There is, according to Scholten, a distinction between the principles and dogmas of a Church. The former are the norm and touch-stone of the latter. The Reformers were not always logical in their reasonings, and have left an unfinished task for the present day. Man arrives at a knowledge of the truth by the Holy Scriptures, but they must not be understood as containing the only revelation from God; He also reveals himself to the world through the hearts of all believers. The Bible is the source of the original religion. There is a difference between the Scriptures and the word of God. The latter is what God reveals in the human spirit concerning his will and himself. The writing down of the communication is purely human; therefore, the Bible cannot be called a revelation. We know, by the testimony of the Spirit, that God's word in the Scriptures is truth. But Scriptural authority must not be accepted,—a liberty which would apply to a Jewish but not to a Christian age. Jesus and the apostles did not compel men to accept truth by a proclamation of authority, but by an irresistible moral power. Even in times when the liberty and individuality of faith have been lost in the Church, there were men who did not answer the question, "Why do you believe?" by saying, "Because the Church has spoken;" but by appealing to their interior consciousness.
Historical criticism must be called in, Scholten further holds, to prove the certainty of the facts of revelation. But the truth of the Christian religion cannot be established on this plan. With Rousseau, Lessing, and others, he opposes any attempt to make the best historical grounds the basis of a religious conviction. The truth of Scripture is testified by human nature itself, which, educated by Christianity, recognizes freely and personally the truth of the gospel. The natural faculty that performs this high office is reason, not feeling. Scripture is the touchstone of the Christianity of a conviction, but not of its truth. The Reformers very properly distinguished between a first and secondary authority, and allowed themselves complete liberty in their search after the origin of the books of Scripture. This was not a dangerous experiment, for he who has once come to know Christianity as the highest form of religion, can never fall into a negative criticism. If the religious contents of the Bible find their justification in the interior consciousness of man, then the question arises, "Can human reason attain to the supersensual, or is it limited to the sensuous experience?" The organ of all natural knowledge of God is reason; while its fountain is the physical, intellectual, and moral world. The first Adam did not possess that knowledge of God which was thoroughly enjoyed by the second. But can man attain to the knowledge of God while in a sinful condition, and while the light of his reason is darkened? Assuredly he may, for sin does not belong to the essence, but to the condition of man. The Reformed theologians built on the acknowledgment that Religion has her seat in the being of man, and sees in the Christian the expression of the reasonable religion. The material principle of the Reformed church is the doctrine of God's sovereignty and free grace. The weakness of the Reformation lay in its inconsistency, for it substituted the authority of the letter for that of the Church.
Scholten's abhorrence of authority has led him to a denial of miracles. From this point of view he can freely join hands with the Rationalists. In his latest work, the Gospel of John, he takes occasion to retract the favorable opinions formerly expressed concerning that portion of the New Testament. He has been fearlessly assailed by Oosterzee, La Saussaye, Da Costa, and other leading theologians. Unfortunately, he exerts more influence over the young theologians of Holland than any other Dutch theologian. He is ardently supported by Knenen, the exegete, his colleague at Leyden; and by Rauenhoff, the ecclesiastical historian. We close our estimate of Scholten with a word on his opinions of Christianity in general. It is neither superhuman nor supernatural. It is the highest point of the development of human nature itself, and, in this sense, it is natural and human in the highest acceptation of those terms. It is the mission of science to put man in a condition to comprehend the divine volume presented by Christianity.[94]
The School of Empirical-Modern Theology. The two leading representatives of this important branch of contemporary Dutch theology are Opzoomer and Pierson. The former, a professor in the University of Utrecht, left the sphere of theological instruction for a time, and took a prominent part in political debates in order to combat the claims of the anti-revolutionary party. He exerted little influence during the first years of his professorship in Utrecht, but since his publication of a manual of logic, The Road of Science, he has had a large share in founding the school with which he is now identified. In this work he maintains that observation is the only means of arriving at certainty, and that everything which cannot be proved by experience is uncertain, and has no right within the domain of science. This is the central thought of his whole system.
Pierson stands related to Opzoomer as Mansel does to Sir William Hamilton. The son of religious parents, he was at first rigidly orthodox. He is now pastor of the Walloon Church at Rotterdam. His early writings were touchingly beautiful and attractive, for it was in them that he laid open his inner life. But in his later works he assumes the air of the censor and scoffer. He was long the personal friend of La Saussaye, but, owing to doctrinal differences, they have parted and now pursue different paths. He is an orator of the American type. His opinions are elaborated in his two works, The Origin of the Modern Tendency, and the Tendency and Life. In the latter treatise we learn not merely the personal views of Pierson, but the creed advocated by all the adherents of the empirical-modern theology.
The New Theology, he holds, has an indisputable right to assume the epithet "modern," in distinction from "liberal." The latter term is borne by the Groningen school, which always opposes the church-creed. The principle of reform has not been fully carried out by the Protestants. The Protestant builds his faith on the Bible, but on what does he build his faith in the Bible? Is it not the testimony of the Holy Spirit? He has this support only through the Bible. Certain liberal theologians, like the orthodox, are extremely illogical in their conclusions concerning the word of God. The former will not accept of verbal inspiration, yet they call the Bible a divine book, which, fortunately, could be no better. Though they laugh at the story of Jonah and the whale, they accept every word of Christ, who quotes the story. They will not hear of present miraculous interpositions of providence, but accept some of the miracles of the Bible. There are Catholic priests who are affability itself, while there are orthodox Protestants possessed of ultra views. In contrast with all these classes stand the heroes of the Modern Theology, who possess the "passion for reality," and are endowed with the new cosmology of Galileo.
All true knowledge, argues Pierson, is self-knowledge. Reality comes to us in the impressions we receive of it. I see, I hear; and whether there is a reality outside corresponding to the impression, is a question never asked by a reasonable man. One who has a fever on a July day complains of cold. The bystanders deny his right to say it is cold. Now do they obtain their right from a comparison of their impressions with something objective? No. His knowledge is subjective in this sense; that it arises from sources which are in him alone, while theirs is objective, because they compare their impressions. Error is not in the impression but in the explanation. Man has more than sensual impressions. We have a faculty which brings us into contact with a spiritual world. The religious man is by necessity an anthropomorphist. He claims a personal God, a Father, a Redeemer, an Ideal. We need a sharp analysis to see the reflections of the contents of our religious feeling. Our mind seeks a conception of God, the basis of which must be the idea of the Absolute, Infinite Being. The Scriptures must be criticised by our reason. The first three gospels, which tell us what Christ said and did, are not authority for us. Their writers are unknown, in the main, and by no means original. But exact criticism may succeed in giving us a portrait of the Prophet of Galilee. He lived a life according to the spirit, and proclaimed a religion such as no one before or after him has been able to do. Is it not enough that he has glorified humanity, and made himself adored as king of humanity, even with a crown of thorns upon his brow? The hearts of men have been disclosed to him, and he has caused to well up therefrom streams of love, which none can turn aside. Is his name not glorious when we think that the penitence of a Magdalene, and the sorrow of a Peter, are flowers which have permanently sprung up from earth only after that earth had been drenched by his blood and tears? But the Church has made a mythological character of Christ. It has contemned the real Jesus who stood in opposition to authority and tradition. In his name the Church has enthroned and glorified this authority. It was not from a system but from a principle that he expected the regeneration of man. We have a safe revelation in the world about us. It is God's work in and around ourselves. Explore it; study yourself and man; but do it with such a spirit and purpose as Christ possessed.
As a specimen of Pierson's style, we give his portrait of a good preacher: "All elements are concentrated in him in such a way that men will, can, and must listen, for attention is as much a state as love. You cannot command, but you may deserve it. Paint for humanity, which, though despised by the formalists, terrified by the moralists, and condemned by the Pharisees, is yet the image of him who spoke not of its guilt, but of its sickness and sorrow; not of a judgment-seat, but of the open arms of the Father; not of damnation, but of regeneration. A Holland painter came from a foreign land, and painted a Dutch landscape. But everybody who saw it, said: 'He has been in Italy.' So let it be said of every Christian minister, 'He has been in Galilee, it is the color of Jesus.'"
The opinions entertained by the defenders of the Empirical-Modern Theology have few points of sympathy with evangelical Christianity. They stand above Rationalism, but not opposed to it. The system attempts a purification-process of Christian faith. It does not break with tradition and doctrine, but claiming the privilege of using its own eyes, it rejects the authority of both. It does not admit a supernatural origin of the Scriptures, but looks with suspicion upon many of the accounts contained therein. Taught by the philosophy of experience that everything has a natural source, even in the world of mind, it finds no room for free will. It cherishes a high regard for the individuality of man, and esteems it wrong to let the particular be lost in the universal. It discards any system of morals which does not do justice to this individuality. Its ethics are deterministic, but not fatalistic. It holds that the mysteries of orthodoxy are mystifications which insult the thinking man. It claims that its doubts are not sinful, for it says: "I have not doubted from a wish to doubt." But it furnishes nothing to take the place of that which it destroys by its negative criticism. This is its fatal weakness. With its principle, "no authority," it attacks the Bible, and finds it written neither by the supposed authors nor at the alleged dates. It destroys the sanctity of that which has become hallowed by our inner experience. It takes away Christ, in all his essential attributes, from the believer.
The Ethical-Irenical School. We have thus far seen, in the present state of theology in Holland, few indications of the vigorous progress of evangelical truth. But the Ethical-Irenical School, combining the principal orthodox minds, stands in manly and prosperous opposition to all parties which possess Rationalistic affinities. Chantepie de la Saussaye and Professor Van Oosterzee are its leaders. These men differ on minor points, but, in general, they are harmonious co-workers against skepticism in every form. They stand in the front rank of Dutch theologians, the former having no superior as a thinker, and the latter none as an orator.