Problems in theology

Preface

Is there any real necessity for a restatement of Christian doctrine ? That is a question which in these days is often asked. Many reasons for both a positive and a negative answer to that question can be furnished. One of the best evidences that the Bible is of divine origin, that it came from the mind of God, is found in its adaptation to all ages, to all classes of society, to all grades of mental ability and culture. Men who are wholly ignorant of the works of God in nature, find in the Bible an all-sufficient guide to conduct them to the shores of a blissful immortality ; while the men versed in all knowledge derived from a study of God in creation, equally need the instructions of the sacred Scriptures to lead them in the same heavenly way and to the same happy destiny. The truths of revelation and of science are abiding, but the human statements of those truths may, and do differ. That is necessarily so. The variations in the attainments of theological learning and scientific research compel revisions and restatements of theories propounded and advocated in other days by other men ; and even the authors of those theories are sometimes obliged to surrender positions which they themselves once firmly held as sound and impregnable.

Whatever significance may be attached to the word " day," as used in the first chapter of Genesis, the one supreme fact is clearly enough revealed that God is the creator of all things. A larger and more thorough knowledge of creation may yield clearer views of the meanings couched in the language of a divine revelation. Broader and more accurate knowledge in the department of philology may modify the

PREFACE.

accepted interpretations of some passages in the Bible, and even new truths may be discovered in that same old book. New disclosures in archaeology may demand other modifications in the direction of Biblical exegesis, and of theology even. So also advance in the science of astronomy and in the study of geology may call for a restatement of many current opinions in the sphere of religious belief. When Galileo affirmed that the earth turned on its axis, the priesthood — the expounders and champions of the sound orthodoxy of the day — were about to sever his head from his body as the penalty for his heresy. But who of to-day finds heresy in the Copernican system, or is embarrassed by any difficulty when he attempts to reconcile that system with the language and doctrines of Scripture? Geological research claims to find evidence of prehistoric man. If the claim be made good, that may call for a new or a much modified statement of the current belief as to the Biblical days of creation, and of the high moral condition of man as he came from the hand of his Creator. So, also, facilities for research and advanced views in the moral government of God over man may require a restatement of the doctrines of Eschatology. Not many decades ago, for a man to be theologically sound, it was necessary for him to believe that

" In Adam's fall We sinned all."

But to-day the personal relation to the once crucified and now living Christ is considered a better claim to soundness of religious faith. The deeper we draw the waters from the wells of true philosophy and science, the clearer and purer will be the waters from the wells of God's holy book. The Bible and the religion taught therein have nothing to fear, but much to gain, in the way of exposition and enforcement, from genuine philosophy and science.

Chapter I. The Foreshadowing Of Creation Upon The Work Of Redemption

The book of nature and the book of revelation, when both are correctly interpreted, are equally true and are in perfect harmony. Revelation was given by inspiration of God, and is as God would have it for all the ages. Man must turn over the leaves of the book of nature, and slowly learn the truths of science. The revelations of science sometimes require a modification of our former interpretations of revelation.

In the first chapter of Genesis, and the first three verses of the second chapter, there is a succinct account of creation, sufficient to teach the truth needed to be revealed, viz., that God is a personal being, and is the creator and fashioner of the universe. By the plural form of the word God, Elohim, there also seems to be an intimation of the creator as the triune God. The manner of fitting up the earth and the universe has not been revealed, but left tc man to discover by slow processes. Man, by the use of the telescope, enlarged and perfected as it has been, and by the researches in geology, has, in later years, made wonderful progress in discovering the processes of the formation of the universe. While much remains to be learned, and while some views now held to be true may, by subsequent light, need to be modified, yet enough has been settled to throw much light on the account of creation given in Genesis.

The nebular system, held by La Place, and developed by others, is the one now adopted by the best scientists. It is sufficient for our purpose briefly to hint at what this system is.

Following the nebular theory, let us note the harmony which exists between the first chapter of Genesis and the discoveries of scientists.

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void ; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." This declares the origin of matter, of which the universe is constructed, and asserts that God is the creator of it. This matter, as it came forth at the divine mandate, was a dark, uniform, inactive, exceedingly diffused gaseous fluid. All was emptiness and desolation. The Spirit of God, then brooding over this vast, dark, gaseous mass, imparted to it an energy, causing it to move and act in accordance with uniform laws. That energy was developed in the form of attraction, contraction, and chemical affinity, resulting in motion. As bodies were formed by contraction, there was imparted to them a motion, causing them to revolve on their axes ; also a projectile, centrifugal motion imparted, causing them to move in orbits around a great attracting central body. Science has proved that light results from motion, the vibrations of ether. The contraction taking place in the dark created mass would evolve light, just as God said, " Let there be light : and there was light." There was light long before the sun was established as the greater light to rule earth's day. " And God divided the light from the darkness." Light was one thing, darkness another. Some places were light and others were dark. " And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night." "And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters " By this is meant the broad expanse above us, the limit of human vision more or less distant, it matters not, which, like an imaginary partition, separates the mass of world material beyond from that which is this side, with which we have to do.

The mass of original gaseous matter, under the divine brooding, and by laws well ascertained, has formed into spheres around nuclei or great sun

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centres, held in their places by the all-pervading law of attraction. Leaving now, as the Bible does, that which is beyond the expanse where fixed stars reign as suns, let us confine ourselves to our sun system, and see the process of its formation, which may possibly be but a sample of other systems which have been constructed out of the nebulous gaseous matter which God created in the beginning.

At first the almost inconceivable amount of original gaseous matter by attraction and contraction formed the sun. The greatness of its mass makes it not only the source of light and heat, but also the controlling force in the motions of all the bodies belonging to the system. Being in a state of fluidity, its revolution on its axis would cause it to assume a greater equatorial than polar diameter. This excess of matter at the equator would at length detach itself from the main body and form a ring around it, like the rings now seen around the planet Saturn, which are in a gaseous state. This ring, breaking up, would, by the power of attraction, form itself into a sphere, and by the motion given it by the sun would begin to revolve on its axis, and also in an orbit around the sun. Thus Neptune became a planet. Then in like manner another ring was formed around the sun, broken up and attracted into a sphere, and another child, Uranus, was born into the family of the great sun system. So on, successively, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Earth, Venus, Mercury, and Vulcan ; those farthest from the sun being formed first, coming to that nearest the sun, which was formed last. It may be that some sun-child may yet be hid in the mists, and that the first-born may have gone so far from home that we have not yet discovered its wanderings.

Some of the planets have moons revolving around them, being thrown off from the planets when in a state of fluidity, in like manner as the planets were thrown off from the sun. Science has also shown that the substance of the sun, earth, and stars is much the same, varying in proportion, salt, iron, hydrogen, barium, copper, zinc, cronium, nickel, etc. Excessive flames of nitrogen are sometimes seen in the sun. Some stars are without perceivable indications of hydrogen, while Sirius has it in abundance. Such discoveries are a confirmation of the nebular theory. The earth, once luminous, the cooling process going on gradually, contracted and at length lost its photosphere. Chemical action continually going on, and the heavier portions being ' drawn nearer to the centre of the earth, the crust of the earth was formed. When sufficiently cool, the hydrogen and oxygen united, and formed water, which, being lighter, completely enveloped the solid crust of the earth. When the oxygen and nitrogen became

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sufficiently cooled, they united and formed the atmosphere, which, being lighter, completely enveloped the waters of the earth. As the cooling process still went on, the earth contracted, and the crust, in the state of semi-hardness, or in a degree plastic, some parts rose and other parts settled, like a hoop when pressed on opposite sides. The waters which once enveloped the whole surface are now divided and thrown together, and the inner crust, appears. " And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear. And God called the dry land Earth ; and the gathering together of the waters called he Sea." Note the apt language with which Moses describes the process. The crust of the earth was comparatively thin, and easily bent and broken, but slowly became thicker and more firm.

In process of time the earth cooled sufficiently for vegetation to flourish. "And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, and herb yielding seed, and fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth." Here is first mentioned the grass and herb, a lower order of vegetable life ; then the fruit tree, a higher order ; and it may have been ages from the time grass began to grow before the fruit tree yielded the fruit after its kind. In the earlier stages of the earth's history, the atmosphere was humid and warm, and

FORESHADOWING OF CREATION. II

vegetation rapid and abundant. Then the coalbeds were formed. The luxuriant plant growth and decay at length formed a soil, fitting the earth for a higher order of existence. In the mean time the sun, with its immense mass of matter, had come into such a chemical state, that it was fitted to be a luminary of the earth, and the centre and controller of the whole solar system.

The moon, sufficiently condensed and cooled, was at length fitted to reflect light on the earth. " And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens, to divide the day from the night ; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years : and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth. And God made two great lights ; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser lights to rule the night."* Not that they were created at this time, but that, in the process of constructing the universe, they now come to perform the office of giving light upon the earth.

In the passing of the ages, " God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly, the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that they may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heavens. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind." Science teaches us that the first creations of animal life were of a low order, and as time went on, these became extinct, and those of a higher order of animal functions took their place ; that animals most useful to man were the last that held sway in the earth. Revelation asserts that fish and fowls were created on the fifth day, but beasts and cattle and creeping things did not appear till the sixth day.

At last, God said, " Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." " So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him : male and female created he them." A remark on the words created and made may help to a better understanding of the account of creation. The word created is translated from the Hebrew word bara, a word with very different meaning from the word from which made is translated. The one means to bring into existence ; the other means more to fashion and mould what has been created. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The matter of the universe was brought into existence. The word made means more the fashioning process going on in the matter after it had been created.

Animal life is so different from the material world, from anything in the mineral and vegetable kingdom, that it cannot proceed out of it, so " God created great whales, and every living thing that moveth." So when God determined to make man in

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his image and likeness, it is said : " So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him : male and female created he them." Here is amoral nature allying man to God, something so different from mere animal life that it cannot be developed from it. It is a new creation.

In the revealed account of creation, we have succession and progression clearly revealed, both in the words created and made. There were successive creations, and there was constant progress in fitting up the universe. Astronomy and geology teach the same truth.

The earth's crust, miles in thickness, holding the raging fires within, proves that ages must have passed in the process of its formation. The successive geologic formations, azoic and zoic ; the prints of vegetable and animal remains in the rocks formed far below what is now the surface of the earth ; the substances which have been formed by chemical action in the crust of the earth ; the slow process of abrasion of the surface, the carrying of the sediment into the sea, hardening into rocks ; the upheaval of the rocks, bringing to light fossil remains ; the upheaval of mountains ; the formations of rich prairie lands, where the waters once held sway ; the deep gorges cut by rivers like Niagara for many miles, advancing only a few feet in a century, — all prove that vast periods of time have been consumed since the earth lost its photosphere. Who, then, shall attempt to go back and count the years since God said, " Let the dry land appear" ? Yea, who shall undertake to trace the ages since the creative fiat went forth, " And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the deep " ?

God, in arranging his moral government over mankind, has seen fit to measure time by weeks of seven days each. He has commanded men to work on six days, and to rest from labor on the seventh day, — to hallow that day unto the Lord as a holy day, a day of worship, a day of moral improvement and spiritual refreshment.

God has taken a week of seven days as a kind of mould into which to cast a revelation of his work of creation and redemption; not that just so much work was done on each day, independent of what was done on other days, for the sun was being fitted for a sun, and the earth for an earth, and the moon for a moon, — all suitable for man's need, in the same ages of time, — but that God might reveal to man his work of creation as a process of development, of succession and progression, however slow or rapid, he has used the period of seven days, leaving man to discover the process as best he can. Six days are used in which the creation and formation of the universe and the development of the earth's crust take place, while the seventh day is devoted to bringing into existence and preparing spiritual beings who shall

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proclaim the praise and glory of the Creator. The distinction should be kept clear in mind between man's week and God's week. Man's week is a short and definite period of time divided into equal days of definite length. God's week is a period of indefinite length divided into long days of indefinite length. It is said at the close of each of the days, " And the evening and the morning were the first day," second day, etc. More literally, " It was evening and it was morning, one day." "And it was evening and it was morning, a second day." This expresses constant progression. The shades of evening are dark compared with the dawning of the day, the rising sun, and noonday splendor. Thus the evening of one day glides into the morning of the next. God expresses the passing from the work of the six days to that of the seventh in such language as follows : " Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work which he had made ; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it ; because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made." God blessed the seventh day. He made it the best of all the days, a day in which his most blessed work was to be done, a day most blessed in the enjoyments it would bring to the universe.

God sanctified the seventh day. He set it apart as a day better than any of the previous ones ; a day devoted to making saints or sanctified ones. This seventh day's work is the culmination of the work of creation.

The account given in the second and third chapters of Genesis, of man being put on probation in the garden of Eden, the account of the origin of institutions by divine authority, the giving of revealed law in commands and prohibitions, man's speedy fall and expulsion from the garden, and the immediate promise of a Redeemer and Life-giver, reveals the divine design, that man was not to live in a condition as first created, nor in a state of innocence simply, but of redemption and of new created spiritual life, that thereby the divine attributes might be the better known, and man be drawn into closer relation to God as the divine Father, and thus the universe be made to resound with loftier notes of praise to the Creator. The seventh day of God's week is the redemption, the life-giving day. This life-giving aspect of the work was so prominent in the mind of the Apostle John, that, in his gospel, he almost omits the mention of repentance and forgiveness. It is a new-created life by the Holy Spirit, bringing man into higher and more intimate relation to the Father of spirits than ever before, that the apostle makes prominent.

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In ascertaining the meaning of some of the earlier chapters of Genesis, we need to recognize the claims of true science as an important factor of interpretation, as well as philology and grammar.

From modern investigations, what does science claim ? It claims that the popular chronology of our Bible, taking us back some twenty-five hundred years to the Noachian deluge, or four thousand years from the birth of Christ to the creation of man, does not give sufficient time for the ethnic, or race distinctions which exist. Scientists claim that the difference in structural form, the complexion, the woolly and straight hair, and all the varied characteristics between the Negro, the Indian, the Mongolian, the Dravidian, and the Caucasian or white man, requires vastly more time to be effected by any known causes than is found since the deluge, if in that deluge the whole human race was destroyed, save eight persons, and that the earth was repeopled by Noah and those saved with him in the ark, or even since Adam was placed in the garden of Eden. This, indeed, has been the puzzle of many a one who has laid no claim to being versed in science, and to solve it they have fallen back upon the almost miraculous working of the Creator.

There is evidence that the descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japheth did not soon spread over the 2 • whole earth, but were confined comparatively to the region of the Mediterranean. Science claims that, with the comparative stability of the crust of the earth, and the relative position of the continents, islands, oceans, and seas, that it would be impossible for the earth to be peopled in all its continents and so many of its islands by people having so little knowledge of the arts of life, during a period of four thousand years before the birth of Christ, if the cradle of the race was the garden of Eden, and the world's progenitors a single pair.

Science claims preadamites. To substantiate the claim, it brings forward human bones found in the surface of the earth among bones of animals, the mammoth, the reindeer, the cave bear, and other species now extinct, and which must have lived in a geologic period prior to the Adam in the garden of Eden.

Science has found in caves, and buried deep in the surface cf the earth, implements fashioned from stone, stone arrow-heads, spear-heads, hammers, axes, knives fastened into bone handles, ornaments of stone and bone perforated and strung together, all kinds of rude implements used in securing a livelihood, in bettering their condition, in contending with fierce animals for the possession of caves, and in slaying them for food. Science calls up the Mound-builders in the western

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hemisphere to testify of their ancient works. It brings forward evidence of the existence of man in the Quaternary period, a geological period preceding our own.

Science has its rude and its polished Stone epoch, showing human advancement in the arts of life. Then comes the Bronze age, when man had learned to use brass by combining the metals of copper and tin. Succeeding the Bronze was the Iron age, when man had learned how to secure this metal from its ore and work it into implements of defence and husbandry, — learning these things as best they could, just as we learn, as best we can, how to harness steam and electricity for the advancement of our civilization.

Science claims that man was in the beginning rude and uncultured, and that he has worked his way up in the arts of civilization and comforts of life, learning by experience as we do now. It claims also that, if the first created pair were placed in the garden of Eden in an advanced state of knowledge and civilization and happiness, there has been degeneration in his whole condition, which is contrary to the acknowledged order of God's working, which is progression, and contrary to man's experience. It is held as scientific truth that the lower races could not have descended from the Mediterranean stock, because there exists such a wide difference in the race characteristics, some so greatly inferior, and that this difference existed in the early dynastic periods of Egypt, as shown by their paintings and sculpture on their monuments.

It is claimed that the chronological position of Noah or even Adam is far too recent for the possibility of such a change since their era. Besides, that the universal degeneracy of all races is scientifically inadmissible.

Does science conflict with the account of man's creation, given in the first chapter of Genesis ? Nay, rather does not the Biblical account call for these truths which science proves ? We read that the fowls of the air, the fish of the sea, and the sea-monsters, the lower orders of creatures in their structural development, were created in the fifth day. Geology finds fossil remains of these and the imprint of their forms in the rocks of an earlier period. But on the sixth day, cattle, creeping things, and beasts, animals needful for man's welfare, were created. These included mammals, or milk-giving animals. With their creation we might reasonably expect man to be created, for whose use they were created. So in the sixth day, we read, God said, " Let us make man after our image, after our likeness." "And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him : male and female created he them." Mark the language : God created them male and female, as he did other animals. This statement should suffice for what God says about man's creation. Whether all animals of the same species descended from a single pair, or whether God created the same species in different centres of the earth, it matters not. Whether the human race all sprung from a single pair in a single centre, or whether God created different types in different centres, all of one blood, all possessing the prime characteristics of manhood, it matters not. We hardly need say that we disclaim all belief in evolution, that man was developed from an ape or chimpanzee or anything else. God created him a man.

Here, then, we have the creation of man in the sixth day. " God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it : and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." The language is not to be taken like statute law or verbal command, for part of the command is given to fish and fowl incapable of understanding it. It is the law of man's nature, his conscious need and conscious superiority prompting to this. The power to know, to think, to reason, to remember, to devise, to improve his condition, — this image of God is man's Magna Charta to the dominion of earth. Man goes forth to subdue the earth, and gain dominion over the whole animal kingdom. He finds obstacles, but he must fight his way through.

He must devise implements to use, and contend with the bear for a morsel of meat, and for the possession of a cave, until he learns how to construct a better dwelling. Since man possesses an animal organism, subject to the same physical laws as other animals, death included, we might naturally expect to find human bones and implements of art mingled among the bones of those animals known to have roamed the earth in the Quaternary epoch, a period of the sixth day of God's week. If we bear in mind the cooling process of the earth, and that the crust of the earth was formerly thinner and less fixed than now, and that the elevation and subsidence of portions of the land were more extensive and frequent than at the present, and consequently the changes on the surface greater, though these are going on at present, and that God instituted vegetable and animal life while these changes were rapid and great, it will relieve us from adopting the opinion of the exceeding great age of man's existence on the earth which some scientists claim. Six or ten thousand years suffice to carry us back to a condition of things as described in the latter part of the sixth day of God's week.

Does not the Bible itself give us direct intimations of preadamites ? If in the third and fourth chapters of Genesis we have an account of the first human pair, it is difficult to understand the Ianguage. When Cain slew his brother, and the curse was pronounced upon him, he said, " My punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the ground ; and from thy face shall I be hid ; and I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer in the earth ; and it shall come to pass that whosoever findeth me shall slay me." Why need he to be a fugitive ? His parents would not kill him, and he had slain his only brother. Where did he find his wife ? where find the people to build a city? Is it not clearly implied in the record that there were preadamites ?