Systematic Theology (Volume 1 of 3)Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Religion
Systematic Theology (Volume 1 of 3)
Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Baptists -- Doctrines; Theology, Doctrinal
See Godet, on the Ultimate Design of Man—“God in man, and man in
God”—in Princeton Rev., Nov. 1880; Pfleiderer, Die Religion, 5-79,
and Religionsphilosophie, 255—Religion is “Sache des ganzen
Geisteslebens”: Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 4—“Religion is the
personal influence of the immanent God”; Sterrett, Reason and
Authority in Religion, 31, 32—“Religion is the reciprocal relation
or communion of God and man, involving (1) revelation, (2) faith”;
Dr. J. W. A. Stewart: “Religion is fellowship with God”; Pascal:
“Piety is God sensible to the heart”; Ritschl, Justif. and
Reconcil., 13—“Christianity is an ellipse with two foci—Christ as
Redeemer and Christ as King, Christ for us and Christ in us,
redemption and morality, religion and ethics”; Kaftan, Dogmatik,
8—“The Christian religion is (1) the _kingdom of God_ as a goal
above the world, to be attained by moral development here, and (2)
_reconciliation with God_ permitting attainment of this goal in
spite of our sins. Christian theology once grounded itself in
man’s natural knowledge of God; we now start with religion, _i.
e._, that Christian knowledge of God which we call faith.”
Herbert Spencer: “Religion is an _a priori_ theory of the
universe”; Romanes, Thoughts on Religion, 43, adds: “which assumes
intelligent personality as the originating cause of the universe,
science dealing with the _How_, the phenomenal process, religion
dealing with the _Who_, the intelligent Personality who works
through the process.” Holland, in Lux Mundi, 27—“Natural life is
the life in God which has not yet arrived at this recognition”—the
recognition of the fact that God is in all things—“it is not yet,
as such, religious; ... Religion is the discovery, by the son, of
a Father who is in all his works, yet is distinct from them all.”
Dewey, Psychology, 283—“Feeling finds its absolutely universal
expression in religious emotion, which is the finding or
realization of self in a completely realized personality which
unites in itself truth, or the complete unity of the relations of
all objects, beauty or the complete unity of all ideal values, and
rightness or the complete unity of all persons. The emotion which
accompanies the religious life is that which accompanies the
complete activity of ourselves; the self is realized and finds its
true life in God.” Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 262—“Ethics is simply
the growing insight into, and the effort to actualize in society,
the sense of fundamental kinship and identity of substance in all
men; while religion is the emotion and the devotion which attend
the realization in our self-consciousness of an inmost spiritual
relationship arising out of that unity of substance which
constitutes man the true son of the eternal Father.” See Van
Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 81-85; Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:227;
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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