_19_Theology and System

Does theology constitute a system? The answer depends on the definition of the term system.190

If by system we mean an integrated, organized whole, the Christian doctrine is indeed a system. Inasmuch as the Christian doctrine is taken solely from Scripture, it forms a complete, unified, homogeneous whole in a twofold respect; namely, as to its source [formal principle] and its Leitmotif [material principle]. (1) Scripture does not contain varying human types of doctrine (e. g., a Mosaic, Johannine, Petrine, Pauline type), but presents the uniform theology of God, since it is divinely inspired and absolutely errorless.191 (2) Since the Christian doctrine is taken solely from Scripture, the doctrine of justification is the central doctrine, of which all other doctrines are either antecedents (articuli antecedentes) or consequents (articuli consequentes).192 Such an integration and correlation of the Christian doctrines was not devised by Luther and the Lutheran dogmaticians, but is set down in Holy Scripture as a fact. When Paul asserts, on the one hand, “I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God” (Acts 20:27), and declares, on the other hand, “I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and Him Crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2), he thereby teaches that the forgiveness of sins gained by the reconciling death of Christ is the center of the entire Christian doctrine. Peter likewise declares that justification by faith in Christ is the central teaching of the whole Old Testament Scripture. He says: “To Him [Christ] give all the Prophets witness, that through His name whosoever believeth in Him shall receive remission of sins” (Acts 10:43).

Furthermore, the close inner connection of the whole Christian doctrine is evident from the fact that the perversion of any part of the Christian doctrine will in the natural course vitiate the whole body of doctrine.193 For instance, the denial that Scripture is God’s own infallible Word affects the whole body of the Christian doctrine. For if Scripture is not God’s Word, it is no longer God and His Word that determines what is Christian doctrine, but the theologizing human Ego. Again, if the metaphysical deity of Christ is denied, the satisfactio vicaria falls (Rom. 5:10; 8:32; 1 John 1:7), and if the satisfactio vicaria is denied, there can be no forgiveness of sins by faith without the deeds of the Law; no means of grace, means which ex parte Dei convey the forgiveness of sins and ex parte hominis require nothing but faith; no Christian Church, for the Christian Church is the communion of believers; no salvation, for salvation is obtained by faith in Christ.194 Luther: “In philosophy a small error in the beginning is a very serious error in the end. So also in theology a slight error will destroy the whole doctrine…. For the doctrine is like a mathematical point; it cannot be divided, that is, it cannot brook either subtraction or addition…. Hence the doctrine must be one continuous and round golden ring, in which there is no break. If even the least break occurs, the ring is no longer perfect.” (St. L. IX:644 f.) Luther thus declares, most emphatically, that the Christian doctrine is a unit, all its parts closely interconnected, and in this sense, a “system.”

Another fact which shows that the Christian doctrines are a unit, with the doctrine of justification by faith the unifying factor, is this, that unless a man believes the article of justification, he actually does not believe any of the other articles of the Christian faith. He may accept the articles, for instance, of the Trinity and of the Person of Christ, with a fides humana, but he cannot accept them with the fides divina, which the Holy Ghost produces, unless he believes in justification by faith, for only through faith in justification does the Holy Spirit enter the heart (Gal. 3:1-3). Only he who believes through the operation of the Holy Ghost that God has forgiven his sins for the sake of Christ’s satisfactio vicaria will also believe, through the operation of the Holy Ghost, that there is none other God but one, that God is triune, that Christ is God and Man, that there is a resurrection of the dead and an eternal life, etc. Most assuredly, the Christian doctrine, in which everything hinges on the article of justification, is “one continuous and round golden ring,” a perfect “system.”

However, we prefer not to call the Christian doctrine a “system,” because modern theology commonly uses this term in a sense in which theology definitely is not a system.

If by “system” is meant the logical arrangement of certain laws which have been derived and deduced from one fundamental principle by pure thought, in disregard of the actual facts (speculative system), then theology certainly is not a system. Systems of that kind are in place only where one is not dealing with things as they actually exist but only with ideal things, as is the case in “pure” mathematics, as distinguished from “applied” mathematics. They are not in place in the field of natural science and history, much less in theology. To apply the methods of the speculative systematizer to science and history is not only unscientific, but also downright nonsensical, because it proceeds on the assumption that facts are obedient to human thinking. Philosophical idealism has been justly called a derangement of the human mind, in which man labors under the obsession that his thoughts (ideas) are the rule and measure of things. Edm. Hoppe remarks in Der Alte Glaube: “Nature” [and he might have added history] “is not so obliging as to follow the diagram of the textbook.”195 Much less may the speculative systematizer intrude into the field of theology, because the Christian doctrine is fixed by Scripture. It is a finished product, which no human thinking may or can change in the least. Here every addition and every subtraction is absolutely and expressly forbidden (Joshua 23:6; Matt. 5:17-19; John 10:35; 8:31; Gal. 1:6-9). It is not the business of the theologian to deduce, through a process of thought, the Christian doctrine from some one fundamental principle or from some one fact, e. g., from the fact of regeneration, nor to construct it from the so-called “whole of Scripture,” which is a logical monstrosity. His work is limited to drawing the Christian doctrine in all its parts directly from those Scripture statements that treat the respective doctrine (sedes doctrinae). When we arrange all the Scriptural statements concerning the various doctrines under the proper heads, we have that well-ordered system of Christian doctrine which we need in this life; and God will not have us ask for something better.

It is, of course, not our business to construct a perfectly logical system and harmonize the various doctrines to suit human reason. We take the doctrines as Scriptures present them. Under this method, gaps (lacunae) remain in this life for our human understanding. Take, for example, the Scripture doctrines of salvation sola Dei gratia and damnation sola hominum culpa, a matter we have already discussed. Both doctrines are clearly revealed in Scripture. But whoever attempts to harmonize these two doctrines in the interest of a logical system will adulterate either the one or the other and will become either a Calvinist or a synergist. The attempts to remove the contradiction which reason finds in the Scripture statements on the Trinity have led to monarchianism on the one hand and to tritheism on the other. Most modern theologians have tried to unify “rationally” what Scripture says concerning the person of Christ (verus Deus and verus homo). As a result they have rejected the “two-nature doctrine” and occupy a position extra ecclesiam. Whoever seeks to “unify” the theological knowledge over and beyond the revelation of Scripture forfeits eo ipso the knowledge which deserves the designation “theological.” In order to forestall any attempts on our part to supply these “gaps,” Paul reminds the theologians of all times that our knowledge of divine matters in this life is a fragmentary one: “We know in part, and we prophesy in part” (1 Cor. 13:9).

Because of the importance of this subject, we shall expand some of the points already touched upon.

1. There is only one book in the world which possesses the quality of perfect unity, and that is the Bible. Though its writers were men of widely different culture and a period of about 1,500 years separated the last from the first writer, the Bible owes its perfect and inerrant unity to the fact that it was written by the inspiration of God. For that we have the authoritative declarations of Christ and His Apostles relative to both the New and the Old Testament in all their parts (John 10:35; 2 Tim. 3:16; 1 Pet. 1:10-11; 2 Pet. 1:21; John 17:14, 17; 8:31-32).

2. Since modern theology denies that Scripture is a “harmonious whole,” it calls upon the “pious consciousness,” the “religious experience,” the “regenerate Ego” of the human subject, to construct this “harmonious whole” of theology. It is confident that this “pious self-consciousness” can do that and has done it. But a closer examination of their pronouncements reveals that they are not so sure after all that the thing has been accomplished. They admit, first, that the pious Ego or the religious experience, which was to take the place of the allegedly unreliable Scripture, is, after all, also somewhat unreliable; they realize that where the human factor enters, one must always reckon with the possibility of self-delusion. They admit, furthermore, that the Ego method has produced uncounted divergencies and that this cornucopia of divergencies will certainly continue to pour out its wealth. Would you call this heterogeneous conglomeration a “harmonious whole”? What is more, they concede both that Holy Scripture should be regarded as an “authentic record” of God’s revelation in history and that the writers of the holy books were at any rate “nearer” to God’s revelation than we, who have appeared upon the scene so much later, after so many centuries. These admissions certainly suggest that for the purpose of obtaining a “unified whole” it might well be more sensible and safer to abide by Scripture than to take recourse to the pious self-consciousness of the theologizing subject, which is subject to self-delusions and actually has given birth to uncounted divergencies.

3. If we would escape the deceptions which are involved in the attempts to construct a human system of theology, we must ever bear in mind that in theology we deal with given and unalterable facts, which human reasoning and the alleged needs of the “system” cannot change in the least. There is, as has been pointed out, an analogy here between natural history and theology. Natural history studies the observable data in the realm of nature; its business is to observe the facts. All human knowledge of natural phenomena extends only so far as man’s observation and experience of the given facts extends. The true scientist does not determine the nature and characteristics of plants and animals according to a preconceived and hypothetical system. In other words: the naturalist does not make or construct his system, but he finds it and adopts it as it has actually impressed itself on the plants or animals to be classified. Where the conjecture, theory, and speculation of the naturalist begins, there the science of natural history ends. Recall Hoppe’s remark: “Nature is not so obliging as to follow the theory of the textbook.”

This matter has been aptly illustrated by contrasting railroad systems and mountain systems. A railroad system is conceived in the mind of the builders before it exists; its construction follows the blueprint drawn up by the engineers. The mountain system, on the other hand, does not follow our blueprints. We can only report our findings regarding its characteristics, the relation of the different mountain ranges to each other, etc., as we find them. The theologian is dealing with a fixed and unchangeable fact, the Word of God which Christ gave His Church through His Apostles and Prophets. God’s Word is a constant, as the laws of nature are constants. As little as we can change those laws, but accept them as they are, so little can we alter the Word of Christ; the Church and its teachers must receive it as it is. It is the business of the scientist to “observe the data.” And the “datum” which the theologian “observes” is the Word of Christ. There are no other “data.” It is God’s ordinance that we continue in the Word of Christ, teach solely out of the mouth of the Lord, and not out of our Ego or the Ego of others (John 8:31-32; Jer. 23:16). The teaching that comes from any other source than the mouth of God is chaff among the wheat, a delusion and deception, and cannot be tolerated in God’s house, in the Christian Church. It is certain, then, that in theology there is no room whatever for human speculation or — and this amounts to the same thing — for the systematizing of theology in the interest of a rational comprehension of the truths of Christianity. Let us not attempt to use our own thoughts to fill the gaps which the revealed Word of God presents to our limited understanding. From 1 Cor. 13:9 we learn that the fragmentary knowledge of divine things is the normal state of the Christian in this life.

One more remark on this point. The modern theologians are inconsistent when they claim that the theologian can construct a unified system on the basis of his subjective experience. Before the scientist can construct a unified system, the scientist must know his subject thoroughly and be fully acquainted with all the facts. All theologians are agreed that the subject of theology is God, who, as even natural reason testifies, is infinite and incomprehensible. From their own Ego standpoint the moderns should see that the attempt to construct a unified system of the divine truth is a titanic undertaking, one that is doomed to failure, and therefore they should abandon it.

4. In his examination of the systematizing method of Hofmann, Kiiefoth has clearly shown when the term theology can be called a system and when not.196 Kliefoth writes: “Starting with the fact of his personal faith, in the simplest form of its self-expression, Hofmann would deduce from it, with absolute necessity, the whole of the Christian doctrine; not only the doctrine of the Church, but also Holy Scripture must be totally disregarded. In other words, this fact (personal faith), as it expresses itself, must unfold itself into the entire body of the Christian doctrine, and this with absolute necessity, without adding anything from any other source. Thus I have understood von Hofmann’s method, and I have shown from his own statements that I have understood him correctly. Now, there are only two modes of systematic treatment. The one aims merely to arrange the facts logically, in agreement with their nature. It deals with empirical [existing, actual] material. It thus has these two characteristics: First, it always works vis-à-vis its empirical material; its sole province is to observe this empirical material and put it into the proper order. Secondly, an orderly arrangement of the empirical material will produce a homogeneous whole, that is, a system only if this material itself is a whole…. The speculative philosophers of all times employ a radically different mode. They start with some fundamental principle and, rejecting all empiricism, would have this fundamental thought unfold into an entire system of propositions, hoping that this process of development, working by absolute necessity, will make the system and its component propositions so correct and certain that it not only agrees with all that we learn through empiricism, but also provides the right key to the empirical knowledge…. We see at once that the speculative mode of building a system, which on principle ignores empiricism, is something entirely different from the first mode, which simply arranges the knowledge gained by observation in conformity with its subject matter. There is no doubt in my mind that the speculative method cannot be applied, either wholly or in part, to the doctrine of salvation, for God has revealed His salvation historically, by Word and work; it is therefore His will that we obtain the knowledge of it in the empirical way. And it is just as certain and self-evident that only the first, the empirical method of systematic treatment, can be applied to the doctrine of salvation; indeed, more than any other branch of knowledge the doctrine of salvation calls for the empirical method; because the words and works of God for our salvation certainly are in themselves a harmonious whole. That is the reason why all Christian dogmaticians of all times have employed this method. And together with these dogmaticians I insist upon the observance of all the laws of this method, viz., in forming a Christian system of theology the theologian is bound, absolutely, by God’s revelation…. Von Hofmann, as his own statements show, has no use for the empirical mode of systematic treatment; it is not sufficiently scientific. He recommends the speculative mode. He really attempts to develop the whole of the Christian doctrine from some certain fundamental thought, he really believes that from it all the rest follows with absolute necessity, he actually demands that Scripture and the doctrine of the Church be disregarded in this process and assures us that the results produced by his method will agree with the teaching of Scripture and the Church…. Hofmann claims that his systematic method is essentially the same as the scientific method which Augustine employed. However, there is not a word in Augustine’s theology about ‘this deducing and self-unfolding with absolute necessity’ and this ‘disregarding Scripture,’ not one word. Nor can Hofmann’s systematic mode be regarded as an intensification of the method of the earlier dogmaticians. There is a difference in kind between these two methods. The earlier dogmaticians were empirics; Hofmann speculates.”

5. The modern systematizers claim Luther as a protagonist of their method. They claim that the Reformer of the Church “genetically developed” the entire body of the Christian doctrine from the article of justification. Thus, for instance, Luthardt: “If dogmatics is to be the systematic presentation of the Christian faith, it must genetically develop the entire body of the Christian doctrine from one fundamental unit. It must not merely deduce it from some first principle, but must unfold the truths of Christianity as summarized in this first principle. This genetic principle is for Luther the article of justification by faith: ‘In it,’ Luther says, ‘David holds before our eyes the sum of the whole Christian doctrine; it is the dear bright sun which illumines the Christian congregation. If this article is grasped and retained in sure and firm faith, the others, too, will come and gradually follow, as the article of the Trinity, etc.’ ‘If this doctrine stands, the Church stands, etc.’ On Gal. 3:13: ‘We must therefore diligently learn the article of justification, as I often admonish you. For all the other articles of our faith are comprehended in it, and if it remains sound, then all the rest are sound.’ [St. L. IX:376.] But the later dogmaticians did not follow through with this thought; they designated the Scriptures (in opposition to the Roman fundamental article of the infallibility of the Pope; cf. Gerhard, Conf. Cathol., I, 2, 1, p. 71) as unicum principium cognoscendi, from which the doctrines were not only proved, but also developed.” 197 It is a fiction that Luther and the “later dogmaticians” are at variance. In the first place, what Luther says about the central position of the doctrine of justification, viz., that this article contains the sum of the whole Christian doctrine, that it illuminates all other doctrines and secures their integrity, etc., is exactly what the Lutheran dogmaticians say when, e. g., they relate all other articles to the doctrine of justification and describe them as articuli antecedentes and consequentes.198 And in the second place, Luther proclaims, if anything more forcefully, the very teaching which according to Luthardt distinguishes the dogmaticians from Luther, viz., that for them Scripture was unicum principium cognoscendi, not only the norm of doctrine, but also the sole source of doctrine. Luther had no patience with those who by-passed Scripture and “constructed” doctrines, nor did he “construct” the articles of faith from the central article of justification, outside Scripture. Scripture is the only source of the Christian doctrine, says Luther. He says it not only in those numerous statements in which he rejects every thought that is not taken from Scripture (“schriftlos”) and advises every theologian to submerge as quickly as possible all thoughts that arise in his mind “without Scripture,” but also in those statements in which he compares the Christian doctrine to a “golden chain” and an “unbroken ring.” The basic presupposition for Luther in this description of the Christian doctrine is that every link in this “golden chain,” every article of the Christian doctrine, is taken directly from the Word of Scripture. For Luther adds that whoever denies any one of the articles of the Christian faith thereby denies God in His Word and makes Him a liar. Luther writes: “It is certain that whoever does not rightly believe one article or refuses to accept it (after he has been admonished and instructed), certainly believes none sincerely and in true faith. And whoever is so presumptuous as to dare to contradict God or call Him a liar in one word [of Scripture], and does this willfully, persisting in it, though he has been admonished and instructed once or twice, he is ready (and he does it, too) to deny God and accuse Him of lying in all His words. There are no two ways about it: either all and everything is believed, truly and fully, or nothing is believed. The Holy Ghost [who wrote all of Scripture, St. L. III:1890] cannot be separated or divided, so that we would be free to teach and believe one article as true and another as false. This does not apply to the weak, who are ready to receive instruction and do not offer stubborn opposition.” (St. L. XX:1781.) Luther was fully acquainted with the construction method of Hofmann, according to which, as we have seen, the theologian, totally disregarding Scripture, first constructs the doctrine from his own thoughts and then looks for this Ego product in Scripture and revises it accordingly. For that was the method which the sacramentarian “enthusiasts” asked Luther to employ. The doctrine of the Lord’s Supper must not be drawn from the words of Scripture pertaining to the Lord’s Supper, but from “faith,” and the Scripture passages must be “interpreted” accordingly. What Luther thought of this construction method is expressed in these sharp words: “It is the wantonness of the devil himself, who makes sport of us in this great matter through these ‘enthusiasts’; he is very willing to submit to Scripture; however, only in such a way that for the time Scripture be laid aside.” Luther demands that the “enthusiasts” do not construct the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper from “faith,” but show that it is set down in the Scripture passages that deal with the Lord’s Supper. “It comes to this, that we have the clear, simple Scripture on our side, which reads: ‘Take, eat; this is My body.’ ” Let Zwingli and Oecolampad “adduce Scripture that reads thus: ‘This signifies My body,’ or: ‘This is the sign of My body.’ ” (St. L. XX:780, 782.) Luther’s powerful sermon on “The Christians’ Armor and Weapons” (St. L. IX:810 ff.) is a warning against all doctrinal “construction”; it warns against a “faith” that does not rest, in all its parts, on the express words of Scripture. Its leading thought is: “We have shown that all the articles of our faith are well grounded in Scripture. Cling to that, and permit no one to distort it for you with glosses and to explain and harmonize it according to reason.” Answering the objection that the Christian doctrine, if based on the words of Scripture, would not constitute a harmonious whole but would contain contradictions, Luther answers: “Scripture will not contradict itself or any single article of faith, even though in your head it is contradictory and does not harmonize.” In short, according to Luther the Christian doctrine certainly constitutes a “unity,” not, indeed, a unity “in the head” of the dogmatizing human subject according to the requirements of the construction method, but a unity which results from the fact that the Christian doctrine, in all its parts, is taken directly from Scripture, which is the Word of God and is therefore not self-contradictory, but completely integrated. “The good man Oecolampadius was led astray by his notion that the Scripture passages which contradicted one another [in his head] must be harmonized and one passage be so interpreted that it agrees with the other…. If they would only first consider the matter and determine to speak nothing but God’s Word, as St. Peter demands, and be done with their speaking and determining, they would not cause so much disaster.” (St. L. XX:798.)

6. It should be noted, finally, that the systematization which would “eliminate all contradictions and gaps,” and produce an unbroken “logical whole,” has been severely criticized also in our day. It has been said that this speculative systematizing, with which Schleiermacher, “the Reformer of the 19th-century Church,” has inoculated the theology of the 19th century, is on closer examination found to be simply a sleight-of-hand feat. In their attempt to make the Christian faith acceptable to an unbelieving generation the Schleiermacher-Hofmann-Frank systematizers actually cancel or at least modify the incomprehensible, which after all is inseparable from the Christian religion. Someone has compared this widely admired scheme to the bed of Procrustes.

There are modern theologians, too, who object to this elimination of what is incomprehensible in the Christian religion. They would retain it. But they go about it in the wrong way. They say: it must be accepted as a fact that everything that “faith” declares in this eon with regard to the Christian doctrine must take the form of the “irrational” or the “paradox.” That sounds good and seems to agree with 1 Cor. 13:9: “We know in part [in this life], and we prophesy in part.” But as long as the representatives of the theology of the “irrational” refuse to accept Holy Scripture as God’s Word and as the only source and norm of theology, they do not make Scripture but the I of the theologian the judge of what is “irrational” or superrational in the Christian faith. We have here the same human systematizing under a new label. Subjectivism has not been discarded, but remains the ruling principle. The “Christian Ego” is still revolving about its own axis.

And this is true of every form of subjectivism. The sola Scriptura and the sola gratia are at stake, for subjectivism supplants the sola gratia with the self-determination, the self-assertion, the self-decision, the human conduct, the facultas se applicandi ad gratiam, etc.; and, further, subjectivism substitutes for the sola Scriptura the “pious” self-consciousness, the religious experience, the religious cognition, the “faith,” etc., of the theologian. Not only is this a revolving about one’s own axis, an unscientific and stupid procedure, but its result is uncertainty of salvation and uncertainty of the truth. On that account Luther fought so relentlessly for the sola gratia and the sola Scriptura both against Rome and the Reformed “enthusiasts.” On that account the Formula of Concord warned so earnestly against making anything in man (aliquid in homine) the foundation of salvation. On that account we had to give battle here in the United States against the Ego theology of the Reformed sects and the Ego theology of synergism, which has always claimed, and still claims, the right of existence within the Lutheran Church. The Christian certitude of salvation and the Christian certitude of the truth can be attained only if, with Luther, we rise “above ourselves” or, in other words, find a footing outside the world. And this is accomplished only if, in agreement with the order established by Christ, we continue through faith in His Word, as we have it in the Word of His Apostles and Prophets, in Holy Scripture.