《Fundamental Christian Theology (Vol. 1)》

A Systematic Theology

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Dedication
Foreword
Introduction.
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Part II
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13

DEDICATION

To the hundreds of students who have filled my class-rooms and have urged me for these thirty years to write my theology for their use, and for that generation of followers whom they may hereafter teach, this work is lovingly dedicated by the author.

A. M. Hills

FOREWORD

Another Systematic Theology! What courage akin to rashness it required to think of such a thing!

But then, "There is a Divinity that shapes our ends, Rough hew them as we will." Some things we are impelled to do by a power above our own. A Divine hand guides us in our meditation and study. Providence co-operates. Men impress us with an abiding influence. Sixty-four years ago I met the mighty Finney, a king among men, and sat four college years under

his ministry. A mind that he would not stir to the depths would be a marvel of mental lethargy. Associated with him was a faculty of strong independent thinkers, President James A. Fairchild, Dr. John Morgan, Professor of Hebrew, Dr. Henry Cowles, the spiritual commentator, and Dr. Judson Smith, afterward secretary of the American Board of Foreign Missions.

I then went to Yale sixty years ago, and met President Woolsey, just retiring, and President Noah Porter, and Timothy Dwight, the Greek exegete, afterward President, and Dr. George P. Fisher, the noble Church Historian, and Dr. Samuel Harris, Professor of Theology. These men were nobly endowed intellectually, and ranked high in scholarship, and were inspiring to a youth who was ambitious to be a soul-winner.

I began to buy theologies and read critically. Strangely enough all my first theologies were strongly Calvinistic, and that feature of them repelled me. I began to have revivals while yet in college, and I wanted a system of doctrines that were directly calculated to bring salvation to the lost. I was not seeking popularity or big pulpits, but usefulness and men. I wanted a practical Biblical theology that would win souls and not delude them by flattery, nor drive them into infidelity, nor drug them by opiates into a sleep of death.

Born and trained in a Congregational home and nursed by Congregational churches, and educated at Oberlin and Yale, I carried a very distinct stamp. But reading widely in twenty-five authors of systematic theology, an inquisitive, honest and teachable mind might get some new light and some deeper insight into Divine truth. I do not think I ever had a Methodist theology in my hand till I was some years in my first pastorate. But God has His own way of training His teachers. Since then I have owned and used ten Methodist theologies in the class-room teaching earnest inquiring minds who do not think alike. This I have been doing for thirty-three years.

I do not make the slightest claim to originality. I am debtor to everybody. If the reader finds anything excellent in this work, which I am sure he will, let him give all the praise to God, whose Holy Spirit has guided me through the tangled maze of conflicting human speculations to the truth as it is in Christ Jesus, found in the infallible Word of God. I invent no hypotheses, and advocate no fads. My sole aim has been to give the world a theology that wholly glorifies the character of the ever adorable God, and is best calculated to bring lost and sinful men in glad surrender to their blessed Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

INTRODUCTION

I. Theology is the greatest study that can occupy human thought. Well it may be. It has the nature of God and His attributes for its theme, and the principles of His government as displayed in His relation to finite moral beings. It necessarily involves a discussion of the nature and character of men and angels.

The term theology suggests as much. It is derived from Theos. God, and logos a discourse. It literally means a discourse about God as related to moral beings and His created universe. The great Hooker said, "Theology, what is it but a science of things divine?"

The very study presupposes a faculty in man which may know God and receive, the knowledge which He imparts of Himself, It has been called "a capacity for religion." Even Voltaire said, "Man is a religious animal."

II. THE SOURCES OF THEOLOGY

1. The two great sources of theology are nature and revelation. They are by no means equal in clearness and fullness. Some great truths we need to know, such as the Trinity, and the Atonement, and how God can forgive sin. These are peculiar to revelation. But the first question of all, theology, the existence of God, must be brought to nature and human reason. The Bible nowhere attempts to prove God's existence, but everywhere assumes it, e. g., Gen. 1:1, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." The Apostle Paul in Romans 1: 19-21, teaches that God is known to the heathen, being revealed by creation, and by the intuitions of their own souls, so that they are left without excuse for their sins. "Religious ideas are everywhere disclosed in human history, ideas of God or of some supernatural Being, whose providence is ever over mankind, and whom men should worship and obey; ideas of moral obligation and responsibility, of future existence and retribution. These ideas are traceable to the light of nature and rationally traceable to no other source."1 Miley, Vol. I, p. 9.

Under this light of nature men may so know God and His will as to be morally responsible to Him. The heathen universally admit this to our foreign missionaries. It is upon this ground that retribution is visited upon the Gentile world.

But the Holy Scriptures are the chief source of theology, whole realms of truth which man needed to know for his moral and spiritual well-being, were never discovered even by the most enlightened and thoughtful either of the ancient or modern heathen world. As the Psalmist said, "The entrance of thy Word giveth light." "If tested by the purest moral and religious intuitions, or by the sharpest inquisition of the logical reason, or by the profoundest sense of religious need, or by the satisfaction which its truths bring to the soul, or by its sublime and transforming power in the Spiritual life, the theology of the Scriptures rises infinitely above all other theologies of the world. That they are a direct revelation from God, with the seal of a divine original clearly set upon them, gives to their theology a certainty and sufficiency, a grace and value, specially divine." 1 1. Miley, Vol. I, p. 12.

2. MISTAKEN OR FALSE SOURCES OF THEOLOGY

(1) Creeds or Confessions of Faith.

These are valuable as a historic record of the theological opinions of scholars and divines of the age in which they were formed. They register the opinions of those who formed them on the subjects which they discussed. But they have no authoritative quality: and are in no sense binding upon other men of another age. They cannot, therefore, be regarded as a true source of theology. Some of them are very excellent statements of Christian doctrine, and Bible truth. Others are equally horrible misrepresentations of God, and caricatures of the Gospel of Grace. They must all be tested and measured by the infallible Word of the infinite God.

(2) Tradition.

In Romanism, tradition is held to be co-ordinate with the Scriptures in matters of faith and morals. The Council of Trent decreed: "The sacred and holy, ecumenical and general synod of Trent, following the example of the orthodox fathers, receives and venerates with an equal affection of piety and reverence, all the books, both of the Old and the New Testament; AS ALSO THE SACRED TRADITIONS, as well those pertaining to faith as to morals, . . . and preserved in the Roman Catholic Church by a continuous succession."2 2. Schaff: "Creeds of Christendom," Vol. II, pp. 79, 80, quoted by Miley

Tradition means anything handed down from person to person. This was of value in the years immediately following Christ's earthly ministry, but what is oft repeated and handed down from generation to generation becomes colored and changed. Innovators came upon the scene of action in the course of the centuries who defended their new doctrines by pretended traditions, "things at variance not only with other traditions, but with the very writings of the Apostles. From this time forward tradition became naturally more and more uncertain and suspicious."1 1. Knapp: "Christian Theology," p. 39.

To meet Ibis exigency of untrustworthiness, Romanism assumes and claims for itself an abiding inspiration which perpetuates its own infallibility. This abiding inspiration is now held to center in the papacy. This helps to explain how the Roman Catholic Church has developed such a vast body of doctrines and practices utterly unknown to the Scriptures, and often flatly opposed to them.

Some illustrations will be in order. "The first great historical fact inconsistent with this theory is, that the great majority of the bishops, both of the Eastern and Western Church, including the Pope of Rome, taught Arianism, a denial of the Divinity of Christ in the Third Century, which the whole Church, both before and afterward, condemned." "After this defection of the Romish Church in the bishop, Liberius, the whole Roman empire was overspread with Arianism." Then the Church afterward renounced Arianism. Again that Church now teaches errors:

1. It is a monstrous error, contrary to the Bible, to its letter and spirit, and shocking to the common sense of mankind, that the salvation of men should be suspended on their acknowledging the Pope to be the head of the Church in the world or the vicar of Christ. This makes salvation independent of faith or character.

2. Again, it is contrary to the express teachings of the Bible that the Sacraments are the only channels of communicating to men the benefits of redemption. Romanists teach that all who die un-baptized, even infants, are lost.

3. The Church of Rome teaches that the ministers of the Gospel are priests: that the people have no access to God or Christ, and cannot obtain the remission of sins, or other saving blessings, except through their ministrations.

4. The doctrine of the merit of Good Works as they teach it, is a prolific error. They hold that a man may do more than the law requires of him, and perform works of supererogation, and, thus obtain more merit than is necessary for his own salvation. And they hold that this superfluous merit of the saints may be dispensed to others as indulgences.

5. The Roman Catholic Church teaches the doctrine of Purgatory, where believers are perfected, and the sufferings of Purgatory may be lessened or shortened by priests of the church.

6. That Church teaches error concerning the Lord's Supper,- Transubstantiation, or that the priest by a few words of Latin, can transmute the whole substance of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, and the whole Christ, body, soul and divinity, is present in the consecrated wafer, which is to be worshiped as the very Christ. This constitutes the idolatry of the mass, against which John Knox thundered.

7. That Church teaches the idolatrous use of images and the worship of the Virgin Mary, or Mariolatry: also the worship of the saints.1 1. Hodge: "Systematic Theology," Vol. I, pp. 144-149.

All these facts conspire to prove that tradition can be no proper source of theology, and that the claim to infallible tradition is a delusion. The Holy Scriptures are the great fountain of truth and the sufficient and only infallible rule of faith and practice.

(3) Mysticism.

Few words have been used in such a vague and indefinite sense as Mysticism. Mystics are those who claim to be under the immediate guidance of God or His Spirit. In the philosophical use of the word, Mysticism includes all those systems of thought which teach either the identity of God and the soul (a form of Pantheism) or the immediate intuition of the infinite.

In a still wider use of the word, any system of thought, whether in philosophy or religion, which ascribes more importance to the feelings than to the intellect, is mystical. "Reason is no longer viewed as the great organ of truth. Its decisions are regarded as well-nigh worthless, while the inward impulses are held up as the true and infallible source of human knowledge. The fundamental process, therefore, of all Mysticism is to reverse the true order of nature and give the precedence to the emotional instead of the intellectual element of the human mind. This is the common ground of all Mysticism."2 2. Morell: "History of Modern Philosophy," p. 556.

It holds that God may be known face to face, and that we attain directly, without the aid of the senses or reason, by an immediate intuition of God, the real and absolute principle of all truth. It therefore, naturally tends to mistake for a divine manifestation the operation of a merely human faculty.

The Mystics easily become imbued with the notion that they receive an immediate communication of divine knowledge from God to the soul independently of the Scriptures, or the use of any ordinary means of Grace.

It will be readily seen that this differs essentially from the Scriptural doctrine of divine illumination as held by all evangelical Christians. The Scriptures teach that the Holy Spirit takes truth already made known in the Bible, and makes it real to our minds by quickening in us a spiritual discernment of its meaning. The Mystics, on the other hand, claim a revelation of truth quite apart from the Bible, and the use of any means of grace, and, indeed, by an utter neglect of them.