Dogmatic Form.
2. The second is the method adopted by those who admit a su- pernatural divine revektion, and concede that such a revelation is contained in the Christian Scriptures, but who reduce all the doc- trines thus revealed to the forms of some philosophical system. This was done by many of the fathers who endeavored to exalt TTicTTis into y^coCTi?, i. g,, the faith of the common people into philoso- phy for the learned. This was also to a greater or less degree the n\ethod of the schoolmen, and finds an illustration even in the " Cur Deus Homo " of Ansel m, the father of scholastic theology. In later times Wolf applied the philosophy of Leibnitz to the ex- planation and demonstration of the doctrines of revelation. He says, " Scripture serves as an aid to natui'al theology. It furnishes natural theology with propositions which ought to be demonstrated ; consequently the philosopher is bound not to invent but to demon- strate." ^ This method is still in vogue. Men lay down certain principles, called axioms, or first truths of reason, and from them deduce the doctrines of religion by a course of argument as rigid and remorseless as that of Euclid. This is sometimes done to the entire overthrow of the doctrines of the Bible, and of the most in- timate moral convictions not only of Christians but of the mass of mankind. Conscience is not allowed to mutter in the presence of the lordly understanding. It is in the spirit of the same method that the old scholastic doctrine of realism is made the basis of the Scriptural doctrines of original sin and redemption. To this method the somewhat ambiguous term Dogmatism has been applied, be- cause it attempts to reconcile the doctrines of Scripture with reason, and to rest their authority on rational evidence. The result of this method has always been to transmute, as far as it succeeded, faith into knowledge, and to attain this end the teachings of the Bible have been indefinitely modified. Men are expected to be- lieve, not on the authority of God, but on that of reason.
Ti'anseendentalists.
3. Thirdly, and preeminently, the modern Transcendentalists are addicted to the speculative method. In the wide sense of the word they are Rationalists, as they admit of no higher source of truth than Reason. But as they make reason to be something very dif- ferent from what it is regarded as being by ordinary Rationalists, the two classes are practically very far apart. The Transcendentalists
1 Theol. Nat. Prolegg. § 22 ; Fiankf and Leipz. 1736, vol. i. p. 22.
6 INTRODUCTION. [Ch. L — Method.
also differ essentially from the Dogmatists. The latter admit an ex- ternal, supernatural, and authoritative revelation. They acknowl- edge that truths not discoverable by human reason are thereby made known. But they maintain that those doctrines when known may be shown to be true on the principles of reason. They undertake to give a demonstration independent of Scripture of the doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation, Redemption, as well as of the im- mortality of the soul and a future state of retribution. Transcen- dentalists admit of no authoritative revelation other than that which is found in man and in the historical development of the race. All truth is to be discovered and established by a process of thought. If it be conceded that the Bible contains truth, it is only so far as it coincides with the teachings of philosophy. The same concession is freely made concerning the writings of the heathen sages. The theology of Daub, for example, is nothing more than the philosophy of Schelling. That is, it teaches just what that philosophy teaches concerning God, man, sin, redemption, and the future state. Mar- heinecke and Strauss find Hegelianism in the Bible, and they therefore admit that so far the Bible teaches truth. Rosenkranz, a philosopher of the same school, says Christianity is the absolute religion, because its fundamental principle, namely, the oneness of God and man, is the fundamental principle of his philosophy. In his " Encyklopadie " (p. 3) he says : " The only religion which con- forms to reason is Christianity, because it regards man as the form in which God has revealed himself. Its theology is therefore an- thropology, and its anthropology is theology. The idea of (Gott- menschheit) the godhead of man, is the key of Christianity, in which as Lessing says, lies its rationality."
These are the principal forms of the speculative method in its application to theology. These topics will present themselves for fuller consideration in a subsequent chapter.
§ 4. The Mystical Method. Few words have been used with greater latitude of meaning than mysticism. It is here to be taken in a sense antithetical to specu- lation. Speculation is a process of thought ; mysticism is matter of feeling. The one assumes that the thinking faculty is that by which we attain the knowledge of truth. The other, distrusting reason, teaches that the feelings alone are to be relied upon, at least in the sphere of religion. Although this method has been unduly pressed, and systems of theology have been constructed under its guidance, which are either entirely independent of the Scriptures,