Systematic Theology (Volume 1 of 3)Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Religion
Systematic Theology (Volume 1 of 3)
Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Baptists -- Doctrines; Theology, Doctrinal
What substance is, we need not here determine. Whether we are
realists or idealists, we are compelled to grant that there cannot
be phenomena without noumena, cannot be appearances without
something that appears, cannot be qualities without something that
is qualified. This something which underlies or stands under
appearance or quality we call substance. We are Lotzeans rather
than Kantians, in our philosophy. To say that we know, not the
self, but only its manifestations in thought, is to confound self
with its thinking and to teach psychology without a soul. To say
that we know no external world, but only its manifestations in
sensations, is to ignore the principle that binds these sensations
together; for without a somewhat in which qualities inhere they
can have no ground of unity. In like manner, to say that we know
nothing of God but his manifestations, is to confound God with the
world and practically to deny that there is a God.
Stählin, in his work on Kant, Lotze and Ritschl, 186-191, 218,
219, says well that “limitation of knowledge to phenomena involves
the elimination from theology of all claim to know the objects of
the Christian faith as they are in themselves.” This criticism
justly classes Ritschl with Kant, rather than with Lotze who
maintains that knowing phenomena we know also the noumena
manifested in them. While Ritschl professes to follow Lotze, the
whole drift of his theology is in the direction of the Kantian
identification of the world with our sensations, mind with our
thoughts, and God with such activities of his as we can perceive.
A divine nature apart from its activities, a preexistent Christ,
an immanent Trinity, are practically denied. Assertions that God
is self-conscious love and fatherhood become judgments of merely
subjective value. On Ritschl, see the works of Orr, of Garvie, and
of Swing; also Minton, in Pres. and Ref. Rev., Jan. 1902:162-169,
and C. W. Hodge, _ibid._, Apl. 1902:321-326; Flint, Agnosticism,
590-597; Everett, Essays Theol. and Lit., 92-99.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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