Goethe explains his own greatness by his avoidance of metaphysics: “Mein Kind, Ich habe es klug gemacht: Ich habe nie über's Denken gedacht”—“I have been wise in never thinking about thinking”; he would have been wiser, had he pondered more deeply the fundamental principles of his philosophy; see A. H. Strong, The Great Poets and their Theology, 296–299, and Philosophy and Religion, 1–18; also in Baptist Quarterly, 2:393 sq. Many a theological system has fallen, like the Campanile at Venice, because its foundations were insecure. Sir William Hamilton: “No difficulty arises in theology which has not first emerged in philosophy.” N. W. Taylor: “Give me a young man in metaphysics, and I care not who has him in theology.”President Samson Talbot: “I love metaphysics, because they have to do with realities.”The maxim “Ubi tres medici, ibi duo athei,” witnesses to the truth of Galen's words: ἄριστος ἰατρὸς καὶ φιλόσοφος—“the best physician is also a philosopher.” Theology cannot dispense with science, any more than science can dispense with philosophy. E. G. Robinson: “Science has not invalidated any fundamental truth of revelation, though it has modified the statement of many. … Physical Science will undoubtedly knock some of our crockery gods on the head, and the sooner the better.” There is great advantage to the preacher in taking up, as did Frederick W. Robertson, one science after another. Chemistry entered into his mental structure, as he said, “like iron into the blood.”
(d) A knowledge of the original languages of the Bible. This is necessary to enable us not only to determine the meaning of the fundamental terms of Scripture, such as holiness, sin, propitiation, justification, but also to interpret statements of doctrine by their connections with the context.
Emerson said that the man who reads a book in a strange tongue, when he can have a good translation, is a fool. Dr. Behrends replied that he is a fool who is satisfied with the substitute. E. G. Robinson: “Language is a great organism, and no study so disciplines the mind as the dissection of an organism.” Chrysostom: “This is the cause of all our evils—our not knowing the Scriptures.” Yet a modern scholar has said: “The Bible is the most dangerous of all God's gifts to men.” It is possible to adore the letter, while we fail to perceive its spirit. A narrow interpretation may contradict its meaning. Much depends upon connecting phrases, as for example, the διὰ τοῦτο and ἐφ᾽ ᾧ, in Rom. 5:12. Professor Philip Lindsley of Princeton, 1813–1853, said to his pupils: “One of the best preparations for death is a thorough knowledge of the Greek grammar.”The youthful Erasmus: “When I get some money, I will get me some Greek books, and, after that, some clothes.” The dead languages are the only really living ones—free from danger of misunderstanding from changing usage. Divine Providence has put revelation into fixed forms in the Hebrew and the Greek. Sir William Hamilton, Discussions, 330—“To be a competent divine is in fact to be a scholar.”On the true idea of a Theological Seminary Course, see A. H. Strong, Philos. and Religion, 302–313.
(e) A holy affection toward God. Only the renewed heart can properly feel its need of divine revelation, or understand that revelation when given.
Ps. 25:14—“The secret of Jehovah is with them that fear him”; Rom. 12:2—“prove what is the … will of God”; cf. Ps. 36:1—“the transgression of the wicked speaks in his heart like an oracle.” “It is the heart and not the brain That to the highest doth attain.” To “learn by heart” is something more than to learn by mind, or by head. All heterodoxy is preceded by heteropraxy. In Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Faithful does not go through the 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 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 Theology aims 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