Systematic Theology (Volume 2 of 3)Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Religion
Systematic Theology (Volume 2 of 3)
Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Baptists -- Doctrines; Theology, Doctrinal
We grant the probability that the great majority of what we call
species were produced in some such ways. If science should render
it certain that all the present species of living creatures were
derived by natural descent from a few original germs, and that
these germs were themselves an evolution of inorganic forces and
materials, we should not therefore regard the Mosaic account as
proved untrue. We should only be required to revise our
interpretation of the word _bara_ in _Gen. 1:21, 27_, and to give
it there the meaning of mediate creation, or creation by law. Such
a meaning might almost seem to be favored by _Gen. 1:11_—“_let the
earth put forth grass_”; _20_—“_let the waters bring forth
abundantly __ the moving creature that hath life_”; _2:7_—“_the
Lord God formed man of the dust_”; _9_—“_out of the ground made
the Lord God to grow every tree_”; _cf._ _Mark 4:28_—αὐτομάτη ἣ γή
καρποφορεῖ—“_the earth brings forth fruit automatically_.” Goethe,
Sprüche in Reimen: “Was wär ein Gott der nur von aussen stiesse,
Im Kreis das All am Finger laufen liesse? Ihm ziemt’s die Welt im
Innern zu bewegen, Sich in Natur, Natur in sich zu hegen, So dass,
was in Ihm lebt und webt und ist, Nie seine Kraft, nie seinen
Geist vermisst”—“No, such a God my worship may not win, Who lets
the world about his finger spin, A thing eternal; God must dwell
within.”
All the growth of a tree takes place in from four to six weeks in
May, June and July. The addition of woody fibre between the bark
and the trunk results, not by impartation into it of a new force
from without, but by the awakening of the life within. Environment
changes and growth begins. We may even speak of an immanent
transcendence of God—an unexhausted vitality which at times makes
great movements forward. This is what the ancients were trying to
express when they said that trees were inhabited by dryads and so
groaned and bled when wounded. God’s life is in all. In evolution
we cannot say, with LeConte, that the higher form of energy is
“derived from the lower.” Rather let us say that both the higher
and the lower are constantly dependent for their being on the will
of God. The lower is only God’s preparation for his higher
self-manifestation; see Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 165, 166.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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