Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 57:225 (Jan 1900)
Article: Modern Theology In Its Relation To Personal Piety And Christian Work
Author: Hugh Macdonald Scott

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Modern Theology In Its Relation To Personal Piety And Christian Work

Professor Hugh M. Scott

Religion is union with God; and theology is the science of such union. All upward-moving impulses of man’s nature, whether longings of the heart or generalizations of the intellect, lead towards the Divine. Justin Martyr tells us he learned in the school of Plato that “the end of all philosophy is to see God.”1 The great desire of Moses, “the man of God,” was to behold the glory of the Lord. And the heart of every Christian hope is to find in Jesus Christ the way to our Father in heaven. What the devout Greek sought after, and what the godly Hebrew hoped for, is given the believer in Christ; for he not only taught us that the pure in heart shall see God, but went on to declare that whoever truly saw the Son of God saw the Father also. Here, then, is the source of Christian piety and the source of Christian theology, the union of God and man through “the God-man,” as Origen called him, even Jesus Christ. The heathen worships the Divine Nature; the Jew adores the Divine Spirit; but the Chris-

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tian becomes one with God through fellowship with the Divine Man.2 In these three ways of approach to the Divine we find invincible evidence, growing in its cogency, for the existence of God, and man’s vital relation to him. Through the approach of the Gentile, we see God in the universe, and learn of him by thinking over his thoughts after him. Through the theocratic approach of the Jew, through law and prophecy and holy of holies, we hear the voice of the Judge of all the earth, whose awful categorical imperative, “Thou shalt,” echoing in every soul of man, declares him responsible, and responsible to God. But especially in Jesus, the new and living way of approach, does God tell us all that human speech can reveal, and all that human life can illustrate, of the character, will, and love of God. It is certainly true, as the Ritschl school of theologians have powerfully set forth, that in reading the Gospel accounts of Jesus, in listening to his words, and in reverently looking into the profound depths of his consciousness of the ever-indwelling, abiding presence of God, we receive an overwhelming conviction that God is, that he loves man, and that he is a rewarder of all them that diligently seek him. He is, for us, the fullness of the Godhead bodily to meet all the emptiness of our hearts and lives.

It is gratifying to observe that, at this point, there is substantial agreement among Christian theologians. Herrmann says, they all understand personal Christianity to be a communion of the soul with the ...