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 exclusively analytical; 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 nothing a 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 exclusively static, 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 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.
III. History of Systematic Theology.
1. In the Eastern Church, Systematic Theology may be said to have had its beginning and end in John of Damascus (700–760).
Ignatius († 115—Ad Trall., c. 9) gives us “the first distinct statement of the faith drawn up in a series of propositions. This systematizing formed the basis of all later efforts” (Prof. A. H. Newman). Origen of Alexandria (186–254) wrote his Περὶ Ἀρχῶν; Athanasius of Alexandria (300–373) his Treatises on the Trinity and the Deity of Christ; and Gregory of Nyssa in Cappadocia (332–398) his Λόγος κατηχητικὸς ὁ μέγας. Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, 323, regards the “De Principiis” of Origen as the “first complete system of dogma,” and speaks of Origen as “the disciple of Clement of Alexandria, the first great teacher of philosophical Christianity.” But while the Fathers just mentioned seem to have conceived the plan of expounding the doctrines in order and of showing their relation to one another, it was John of Damascus (700–760) who first actually carried out such a plan. His Ἔκδοσις ἀκριβὴς τῆς ὀρθοδόξου Πίστεως, or Summary of the Orthodox Faith, may be considered the earliest work of Systematic Theology. Neander calls it “the most important doctrinal text-book of the Greek Church.” John, like the Greek Church in general, was speculative, theological, semi-pelagian, sacramentarian. The Apostles' Creed, so called, is, in its present form, not earlier than the fifth century; see Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 1:19. Mr. Gladstone suggested that the Apostles' Creed was a development of the baptismal formula. McGiffert, Apostles' Creed, assigns to the meagre original form a date of the third quarter of the second century, and regards the Roman origin of the symbol as proved. It was framed as a baptismal formula, but specifically in opposition to the teachings of Marcion, which were at that time causing much trouble at Rome. Harnack however dates the original Apostles' Creed at 150, and Zahn places it at 120. See also J. C. Long, in Bap. Quar. Rev., Jan. 1892: 89–101.
2. In the Western Church, we may (with Hagenbach) distinguish three periods:
(a) The period of Scholasticism—introduced by Peter Lombard (1100–1160), and reaching its culmination in Thomas Aquinas (1221–1274) and Duns Scotus (1265–1308).
Though Systematic Theology had its beginning in the Eastern Church, its development has been confined almost wholly to the Western. Augustine (353–430) wrote his “Encheiridion ad Laurentium” and his “De Civitate Dei,” and John Scotus Erigena († 850), Roscelin (1092–1122), and Abelard (1079–1142), in their attempts at the rational explanation of the Christian doctrine foreshadowed the works of the great scholastic teachers. Anselm of Canterbury (1034–1109), with his “Proslogion de Dei Existentia” and his “Cur Deus Homo,” has sometimes, but wrongly, been called the founder of Scholasticism. Allen, in his Continuity of Christian Thought, represents the transcendence of God as the controlling principle of the Augustinian and of the Western theology. The Eastern Church, he maintains, had founded its theology on God's immanence. Paine, in his Evolution of Trinitarianism, shows that this is erroneous. Augustine was a theistic monist. He declares that “Dei voluntas rerum natura est,” and regards God's upholding as a continuous creation. Western theology recognized the immanence of God as well as his transcendence.
Peter Lombard, however, (1100–1160), the “magister sententiarum,” was the first great systematizer of the Western Church, and his “Libri Sententiarum Quatuor” was the theological text-book of the Middle Ages. Teachers lectured on the “Sentences”(Sententia = sentence, Satz, locus, point, article of faith), as they did on the books of Aristotle, who furnished to Scholasticism its impulse and guide. Every doctrine was treated in the order of Aristotle's four causes: the material, the formal, the efficient, the final. (“Cause” here = requisite: (1) matter of which a thing consists, e.g., bricks and mortar; (2) form it assumes, e.g., plan or design; (3) producing agent, e.g., builder; (4) end for which made, e.g., house.) The organization of physical as well as of theological science was due to Aristotle. Dante called him “the master of those who know.” James Ten Broeke, Bap. Quar. Rev., Jan. 1892:1–26—“The Revival of Learning showed the world that the real Aristotle was much broader than the Scholastic Aristotle—information very unwelcome to the Roman Church.” For the influence of Scholasticism, compare the literary methods of Augustine and of Calvin—the former giving us his materials in disorder, like soldiers bivouacked for the night; the latter arranging them like those same soldiers drawn up in battle array; see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 4, and Christ in Creation, 188, 189.
Candlish, art.: Dogmatic, in Encycl. Brit., 7:340—“By and by a mighty intellectual force took hold of the whole collected dogmatic material, and reared out of it the great scholastic systems, which have been compared to the grand Gothic cathedrals that were the work of the same ages.” Thomas Aquinas (1221–1274), the Dominican, “doctor angelicus,” Augustinian and Realist—and Duns Scotus (1265–1308), the Franciscan,