Systematic Theology (Volume 2 of 3)Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Religion
Systematic Theology (Volume 2 of 3)
Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Baptists -- Doctrines; Theology, Doctrinal
Jackson, James Martineau, 390—“All is well, says an American
preacher, for if there is anything that is not well, it is well
that it is not well. It is well that falsity and hate are not
well, that malice and envy and cruelty are not well. What hope for
the world or what trust in God, if they were well?” _Live_ spells
_Evil_, only when we read it the wrong way. James Russell Lowell,
Letters, 2:51—“The more I learn ... the more my confidence in the
general good sense and honest intentions of mankind increases....
The signs of the times cease to alarm me, and seem as natural as
to a mother the teething of her seventh baby. I take great comfort
in God. I think that he is considerably amused with us sometimes,
and that he likes us on the whole, and would not let us get at the
matchbox so carelessly as he does, unless he knew that the frame
of his universe was fireproof.”
Compare with all this the hopeless pessimism of Omar Kháyyám,
Rubáiyát, stanza 99—“Ah Love! could you and I with Him conspire To
grasp this sorry scheme of things entire, Would not we shatter it
to bits—and then Remould it nearer to the heart’s desire?” Royce,
Studies of Good and Evil, 14, in discussing the Problem of Job,
suggests the following solution: “When you suffer, your sufferings
are God’s sufferings, not his external work, not his external
penalty, not the fruit of his neglect, but identically his own
personal woe. In you God himself suffers, precisely as you do, and
has all your concern in overcoming this grief.” F. H. Johnson,
What is Reality, 349, 505—“The Christian ideal is not
maintainable, if we assume that God could as easily develop his
creation without conflict.... Happiness is only one of his ends;
the evolution of moral character is another.” A. E. Waffle, Uses
of Moral Evil: “(1) It aids development of holy character by
opposition; (2) affords opportunity for ministering; (3) makes
known to us some of the chief attributes of God; (4) enhances the
blessedness of heaven.”
4. To Providence and Redemption.
Christianity is essentially a scheme of supernatural love and power. It
conceives of God as above the world, as well as in it,—able to manifest
himself, and actually manifesting himself, in ways unknown to mere nature.
But this absolute sovereignty and transcendence, which are manifested in
providence and redemption, are inseparable from creatorship. If the world
be eternal, like God, it must be an efflux from the substance of God and
must be absolutely equal with God. Only a proper doctrine of creation can
secure God’s absolute distinctness from the world and his sovereignty over
it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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