Systematic Theology (Volume 1 of 3)Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Religion
Systematic Theology (Volume 1 of 3)
Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Baptists -- Doctrines; Theology, Doctrinal
There is such a thing as immanent and unconscious finality.
National spirit, without set purpose, constructs language. The bee
works unconsciously to ends. Strato of Lampsacus regarded the
world as a vast animal. Aristotle, Phys., 2:8—“Plant the
ship-builder’s skill within the timber itself, and you have the
mode in which nature produces.” Here we see a dim anticipation of
the modern doctrine of development from within instead of creation
from without. Neander: “The divine work goes on from within
outward.” John Fiske: “The argument from the watch has been
superseded by the argument from the flower.” Iverach, Theism,
91—“The effect of evolution has been simply to transfer the cause
from a mere external influence working from without to an immanent
rational principle.” Martineau, Study, 1:349, 350—“Theism is in no
way committed to the doctrine of a God external to the world ...
nor does intelligence require, in order to gain an object, to give
it externality.”
Newman Smyth, Place of Death, 62-80—“The universe exists in some
all-pervasive Intelligence. Suppose we could see a small heap of
brick, scraps of metal, and pieces of mortar, gradually shaping
themselves into the walls and interior structure of a building,
adding needed material as the work advanced, and at last
presenting in its completion a factory furnished with varied and
finely wrought machinery. Or, a locomotive carrying a process of
self-repair to compensate for wear, growing and increasing in
size, detaching from itself at intervals pieces of brass or iron
endowed with the power of growing up step by step into other
locomotives capable of running themselves and of reproducing new
locomotives in their turn.” So nature in its separate parts may
seem mechanical, but as a whole it is rational. Weismann does not
“disown a directive power,”—only this power is “behind the
mechanism as its final cause ... it must be teleological.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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