Systematic Theology (Volume 2 of 3)Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Religion
Systematic Theology (Volume 2 of 3)
Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Baptists -- Doctrines; Theology, Doctrinal
Napoleon asked Goethe what matter was. “_Esprit gelé_,”—frozen
spirit was the answer Schelling wished Goethe had given him. But
neither is matter spirit, nor are matter and spirit together mere
natural effluxes from God’s substance. A divine institution of
them is requisite (quoted substantially from Dorner, System of
Doctrine, 2:40). Schlegel in a similar manner called architecture
“frozen music,” and another writer calls music “dissolved
architecture.” There is a “psychical automatism,” as Ladd says, in
his Philosophy of Mind, 169; and Hegel calls nature “the corpse of
the understanding—spirit to alienation from itself.” But spirit is
the Adam, of which nature is the Eve; and man says to nature:
“_This is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh_,” as Adam did
in _Gen. 2:23_.
3. Creation from eternity.
This theory regards creation as an act of God in eternity past. It was
propounded by Origen, and has been held in recent times by Martensen,
Martineau, John Caird, Knight, and Pfleiderer. The necessity of supposing
such creation from eternity has been argued from God’s omnipotence, God’s
timelessness, God’s immutability, and God’s love. We consider each of
these arguments in their order.
Origen held that God was from eternity the creator of the world of
spirits. Martensen, in his Dogmatics, 114, shows favor to the
maxims: “Without the world God is not God.... God created the
world to satisfy a want in himself.... He cannot but constitute
himself the Father of spirits.” Schiller, Die Freundschaft, last
stanza, gives the following popular expression to this view:
“Freundlos war der grosse Weltenmeister; Fühlte Mangel, darum
schuf er Geister, Sel’ge Spiegel seiner Seligkeit. Fand das
höchste Wesen schon kein Gleiches; Aus dem Kelch des ganzen
Geisterreiches Schäumt ihm die Unendlichkeit.” The poet’s thought
was perhaps suggested by Goethe’s Sorrows of Werther: “The flight
of a bird above my head inspired me with the desire of being
transported to the shores of the immeasurable waters, there to
quaff the pleasures of life from the foaming goblet of the
infinite.” Robert Browning, Rabbi Ben Ezra, 31—“But I need now as
then, Thee, God, who mouldest men. And since, not even when the
whirl was worst, Did I—to the wheel of life With shapes and colors
rife, Bound dizzily—mistake my end, To slake thy thirst.” But this
regards the Creator as dependent upon, and in bondage to, his own
world.
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.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account