Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/356

338 338 DOGMATIC of the inward experience of that fellowship in a new life produced by a moral and spiritual renovation of the soul of man. Doctrines, or general principles bearing on the relation of God to man, are indeed contained in the Bible, but only as they are involved in the great realities that the Bible makes known to us. The Bible is to the theologian what the telescope is to the astronomer, or the microscope to the physiologist. Many of the laws of these sciences could not have been known without the help of these instruments, not because the telescope discovers to us laws of astronomy, or the microscope enables us to see the principles of physiology, but because they bring within our ken the phenomena from which these laws and principles may be ascertained. So the Bible does not directly reveal dogmatic principles ; but its function is to reveal to us tLat great work of renovation by God in Christ, from which the principles of Christian dogmatic are to be derived. On this view, while the Christian religion is ever one and the same, unalterable in all ages, Christian theology, or the scientific knowledge of that religion, is constantly progressive. All its truths are indeed contained implicitly in the Bible ; but they have to be drawn from it, not by a mere process of interpreting and systematizing the words of Scripture, but by apprehending and experiencing the realities made known to us by the words, and so coming to understand what they are and in what relations they stand one to another. It is in this way that all the great doctrines in theology have been established, not merely by the application of grammar and logic to the text of Scripture, but by the apprehension and experience of the renovating change, and the comparison and understanding of its different parts. So, for example, the doctrine of the Logos was formulated by men like Justin Martyr, who, after vainly searching for truth in all the schools of philosophy, found that there is in Christianity, when sincerely received, a light that dispels the darkness and doubt of the mind. So Augustine learned the doctrines of original sin and divine grace, by finding in his own experience the power of inward corruption on the one hand, and the deliverance wrought by the gospel on the other. So Luther discovered the truth of justification by faith, through learning by sore and bitter conflicts how impos sible it was to find peace of conscience, as long as he trusted to any works of his own, and how fully he obtained it by faith in Christ. In this way the system of dogmatic has been built up, one doctrine after another being added, as it was discovered and verified by the experience of the church. None of these developments was any addition to the Christianity of true disciples of the Lord ; that remains substantially the same in all ages, and contains implicitly all true doctrines of religion. But all Christians are not conscious of what is involved in their religion and experi ence, and some are very imperfectly aware of it. The men who have made their mark in theology have been those who have been led by circumstances, and enabled by their intellectual powers, to discern elements in Christian life not previously seen ; and the body of the church, coming after them, have verified and accepted the results of their experi ence. In this way dogmatic theology hitherto has been progressive, and no man or church has a right to say that the goal has been reached beyond which no further progress is possible. 1 There is one condition always to be borne in mind, with which alone such progress is sound and genuine. It is that what is added to the system of doctrine be really an expression of the Christianity which is revealed in Scrip ture. Anything that is not such may be a fancy of men, 1 Cf. Candlish s Cunningham Lectures, Lect. vi. Note A ; llainy s Cunninyham Lectures. &quot;On the delivery aiid development of doctrine,&quot; Lect. v. 1 or an abnormal development of spiritual life, but it is not really a discovery of Christian truth. There have been opinions held and widely prevalent that are of this charac ter, and it is part of the work of the theologian to detect and remove what is false as well as to build up what is true. There have been false developments of doctrine ; there have been exaggerations and maladjustments of important truths. It is not probable that any minute and elaborate system consists of pure and absolute truths unmixed with any error. The work of progress in theo logy, therefore, must sometimes consist of undoing what has been laboriously built up in past ages. But if any true progress is possible now, it is not to be expected that all the old beliefs will have to be swept away, and an entirely new system put in their place. For if nothing had been ascertained in the course of the ages during which so many great minds have been directed to the study of theology, there would seem to be little hope of anything certain being discovered now. Those who think theology to be a progressive science can most consistently hold that some progress has been made already, and some conclusions have been reached that are not to be overturned by any new inquiries. They do not look for an entire reversal of old beliefs, and a new theory of the universe and its relation to God to be put in their place ; they expect that what has been most generally agreed upon in former ages will be maintained and confirmed, and that any new truth that may be brought to light will fit in to the old foundations ; though in some cases former modes of statement may have to be reconsidered and adjusted to larger and deeper views, and exaggerated or one-sided doctrines may have to be given up or modified. There are some doctrines in every system that are merely sectarian, adopted by one particular branch of the church, but not recognized by others as cor rect expressions of Christian faith and life, e.g., the Anglican dogma of baptismal regeneration, or the Lutheran tenet of the communication of attributes in the person of Christ, or the supralapsarian and sublapsarian theories of Calvinists : in regard to such points there is no just ground of confidence of their permanence; they are like plausible but unproved hypotheses in science. But there are many leading doctrines which, ever since they have been distinctly formulated, have been accepted by the great mass of Christians in all branches of the church ; these may be said to be established results of theological investigation, which no further progress of the science is likely to overthrow. The progressive character of dogmatic, and the manner Hist of its progress in the past, may be seen from a brief sketch dogu of its history from the end of the apostolic age to the present day. The apostolic writings themselves do not properly fall within the range of such a history; for they are not of the nature of human science but of divine revela tion. No doubt several of them present to us conceptions and trains of thought that are very analogous to the systems of later times, and have sometimes been employed as the basis of dogmatic systems. But the inspired writers do not stand in the same line as the thinkers who came after them ; their aim in writing was not the scientific one of investigating the principles of Christianity in their mutual relations, but the more primary religious one of presenting Christianity itself to the world. This they have been enabled to do, by the working of the Spirit in them, with a power and fulness and insight that throw much light on the scientific study of Christian doctrine ; but their writings are not doctrinal systems, and do not come into the line of the rise and progress of the human science of dogmatic. Its history begins with the attempts of men to comprehend the revelation of Christianity, and presupposes that revelation complete, though not completely