《A Compendium of Christian Theology (Vol.1)》
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 1
DEFINITION OF THEOLOGY
THEOLOGY PROPER
God and Divine Things
IN RELATION TO MAN
Extent and Limitation
IN JESUS CHRIST
Relation to Natural Theology, and Earlier Dispensations
IN THE CHURCH:
Development and Various Types
THEOLOGY A SCIENCE
Its Aim, Methods, and Study
CHRISTIAN Theology is the science of God and Divine thing’s, based upon the revelation made to mankind in Jesus Christ, and variously systematized within the Christian Church.
(General Definition) All that belongs to the preliminaries of our study may be distributed under the several heads suggested by this definition, which is so framed as to include, first, Theology proper; secondly, its limitation to the relations between God and mankind; thirdly, its essential connection with Christ; fourthly, its characteristics as developed under various influences within the Christian Church; and lastly, its title to the name of a science. The introductory remarks which will be made on these several topics have for their object simply to prepare the mind of the student for what lies before him; and to give a few hints which will all afterwards be expanded in due course.
THEOLOGY.
God is the source and the subject and the end of theology. The stricter and earlier use of the word limited it to the doctrine of the Triune God and His attributes. But in modern usage it includes the whole compass of the science of Religion, or the relations of all things to God. This gives it its unity and dignity and sanctity. It is A DEO, DE DEO, IN DEUM: from God in its origin, concerning God in its substance, and it leads to God in all its issues; His NAME is in it.
1. The only adequate definition of this subject embraces DIVINE THINGS: Logos peri tou Theou kai peri ton Theion. The Supreme, whose being is the first postulate of theology or divinity, declares Himself to be as to His nature incomprehensible and unsearchable. I AM THAT I AM 1 is the nearest approach to a definition; it asserts without proving His existence, and that He exists in an essence known only to Himself. The Old Testament asks: Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?2 The New Testament, which brings Him nearer in His Son, represents Him as dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto to search.3 In the profoundest sense He is ever THE UNKNOWN GOD.4 It is His glory that He must conceal Himself. But St. Paul, as a preacher to the Gentiles, nevertheless declares that Unknown God, and in his writings uses two expressive phrases which at once affirm the prerogative and assign the limits of our theology proper. He speaks of the things of God, ta ton Thon, 5 in reference to those mysteries which the Spirit can and will reveal to those who receive Him. And he indicates that even apart from the supernatural revelations of the Spirit what is [or may be] known of God, to gnwsyon ton Theon,6 is unfolded to man. All that is known is all that may be known: the possible knowledge is the actual knowledge in its successive communications from the light of nature to the light of grace and thence to the light of glory. The thick darkness round about the unsearchable Presence is not absolutely unbroken: the rays that flow from it penetrate every department of true knowledge, especially of this.
1 Ex. 3:14, 2 Job 11:7, 3 1 Tim. 6:16, 4 Acts 17: 23, 5 1 Cor. 2:11, 6 Rom 1:19.
2. There is a sense in which universal theology is concerned simply with the relation of all things to God: if we carefully guard our meaning we may make this proposition include the converse, the relation of God to all things. Relation of course must be mutual; but it is hard in this matter to detach from the notion of relation that of dependence. The Eternal One is the Unconditioned Being. When we study His nature and perfections and works we must always remember that He is His Perfect Self independent of every created object, and independent of every thought concerning Him. But there is not a doctrine, nor is there a branch or development of any doctrine, which is not purely the expression of some relation of His creatures to the Supreme First Cause.
3. Hence every branch of this science is sacred. It is a temple which is filled with the presence of God. From its hidden sanctuary, into which no high priest taken from among men can enter, issues a light which leaves no part dark save where it is dark with excess of glory. Therefore all fit students are worshippers as well as students. In the heathen world there was a true instinct of this. The highest tribute the ancients could pay to their poets and philosophers, from Homer and Hesiod downwards, was to call them Theologoi.
Their philosophy was their theology. So in the early Church, when theology put on its perfection, its relation to God was the seal of that perfection: St. John was called the Divine, Ho Theologos, because his writings contained most of the manifestation of the Holy Trinity in its internal and external relations. What has been said of God Himself may be said concerning the theological study of God: He is the centre everywhere of a science which has its circumference nowhere. The remembrance of this must exert its influence upon our spirit and temper in all our studies. Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in His holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart.1
1Ps. 24:3,4.
DIVINE THINGS MADE KNOWN TO MAN.
Theology is mainly concerned with the things of God as they are related to man and his destination. This proposition implies the capacity in our nature to receive Divine truth; indicates both the extent and the limits of its range as revealed especially for man; and explains the essentially human character which is impressed on its form and invests it with a profound human interest.
1. Man is in a certain sense the centre of this science. He is specifically the centre of one branch of it, technically called ANTHROPOLOGY, which has to do with his characteristics as a creature formed in the image of God; but, more generally, he is the object around which all revolves. The light of revelation is poured upon the human race; and in its fullness upon it alone. Accordingly the relation of mankind to the Supreme may be said to be one of the definitions of theology. But man is only one insignificant, and yet not insignificant, creature of God. His place in the vast creation, and the development of his wonderful career in harmony with all other Divine designs, marks out his relation to theology universal. But this general truth must be viewed in two lights: man is the object of all revelation, as it concerns him and his destination; man is the subject of all revelation, as he is its recipient.
(1) Theology is concerned with the destiny of man in the universe. Its first lessons, the opening of the volume of the book, presents him as the head of the creation of God: the history of the origin of all things, and of the slow formation of this world, is only the preface to his introduction as the representative of his Maker upon the earth. His fall and his redemption are blended in one; the whole sequel of revelation is the record of the Divine method of retrieving in the Second Adam what in the first was marred, THE DIVINE IMAGE. The redemption of the human race, and the salvation of individual man, are interwoven into one great economy, stretching from the shutting of the earthly to the opening of the heavenly Paradise. There is not a revelation of God in His three Persons, as the Father, the Son Incarnate, and the Holy Ghost, which is not directly or indirectly connected with the salvation of mankind. Thus theology is simply the system of Divine truth which lies at the foundation of human religion or the spiritual fellowship between man and his Creator.
(2) But the same general principle may be referred to man as the recipient of revelation.
Created in the image of God, he is an intelligent, free and responsible creature, capable of separation from the Divine will and also capable of restoration to the Divine communion.
The two first postulates of all theology are the Personality of the Infinite Being and the personality of man His creature. Neither of these is matter of demonstration in the holy oracles: both are assumed or taken for granted everywhere. To renounce either is to annihilate theological knowledge properly so called. Although in the prosecution of this study methods of proving both may be adopted, under the pressure of a necessity imposed on us by the waywardness of human skepticism, yet must we finally and always beg the question here God is a Person who condescends to man; and man is a person who is capable of God.
(3) The objective and subjective relations of man as the centre of theological science meet in the word RELIGION, one of the largest and deepest terms with which we have to do. Its derivation has been much disputed; but the two leading explanations of it may be united for our present purpose. According to Lactantius, vinculo pietatis obstricti deo et RELIGATI sumus, unde ipsa religio nomen accepit, non, ut Cicero interpretatus est, a relegendo. That is to say, the eternal bond which binds man to God is signified by religion, which is therefore the relation of the human creature to the Supreme Creator, as acknowledged and borne witness to in all forms of theological teaching and worship.
Men have never been without a religion, for God has never left Himself without witness1 in any age or land: there have been gods many and religions many, though to us only one God and. one religion. The rejected interpretation of Cicero, however, demands to be heard: qui omnia, quae ad cultum deorum pertinerent, diligenter retractarent et tanquam RELEGERENT, sunt dicti religiosi, ex relegendo. That is to say, the exercise of the human mind in pondering and considering Divine things is signified by religion, which is, as it were, an instinctive and inwrought aspiration of human nature corrected and purified and directed to its highest issues in the true faith. We combine the two when we say that man is the centre of all theology as it is the foundation of all true religion.
1Acts 14:17.
2. Hence the limitation that everywhere meets us. The relations of the vast universe, and of other creatures in it, with God, are included only so far as they concern mankind.
Revelation brings us tidings from without, from the outside universe; and its communications concerning the earlier probation of spiritual intelligences, their division into orders, their interest and agency in the development of the Divine purposes, amount when systematized to a considerable department of revealed truth, to which the name ANGELOLOGY is sometimes given. But it is always their connection with man that regulates the method and the amount of these disclosures. There is strict parsimony as to everything not essential to human destiny: the principle of Least Action is maintained in revelation as in nature. Hence it is obvious that the responsibility of theology, so to speak, is limited to one subject. Those who study it must submit to this restriction.
What is that to thee?1 has its meaning here for all who indulge too much in speculation both as to the past and as to the future. Concerning all other things thou shalt know hereafter: there are many hints and earnests of a more abundant compensatory outpouring of knowledge in due time. Meanwhile this is the answer by anticipation to many objections of the skeptical spirit. We have but one leaf out of an enormous book; its page begins and ends, so to speak, in the middle of a sentence. Hereafter we shall see much more of this book. Now we know in part.2 We know ourselves apart from other creatures and other worlds. Then we shall know as also we are known: we shall know other beings and other worlds as they know us.
1John 21:22, 2 1 Cor. 13:12.
3. There is an impress upon theology, whether in its Divine records or in its human science, which results from its adaptation to human faculties. We must here take it for granted that man is a creature capable of religion, that is, of communion with God, as a person related to a Person. The Scripture which does not prove that God is does not prove that man is capable of knowing God: both are the fundamental presuppositions of theology. But, reserving the fuller demonstration of this, we must mark that as he is a creature in probation, his knowledge of Divine things is given in probationary forms, testing his character at every point. All is expressly adapted to his limited faculties, and imparted to him in a way suitable to his present stage of existence. God has come down to us in the likeness of men,1 and speaks to them in their own language. As the Rabbins said of the Law, Lex Dei loquitur linguam filiorum hominum, the law of God speaks the language of the children of men. The entire Bible is pervaded by what is called ANTHROPOMORPHISM and ANTHROPOPATHY: the former gives a name to the condescension of God in seeming to take a human form and human attributes; the latter includes also the peculiar affections of man, not excepting some that belong to his infirmity, such as hope and suspense. Not that the reality does not correspond. The Supreme gives us a true revelation of Himself; but it is a revelation that can be understood only in our world, and by us men. Even the angels desire to look into these things; 2 they are learning the secrets of the manifold wisdom of God as known by the Church; 3 but they cannot study them in our language.
1Acts 14:11, 2 1 Peter 1:12, 3 Eph. 3:10.
4. As human students of our own truth, we may be assured Sufficient that we shall have full and sufficient guidance. Nothing that it concerns us to know has been or will be hidden from us: what is reserved is reserved for our discipline, as what is revealed is revealed for our instruction. He hath showed thee, 0 man, what is good: 1 this must have its widest application. So also must that other saying, which contains the counterpart: The secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever.2 With what a profound human interest does this invest the whole domain of this sacred knowledge! Our life, our hope, our destiny, our all, is bound up with it: it is the record of our degradation and of our deliverance, of our ruin and of our recovery, of our woes and of our redemption. How great is the dignity of man that he is the centre, in any sense, of such a science! If it is the name of God that gives it its surpassing majesty, that grandeur is reflected upon us.
What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? 3 Our study cannot be conducted aright without a combination of the loftiest triumph and the deepest humility; we must always remember the dignity while we never forget the lowliness of the place we ourselves occupy in it. Approaching the revelation of Him who is our Wisdom, we hear: that no flesh should glory in His presence; 4 receiving that revelation we again hear, he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. 5 Theology is a light shed upon all the universe; it is the glory of God's creature, man. But this leads us to the eternal secret of our dignity.
Our knowledge comes to us through One who is Man and also God; His incarnation in the fullness of time explains the Anthropomorphism of the Old Testament; and it is in Him that the theology of God and the theology of man become one.
1Mic. 6:8, 2 Deut. 29:29, 3 Psa. 8:4, 4 1 Cor. 1:29-31, 5 Luk. 2:32.
BY JESUS CHRIST.
Jesus Christ is Himself in Person and in Word the revelation of God. He has confirmed and supplemented Natural Theology, or that which is independent of supernatural revelation. He has consummated the preliminary disclosures of His own earlier dispensations. He has discredited and condemned all teachers and teaching that reject His authority. Hence the science which we study is essentially Christian theology.
The postulates of the general proposition will be more fully established hereafter: they are now only stated and assumed.
1. In its technical sense, the term CHRISTOLOGY generally refers to the doctrine of Christ's Person as such in the unity of His two natures; but it may be said that Christology is Theology. He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father. 1 Although He reveals God as the Father who becomes visible in Him, He is in a certain sense the manifestation of the entire Divinity. He is the Mystery of God manifest in the flesh.2 The Old Testament, Behold your God! 3 Ecce Deus tuus! answers to the New Testament, Behold the Man!4 Ecce Homo! Our Lord is the ever-blessed unity of these: for both were spoken expressly of Him. His Person is the compendium of all that is Divine in human things, and in Him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.5 He is the substance of revelation in act and in word. He is Himself the one and supreme Theologian: neither knoweth any man the Father save the Son. 6 He is the centre of theology; all its doctrines revolve around Him: I am the Truth. 7 And, as Mediator between God and men,8 making both one, He is in a peculiar sense the bond of perfectness in theology. In Him is its unity, and it is complete in Him. The superscription of the Apocalypse is the superscription of our science as a whole: it is the apokalnpsis 'Iesous Christos, the Revelation of Jesus Christ,9 of Him as its object, from Him as its source.