8
November 1877: Inauguration of Mr. (Rev. Dr.) A. A. Hodge as Associate Professor at Old
Princeton Seminary
It was on this day, November 8th, in
1877, that the Rev. Dr. Archibald Alexander Hodge was inaugurated as
Associate Professor of Didactic and Polemic Theology at the Princeton
Theological Seminary. With an eye to the value of the tradition, some schools,
like Westminster Theological Seminary, continue the practice of the inaugural
address. As Dr. Hodge notes in his opening paragraph, the address makes for an
opportunity to display both theological convictions and theological method of
the teacher.
While perhaps a bit long for a weekday
post, hopefully the busy reader will at least bookmark the page and return over
the weekend. As one could only expect from A.A. Hodge, this is an excellent
composition, worthy of serious, careful consideration.
Dogmatic Christianity, the Essential
Ground of Practical Christianity
The Inaugural Address of Archibald Alexander Hodge,
upon his installation as Associate Professor of Dogmatic and Polemic Theology
at Princeton Theological Seminary, November 8, 1877.
upon his installation as Associate Professor of Dogmatic and Polemic Theology
at Princeton Theological Seminary, November 8, 1877.
FATHERS AND BRETHREN OF THE BOARD
OF DIRECTORS:
In obedience to your call, I am here to assume the solemn
trust involved in teaching Christian theology in this Seminary. Doubtless the
design of associating an inaugural address with the induction of a new
professor into such a charge is to afford him an opportunity of satisfying you,
as the responsible guardians of the institution, with respect to his
theological convictions and method.
I therefore affirm my belief that the Scriptures of the
Old and New Testaments in their integrity are the Word of God,
as a whole and in every part infallible and binding the conscience, and the
only divinely authentic informant and rule of faith in matters of religion.
Christian theology is wholly in the Scriptures, and is to be drawn from them
only by legitimate interpretation. This is true of systematic as absolutely as
of exegetical or of Biblical theology. The system lies in the relations of the
facts, and their relations are deteremined by their nature, as that is
disclosed by the words of the Holy Ghost. The systematic theologian as well as
the exegete is only an interpreter; the one interprets the words and develops
the revealed truths; the other interprets these separate lessons in their
mutual light and reciprocal relations, and develops the revealed system.
More definitely I affirm, not as a professional
propriety, but as a personal conviction, that the Confession and Catechisms of
the Westminster Assembly contain the system taught in the Holy Scriptures. Or
rather, in the more absolute terms of subscription imposed upon intrants by the
Scottish Presbyterian Churches, “I do sincerely own and believe the WHOLE
DOCTRINE contained in the Confession of Faith, approved by former General
Assemblies of this Church, to be founded upon the Word of God, and do
acknowledge the same as the confession of my personal faith, and will firmly
and constantly adhere thereunto, and to the utmost of my power will assert,
maintain, and defend the same.” This is affirmed, not only because I believe
this “whole doctrine” to be true, but because I also believe this “system of
doctrine” to be the most complete and adequate presentation as yet attained by
the Church of that truth revealed in the Holy Scriptures, which the Holy Ghost
has declared to be “the power of God unto salvation.” For therein Christ and
His work is exhibited in their relation to human needs, experiences, duties,
and destinies, and it is, therefore, the efficient instrument of forming
character, of ruling action, and of effecting salvation.
It is precisely this last position which in the present
day is so earnestly and in such various quarters denied. Besides the numerous
classes of professed unbelievers, who positively reject Christianity, or the
integrity and authority of its records, or at least some of its essential
doctrines, there are many more, because of their position of professed
friendliness, doing incalculably more harm, who, expressing no opinion as to
the objective truthfulness of the church system of doctrines, maintain that it
is at any rate unessential because impractical and unprofitable. Hence, they
insist that the careful elaboration, and the prominent and ceaseless emphasis
which the Church gives to doctrine imperils the interests of religion, by
dividing those otherwise agreed, by rendering the candid examination of new
truth impossible through the bias of foregone conclusions, and by diverting the
attention of Christian people from the great practical and moral interests of
life to matters of barren speculation. They charge the Church with exalting
creed above morals, and faith above character. They insist upon it, that the
norm of Christianity is to be found in the Sermon on the Mount, and as such it
is proved to be a religion of character, not of creed; and hence, that it is
the duty of the Church to regard immoral action as the only heresy.
This tendency to depreciate the importance of clearly
discriminated views of religious truth, rests in the case of different
objectors upon very different grounds, and is carried to very different
degrees. But against this entire tendency, which opposes creed and morals,
faith and character, in all its forms and intensities, we protest, and proclaim
the opposite principle as fundamental,–that truth is in order to holiness, and
that knowledge of the truth is an essential prerequisite to right character and
action.
The force of the objections against the importance of
clearly discriminated truth in the sphere of religion is mainly the result of
the vagueness with which the objections are stated. When it is charged against
the Church, as its record stands in history, that it has subordinated moral and
practical interests to those of scholastic specualtion and party contests,
there is a coloring of truth in the charge which commands attention, and
disguises the real animus and ultimate aim of the objectors.
In order to clear the question of accidental
complications, which constantly confuse the current discussions of it, we make
the following admissions and distinctions:
1st. We concede that one of the sins most easily
besetting theologians has been a tendency to over-refinement in speculation,
over-formality of definition, and an excess of rigidity of system. Logical
notions, creatures of the understanding, have too often been substituted for
the concrete form of spiritual truth presented by the Holy Ghost to faith.
Theologians have often practiced a rationalism as real as that of their modern
opponents, when their ambition to be wise beyond what is written has urged them
to explore and explain divine mysteries, to philosphize on the basis of
scriptural facts, and to form rational theories, as, for instance, of the
relation of the divine and human natures in the person of Christ, and of the
concursus of the first with the second causes in Providence.
2d. We admit also that zeal for doctrine has in too
many instances been narrow and prejudiced, mingled with the infirmities of
personal pride and party spirit, and has hence led to the unnecessary divisions
and alienations of those who were in reality one in faith, and to the
conditioning of communion, and even of salvation, upon unessential points.
Human nature has operated among earnest theological advocates with the
uniformity and blindness of a physical law, leading each to choose a position
as far as possible from his opponent–to unduly emphasize some Scriptures and
depreciate others–to confine his attention to the fragment of truth he
champions, exaggerating its proportions, and denying or minimizing the
qualifying truths represented by his antagonist. This law has led to the
multiplying of special theological tendencies, and to their development in all
possible directions and to every possible extent, and has thus been
providentially overruled to the extension of our knowledge, and to the ultimate
establishment of the truth in wider relations. but the habit is in itself
obviously evil, since for the individuals immediately concerned it sacrifices
the truth as a whole to special elements, which by exaggeration or dissociation
from their natural relations become virtually untruths. This is illustrated in
the whole history of controversies, e.g., between Nestorians and
Monophysites, Lutherans and Reformed as to the person of Christ, between
Supralapsarian Calvinists and Arminians, Churchmen and Puritans, Mystics and
Formalists. It is plainly the duty of the individual to understand, as fully as
possible the position of his respondent, and to incorporate the other’s
fragment of truth with his own into the catholic whole.
3d. We must admit also that some advocates of
theological dogma have lacked the courage of their convictions, and have
betrayed their want of perfect confidence in the foundations on which they have
builded by a disposition to discourage the fearless investigations of new truth
in all directions, and to put an ungenerous interpretation upon all opinions to
which their own minds were unaccustomed.
We claim to be sincere advocates of free investigation,
in the true sense of that word, in every direction open to man. The believer in
the supernatural revelation contained in God’s Word is place on a higher and
more central point of vision than that of the mere naturalist, and he is thus
rendered free of the whole sphere of truth. The true relation of the successive
realms of the universe of being and knowledge can be read by one looking upon
them from within outward and not from without inward, from above downward and
in the direction in which the supreme light of revelation radiates, and not
from below upward upon the side on which the shadows fall.
But it is absurd to suppose that true intellectual
progress consists in a mere change of opinions, or that it is consistent with
the destruction of the foundations which have been laid in the verified
knowledge of the past. Truth once adequately established must be held fast
forever, while we stand prepared to add to it all new truth substantiated by
equal evidence. And it is a law which all educated men should be ready to
acknowledge as axiomatic, that truth in any department once established must
ever after hold the place of valid presumptions, influencing the course of new
investigations in every department. Ruskin well testifies, “It is the law of
progressive human life that we shall not build in the air, but in the already
high-storied temple of the thoughts of our ancestors,” and that any addition
successfully made can “never be without modest submission to the Eternal
Wisdom, nor ever in any great degree except by persons trained reverently in
some large portion of the wisdom of the past.”
It cannot be doubted that what is held by men as truth in
any one department of knowledge must, in the long run, be brought into
conscious adjustment with all that they hold as truth in every other
department. That which is false in philosophy cannot long be believed to be
true in religion, and conversely, that which is false in religion can never be
rightly regarded true in philosophy. Consequently, in the rapid development of
the physical sciences which characterizes the present age, it is inevitable
that there should be serious difficulty in so adjusting all the elements as to
allow us to become clearly conscious of the congruity in all respects of the
new knowledge with the old. It is not to be wondered at even that at several
points there is an apparently irreconcilable antagonism. But when we recall the
obvious distinction between facts and theories, between established knowledge
and provisional hypothesis, we are readily reassured by the recollection it
suggests that the historic track of human thought is strewn with the wrecks of
systems, of cosmogonies, and anthropologies, as certainly believed and as
influential in their day as any of the anti-theological systems of the present
day.
We should unquestionably open our doors wide, with a joy
equal to her own, for all the facts which science gathers in her harvest-time.
But is it not absurd to ask the believers in the great Church Creeds of
Christendom to abandon, to modify, or to mask that ancient and coherent mass of
knowledge which roots itself in the profoundest depths of human nature, and in
all human history, which has verified itself to reason and every phase of
experience for two thousand years, which has moulded the noblest charcters,
inspired the most exalted lives, and inaugurated the very conditions which made
modern science and civilization possible–to modify or abandon all this in
deference to one or the other of the variant and transient speculations which
each in his little day claims to speak in the venerable name of science?
We admit also that all Christian doctrine, like all other
truth, rests on evidence appropriate in kind and adequate in degree. Nor is it
denied that human reason legitimately exercised is the organ by which alone
this divine truth is to be apprehended and its credentials examined and
verified. These evidences ought to be subjected to the most thorough legitimate
examination. He is a false or a mistaken advocate of the truth who would impede
such investigation or who fears the result. Most of those who depreciate
Christian dogma as incapable of certain verification, or as impractical and
unprofitable, simply beg the question as to these evidences. All such we refer
to the Christian Apologist, who is fully prepared to meet all reasonable
demands. At present we assume the truth of our dogma and claim, that being
true, every fragment of it is of transcendcent importance as to the
God-appointed means of effecting the moral and spiritual regeneration of human
character and life.
4th. We moreover admit without hesitation that theologians
must themselves be held to their own principle that truth is in order to
holiness; that the great end of dogma is not the gratification of the taste for
speculation, but the formation of character and the determination of the
activities of our inward and outward life in relation to God and our fellow-men.
There is a patent distinction between the logical and the moral aspects of
truth, between that manner of conceiving and stating it which satisfies the
understanding and that which affects the moral nature and determines
experience. Neither can be neglected without injury to the other. For if the
laws of the understanding are essentially outraged, the moral nature cannot be
either healthfully or permanently affected; that which is apprehended as
logically incongruous by the understanding, cannot be rested in as certainly
true and trusthworthy by the heart and conscience and will. But all the great
doctrines of the Scriptures may be apprehended on the side and in the relations
which immediately determine the moral attitude of the soul in relation to God.
It is possible, for instance, to treat the Biblical teaching as to the sinful
estate into which man has fallen and from which he has been redeemed by Christ,
as a metaphysical or a psychological problem, in which its reality and
bearings, as a matter of experience, may be to a great degree disguised. On the
other hand, it may be set forth, as it always is in Scripture, as it is
realized in consciousness, and as it enters into all religious experience. If,
as is asserted, religious experience is only the personal experience of the
truth of the great doctrines of Christianity, as we are personally concerned
with them, it follows that they must be conceived and stated in a form in which
they admit of being realized in the experience. Any theological method which
sacrifices the moral and experiential aspects of the truth to a metaphysical
and speculative interest will soon lose its hold upon the consciences of men,
and itself experience that law of change which determines the fluctuations of
all mere speculative systems.
With these admissions and distinctions, we return to our
theme, that the truth revealed in the Scriptures, and embraced in what
evangelical Christians style Christian dogma, is the great God-appointed means
of producing in men a holy character and life. at present neither the general
truth of Christianity nor that of any particular system of theology claiming to
represent it, is the question. but the truth of Christianity being assumed, we
affirm that the truths set forth in the Word of God in their mutual relations,
are necessary means of promoting holiness of heart and life. That is, that
dogmatic Christianity is the essential ground of practical Christianity.
1st. This will be made evident when we consider what
Christianity really is and what is the essence of Christian doctrine. Unlike
all philosophies, it is not a speculative system built up on certain principles
or seminal ideas. It is, on the contrary, a divinely authenticated statement of
certain facts concerning God, His nature, His attitude towards man as fallen,
His purpose with regard to man’s redemption from sin, and several stages of His
actual intervention to effect that end. This redemptive work Christ has been,
and is now engaged in accomplishing by several actions in chronological succession.
The revelation of these purposes and redemptive actions has been evolved
through an historic process, the separate facts of which are as definitely
ascertainable as those which constitute any other history. Christian doctrine,
therefore, is just God’s testimony with regard to certain matters of fact, with
which the religious life of the race is bound up. A distinction has been
pressed, beyond all reason, between the matter of fact taught in Scripture and
doctrines which, it is asserted, men have inferred from or have superadded to
the facts, as hypothetical explanations of them. By matters of fact the liberal
school means the external events of Christ’s history as these were observed by
the bodily senses of human witnesses, and assured to us by their testimony; and
these external facts of sense, perception, and nothing more, they admit to be
valid objects of faith, forgetful that a more advanced and consistent school of
their fellow-rationalists overset these external facts just as confidently as they
themselves flippantly relegate dogma to the religion of the unknowable. These
men admit, for instance, that we know, as a matter of “fact,” that Christ died
on the cross, and rose from the dead the third day; but they hold that the
design with which he died or that the relation which His death sustains to
man’s restoration to the divine favor are matters of speculative opinion, but
no matter of “fact.”
The word “fact” in universal usage signifies not merely
an action, a thing done, but as well any objective reality, and by way of
eminence, a reality of which we have adequate certainty, in distinction from a
matter of opinion or probably reality. Now that Christ died and rose again as
our representative, that His death was a vicariously endured penalty, is
plainly as purely a matter of fact, i.e., objective reality,
as definitely and certainly verifiable on the direct testimony of God, as the
dying and rising again themselves. All that a witness in the Hall of
Independence on the 4th of July, 1776, would have seen with his bodily eyes
would have been the physical acts of certain men subscribing their names to a
written paper; that was the optical perception, and nothing more. But no man
would be absurd enough to deny that it is just as much a “fact,” and just as
certain a “fact,” that they subscribed their names as the representatives of
certain political communities, with the design and effect of changing their
political constitutions and relations. The sensible transaction, and its legal
intent and effect were equally matters of “fact” and ascertainable with equal
precision and certainty upon adequate evidence. Now the matter of fact of which
Christian dogmas are the revealed expression and attestation are those which
more than any other conceivable facts are of transcendent importance and of
immediate practical interest to mankind. The tri-personal constitution of the
Godhead, and His essential attributes and eternal purposes–His relation to the
world as Creator, providential Ruler, and moral Governor–His judgment of man’s
present guilt, corruption, and impotence as a sinner–His purposes of grace, and
the provision made for their execution, in the incarnation of the Second Person
of the Trinity, and in the life, death, resurrection, and ascension to
universal dominion of the God-man–the resurrection of the body, the judgment
and eternal condemnation of the finally impenitent and glorification of
believers–these are the FACTS.
In every department of life all practical experience and
activity is constantly determined by the external facts into relation to which
we are brought, and upon our knowledge of and voluntary conformity to these
facts. All modern life, personal, social, and political, is notoriously being
changed through the influence of the facts brought to our knowledge in the
advances of the physical sciences. All moral duties spring out of relations, as
those of husband and wife, parent and child, citizen and community. All
religion is morality lifted up to the sphere of our relations to God, as
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, as Creator, Moral Governor, Redeemer, Sanctifier,
and Father. Our question, at present, is not whether our theological dogmas are
true, but whether, being true, they are of practical importance. Much of the
cavil against their use is only a disingenuous begging the question as to their
truth. We prove them to be true in the department of Apologetics, which draws
upon all the resources of philosophy and historical criticism. And having
proved them to be true, we now assert, in advance, that morality and religion
are possible only so far as these facts are recognized, and our inward and
outward life adjusted to them. It would be incomparably more reasonable to
attempt to accomplish all the offices pertaining to the departments of
agriculture, navigation, and manufactures, while ignoring all the ascertained
facts of the natural world, than it would be to attempt to accomplish the
offices of morality and religion while ignoring the facts of the spiritual
world signified and attested to us in Christian dogma.
2d. Again, our
proposition that knowledge and belief of scriptural truth is the essential
means of the production of holiness in heart and life, may be demonstrated upon
universally admitted psychological principles. Knowledge is the act of the
subject knowing, apprehending the truth. Truth is the object apprehended and
recognized in the act of knowledge. In every act of apprehension there is
required the object to be apprehended, and the apprehensive power upon the part
of the agent apprehending. “The eye sees only that which it brings with it the
power of seeing.” All truth of every kind stands related to the human mind, and
the mind is endowed with constitutional faculties adjusted to it, and effecting
its apprehension. As an actual fact, however, in the present state of the race,
many individuals are found incapable of apprehending and recognizing some kinds
of truth. for the apprehension of some truth a special endowment and
cultivation of the understanding is necessary; for the recognition of other
truth a special temperment and cultivation of tast is requisite, and for the
apprehension of other truth again a special condition and habit of the moral
and spiritual nature. In the actual condition of human nature the truths
revealed in the Scriptures cannot be discerned in their spiritual quality as
the things of God. But when the sould is quickened to a new form of spiritual
life by the baptism of the Holy Ghost, this very truth, now discerned, becomes
the insturment whereby the new spiritual life is sustained and developed. This
accords with the analogy of the constitutional action of the soul in every
sphere of its activity. The perception of beauty depends upon the possession of
the aesthetic faculty. But that being possessed, the aesthetic culture of the
soul depends upon the contemplation of beautiful objects, and the knowledge of
the law of beauty in the endless variety of its forms. It is a law having no
exception that the exercise of the perceptive faculty necessarily precedes and
conditions the exercise of the affections and the will. Beauty must be
apprehended before it can be appreciated and loved. Moral truth must be
apprehended before it can be loved or chosen, and only thus can the moral
affections be trained and strengthened. Mere feeling and mere willing without
knowledge are absolutely impossible experiences, and if possible, they would be
irrational and immoral. It is the grand distinction of Christianity that it is
ethical and not magical in all its processes and spirit. It rests on facts. It
moves in the sphere of personal relations. It is a spiritual power acting
through the instrumentality of truth addressed to the reason, and made
effectual upon the soul by the power of the Divine Spirit. And the truth,
through the medium of knowledge spiritualized, acts on the emotions and will,
and transforms character and governs life.
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