Systematic Theology (Volume 1 of 3)Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Religion
Systematic Theology (Volume 1 of 3)
Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Baptists -- Doctrines; Theology, Doctrinal
Ambrose: “To whom shall I give greater credit concerning God than
to God himself?” Von Baader: “To know God without God is
impossible; there is no knowledge without him who is the prime
source of knowledge.” C. A. Briggs, Whither, 8—“God reveals truth
in several spheres: in universal nature, in the constitution of
mankind, in the history of our race, in the Sacred Scriptures, but
above all in the person of Jesus Christ our Lord.” F. H. Johnson,
What is Reality? 399—“The teacher intervenes when needed.
Revelation _helps_ reason and conscience, but is not a
_substitute_ for them. But Catholicism affirms this substitution
for the church, and Protestantism for the Bible. The Bible, like
nature, gives many free gifts, but more in the germ. Growing
ethical ideals must interpret the Bible.” A. J. F. Behrends: “The
Bible is only a telescope, not the eye which sees, nor the stars
which the telescope brings to view. It is your business and mine
to see the stars with our own eyes.” Schurman, Agnosticism,
178—“The Bible is a glass through which to see the living God. But
it is useless when you put your eyes out.”
We can know God only so far as he has revealed himself. The
immanent God is known, but the transcendent God we do not know any
more than we know the side of the moon that is turned away from
us. A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 118—“The word ‘authority’ is
derived from _auctor_, _augeo_, ‘to add.’ Authority adds something
to the truth communicated. The thing added is the personal element
of _witness_. This is needed wherever there is ignorance which
cannot be removed by our own effort, or unwillingness which
results from our own sin. In religion I need to add to my own
knowledge that which God imparts. Reason, conscience, church,
Scripture, are all delegated and subordinate authorities; the only
original and supreme authority is God himself, or Christ, who is
only God revealed and made comprehensible by us.” Gore,
Incarnation, 181—“All legitimate authority represents the reason
of God, educating the reason of man and communicating itself to
it.... Man is made in God’s image: he is, in his fundamental
capacity, a son of God, and he becomes so in fact, and fully,
through union with Christ. Therefore in the truth of God, as
Christ presents it to him, he can recognize his own better
reason,—to use Plato’s beautiful expression, he can salute it by
force of instinct as something akin to himself, before he can give
intellectual account of it.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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