II. Limitations of Theology.
Although theology derives its material from God's two-fold revelation, it does not profess to give an exhaustive knowledge of God and of the relations between God and the universe. After showing what material we have, we must show what material we have not. We have indicated the sources of theology; we now examine its limitations. Theology has its limitations:
(a) In the finiteness of the human understanding. This gives rise to a class of necessary mysteries, or mysteries connected with the infinity and incomprehensibleness of the divine nature (Job 11:7; Rom. 11:33).
Job 11:7—“Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection?” Rom. 11:33—“how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!” Every doctrine, therefore, has its inexplicable side. Here is the proper meaning of Tertullian's sayings: “Certum est, quia impossible est: quo absurdius, eo verius”; that of Anselm: “Credo, ut intelligam”; and that of Abelard: “Qui credit cito, levis corde est.” Drummond, Nat. Law in Spir. World: “A science without mystery is unknown; a religion without mystery is absurd.” E. G. Robinson: “A finite being cannot grasp even its own relations to the Infinite.” Hovey, Manual of Christ. Theol., 7—“To infer from the perfection of God that all his works [nature, man, inspiration] will be absolutely and unchangeably perfect: to infer from the perfect love of God that there can be no sin or suffering in the world; to infer from the sovereignty of God that man is not a free moral agent;—all these inferences are rash; they are inferences from the cause to the effect, while the cause is imperfectly known.” See Calderwood, Philos. of Infinite, 491; Sir Wm. Hamilton, Discussions, 22.
(b) In the imperfect state of science, both natural and metaphysical. This gives rise to a class of accidental mysteries, or mysteries which consist in the apparently irreconcilable nature of truths, which, taken separately, are perfectly comprehensible.
We are the victims of a mental or moral astigmatism, which sees a single point of truth as two. We see God and man, divine sovereignty and human freedom, Christ's divine nature and Christ's human nature, the natural and the supernatural, respectively, as two disconnected facts, when perhaps deeper insight would see but one. Astronomy has its centripetal and centrifugal forces, yet they are doubtless one force. The child cannot hold two oranges at once in its little hand. Negro preacher: “You can't carry two watermelons under one arm.” Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, 1:2—“In nature's infinite book of secresy, A little I can read.” Cooke, Credentials of Science, 34—“Man's progress in knowledge has been so constantly and rapidly accelerated that more has been gained during the lifetime of men still living than during all [pg 035]human history before.” And yet we may say with D'Arcy, Idealism and Theology, 248—“Man's position in the universe is eccentric. God alone is at the centre. To him alone is the orbit of truth completely displayed.... There are circumstances in which to us the onward movement of truth may seem a retrogression.” William Watson, Collected Poems, 271—“Think not thy wisdom can illume away The ancient tanglement of night and day. Enough to acknowledge both, and both revere: They see not clearliest who see all things clear.”
(c) In the inadequacy of language. Since language is the medium through which truth is expressed and formulated, the invention of a proper terminology in theology, as in every other science, is a condition and criterion of its progress. The Scriptures recognize a peculiar difficulty in putting spiritual truths into earthly language (1 Cor. 2:13; 2 Cor. 3:6; 12:4).
1 Cor. 2:13—“not in words which man's wisdom teacheth”; 2 Cor. 3:6—“the letter killeth”; 12:4—“unspeakable words.” God submits to conditions of revelation; cf. John 16:12—“I have yet many things to say into you, but ye cannot bear them now.” Language has to be created. Words have to be taken from a common, and to be put to a larger and more sacred, use, so that they “stagger under their weight of meaning”—e. g., the word “day,” in Genesis 1, and the word ἀγάπη in 1 Cor. 13. See Gould, in Amer. Com., on 1 Cor. 13:12—“now we see in a mirror, darkly”—in a metallic mirror whose surface is dim and whose images are obscure = Now we behold Christ, the truth, only as he is reflected in imperfect speech—“but then face to face” = immediately, without the intervention of an imperfect medium. “As fast as we tunnel into the sandbank of thought, the stones of language must be built into walls and arches, to allow further progress into the boundless mine.”
(d) In the incompleteness of our knowledge of the Scriptures. Since it is not the mere letter of the Scriptures that constitutes the truth, the progress of theology is dependent upon hermeneutics, or the interpretation of the word of God.
Notice the progress in commenting, from homiletical to grammatical, historical, dogmatic, illustrated in Scott, Ellicott, Stanley, Lightfoot. John Robinson: “I am verily persuaded that the Lord hath more truth yet to break forth from his holy word.”Recent criticism has shown the necessity of studying each portion of Scripture in the light of its origin and connections. There has been an evolution of Scripture, as truly as there has been an evolution of natural science, and the Spirit of Christ who was in the prophets has brought about a progress from germinal and typical expression to expression that is complete and clear. Yet we still need to offer the prayer of Ps. 119:18—“Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.” On New Testament Interpretation, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 334-336.
(e) In the silence of written revelation. For our discipline and probation, much is probably hidden from us, which we might even with our present powers comprehend.
Instance the silence of Scripture with regard to the life and death of Mary the Virgin, the personal appearance of Jesus and his occupations in early life, the origin of evil, the method of the atonement, the state after death. So also as to social and political questions, such as slavery, the liquor traffic, domestic virtues, governmental corruption. “Jesus was in heaven at the revolt of the angels, yet he tells us little about angels or about heaven. He does not discourse about Eden, or Adam, or the fall of man, or death as the result of Adam's sin; and he says little of departed spirits, whether they are lost or saved.” It was better to inculcate principles, and trust his followers to apply them. His gospel is not intended to gratify a vain curiosity. He would not divert men's minds from pursuing the one thing needful; cf. Luke 13:23, 24—“Lord, are they few that are saved? And he said unto them, Strive to enter in by the narrow door; for many, I say unto you, shall seek to enter in, and shall not be able.” Paul's silence upon speculative questions which he must have pondered with absorbing interest is a proof of his divine inspiration. John Foster spent his life, “gathering questions for eternity”; cf. John 13:7—“What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt understand hereafter.” The most beautiful thing in a countenance [pg 036]is that which a picture can never express. He who would speak well must omit well. Story: “Of every noble work the silent part is best; Of all expressions that which cannot be expressed.” Cf. 1 Cor. 2:9—“Things which eye saw not, and ear heard not, And which entered not into the heart of man, Whatsoever things God prepared for them that love him”; Deut 29:29—“The secret things belong unto Jehovah our God: but the things that are revealed belong unto us and to our children.” For Luther's view, see Hagenbach, Hist. Doctrine, 2:388. See also B. D. Thomas, The Secret of the Divine Silence.
(f) In the lack of spiritual discernment caused by sin. Since holy affection is a condition of religious knowledge, all moral imperfection in the individual Christian and in the church serves as a hindrance to the working out of a complete theology.
John 3:3—“Except one be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” The spiritual ages make most progress in theology,—witness the half-century succeeding the Reformation, and the half-century succeeding the great revival in New England in the time of Jonathan Edwards. Ueberweg, Logic (Lindsay's transl.), 514—“Science is much under the influence of the will; and the truth of knowledge depends upon the purity of the conscience. The will has no power to resist scientific evidence; but scientific evidence is not obtained without the continuous loyalty of the will.” Lord Bacon declared that man cannot enter the kingdom of science, any more than he can enter the kingdom of heaven, without becoming a little child. Darwin describes his own mind as having become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, with the result of producing “atrophy of that part of the brain on which the higher tastes depend.” But a similar abnormal atrophy is possible in the case of the moral and religious faculty (see Gore, Incarnation, 37). Dr. Allen said in his Introductory Lecture at Lane Theological Seminary: “We are very glad to see you if you wish to be students; but the professors' chairs are all filled.”
III. Relations of Material to Progress in Theology.
(a) A perfect system of theology is impossible. We do not expect to construct such a system. All science but reflects the present attainment of the human mind. No science is complete or finished. However it may be with the sciences of nature and of man, the science of God will never amount to an exhaustive knowledge. We must not expect to demonstrate all Scripture doctrines upon rational grounds, or even in every case to see the principle of connection between them. Where we cannot do this, we must, as in every other science, set the revealed facts in their places and wait for further light, instead of ignoring or rejecting any of them because we cannot understand them or their relation to other parts of our system.
Three problems left unsolved by the Egyptians have been handed down to our generation: (1) the duplication of the cube; (2) the trisection of the angle; (3) the quadrature of the circle. Dr. Johnson: “Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none; and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.” Hood spoke of Dr. Johnson's “Contradictionary,” which had both “interiour” and “exterior.” Sir William Thompson (Lord Kelvin) at the fiftieth anniversary of his professorship said: “One word characterizes the most strenuous of the efforts for the advancement of science which I have made perseveringly through fifty-five years: that word is failure; I know no more of electric and magnetic force, or of the relations between ether, electricity and ponderable matter, or of chemical affinity, than I knew and tried to teach my students of natural philosophy fifty years ago in my first session as professor.” Allen, Religious Progress, mentions three tendencies. “The first says: Destroy the new! The second says: Destroy the old! The third says: Destroy nothing! Let the old gradually and quietly grow into the new, as Erasmus wished. We should accept contradictions, whether they can be intellectually reconciled or not. The truth has never prospered by enforcing some 'via media.' Truth lies rather in the union of opposite propositions, as in Christ's divinity and humanity, and in grace [pg 037]and freedom. Blanco White went from Rome to infidelity; Orestes Brownson from infidelity to Rome; so the brothers John Henry Newman and Francis W. Newman, and the brothers George Herbert of Bemerton and Lord Herbert of Cherbury. One would secularize the divine, the other would divinize the secular. But if one is true, so is the other. Let us adopt both. All progress is a deeper penetration into the meaning of old truth, and a larger appropriation of it.”
(b) Theology is nevertheless progressive. It is progressive in the sense that our subjective understanding of the facts with regard to God, and our consequent expositions of these facts, may and do become more perfect. But theology is not progressive in the sense that its objective facts change, either in their number or their nature. With Martineau we may say: “Religion has been reproached with not being progressive; it makes amends by being imperishable.” Though our knowledge may be imperfect, it will have great value still. Our success in constructing a theology will depend upon the proportion which clearly expressed facts of Scripture bear to mere inferences, and upon the degree in which they all cohere about Christ, the central person and theme.
The progress of theology is progress in apprehension by man, not progress in communication by God. Originality in astronomy is not man's creation of new planets, but man's discovery of planets that were never seen before, or the bringing to light of relations between them that were never before suspected. Robert Kerr Eccles: “Originality is a habit of recurring to origins—the habit of securing personal experience by personal application to original facts. It is not an eduction of novelties either from nature, Scripture, or inner consciousness; it is rather the habit of resorting to primitive facts, and of securing the personal experiences which arise from contact with these facts.” Fisher, Nat. and Meth. of Revelation, 48—“The starry heavens are now what they were of old; there is no enlargement of the stellar universe, except that which comes through the increased power and use of the telescope.” We must not imitate the green sailor who, when set to steer, said he had “sailed by that star.”
Martineau, Types, 1:492, 493—“Metaphysics, so far as they are true to their work, are stationary, precisely because they have in charge, not what begins and ceases to be, but what always is.... It is absurd to praise motion for always making way, while disparaging space for still being what it ever was: as if the motion you prefer could be, without the space which you reproach.” Newman Smyth, Christian Ethics, 45, 67-70, 79—“True conservatism is progress which takes direction from the past and fulfils its good; false conservatism is a narrowing and hopeless reversion to the past, which is a betrayal of the promise of the future. So Jesus came not ‘to destroy the law or the prophets’; he ‘came not to destroy, but to fulfil’ (Mat. 5:17).... The last book on Christian Ethics will not be written before the Judgment Day.” John Milton, Areopagitica: “Truth is compared in the Scripture to a streaming fountain; if her waters flow not in a perpetual progression, they sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition. A man may be a heretic in the truth.” Paul in Rom. 2:16, and in 2 Tim. 2:8—speaks of “my gospel.” It is the duty of every Christian to have his own conception of the truth, while he respects the conceptions of others. Tennyson, Locksley Hall: “I that rather held it better men should perish one by one, Than that earth should stand at gaze like Joshua's moon at Ajalon.” We do not expect any new worlds, and we need not expect any new Scriptures; but we may expect progress in the interpretation of both. Facts are final, but interpretation is not.