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 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 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 Theology traces 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.