Systematic Theology (Volume 1 of 3)Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Religion
Systematic Theology (Volume 1 of 3)
Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Baptists -- Doctrines; Theology, Doctrinal
“A genial set of Jesuitical religionists”—with mind and heart
enough to write the gospel according to John, and who at the same
time have cold-blooded sagacity enough to keep out of their
writings every trace of the developments of church authority
belonging to the second century. The newly discovered “Teaching of
the Twelve Apostles,” if dating from the early part of that
century, shows that such a combination is impossible. The critical
theories assume that one who knew Christ as a man could not
possibly also regard him as God. Lowrie, Doctrine of St. John,
12—“If St. John wrote, it is not possible to say that the genius
of St. Paul foisted upon the church a conception which was strange
to the original apostles.” Fairbairn has well shown that if
Christianity had been simply the ethical teaching of the human
Jesus, it would have vanished from the earth like the sects of the
Pharisees and of the Sadducees; if on the other hand it had been
simply the Logos-doctrine, the doctrine of a divine Christ, it
would have passed away like the speculations of Plato or
Aristotle; because Christianity unites the idea of the eternal Son
of God with that of the incarnate Son of man, it is fitted to be
and it has become an universal religion; see Fairbairn, Philosophy
of the Christian Religion, 4, 15—“Without the personal charm of
the historical Jesus, the œcumenical creeds would never have been
either formulated or tolerated, and without the metaphysical
conception of Christ the Christian religion would long ago have
ceased to live.... It is not Jesus of Nazareth who has so
powerfully entered into history: it is the deified Christ who has
been believed, loved and obeyed as the Savior of the world.... The
two parts of Christian doctrine are combined in the one name
‘Jesus Christ.’ ”
(_e_) This theory cannot account for the universal acceptance of the
gospels at the end of the second century, among widely separated
communities where reverence for writings of the apostles was a mark of
orthodoxy, and where the Gnostic heresies would have made new documents
instantly liable to suspicion and searching examination.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account