Elements of religion

Preface

Some time ago, two clergymen, writing without consultation, from different parts of the country, almost simultaneously requested us to prepare a volume of essays on Dodtrinal Theology, adapted to the wants of inquirers, both within and without the communion to which we belong. It was tepresented that, in these times of unrest and subtle scepticism, there was a call for a treatment of theological questions in a plain, direct and straightforward way, avoiding the technicalities of professed scientific expositions, and better adapted to our age and country, than the translations of excellent works that have proved of great service to many among us.

: The author, who has for some years been endeavoring to teach Theology, recognized in the suggestion an opportunity to present, in a familiar and connected form, his own personal testimony on topics, the significance and life of which, he has often apprehended, are obscured by the close methods of analysis and demands of rigid, logical precision necessarily required in their more scientific treatment. His highest delight in the class room has been whenever he could push aside text-book and lecture, and could speak from his own convictions on these living topics. Nor has he ever found his students un-responsive when such liberty to depart from the prescribed routine was taken. In this book he has endeavored to write with similar - freedom. ‘The book was written amidst the duties of session time, under the stimulus of daily contact with students in the class-room, and with their many questions and perplexities in view. The fruits of the author’s reading throughout his entire life have been ever in mind; but, as a rule, he has ventured to write without accumulating authorities. The aim isto present, ina plain form, a restatement of the main argument of revealed religion. He has hoped in this way to aid students in unifying the knowledge, which, in such an indispensable work as Schmid’s ‘‘ Doétrinal Theology, of the Evangelical Lutheran Church,’’ is presented in a very fragmentary way, that often confuses one who attempts to study it consecutively. In the arrangement of his material, he has neither endeavored to conform to previous writers, nor to depart from them. He does not offer his construction of the system asthe best attainable, cr as a great improvement on those that have already been given; but he hopes that some of the doctrines in the true, although not very usually assigned relations in which they are placed, may gain fresh interest.

ELEMENTS OF: RELIGION: in

The author is a Lutheran, who, without being blind to the great merits and distinguished services of theologians of other Churches, accepts, with ever increasing devotion, the matchless expositions. of Scriptural truth contained in the Lutheran Confessions. He recognizes, however, the fact that the Church of every age and every land has a peculiar calling to fulfill and a peculiar service, in the development of the kingdom of God, to perform. Toconfess the same faith in many lands and many tongues requires more than the translation of the same treatise from one language into the others. As with our sermons, soit must also be with our theology ; we cannot depend upon translations, except as merely temporary expedients. The matter remains permanent; but the form changes not only with the language, but with the age, the currents of thought and the diverse classes of errors and attacks that succeed one another with great rapidity. We must speak the language of the time and place where Providence has placed us.

The reference to authorities generally excluded in the text, for the purpose of avoiding a break in the argument, has been at least partially supplied by an appendix. We hope that the illustrative matter, there found, may be serviceable to those who desire a fuller and more thorough treatment. Much has been included that has been profitable and interesting to the author, and which he believes will be valuable to his readers. Not the least important are testimonials to the force of the Lutheran position by theologians of other communions. Several questions of interest have also been presented there more fully than was possible in the text, where it has been our purpose to exhibit results rather than processes. HENRY E.. JACOBS.

Table Of Contents

PART £

THE PRE-REQUISITES OF REDEMPTION.

Chapter I. il.

PART I. Se

THE PRE-REQUISITES OF REDEMPTION.

CHAPTER: E

THEOLOGY AND RELIGION.

Theology is the science which treats of the revelation of God to man. It presupposes that there is a God, that He has made a revelation, and that, however inexplicable be the mysteries connected with this revelation, all that is comprised therein may be known. We know God, so far as He has given us capacities to know Him, and has enabled us to exercise these capacities upon the truths that He communicates to us.

When Theology is defined, as the science of religion, no contradiction with the above definition is involved, but reference is had to the fact that all revelation has a practical end. God’s revelation of Himself to man is for the purpose of implanting and developing within mana new life. By the study ofthis new life, whichis theresult of the presence of God’s Spirit within man, and which is constantly unfolding itself in the lives of individuals and the life of the Church, we trace more and more the details of God’s revelation. Theology, thus considered, is not occupied with what God is apart from His relations to man, but with what

He is in and through and for these relations. What, then, is religion? It is the communion of man with God. It affirms not only the possibility, but also the reality of a life of man in God, and a life of God in man. God and man are forever distinct. There are. two personalities, one infinite and the other finite, bound together by the closest union, so that the finite is made partaker of the resources of theinfinite. It is the office of the science of religion to teach us who these persons are, whence this communion comes, what it is and whither it tends. It gathers together and presentsinorderall - the teachings of revelation concerning what man is towards God, and what God is towards man. But since what God isto man, and what man is to God in this communion is realized only in the Christian life, theology, as the science of religion, may be defined, as thescience of the Christian life. Religion comes to man through the revelation to him of God’s love. Man enters into communion with God by learning what God’s love towards him is. But he learns this, only as God declares and unfoldsit. He knows nothing, and can know nothing of God, except what God Himself discloses. God reveals Himself in Nature; and this revelation in Nature is described in Psalm 19: 1; Acts 17: 24-26; Romans 1:18. But this is insufficient to bring about a life-communion between man and God. It is, on the one hand, a revelation of wrath, Romans 1:18. It is, onthe other, only a suggestion of a clearer and fuller revelation that is to follow, Acts 17:23. Itisa voice of God, asserting His supreme claims to man’s love and worship, Romans 2:15; but bringing no answer to the question as to how such love and worship are to be rendered. It keeps man from being completely absorbed in the life of Nature, by ever reminding him of what is heyond and above Nature. The various false religions derive whatever elements of strength they have solely from this natural revelation. It asserts that there is a God, but fails to declare who or what God is. Some of His attributes are made manifest ; but all foundation for the recon-. ciliation and the intimate union between man and God is lacking. Hither some of the features of the primitive revelation of God, preserved by tradition from a purer period, are perverted, distorted and unduly emphasized by the loss of other dodtrines, or the human mind, by the contemplation of Nature, and, by reflection upon itself, rising from the feeblest apprehensions of a higher power,' like one—to use a figure of Tertullian?—awakening from the stupor of intoxication, gropes painfully amidst the thick darkness towards the glow of coming day. :

If man is ever to have commumion with God, this feeble light of Nature, that comesonly likethe faint streaks of early dawn, must be lost in the clear and full exhibition of what God is to usin Christ.

Numbers in the text refer to notes in the APPENDIX.

We know God only as the Son of God has declared him, John 1:18. As natural revelation, or the revelation of Creation, teaches us that there isa God, supernatural revelation, or the revelation of Redemption, teaches who and what God is. ‘The religion which comes from natural revelation goes no farther than toseek after God ; the only true religion is that in which the revelation of God is so certain and distin, that man can live in the consciousness of God’s presence and favor, of God’s direction and support and omnipotent efficiency. This supernatural revelation of God has its degrees, as it progressively unfolds itself through all the stages of the world’s history. When it is said that God is known only in Christ, by this we do not mean that the knowledge of what God is in Christ was entirely ‘withheld until the incarnation of the Son of God. As the eternal, personal Word, he was in all ages the great Revealer. ‘The revelation of Redemption began immediately after man’s fall; at first indistinctly and faintly, but growing in brightness with every succeeding era, until at last when Christ came, the mystery hidden from the ages became manifest—Col. 1:26; Eph. 3: 9. Even the lower degrees of this revelation called forth and sustained and developed a religious life in man, as plants may grow and bloom in a cell into which only a few rays of light fall. Enough truth was given to assure man that God is both just and merciful, and, by the assurance of God’s love to the sinful, to bring man to God, and to enable him to look forward into the futtfre for some signal display of Divine mercy, he could not tell what or how, whereby his complete deliverance from sin and highest enjoyment of God would be obtained. Thus the communion of God with man was restored in the first years of the human race. Men walked with God. They knew God as an ever living, ever loving, ever present personality, the one great reality to them beneath all other realities, nearer and more accessible than anything that they could see or hear. They knew that wherever they went _ God went, and wherever they were God was, and however alone they might seem in the silence of the night, or the seclusion of the desert, God always talked with them and they with God. From this communion with God, they ever drew new strength for the performance of life’s duties and the endurance of life’s trials. If they had put into writing all that they knew of God and their relations to Him, and their experience of His loving favor, this would have been a theology of the patriarchal age.

But, with all this, they carried with them the sense of the incompleteness of this communion. They ever longed to be nearer to God, to know more of the mysteries of His love and wisdom, to be more wholly devoted to His will. Their communion with Him was mingled with overwhelming disclosures of their sinfulness and unworthiness. ‘There was something distant and external about their relation.

There were seeming contradictions in their experience that they could not reconcile. Even when they knew Him to be nearest, Heseemed to them to be most remote. Even when they were sure of His constant presence, He seemed to appear and to speak only at intervals, and only a small portion of His will concerning them, withholding freedom of utterance, like one whose confidence has been only partially gained. Jacob’s wrestling with the angel, Gen. 32: 24-30, tells the whole story. The ‘‘divers portions ’’ and ‘‘ divers manners ”’ of the Old Testament pointed towards a more direct and consoling expression of God’s wili, to be found in the unity and permanency ofa higher revelation and still closer communion with man, Heb. 1:1, 2.

In the Old Testament there was progress, both in revelatiou and in man’s apprehension of the contents of this revelation. ‘To Abraham God revealed Himself more fully than to Adam, to Moses more fully than to Abraham, to David more fully than to Moses, to Isaiah more fully than to David. The faces of all are turned towards a future, ever bright- _ ening as the centuries advance. But there was progress also in man’s apprehension of the contents of revelation. It is not on the first reception of a word of God, that its meaning is most clearly understood. The word must enter the life and develop there its spiritual capacities. ‘The appropriation and assimilation of the word is gradual, day after day, and year after year of the religious life, affording ever new occasions for its application, and new relations in which its precious powers are exercised. While the individual thus grows in his personal apprehension of the contents of the revelation which he has long possessed, the fruits of his experience are transmitted to those who succeed him. The religious experience of one generation becomes the heritage of the possessors of the same religious life in the next generation. This is the meaning of the words: ‘‘I am the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob,’’ Matt. 22:32. The Old Testament saints were not, therefore, confined to the knowledge of the mere words in which God had declared to them His will, but each one, looking back upon his own life, and upon that of those who preceded him, could read the Word as interpreted, by numberless incidents of human experience in divine things. Not that experience is in any way the test of truth, but that the Word as the constant test of experience, manifests, through this process, resources which at first were unthought of.

As the knowledge of God,. communicated through revelation and constantly more fully apprehended in human experience, was unfolded, it found its record in the successive books of the Old Testament, written under inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

The Old Testament revelation was, however, only a feeble light, when compared with that of the New Testament. The fulness of God’s revelation entered, when God took humanity into personal union with Himself. When ‘‘ the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,’ John 1:14; they who saw Him saw the Father, John 14:9. This made the greatest under the Old Testament, less than the least under the New, Matt. 11:11. In Christ, man’s longing for complete union and reconciliation with God, and with it, the satisfying of the desire for knowing God, was at last to be accomplished. But here again, this knowledge was attained only gradually. The Lord of Glory, incarnate in weak humanity, leads His people by slow stages to the understanding of what He is and whence and for what Hecomes. The story of that wonderful earthly life is a succession of revelations and surprises. Every descent into a valley of humilation, is only a preparation for an ascent to an elevation far beyond what had been previously reached. The dark shadows of the valley of Gethsemane lead to Olivet and the higher glories beyond. He reveals Himself both in holy deeds and in words of saving power, forever impressed upon the minds of those who are with Him, even though they understand but little of their deep significance. ‘The disciples were like collectors of a vast literature written in hieroglyphics that must be deciphered in coming years, on a distant shore and by long practice. Sothe words were gathered to be recorded and applied only when the promise would be fulfilled: ‘‘ The Holy Ghost shall bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you,’’ John 14:26. To use another figure, the negative was photographed when the lord was present to their sight; but the development of that impression continues through the power of the Holy Spirit throughout succeeding ages.

None were more conscious of this process, and how far they were from attaining perfection in apprehending the contents of revealed truth, than those who made the greatest progress in this sphere. Paul confesses that the love of Christ passeth knowledge, Eph. 4:19. All truth was given in Christ. Nothing remained to be said concerning the will of God towards man. In Him revelation was complete. ‘Theone complete revelation in Christ is contrasted with the many partial revelations of a former period, Heb. 1:1,2. But the contents of this one revelation are more and more unfolded and applied under the leading of the Spirit, until the highest stage of revelation is reached in the world to come, where we will no longer know in part, but as we are known, 1 Cor. 13: 12.

This process may be traced in the New Testament Canon. ‘The last of the Gospels excels, in depth and inwardness, those that precede it, tosuch a degree that the distinction between the Synoptics and the Gospel of John is one of the most prominent features of New Testament study. The Epistles are explanations, defences and applications of the doctrine of Christ, made, as the Holy Spirit brought His teachings to mind, and preserved the writers from error in representing and recording them.

But the process did not cease with the completion of the New Testament Canon and the days of inspiration. The Holy Spirit came to God’s people on the Day of Pentecost, to abide with them forever, John 14:16. Heis no less present in the Church of the Nineteenth, than He was in the Church of the First Century. Under His leading and inner impulse, believing men have been ever brought toa clearer and fuller apprehension of the doctrines given once for allin Holy Scripture. All the products of this working of the Holy Spirit in the experience of the Church are to be carefully treasured and to be thankfully used. The Holy Scriptures afford the test whereby to discriminate a true from a false development. All that is not contrary to Holy Scripture in the life of the Church, belongs to the Providential development of its capacities, as the witness of the truth and the bearer of salvation. Well-known as may be a passage or a series of passages of Scripture and abundant in consolation, a joyful discovery of riches hitherto unthought of hidden therein, often follows, when error seeks to pervert it; and the confusion which is threatened, forces the individual Christian, ora Church communion toits most thorough study. For a time, the violence of controversy may be heard, and the fact be deeply deplored that Christian men instead of applying the word of Scripture to the wants of practical life, should allow their

LHEPOLOGY ANDI RELIGION, 21 energies to be dissipated by polemical zeal. But the rise of every error and the rage of every controversy point to an ultimate victory. Men are forced anew to the Word of God; arguments on _the one side and on the other, are carefully balanced, the ardor of contestants only contributing more fully to the wealth of material that is gathered, and the wider outlook which the controverted passage or doctrine opens. ‘The result is the formulation of a definition or statement, condensing declarations found im numerous Scriptural passages, and expressed in language so thoroughly guarded as to exclude the errors which threatened to enter under the garb of more general terms that had hitherto beenused. Suchadefinition settling a controversy, and officially approved as a test of sound teaching, is called a dogma.

The dogmas, or officially approved definitions, of the Church are set forth in the Church’s Confessions of Faith. They have their authority not from the Church, but from their agreement with Holy Scripture. A pure dogma, therefore, combines two elements: Its material is from the Holy Scriptures; its form has been determined by the Church’s experience. It has, therefore, both a Scriptural and an historical side.

The science which exhibits the dogmas of the Church in their connection, is the science of Dogmatics. ‘The distinction between Biblical Theology and Dogmatics can be clearly drawn. Biblical

Theology ignores all other sources but the Bible. Dogmatics uses as its sources the Bible and the results of the Church’s experience as expressed in definitions, whose truth can be proved from the Bible. Dogmatics proceeds even further. It may use the results attained by the experience of the Church and the individual believer in the application and defence of the Church’s dogma.

Regarding, then, theology as the science of religion, and religion as the communion of man with God, a correct dogmatical method investigates the principles from which this communion comes, and by which it is supported and developed. But its sphere cannot be limited to the consideration of those truths which belong to the individual’s personal experience of God’s saving grace. Itincludes all that is containedin Holy Scripture, whether this can be traced in human experience or not. Its sphere comprehends that of Biblical Theology, as well as that of the Church’s dogmas. ‘Thus, while our Own experience, and the experience of the Church for ages give us no data for a dogma concerning angels, yet as the Holy Scriptures teach their existence and offices, the theologian must believingly appropriate, state and defend all that Scripture says concerning them. But on the doctrines of sin, the need of redemption, and the applying grace of the Holy Spirit, Christian experience most abundantly illustrates the statements of Holy Scripture, and hence enters as a most important factor for an adequate treatment.

Chapter II. The Holy Scriptures

The Holy Scriptures are the infallible and inerrant record of God’s revelation of His saving grace to men. Since the revelation was made long before it was committed to writing, the record is not the sole source of the truths which it contains. The first source of the New Testament message was the oral communication of this revelation by Christ and his Apostles. As it is not the record, but the truth borne by the record, which is the organ of the regenerating and converting influences of the Holy Spirit, this same truth orally communicated in Apostolic days and since then, is just as efficient as when it is read from the pages of Scripture. But while the statement that the Holy Scriptures are the sole source of revealed truth requires this qualification, they are to be revered as the chosen means for preserving the purity of the Apostolic teaching, since tradition, without a written record whereby to test it, inevitably becomes corrupt. ‘They are the absolute standard of a pure revelation, ‘‘ according to which all doctrines and all teachers are to be judged.’’ The fruits of Christian experience are not to be ignored by the student of theological science; but they are not co-ordinated with Holy Scripture, neither do they supplement Scripture. ‘They are valuable, only as, when we recur to Holy Scripture, we find that they are the development of the truths therein set forth. The definitions of the Church are not to be lightly esteemed, nor is the testimony of Christian scholars of all ages to be passed by; but heartily as we admire, and profoundly as we study them, unless they can show that their divergence from the Scriptural record, is only in applying its truths to other spheres and other relations, they are to be absolutely discarded.

As long as the Apostles lived, endowed as witnesses of the teaching of the Lord, with a special divine gift which raised them above the possibility of error, this was of itself a sufficient standard. But when with their death, the Church was destitute of infallible teachers, the need of a record as the test of the pure Apostolic teaching was manifest. Even the most-ordinary matters of life, concerning which the witnesses have no motive for deception, are soon misrepresented, as the account passes by oral communication from person to person. The interest of the various persons who hear the report differs with respect to the details, according to the temperament, occupation, experience and education of each one. Every detail

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PAE HIOL Ye SC RIL LORDS: 25 may be preserved, but the narrative will convey an entirely different impression, according to the varied emphasis of details, where a less important circumstance is assigned the chief place, and the most important sinks into relative obscurity. ‘Thus the proportion of eventsis distorted. But the difficulty of accurate transmission increases, as the facts pass from the sphere of the natural to that of the supernatural. What we understand we can transmit more faithfully than that which baffles our efforts to comprehend. ‘The mysteries of faith would soon he distorted, were they not fixed in a written record. Still greater, however, is the difficulty where what is handed down reproves and condemns those by whom it is to be reported; where the dignity of humanity, concerning which men boast so loudly, is shown to be a fraud; where human wisdom is declared to be folly, and human glory dishonor ; where, on every page, the very best man must read a reproof of sin and, but for the interposition of redemption, the certain wrath of God. We all know how natural it is to try to persuade ourselves that a charge against us is less serious than the reality. Itis an easy matter to pass over specifications of guilt, and to suppress or misstate doctrines that to a perverted reason seem unimportant or absurd. The same principle that requires us to learn the standpoint of the historian, in order that we may estimate the correctness and proportioning of his facts, clearly declares that the statements of

26 ELEMENTS CF RELIGION.

tradition are always influenced by the medium through which they come to us. In all important business transactions, mere oral statements are nothing. Everything is in uncertainty, until what is in mind is ‘‘ put into black and white’’ in a written document. An entertainment which is said to have originated with the late Prof. Whewell, of Cambridge, gives an excellent illustration. Write a brief narrative, and read it to the first of a circle of friends. Let him repeat it to his neighbor, and so on, until the last of the circle commits it to writing; and then let the two records be compared. But if, instead of continuous repetition, a year, or even a day should intervene between each repetition, and there should be some items included in the story discreditable to those who repeat it, it would soon assume a form that could scarcely be recognized. Scripture, therefore, is not to be brought to tradition, as the standard according to which it isto be tested, but tradition is constantly to be tested by Scripture. The final appeal is to the written record.

A record of revelation was necessary, also, in view of the large number of persons who were to be reached, and the closer and more frequent contact with revealed truth which was thus to be established. The oral tradition, even if preserved in its purity, could not always be recalled; most of it would be absent when most wanted. A sermon unwritten, howeyer excellent, may soon be almost entirely for-

Tem OL? SCALELURES. 27 gotten even by the preacher, while the manuscript of former years recalls what otherwise is lost. If oral tradition were the test, then were any truth assailed by errorists, believers would be powerless, when they could not immediately recall the words of God upon which it rests; but with revelation committed to writing, the volume is always by them in which they can search and read for themselves what God has declared.

The authority of Holy Scripture is cetermined byinspiration. Revelation and inspiration are sometimesconfounded. The formeristhe making known of that which hitherto had been unknown; the latter is the divine influence whereby men are enabled to produce an infallible declaration of what has been revealed. Inspiration with respect to the Holy Scriptures, is that divine act whereby chosen men were enabled to write an infallible record of revelation. So penetrating and thorough was this Divine influence, that the record is properly said to be the Word of God. The individuality of the writer is not destroyed. His peculiarities of style and thought are preserved, and this is done by’ no accomodation of the Holy Spirit to his phrases and idioms. ‘The Gospel of St. Matthew is truly, and not simply seemingly, what it claims to be, the Gospel according to St. Matthew, 7z. e., the Gospel from the standpoint of the human personality of St. Matthew, with that personality impelled by the Spirit of God and guarded frem a!l theolcgical error. ‘The grammar and rhetoric, like the chirography and orthography of the original text, are Matthew’s. The entire human side of the Gospel comes from the writer. But, at the same time, every word is just as truly a word of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit impelled the author to write, suggested the thoughts, and so controlled their expression, that it became aun infallible record of revelation in all those matters for which God has given usa revelation. We claim for the Holy Scriptures absolute inerrancy with respect to all theological truth; we repell any suggestion or suspicion of deception, or error in the strict sense of the term, even on those subjects which only form the framework, but not the contents of the record of revelation. It is true that the sun rises and sets, even though astronomy may in its way establish the contrary ; for this deceives no reader, and conveys an entirely correct impression. No witness would be charged with perjury, if he swore that, at sunrise, he was witness of an important deed. Only a pedant would suggest that he spoke inaccurately. A. Newton or a Kepler would always speak in the same way, except when he would enter upon the scientific explanation of the phenomenon of the rising and the setting sun. Writers were not inspired so as to speak with scientific precision when they employed their human knowledge of geographical or chronological details, in unfolding to unlettered men the revealed truth with which the entire