Systematic Theology (Volume 2 of 3)Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Religion
Systematic Theology (Volume 2 of 3)
Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Baptists -- Doctrines; Theology, Doctrinal
Our view of creation is so nearly that of Lotze, that we here
condense Ten Broeke’s statement of his philosophy: “Things are
concreted laws of action. If the idea of being must include
permanence as well as activity, we must say that only the personal
truly is. All else is flow and process. We can interpret ontology
only from the side of personality. Possibility of interaction
requires the dependence of the mutually related many of the system
upon an all-embracing, coördinating One. The finite is a mode or
phenomenon of the One Being. Mere things are only modes of
energizing of the One. Self-conscious personalities are created,
posited, and depend on the One in a different way. Interaction of
things is immanent action of the One, which the perceiving mind
interprets as causal. Real interaction is possible only between
the Infinite and the created finite, _i. e._, self-conscious
persons. The finite is not a part of the Infinite, nor does it
partly exhaust the stuff of the Infinite. The One, by an act of
freedom, posits the many, and the many have their ground and unity
in the Will and Thought of the One. Both the finite and the
Infinite are free and intelligent.
“Space is not an extra-mental reality, _sui generis_, nor an order
of relations among realities, but a form of dynamic appearance,
the ground of which is the fixed orderly changes in reality. So
time is the form of change, the subjective interpretation of
timeless yet successive changes in reality. So far as God is the
ground of the world-process, he is in time. So far as he
transcends the world-process in his self-conscious personality, he
is not in time. Motion too is the subjective interpretation of
changes in things, which changes are determined by the demands of
the world-system and the purpose being realized in it. Not
atomism, but dynamism, is the truth. Physical phenomena are
referable to the activity of the Infinite, which activity is given
a substantive character because we think under the form of
substance and attribute. Mechanism is compatible with teleology.
Mechanism is universal and is necessary to all system. But it is
limited by purpose, and by the possible appearance of any new law,
force, or act of freedom.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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