“Christianity is an historical religion. It is made up of events, or, to say the least, springs out of events which, however peculiar in their origin, form a part of the history of mankind.... The Apostle Paul refers to the birth of Christ as having occurred ‘when the fulness of time was come’ (Gal. iv. 4).
“His thought evidently is not only that a certain measure of time must run out, but that a train of historical events and changes must occur which have the coming of Christ for their proper sequence. Of the nature of these antecedents in the previous course of history he speaks when he has occasion to discuss the relation of the Mosaic dispensation to the Christian, and to point out the aims of Providence in regard to the Gentile nations. It was formerly a mistake of both orthodox and rationalist to look upon Christianity too exclusively as a system of doctrine addressed to the understanding. Revelation has been thought of as a communication written on high and let down from the skies—delivered to men as the Sibylline books were said to have been conveyed to Tarquin. Or it has been considered, like the philosophical system of Plato, a creation of the human intellect, busying itself with the problems of human life and destiny; the tacit assumption in either case being that Christianity is merely a body of doctrine. The truth is that revelation is at the core historical. It is embraced in a series of transactions in which men act and participate, but which are referable manifestly to an extraordinary agency of God, who thus discloses or reveals himself. The supernatural element does not exclude the natural; miracle is not magic. Over and above teaching there are laws, institutions, providential guidance, deliverance, and judgment. Here is the groundwork of revelation. For the interpretation of this extraordinary and exceptional line of historical phenomena prophets and apostles are raised up—men inspired to lift the veil and explain the dealings of Heaven with men. Here is the doctrinal or theoretical side of revelation. These individuals behold with an open eye the significance of the events of which they are witnesses or participants. The facts of secular history require to be illuminated by philosophy. Analogous to this office is the authoritative exposition and comment which we find in the Scripture along with the historical record. The doctrinal element is not a thing independent, purely theoretic, disconnected from the realities of life and history. These lie at the foundation; on them everything of a didactic nature is based. This fact will be impressively obvious to one who will compare the Bible, as to plan and structure, with the Koran.
“The character of revelation is less likely to be misconceived when the design of revelation is kept in view. The end is not to satisfy the curiosity of those who ‘seek after wisdom,’ by the solution of metaphysical problems. The good offered is not science, but salvation. The final cause of revelation is the recovery of men to communion with God—that is, to true religion. Whatever knowledge is communicated is tributary to this end.
“Hence the grand aim, under the Old Dispensation and the New, was not the production of a book, but the training of a people. To raise up and train up a nation that should become a fit instrument for the moral regeneration of mankind was the aim of the old system.... Under the new or Christian system the object was not less the training of a people; not, however, with any limitations of race. The fount of the system was to be a community of men who should be ‘the light of the world,’ and ‘the salt of the earth....’
“The grand idea of the kingdom of God is the connecting thread that runs through the entire course of divine revelation. We behold a kingdom planted in the remote past, and carried forward to its ripe development, by a series of transactions in which the agency of God mingles in an altogether peculiar way in the current of human affairs. There is a manifestation of God in act and deed. Verbal teaching is the commentary attached to the historic fact, ensuring to the latter its true meaning.”
This is sound and Christian philosophy, admirably expressed and containing many fruitful germs of thought. What we have quoted may suffice to show that the historical nature of Christianity is the fundamental idea of Dr. Fisher’s argument in the work under review.
He recognizes also a law of historical and continuous development through all time in Christianity as resulting from its vital force, which differs from the previous historical stage in this: that “in the giving of revelation, at each successive stage, and especially at the consummation, there was an increment of its contents,” whereas “this is not true of Christianity since the apostolic age.” The touchstone and test of normal development, in the sense to which the signification of the term is restricted when it is used of the post-apostolic age, is that “it springs out of the primitive seed”—namely, the deposit of revealed truth contained in the teaching of Christ and the apostles in its state of ultimate completeness.
The historical method of determining the real origin and nature of Christianity is contrasted with the method which is purely à priori and exclusively metaphysical in the following passage:
“The historical basis of Christianity marks the distinction between Christian theology and metaphysical philosophy. The starting-point of the philosopher is the intuitions of the mind; on them as a foundation, with the aid of logic, he builds up his system. His only postulates are the data of consciousness. In Christian theology, on the contrary, we begin with facts recorded in history, and explore, with the aid of inspired authors, their rationale. To reverse this course, and seek to evolve the Christian religion out of consciousness, to transmute its contents into a speculative system, after the manner of the pantheistic thinkers in Germany, is not less futile than would be the pretence to construct American history with no reference to the Puritan emigration, the Revolutionary war, or the Southern Rebellion. The distinctive essence of Christianity evaporates in an effort, like that undertaken by Schelling in his earlier system, and by Hegel, to identify it with a process of thought.”[[93]]
Farther on in his argument Dr. Fisher shows how this perverse employment of the à priori method has produced the sceptical theories of the Tübingen school of criticism: