Systematic Theology (Volume 1 of 3)Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Religion
Systematic Theology (Volume 1 of 3)
Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Baptists -- Doctrines; Theology, Doctrinal
B. Faith is a knowledge conditioned by holy affection.—The faith which
apprehends God’s being and working is not opinion or imagination. It is
certitude with regard to spiritual realities, upon the testimony of our
rational nature and upon the testimony of God. Its only peculiarity as a
cognitive act of the reason is that it is conditioned by holy affection.
As the science of æsthetics is a product of reason as including a power of
recognizing beauty practically inseparable from a love for beauty, and as
the science of ethics is a product of reason as including a power of
recognizing the morally right practically inseparable from a love for the
morally right, so the science of theology is a product of reason, but of
reason as including a power of recognizing God which is practically
inseparable from a love for God.
We here use the term “reason” to signify the mind’s whole power of
knowing. Reason in this sense includes states of the sensibility,
so far as they are indispensable to knowledge. We cannot know an
orange by the eye alone; to the understanding of it, taste is as
necessary as sight. The mathematics of sound cannot give us an
understanding of music; we need also a musical ear. Logic alone
cannot demonstrate the beauty of a sunset, or of a noble
character; love for the beautiful and the right precedes knowledge
of the beautiful and the right. Ullman draws attention to the
derivation of _sapientia_, wisdom, from _sapĕre_, to taste. So we
cannot know God by intellect alone; the heart must go with the
intellect to make knowledge of divine things possible. “Human
things,” said Pascal, “need only to be known, in order to be
loved; but divine things must first be loved, in order to be
known.” “This [religious] faith of the intellect,” said Kant, “is
founded on the assumption of moral tempers.” If one were utterly
indifferent to moral laws, the philosopher continues, even then
religious truths “would be supported by strong arguments from
analogy, but not by such as an obstinate, sceptical heart might
not overcome.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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