Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 61:241 (Jan 1904)
Article: Professor Park’s Theological System
Author: Frank Hugh Foster

BSac 61:241 (Jan 1904) p. 55

Professor Park’s Theological System1

Rev. Frank Hugh Foster

The Bible having now been established as the means of the divine revelation, the doctrines peculiar to the Bible can be introduced. Of these the first examined is

The Trinity

Park’s treatment of this theme is determined by his historical situation. New England was not yet out of the period of the Unitarian controversy when he began his professional work, and the antithesis to Unitarianism remained throughout his entire career more distinctive of the theological condition of things than any other element. Hence Park devoted an unusual amount of space to the doctrine of the Trinity. But this did not lead him to go into such discussions as fill Augustine’s treatise, or make up what Dr. Hodge would call the “protestant doctrine.” The great portion of this unusual space was devoted to the central part of the Unitarian denial,—to the divinity of Christ. As to the rest, Park followed historically, and for substance of teaching, Moses Stuart, who had met many of the Unitarian denials by abandoning indefensible positions and concentrating his forces on the central elements of the truth. Stuart had abandoned the word “person” as descriptive of the three elements of the Trinity, substituting for it the less objectionable word “distinction.” With this had gone a great mass of pseudo-biblical and philosophically untenable theological barnacles,

BSac 61:241 (Jan 1904) p. 56

such as the “eternal generation “of the Son, and the “procession “of the Spirit. And, in general, Stuart had confined himself to the simple results of Nice and Chalcedon,—one God in three ontological and eternal distinctions, one Christ in two natures, human and divine. Park also refused to advance beyond this point, affirming our ignorance of many things. “On this doctrine,” he says, “we must be careful not to know too much.” “The profit of the doctrine of the Trinity is derived in some degree from the fact of its mysteriousness.” He thus relieved his pupils of many difficulties which proved highly perplexing to others who had been taught to identify all the forms of this doctrine with its substance, when in the process of time, the discussions of the new era of criticism and evolution had begun. They had comparatively little to “unload.”

The path of approach to the subject was determined by the inductive method of investigation, which Park had adopted, and of which many an example has already been given in the discussions of the order of his arguments. He begins the Trinity with the doctrine which historically led to it, the nature of Christ; and this he begins at the point nearest to the inv...