Chapter 111
Theology and doctrine; reasoning about God and sacred teaching; scripture and its interpretation.
366 passages · 138 principal · Covers the 49 volumes of primary texts
Theology, in the sense these books give it, is reasoning about God and sacred teaching. It covers the doctrines of God’s nature and the Trinity, of Christ and the sacraments, of grace, salvation and the last things, and above all the principles by which Scripture is to be read and judged. It is a great idea for the Harvard Classics because so many of the authors gathered there, from Paul and Augustine through Dante, Luther and Pascal to Emerson and Huxley, define themselves by their stand toward it. Some treat it as the crown of learning, some as a poison, some as a burden to be lightened by reason. The question of what theology is cannot be separated from the question of who has the right to do it.
Calvin states the classical ambition plainly. His Institutes are organized around the knowledge of God and of ourselves, ordered by the four parts of the Creed1. Pascal goes further and calls theology the centre of all truths. In his view the Gospel completes the partial views that philosophers took of man’s greatness and his weakness2, and theology is a science that contains many sciences3. Cervantes and Sidney both set divinity apart from every human study, because its end is to bring souls to heaven and its scope exceeds others as eternity exceeds a moment4,5. Milton’s plan of education accordingly reserves Sundays for the highest matters of theology and for Scripture in the original tongues6. Carlyle recalls that the universities were founded with theology as their aim, and he takes theology broadly as the study of the universe and of our relation to it7. George Long shows that this ambition is older than Christianity: for Marcus Aurelius, physics, theology and ethics were inseparable, since the study of nature was also the study of the Deity’s government of the world8,9.
Against this lofty view stands a democratic one. Channing holds that all theology is summed up in the idea of God. A laborer can hold that idea without libraries, and the true theologian is anyone who purifies and enlarges his conception of God by thought and obedience10,11. In Channing’s judgment, the artificial systems of the theologians have only displaced the plain precepts of love and justice12. From here it is a short step to open hostility. Goethe’s Mephistopheles warns that theology hides a poison no one can tell from medicine, and he mocks the doctrine of three and one as error passed off as truth13,14. Hobbes finds the scholastic doctrines of the Trinity, transubstantiation and free will unintelligible once they are translated15. Emerson judges that life has run ahead of theology. Popular theology, he says, has gained decorum but not principle16,17, and its cure lies in motherwit rather than in theological discipline18. The denials then multiply in different directions. Ruskin warns women away from theology as a dangerous science in which the wisest have erred19. Renan prefers frank mythology to a colorless rational theology20. Huxley approves the banishment of theology from a scientific college21.
Underneath these quarrels lies the deeper question of how reason stands to revelation. Dante’s Virgil gives the medieval answer: reason cannot explore the Trinity, and if reason had sufficed, no revelation would have been needed22. Thomas à Kempis forbids curious searching into the Sacrament and counsels following the Fathers23. Bacon and Descartes, for all their novelty, agree that revealed truths exceed reason and that the understanding must submit to the divine oracles24,25. Browne even delights in the Trinity and the Incarnation as enigmas26. Yet he distinguishes points of faith from mere common tenets, and on the latter he thinks reason may dispute freely27. Hume echoes the old caution, but with a different edge: unassisted reason, he says, falls into contradictions on these mysteries28. He also calls those who defend Christianity by reason its “dangerous friends”29, and he places its best foundation in faith alone30.
Natural theology divides the moderns. Browne speaks of two books of divinity, Scripture and nature, and he grants that the heathen read the second better than Christians do31. Pascal answers that arguments drawn from the moon and planets make the Christian proofs look weak. He notes that no canonical writer ever proved God from nature32,33, and he holds that mere worship of a great and eternal God misunderstands Christianity34. Rousseau’s Savoyard Vicar draws all his theology from surveying the universe35,36. From that ground he asks whether revelation does not rather debase the Deity, clothing him in human passions and adding absurdities to the divine mysteries37,38. In the end the Vicar finds the proofs and objections balanced, and he refuses any obligation to submit39. Kant cuts deeper still. He denies that morality can be derived from God’s perfect will, because we have no intuition of that perfection and the argument runs in a circle40. Lessing tries reconciliation instead. He conceives revelation as the educator of humanity41, and he suggests that the Trinity, original sin and the Son’s satisfaction may in time become truths reason itself can grasp42. Bagehot marks the change of temper. Milton had boldly set out to justify the ways of God, while Butler’s Analogy merely shows that difficulties attend natural religion as much as revealed, and so admits the limits of human understanding43,44.
Once revelation is granted, a second question follows: what authority governs doctrine? Dante complains that Scripture is made to yield to human authority while vain disputers in the schools darken the truth. The apostles, he says, needed only the Gospel as spear and shield45,46. Luther presses the same complaint into a program. Theologians, he charges, neglect the Bible for the Sentences, which bring in heathen fallacies, and only the Holy Ghost makes a true doctor of Scripture47,48. Calvin adds that the Fathers were fallible and inconsistent, so doctrine must be settled by Scripture and not by their authority49. Bacon likens the schoolmen to astronomers inventing epicycles to save the phenomena50. Hobbes blames the importation of Aristotle for absurdities that discredited the clergy51. Pascal, by contrast, holds that in theology authority is inseparable from truth. Reasoning alone is wicked there, he says, and novelty is condemned52,53. Rousseau replies that a church which determines its own right to determine is reasoning in a circle54. Browne steers between the parties. He keeps the faith of the Apostles and Fathers as the reformers restored it55, and he dismisses idle questions, such as whether Adam was a hermaphrodite, as unworthy of study56. Huxley looks back on the whole medieval arrangement as one in which Scripture and dogma served as infallible axioms from which philosophy deduced its conclusions57.
The Reformation turned on who may interpret. Luther rejects the papal monopoly: the pope can err, the keys were given to the whole community, and an ordinary believer may understand Scripture better58,59,60. Calvin binds interpretation to the analogy of faith61. Browne calls every interpretation a fallible human discourse on God’s word62. The Koran, approaching from outside this quarrel, distinguishes decisive verses from ambiguous ones. It declares that only God knows the interpretation of the latter, and that the perverse are the ones who follow them63.
Most of these authors agree that Scripture is not plain. In Acts the Ethiopian cannot understand Isaiah without Philip to guide him64. Augustine finds Scripture lowly in its entrance but lofty in its recesses, veiled from the proud65. Thomas à Kempis says that the words come through men but that God alone reveals their sense66. Pascal argues that the obscurities serve the elect and blind the rest67. He also warns that whoever takes the meaning of Scripture from outside it is its enemy68.
The positive theory of interpretation is most fully worked out by Pascal. He holds that Scripture has two senses, literal and mystical, and that Christ himself gave the key to them69,70. His argument is that literal temporal blessings are unworthy of God, so the Old Testament must be figurative71. Yet he mocks the extravagant readings of the Millenarians72 and forbids ascribing to Scripture any meaning it has not revealed73. The root of this typology lies in the New Testament itself. Paul speaks of a veil over Israel’s reading, lifted only in Christ74. The risen Jesus expounds to the travelers at Emmaus everything in the Scriptures concerning himself75, and Paul in Acts reads the psalms as fulfilled in the resurrection76. Augustine learns from Ambrose to read the image of God spiritually rather than as a human shape77. Bunyan reads Mount Sinai as the bondage of the Law78, and Malory sets the new law of faith and baptism against the old79.
The moderns also learned how easily texts could be turned to opposite uses. More’s jester and friar quote Scripture against each other80, and Copernicus brushes aside critics who twist Scripture against his astronomy81. Hobbes reads the Gospel demoniacs as madmen, on the ground that Scripture aims at obedience to God and not at natural philosophy82. Berkeley, for his part, finds the plain sense of Genesis friendlier to immaterialism than to materialism83,84. Browne allows that Scripture speaks in accommodated, vulgar language85. Goethe’s Faust renders John’s “Word” in turn as Sense, Power and Deed86. Ruskin observes that sermons on damnation rest on a forceful translation of a Greek word87.
The doctrine of God divides these books most sharply over the Trinity. Calvin treats unity of essence and trinity of persons as matters revealed in Scripture88. Browne illustrates the Trinity by a triangle and by the faculties of the soul89. Bunyan’s catechism assigns to each person a distinct work of salvation: the Father saves by grace, the Son by his blood, the Spirit by illumination90. Coleridge, as Emerson reports him, defends the Trinity against the Unitarians91. On the other side, the Koran forbids men to “say not Three” and calls Jesus apostle and Word of God, not son92,93. Voltaire records the English Arians, who held the Father greater than the Son94. Bagehot finds Milton himself departing from the Athanasian creed in making the Son generated in time95,96. Browne, characteristically, thinks that even deniers of the Trinity keep some conception of God97. The attributes of God raise the harder question of justifying his ways. Pascal holds that Scripture names God as hidden and found only by those who seek98. Bagehot thinks Milton’s unequal match between Satan and our first parents burdens theology rather than justifying God99.
On Christ, Augustine records a decisive discovery. The Platonist books taught him of the Word through whom all things were made, but not that the Word became flesh100,101. The Incarnation, he says, was Wisdom feeding our infant state102. Dante’s Beatrice argues that it was the worthiest remedy, because man could not atone by humility, and so God gave himself103. Pascal treats the two natures as the model of every orthodox balance. The Church found it as hard to defend Christ’s humanity as his divinity, and each heresy grasps one truth and denies the other104,105. Augustine calls Christ Priest, Victim, Victor and Mediator106. Bunyan’s Great-heart teaches that Christ died our death, so that his obedience is imputed to sinners107,108. Pascal raises the question whether redemption is universal. He answers that it was offered to all, though Christ is not perhaps master of all, and he holds that Semi-Pelagians and Calvinists both err by confusing grace’s general and particular effects109,110,111. The Eucharist is a mystery beyond the angels for Thomas à Kempis112 and a delusion of St. Thomas for Luther113. Pascal holds real presence and commemorative type together114. The Quakers in Voltaire’s account deny from Scripture that Christ commanded baptism with water115.
Salvation was the Reformers’ center. Luther argues that faith alone justifies. He divides Scripture into precepts and promises: the precepts show sin, and the promises give what the precepts exact116,117,118. He adds that law and grace must both be preached119. Calvin and Bunyan elaborate the doctrine of imputed righteousness120,121. Even Hobbes concedes that no man merits Paradise by his own righteousness122. The doctrine of grace reaches back before the Reformation. Dante’s Bernard teaches that degrees of glory are assigned by grace and not by merit123, and Thomas à Kempis says that God’s hidden judgments must be revered, not disputed124,125. Calvin defends grace against free will126. Browne, while grounding salvation in election, refuses to judge who is saved127,128. The poets react against the doctrine of election. Burns’s Holy Willie praises a God who sends one to heaven and ten to hell regardless of deeds129, and Tennyson trusts mercy over reprobation130. On the last things, Dante holds that none were saved before Christ’s descent131. Browne excludes even virtuous pagans from heaven, yet he speculates freely on the nature of hell’s fire132,133.
Heresy, finally, is the shadow that orthodoxy casts. Dante compares Sabellius and Arius to warped mirrors134, and Augustine judges the Manichees blasphemous135. Pascal thinks heresy is best prevented by teaching all the truths together136. Burns ridicules the clergy who condemned Dr. M’Gill for joining faith with sense137. The quarrel between Rome and the Reformers gathered round a few points. Luther denies that indulgences confer holiness138. Calvin insists that doctrine must test miracles and not the reverse139, and he charges that Rome sets the Church above Scripture140. Donne, as Walton portrays him, surveyed the whole controverted body of divinity before choosing his side141.
Several questions remain open across these pages. Some ask whether theology is a science, a mystery or an artifice. Others ask whether revelation completes reason or offends it, and whether Scripture speaks plainly to every believer or only through a guide. Mill’s counsel, that theologians must face difficulties in their most puzzling form142, suits the whole conversation. So does Whittier’s refusal to let any scheme fix the bounds of God’s love143.
Introductory essay written by Claude Opus 5.5 from the outline and the notes on every passage below; quotations are checked against this edition.
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