THEOLOGY 275 theology, from which it is as distinct as Christian apologetics is from Christian xlogmatics. It lays a foundation for natural theology, inasmuch as it vindicates religion by showing that it rests on objective spiritual truth. It presupposes a knowledge of religion as an historical and psychological phenomenon, but none of natural theology, which it, of course, leaves as a science to establish its own doctrines. It has the following tasks to perform. (1) To show that man is capable of apprehending the divine. This requires the refutation of agnosticism and the vindication of the principles implied in religious knowledge and certitude. 1 (2) To prove the reality of a revelation of the Divine in physical nature, mind, and history. The results of the various sciences will thereby be shown to be data of theology. It requires the refutation of atheism, mate rialism, positivism, and secularism, and of all principles which logically involve these systems. (3) To exhibit the reasons for the true conception of the Divine, and to expose the arguments em ployed in favour of false conceptions. The defence of theism, for example, must be accompanied by proof of the erroneousness and insufficiency of the polytheistic, dualistic, deistic, and pantheistic hypotheses. (4) To adduce whatever evidence may be contained in general revelation for the immortality of the soul and a future state of rewards and punishments. Natural Natural theology is the systematic exposition of the truths in theology, natural or general revelation. Its data are the facts and laws of nature, as ascertained by physical, mental, and historical science. Its inductions and inferences relate to God, men, and their rela tionship. Its appearance as a distinct science may be dated from the publication of Raymond de Sebonde s Theologia Naturalis in 1436, although portions of it had been admirably presented by ancient philosophers, e.g., Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, arid Cicero. It flourished with extraordinary vigour in the latter half of the 17th and throughout the 18th century. It should endeavour to perform the following tasks. (1) To describe the nature, character, and attributes of God, so far as they are disclosed by the material world, mind, and history. (2) To treat of God in relation to the world and man, and of the world and man in relation to God, under which head all questions as to creation, pro vidence, theodicee, optimism and pessimism, education of the human race, &c. , will fall to be discussed from the standpoint of general revelation. (3) To determine, so far as can be done from general revelation, what man may reasonably hope for as to deliver ance from sin and its consequences, and what he may reasonably believe as to the conditions of existence in a future world. As to this third point the view is prevalent that the light of nature dis closes nothing regarding man s salvation or future destiny. But does this view not arise from overlooking that the kingdom of God is within, and from falsely supposing that salvation is entrance into an external, non-spiritual heaven on conditions which, being in themselves non-natural, cannot be naturally known ? The heathen nations have certainly not supposed nature to be wholly silent and dark on the subject. In every developed ethnic religion there is a soteriology and eschatology as well as a theology. Man is no where necessarily without hope any more than without God in the world. 2 Theo- Theological ethics differs from natural theology in that it seeks logical in nature, viewed as a Divine revelation, laws of spiritual life, not ethics. merely religious doctrines. Its place is between moral philosophy and Christian ethics. It is unmistakably distinct from both, and may be more plausibly included in natural theology than in either. It should endeavour (1) to determine how religion and morality are distinct and how connected ; (2) to ascertain how morality has been affected and modified by the various positive ethnic religions and the various religious but non-Christian philosophies ; (3) to exhibit how the character of God, as delineated by natural theology, stands related to the moral law, the moral life, and the chief ethical end or supreme good of man ; (4) to describe the duties which the light of nature shows that man owes directly to God ; and (5) to trace how piety to God must influence personal and social virtue. Unlike moral philosophy and Christian ethics, it can hardly be said to have been yet treated as a separate discipline and presented as a whole. Daub and Marheineke have, indeed, written works nominally on Theological Morals, and I^othe and Von Hofmann on Theological Ethics, but in all these works it is really Christian ethics which is exhibited to us under certain speculative lights. There is, however, a very extensive literature relating to particular 1 For the literature on agnosticism, see above, p. 246 note 2. 2 For the literature of apologetics (theological and Christian), see Redford s Christian Plea against Modern Unbelief, pp. 497-533. For a list of the best works on theological apologetics and natural theology, see Cave s Introduction to Theology, pp. 149-161. Indications as to the history and literature of many particular questions and portions of both disciplines are given in the notes to Flint s Theism and Antitheistic Theories. One of the best sketches of the history of natural theology is that in Zockler s Theologia Naturalis. Here it may be sufficient to mention the following works: Butler s Analogy; Paley s Natural Theology; Chalmers s Natural Theology; the Bridgewater Treatises ; Thompson s Theism; Tulloch s Theism ; M Cosh s Method of the Divine Government ; Ulrici s Gott und die Natur ; Jules Simon s Natural Religion (Eng. tr.) ; Janet s Final Causes (Eng. tr.) ; Caro s Idee de Dieu, 5th ed. ; Gratry s Connaissance de Dieu, 7th ed. ; and Margerie s Theodicee, 3d ed. problems and portions of theological ethics. Thus what has been just indicated as problem first that as to the relation of religion and morality has been long much discussed. 3 The second problem demands wide and close historical research ; it has been touched at a multitude of points, but only touched. With the third problem, or rather group of problems, almost all systems of Christian ethics have to some extent dealt ; and with the fourth and fifth problems almost all systems of moral philosophy. We now pass to Christian theology. Its historical section in- Biblical eludes, besides the histories of Israel and the church (as to which and see ISRAEL and CHURCH HISTORY), Biblical theology, the history church of Christian doctrine, and Christian "symbolics. history. All hermeneutical studies are auxiliary to exegesis, and all Biblical Biblical exegesis leads up to that comprehensive and connected theology, view of the development of Biblical ideas which it is the aim of Biblical theology to set forth. Biblical theology is not to be under stood as meaning a theology founded on the Bible Christian dogmatics under another name. It does not assume that the Bible is either a source or standard of truth. It does not set forth the ideas which it exhibits as true in themselves, but only as truly in the Bible. It seeks no other truth than truth of exposition. It aims at doing no more than giving a true account of what are the religious ideas in the Bible, of how they are related as set forth in the Bible, and of what their history has been throughout the Biblical period. Its sole business is critically to ascertain and truthfully to exhibit what Scripture teaches, what each writer, even, of Scripture teaches, in a purely objective, organic, historical manner. It cannot possibly be confounded with Christian dog matics by any one who has the slightest notion of what it is, although the latter must in great part rest on it and derive most of its materials from it. It is the ultimate direct result and the most comprehensive and perfect product of Biblical exegesis, and related to the history of religious ideas as a part to the whole in which it is included, comparative theology preceding and the history of Christian doctrine following it. It divides into theology of the Old Testament and theology of the New Testament ; and its method is one appropriate to an historical discipline, and, there fore, chronological, genetic, analytic, and synthetic. It is a com paratively recently constituted department of theological science, both Catholic and Protestant divines having made for ages the enormous mistake of studying Scripture so far as their interest therein was theoretical and not practical primarily in order to find proof of the doctrines contained in their creeds and confessions. They failed to apprehend and appreciate the seemingly very simple thought that Scripture should be studied in the first instance with a single eye to find out what was really in it, and that to this end the study of it should be strictly and purely exegetical and his torical. J. Ph. Gabler, in his thesis De Justo Discrimine Theologix Biblicsz et Dogmatical, published in 1787, was the first clearly to show the true character of Biblical theology as an essentially historical study. Since then it has been cultivated with great zeal by a host of able labourers. 4 The history of Christian doctrine only began to be treated as History c a separate theological discipline in the latter part of the 18th Christian century. Previously it was dealt with as an appendix to dog- doctrine, matics or as a part of church history. It is not an appendix to dogmatics, but it includes its history and contributes to lay a foundation for it. No doctrine can be either correctly understood or rightly developed where there is ignorance of its history. The history of Christian doctrine is a part of the history of Christianity, namely, the history of Christian beliefs, as distinguished, on ,- the one hand, from the history of Christian life and practice, and, on the other hand, from the outward history of the church. It is a part also of the history of religious thought, and of the history of thought in general, and therefore closely connected with the history of philosophy. Its development must be admitted to be ruled by the general laws of the intellectual history of man. It may be taken, however, in a wider or narrower sense, in the former being the history of Christian thought and belief as such, and in the latter the history only of dogmas strictly so called, i.e., of doctrines formulated and promulgated by ecclesiastical authority, and accepted either by the whole church or by large divisions of the church. There ought perhaps to be a history of doctrines in both senses. One in the former sense has only been undertaken recently by Harnack. The method of the history of Christian doctrine must be strictly historical, and at the same time both analytic and synthetic, seeing that both the history of the separate doctrines and the general and connected evolution of the doctrines require to be traced. Its periods will coincide with those of church history, but they ought to be determined from direct examination 3 The following references may be given : the last chapter of Janet s La Morale ; the first three chapters in Caro s Morale Sociale ; many articles and reviews in Renouvier s Critique Philosophique ; Martensen s Christian Ethics, 5-14; Pfleiderer s Moral und Religion ; Bradley s Ethical Studies, pp. 279- 305; and Caird s Introd. to Phil, of Rel., ch. ix.
- For the history of Biblical theology, see Briggs s Biblical Study ; for the
literature Cave, Hagenbach, Rabiger, or Zockler ; for a reference to some of the
best works, see THEISM, supra, p. 239 notes 2 and 3.
