologie; Hofmann, Schriftbeweis; Nitzsch, System of Christian Doctrine. The last, however, has more of the philosophical element than properly belongs to Biblical Theology. The third volume of Ritschl's Justification and Reconciliation is intended as a system of Biblical Theology, the first and second volumes being little more than an historical introduction. But metaphysics, of a Kantian relativity and phenomenalism, enter so largely into Ritschl's estimates and interpretations, as to render his conclusions both partial and rationalistic. Notice a questionable use of the term Biblical Theology to designate the theology of a part of Scripture severed from the rest, as Steudel's Biblical Theology of the Old Testament; Schmidt's Biblical Theology of the New Testament; and in the common phrases: Biblical Theology of Christ, or of Paul. These phrases are objectionable as intimating that the books of Scripture have only a human origin. Upon the assumption that there is no common divine authorship of Scripture, Biblical Theology is conceived of as a series of fragments, corresponding to the differing teachings of the various prophets and apostles, and the theology of Paul is held to be an unwarranted and incongruous addition to the theology of Jesus. See Reuss, History of Christian Theology in the Apostolic Age.

Instance DeWette, Biblische Theologie; Hofmann, Schriftbeweis; Nitzsch, System of Christian Doctrine. The last, however, has more of the philosophical element than properly belongs to Biblical Theology. The third volume of Ritschl's Justification and Reconciliation is intended as a system of Biblical Theology, the first and second volumes being little more than an historical introduction. But metaphysics, of a Kantian relativity and phenomenalism, enter so largely into Ritschl's estimates and interpretations, as to render his conclusions both partial and rationalistic. Notice a questionable use of the term Biblical Theology to designate the theology of a part of Scripture severed from the rest, as Steudel's Biblical Theology of the Old Testament; Schmidt's Biblical Theology of the New Testament; and in the common phrases: Biblical Theology of Christ, or of Paul. These phrases are objectionable as intimating that the books of Scripture have only a human origin. Upon the assumption that there is no common divine authorship of Scripture, Biblical Theology is conceived of as a series of fragments, corresponding to the differing teachings of the various prophets and apostles, and the theology of Paul is held to be an unwarranted and incongruous addition to the theology of Jesus. See Reuss, History of Christian Theology in the Apostolic Age.

2.Historical Theologytraces the development of the Biblical doctrines from the time of the apostles to the present day, and gives account of the results of this development in the life of the church.

By doctrinal development we mean the progressive unfolding and apprehension, by the church, of the truth explicitly or implicitly contained in Scripture. As giving account of the shaping of the Christian faith into doctrinal statements, Historical Theology is called the History of Doctrine. As describing the resulting and accompanying changes in the life of the church, outward and inward, Historical Theology is called Church History. Instance Cunningham's Historical Theology; Hagenbach's and Shedd's Histories of Doctrine; Neander's Church History. There is always a danger that the historian will see his own views too clearly reflected in the history of the church. Shedd's History of Christian Doctrine has been called“The History of Dr. Shedd's Christian Doctrine.”But if Dr. Shedd's Augustinianism colors his History, Dr. Sheldon's Arminianism also colors his. G. P. Fisher's History of Christian Doctrine is unusually lucid and impartial. See Neander's Introduction and Shedd's Philosophy of History.

By doctrinal development we mean the progressive unfolding and apprehension, by the church, of the truth explicitly or implicitly contained in Scripture. As giving account of the shaping of the Christian faith into doctrinal statements, Historical Theology is called the History of Doctrine. As describing the resulting and accompanying changes in the life of the church, outward and inward, Historical Theology is called Church History. Instance Cunningham's Historical Theology; Hagenbach's and Shedd's Histories of Doctrine; Neander's Church History. There is always a danger that the historian will see his own views too clearly reflected in the history of the church. Shedd's History of Christian Doctrine has been called“The History of Dr. Shedd's Christian Doctrine.”But if Dr. Shedd's Augustinianism colors his History, Dr. Sheldon's Arminianism also colors his. G. P. Fisher's History of Christian Doctrine is unusually lucid and impartial. See Neander's Introduction and Shedd's Philosophy of History.

3.Systematic Theologytakes the material furnished by Biblical and by Historical Theology, and with this material seeks to build up into an organic and consistent whole all our knowledge of God and of the relations between God and the universe, whether this knowledge be originally derived from nature or from the Scriptures.

Systematic Theology is therefore theology proper, of which Biblical and Historical Theology are the incomplete and preparatory stages. Systematic Theology is to be clearly distinguished from Dogmatic Theology. Dogmatic Theology is, in strict usage, the systematizing of the doctrines as expressed in the symbols of the church, together with the grounding of these in the Scriptures, and the exhibition, so far as may be, of their rational necessity. Systematic Theology begins, on the other hand, not with the[pg 042]symbols, but with the Scriptures. It asks first, not what the church has believed, but what is the truth of God's revealed word. It examines that word with all the aids which nature and the Spirit have given it, using Biblical and Historical Theology as its servants and helpers, but not as its masters. Notice here the technical use of the word“symbol,”from συμβάλλω, = a brief throwing together, or condensed statement of the essentials of Christian doctrine. Synonyms are: Confession, creed, consensus, declaration, formulary, canons, articles of faith.Dogmatism argues to foregone conclusions. The word is not, however, derived from“dog,”as Douglas Jerrold facetiously suggested, when he said that“dogmatism is puppyism full grown,”but from δοκέω to think, to opine. Dogmatic Theology has two principles: (1) The absolute authority of creeds, as decisions of the church: (2) The application to these creeds of formal logic, for the purpose of demonstrating their truth to the understanding. In the Roman Catholic Church, not the Scripture but the church, and the dogma given by it, is the decisive authority. The Protestant principle, on the contrary, is that Scripture decides, and that dogma is to be judged by it. Following Schleiermacher, Al. Schweizer thinks that the term“Dogmatik”should be discarded as essentially unprotestant, and that“Glaubenslehre”should take its place; and Harnack, Hist. Dogma, 6, remarks that“dogma has ever, in the progress of history, devoured its own progenitors.”While it is true that every new and advanced thinker in theology has been counted a heretic, there has always been a common faith—“the faith which was once for all delivered unto the saints”(Jude 3)—and the study of Systematic Theology has been one of the chief means of preserving this faith in the world.Mat. 15:13, 14—“Every plant which my heavenly Father planted not, shall be rooted up. Let them alone: they are blind guides”= there is truth planted by God, and it has permanent divine life. Human errors have no permanent vitality and they perish of themselves. See Kaftan, Dogmatik, 2, 3.

Systematic Theology is therefore theology proper, of which Biblical and Historical Theology are the incomplete and preparatory stages. Systematic Theology is to be clearly distinguished from Dogmatic Theology. Dogmatic Theology is, in strict usage, the systematizing of the doctrines as expressed in the symbols of the church, together with the grounding of these in the Scriptures, and the exhibition, so far as may be, of their rational necessity. Systematic Theology begins, on the other hand, not with the[pg 042]symbols, but with the Scriptures. It asks first, not what the church has believed, but what is the truth of God's revealed word. It examines that word with all the aids which nature and the Spirit have given it, using Biblical and Historical Theology as its servants and helpers, but not as its masters. Notice here the technical use of the word“symbol,”from συμβάλλω, = a brief throwing together, or condensed statement of the essentials of Christian doctrine. Synonyms are: Confession, creed, consensus, declaration, formulary, canons, articles of faith.

Dogmatism argues to foregone conclusions. The word is not, however, derived from“dog,”as Douglas Jerrold facetiously suggested, when he said that“dogmatism is puppyism full grown,”but from δοκέω to think, to opine. Dogmatic Theology has two principles: (1) The absolute authority of creeds, as decisions of the church: (2) The application to these creeds of formal logic, for the purpose of demonstrating their truth to the understanding. In the Roman Catholic Church, not the Scripture but the church, and the dogma given by it, is the decisive authority. The Protestant principle, on the contrary, is that Scripture decides, and that dogma is to be judged by it. Following Schleiermacher, Al. Schweizer thinks that the term“Dogmatik”should be discarded as essentially unprotestant, and that“Glaubenslehre”should take its place; and Harnack, Hist. Dogma, 6, remarks that“dogma has ever, in the progress of history, devoured its own progenitors.”While it is true that every new and advanced thinker in theology has been counted a heretic, there has always been a common faith—“the faith which was once for all delivered unto the saints”(Jude 3)—and the study of Systematic Theology has been one of the chief means of preserving this faith in the world.Mat. 15:13, 14—“Every plant which my heavenly Father planted not, shall be rooted up. Let them alone: they are blind guides”= there is truth planted by God, and it has permanent divine life. Human errors have no permanent vitality and they perish of themselves. See Kaftan, Dogmatik, 2, 3.

4.Practical Theologyis the system of truth considered as a means of renewing and sanctifying men, or, in other words, theology in its publication and enforcement.

To this department of theology belong Homiletics and Pastoral Theology, since these are but scientific presentations of the right methods of unfolding Christian truth, and of bringing it to bear upon men individually and in the church. See Van Oosterzee, Practical Theology; T. Harwood Pattison, The Making of the Sermon, and Public Prayer; Yale Lectures on Preaching by H. W. Beecher, R. W. Dale, Phillips Brooks, E. G. Robinson, A. J. F. Behrends, John Watson, and others; and the work on Pastoral Theology, by Harvey.It is sometimes asserted that there are other departments of theology not included in those above mentioned. But most of these, if not all, belong to other spheres of research, and cannot properly be classed under theology at all. Moral Theology, so called, or the science of Christian morals, ethics, or theological ethics, is indeed the proper result of theology, but is not to be confounded with it. Speculative theology, so called, respecting, as it does, such truth as is mere matter of opinion, is either extra-scriptural, and so belongs to the province of the philosophy of religion, or is an attempt to explain truth already revealed, and so falls within the province of Systematic Theology.“Speculative theology starts from certaina prioriprinciples, and from them undertakes to determine what is and must be. It deduces its scheme of doctrine from the laws of mind or from axioms supposed to be inwrought into its constitution.”Bib. Sac., 1852:376—“Speculative theology tries to show that the dogmas agree with the laws of thought, while the philosophy of religion tries to show that the laws of thought agree with the dogmas.”Theological Encyclopædia (the word signifies“instruction in a circle”) is a general introduction to all the divisions of Theology, together with an account of the relations between them. Hegel's Encyclopædia was an attempted exhibition of the principles and connections of all the sciences. See Crooks and Hurst, Theological Encyclopædia and Methodology; Zöckler, Handb. der theol. Wissenschaften, 2:606-769.The relations of theology to science and philosophy have been variously stated, but by none better than by H. B. Smith, Faith and Philosophy, 18—“Philosophy is a mode of human knowledge—not the whole of that knowledge, but a mode of it—the knowing of things rationally.”Science asks:“WhatdoI know?”Philosophy asks:“WhatcanI know?”William James, Psychology, 1:145—“Metaphysics means nothing[pg 043]but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.”Aristotle:“The particular sciences are toiling workmen, while philosophy is the architect. The workmen are slaves, existing for the free master. So philosophy rules the sciences.”With regard to philosophy and science Lord Bacon remarks:“Those who have handled knowledge have been too much either men of mere observation or abstract reasoners. The former are like the ant: they only collect material and put it to immediate use. The abstract reasoners are like spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes a middle course: it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and the field, while it transforms and digests what it gathers by a power of its own. Not unlike this is the work of the philosopher.”Novalis:“Philosophy can bake no bread; but it can give us God, freedom and immortality.”Prof. DeWitt of Princeton:“Science, philosophy, and theology are the three great modes of organizing the universe into an intellectual system. Science never goes below second causes; if it does, it is no longer science,—it becomes philosophy. Philosophy views the universe as a unity, and the goal it is always seeking to reach is the source and centre of this unity—the Absolute, the First Cause. This goal of philosophy is the point of departure for theology. What philosophy is striving to find, theology asserts has been found. Theology therefore starts with the Absolute, the First Cause.”W. N. Clarke, Christian Theology, 48—“Science examines and classifies facts; philosophy inquires concerning spiritual meanings. Science seeks to know the universe; philosophy to understand it.”Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 7—“Natural science has for its subject matter things and events. Philosophy is the systematic exhibition of the grounds of our knowledge. Metaphysics is our knowledge respecting realities which are not phenomenal,e. g., God and the soul.”Knight, Essays in Philosophy, 81—“The aim of the sciences is increase of knowledge, by the discovery of laws within which all phenomena may be embraced and by means of which they may be explained. The aim of philosophy, on the other hand, is to explain the sciences, by at once including and transcending them. Its sphere is substance and essence.”Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 3-5—“Philosophy =doctrine of knowledge(is mind passive or active in knowing?—Epistemology) +doctrine of being(is fundamental being mechanical and unintelligent, or purposive and intelligent?—Metaphysics). The systems of Locke, Hume, and Kant are preëminently theories of knowing; the systems of Spinoza and Leibnitz are preëminently theories of being. Historically theories of being come first, because the object is the only determinant for reflective thought. But the instrument of philosophy is thought itself. First then, we must study Logic, or the theory of thought; secondly, Epistemology, or the theory of knowledge; thirdly, Metaphysics, or the theory of being.”Professor George M. Forbes on the New Psychology:“Locke and Kant represent the two tendencies in philosophy—the empirical, physical, scientific, on the one hand, and the rational, metaphysical, logical, on the other. Locke furnishes the basis for the associational schemes of Hartley, the Mills, and Bain; Kant for the idealistic scheme of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. The two are not contradictory, but complementary, and the Scotch Reid and Hamilton combine them both, reacting against the extreme empiricism and scepticism of Hume. Hickok, Porter, and McCosh represented the Scotch school in America. It was exclusivelyanalytical; its psychology was the faculty-psychology; it represented the mind as a bundle of faculties. The unitary philosophy of T. H. Green, Edward Caird, in Great Britain, and in America, of W. T. Harris, George S. Morris, and John Dewey, was a reaction against this faculty-psychology, under the influence of Hegel. A second reaction under the influence of the Herbartian doctrine of apperception substituted function for faculty, making all processes phases of apperception. G. F. Stout and J. Mark Baldwin represent this psychology. A third reaction comes from the influence of physical science. All attempts to unify are relegated to a metaphysical Hades. There is nothing but states and processes. The only unity is the laws of their coëxistence and succession. There is nothinga priori. Wundt identifies apperception with will, and regards it as the unitary principle. Külpe and Titchener find no self, or will, or soul, but treat these as inferences little warranted. Their psychology is psychology without a soul. The old psychology was exclusivelystatic, while the new emphasizes the genetic point of view. Growth and development are the leading ideas of Herbert Spencer, Preyer, Tracy and Stanley Hall. William James is explanatory, while George T. Ladd is descriptive. Cattell, Scripture, and Münsterberg apply the methods of Fechner, and the Psychological[pg 044]Review is their organ. Their error is in their negative attitude. The old psychology is needed to supplement the new. It has greater scope and more practical significance.”On the relation of theology to philosophy and to science, see Luthardt, Compend. der Dogmatik, 4; Hagenbach, Encyclopädie, 109.

To this department of theology belong Homiletics and Pastoral Theology, since these are but scientific presentations of the right methods of unfolding Christian truth, and of bringing it to bear upon men individually and in the church. See Van Oosterzee, Practical Theology; T. Harwood Pattison, The Making of the Sermon, and Public Prayer; Yale Lectures on Preaching by H. W. Beecher, R. W. Dale, Phillips Brooks, E. G. Robinson, A. J. F. Behrends, John Watson, and others; and the work on Pastoral Theology, by Harvey.

It is sometimes asserted that there are other departments of theology not included in those above mentioned. But most of these, if not all, belong to other spheres of research, and cannot properly be classed under theology at all. Moral Theology, so called, or the science of Christian morals, ethics, or theological ethics, is indeed the proper result of theology, but is not to be confounded with it. Speculative theology, so called, respecting, as it does, such truth as is mere matter of opinion, is either extra-scriptural, and so belongs to the province of the philosophy of religion, or is an attempt to explain truth already revealed, and so falls within the province of Systematic Theology.“Speculative theology starts from certaina prioriprinciples, and from them undertakes to determine what is and must be. It deduces its scheme of doctrine from the laws of mind or from axioms supposed to be inwrought into its constitution.”Bib. Sac., 1852:376—“Speculative theology tries to show that the dogmas agree with the laws of thought, while the philosophy of religion tries to show that the laws of thought agree with the dogmas.”Theological Encyclopædia (the word signifies“instruction in a circle”) is a general introduction to all the divisions of Theology, together with an account of the relations between them. Hegel's Encyclopædia was an attempted exhibition of the principles and connections of all the sciences. See Crooks and Hurst, Theological Encyclopædia and Methodology; Zöckler, Handb. der theol. Wissenschaften, 2:606-769.

The relations of theology to science and philosophy have been variously stated, but by none better than by H. B. Smith, Faith and Philosophy, 18—“Philosophy is a mode of human knowledge—not the whole of that knowledge, but a mode of it—the knowing of things rationally.”Science asks:“WhatdoI know?”Philosophy asks:“WhatcanI know?”William James, Psychology, 1:145—“Metaphysics means nothing[pg 043]but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.”Aristotle:“The particular sciences are toiling workmen, while philosophy is the architect. The workmen are slaves, existing for the free master. So philosophy rules the sciences.”With regard to philosophy and science Lord Bacon remarks:“Those who have handled knowledge have been too much either men of mere observation or abstract reasoners. The former are like the ant: they only collect material and put it to immediate use. The abstract reasoners are like spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes a middle course: it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and the field, while it transforms and digests what it gathers by a power of its own. Not unlike this is the work of the philosopher.”Novalis:“Philosophy can bake no bread; but it can give us God, freedom and immortality.”Prof. DeWitt of Princeton:“Science, philosophy, and theology are the three great modes of organizing the universe into an intellectual system. Science never goes below second causes; if it does, it is no longer science,—it becomes philosophy. Philosophy views the universe as a unity, and the goal it is always seeking to reach is the source and centre of this unity—the Absolute, the First Cause. This goal of philosophy is the point of departure for theology. What philosophy is striving to find, theology asserts has been found. Theology therefore starts with the Absolute, the First Cause.”W. N. Clarke, Christian Theology, 48—“Science examines and classifies facts; philosophy inquires concerning spiritual meanings. Science seeks to know the universe; philosophy to understand it.”

Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 7—“Natural science has for its subject matter things and events. Philosophy is the systematic exhibition of the grounds of our knowledge. Metaphysics is our knowledge respecting realities which are not phenomenal,e. g., God and the soul.”Knight, Essays in Philosophy, 81—“The aim of the sciences is increase of knowledge, by the discovery of laws within which all phenomena may be embraced and by means of which they may be explained. The aim of philosophy, on the other hand, is to explain the sciences, by at once including and transcending them. Its sphere is substance and essence.”Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 3-5—“Philosophy =doctrine of knowledge(is mind passive or active in knowing?—Epistemology) +doctrine of being(is fundamental being mechanical and unintelligent, or purposive and intelligent?—Metaphysics). The systems of Locke, Hume, and Kant are preëminently theories of knowing; the systems of Spinoza and Leibnitz are preëminently theories of being. Historically theories of being come first, because the object is the only determinant for reflective thought. But the instrument of philosophy is thought itself. First then, we must study Logic, or the theory of thought; secondly, Epistemology, or the theory of knowledge; thirdly, Metaphysics, or the theory of being.”

Professor George M. Forbes on the New Psychology:“Locke and Kant represent the two tendencies in philosophy—the empirical, physical, scientific, on the one hand, and the rational, metaphysical, logical, on the other. Locke furnishes the basis for the associational schemes of Hartley, the Mills, and Bain; Kant for the idealistic scheme of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. The two are not contradictory, but complementary, and the Scotch Reid and Hamilton combine them both, reacting against the extreme empiricism and scepticism of Hume. Hickok, Porter, and McCosh represented the Scotch school in America. It was exclusivelyanalytical; its psychology was the faculty-psychology; it represented the mind as a bundle of faculties. The unitary philosophy of T. H. Green, Edward Caird, in Great Britain, and in America, of W. T. Harris, George S. Morris, and John Dewey, was a reaction against this faculty-psychology, under the influence of Hegel. A second reaction under the influence of the Herbartian doctrine of apperception substituted function for faculty, making all processes phases of apperception. G. F. Stout and J. Mark Baldwin represent this psychology. A third reaction comes from the influence of physical science. All attempts to unify are relegated to a metaphysical Hades. There is nothing but states and processes. The only unity is the laws of their coëxistence and succession. There is nothinga priori. Wundt identifies apperception with will, and regards it as the unitary principle. Külpe and Titchener find no self, or will, or soul, but treat these as inferences little warranted. Their psychology is psychology without a soul. The old psychology was exclusivelystatic, while the new emphasizes the genetic point of view. Growth and development are the leading ideas of Herbert Spencer, Preyer, Tracy and Stanley Hall. William James is explanatory, while George T. Ladd is descriptive. Cattell, Scripture, and Münsterberg apply the methods of Fechner, and the Psychological[pg 044]Review is their organ. Their error is in their negative attitude. The old psychology is needed to supplement the new. It has greater scope and more practical significance.”On the relation of theology to philosophy and to science, see Luthardt, Compend. der Dogmatik, 4; Hagenbach, Encyclopädie, 109.

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