Systematic Theology (Volume 1 of 3)Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Religion
Systematic Theology (Volume 1 of 3)
Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Baptists -- Doctrines; Theology, Doctrinal
We append a number of opinions, ancient and modern, with regard to
miracles, all tending to show the need of so defining them as not
to conflict with the just claims of science. Aristotle: “Nature is
not full of episodes, like a bad tragedy.” Shakespeare, All’s Well
that Ends Well, 2:3:1—“They say miracles are past; and we have our
philosophical persons to make modern and familiar things
supernatural and causeless. Hence it is that we make trifles of
terrors, ensconsing ourselves into seeming knowledge, when we
should submit ourselves to an unknown fear.” Keats, Lamia: “There
was an awful rainbow once in heaven; We know her woof, her
texture: she is given In the dull catalogue of common things.”
Hill, Genetic Philosophy, 334—“Biological and psychological
science unite in affirming that every event, organic or psychic,
is to be explained in the terms of its immediate antecedents, and
that it can be so explained. There is therefore no necessity,
there is even no room, for interference. If the existence of a
Deity depends upon the evidence of intervention and supernatural
agency, faith in the divine seems to be destroyed in the
scientific mind.” Theodore Parker: “No whim in God,—therefore no
miracle in nature.” Armour, Atonement and Law, 15-33—“The miracle
of redemption, like all miracles, is by intervention of adequate
power, not by suspension of law. Redemption is not ‘the great
exception.’ It is the fullest revelation and vindication of law.”
Gore, in Lux Mundi, 320—“Redemption is not natural but
supernatural—supernatural, that is, in view of the false nature
which man made for himself by excluding God. Otherwise, the work
of redemption is only the reconstitution of the nature which God
had designed.” Abp. Trench: “The world of nature is throughout a
witness for the world of spirit, proceeding from the same hand,
growing out of the same root, and being constituted for this very
end. The characters of nature which everywhere meet the eye are
not a common but a sacred writing,—they are the hieroglyphics of
God.” Pascal: “Nature is the image of grace.” President Mark
Hopkins: “Christianity and perfect Reason are identical.” See
Mead, Supernatural Revelation, 97-123; art.: Miracle, by Bernard,
in Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible. The modern and improved view
of the miracle is perhaps best presented by T. H. Wright, The
Finger of God; and by W. N. Rice, Christian Faith in an Age of
Science, 336.
2. Possibility of Miracle.
An event in nature may be caused by an agent in nature yet above nature.
This is evident from the following considerations:
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