Protestants failed to recognize its strength
It is with a pang that one is forced to trace in this movement that oft-repeated chapter in the history of mankind. As the leader of Israel was allowed to view the promised land from the top of Pisgah, but must there lay aside his armor and sleep the sleep of death because of a departure from right principles, so Protestantism, through its schools, looked across Jordan, but failed to maintain the principle of faith which could at the crucial moment command the waters to part.
Education by faith lost
One reason for the decline is thus stated by Painter: “In their efforts to give Christian doctrine a scientific form [that is, to formulate it], they lost its spirit. Losing its early freedom and life, Protestantism degenerated in a large measure into what has been called ‘dead orthodoxy.’ ... Christian life counted for little, and the Protestant world broke up into opposing factions. Says Kurtz, who is disposed to apologize for this period as far as possible: ‘Like medieval scholasticism, in its concern for logic, theology almost lost vitality. Orthodoxy degenerated into orthodoxism; externally, not only discerning essential diversities, but disregarding the broad basis of a common faith, and running into odious and unrestrained controversy; internally, holding to the form of pure doctrine, but neglecting cordially to embrace it and to live consistently with it.’”[130]
Scholasticism killed Protestant schools
How narrow the line between truth and error! How easy for those who had been given to eat of the tree of life to turn to the tree of knowledge of good and evil! What a pity that Protestant educators could not remain true to their trust! When on the eve of success, they turned to the old paths, and “called into existence a dialectic scholasticism which was in no way inferior to that of the most flourishing period of the Middle Ages.”[131] Papal principles are papal, whether advocated by Catholics or Protestants; having left the fountain of the pure waters of faith, they turned to the only other accessible source of knowledge—the pagan world. That system of education introduced by Luther and Melancthon, founded upon the Holy Scriptures, and through them viewing the sciences, mathematics, and literature, using the latter only as a means of illustrating God’s Word, was replaced by the scholasticism of the Middle Ages. One involuntarily asks, “How many times, O Israel, wilt thou return into Egypt?”
Form took the place of life
This decline is described in the following quotations taken from Painter, and they need no comment: “During the period extending from the middle of the sixteenth to the beginning of the eighteenth century, three leading tendencies are apparent in education. These may be characterized as the theological, the humanistic, and the practical.... A large share of the intellectual strength of the age was turned to theology. Every phase of religious truth, particularly in its doctrinal and speculative aspects, was brought under investigation. Theology was elevated to a science, and doctrinal systems were developed with logical precision, and extended to trifling subtilities.”[132]
In the figure of the Bible they strained for gnats, meanwhile swallowing the camel. The life was thus lost in the pulpit and in the theological schools. It was again the “teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.”