Henry Basics of the Faith

An Evangelical Introduction to Christian Doctrine
1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-1-68359-339-3
Verlag: Lexham Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 384 Seiten

Reihe: Best of Christianity Today

A systematic theology from the pillars of evangelicalism. Basics of the Faith is an overview of essential Christian doctrines from some of the best minds of mid-twentieth century evangelicalism around the globe. Originally appearing in the pages of Christianity Today during 1961-1962, this collection includes essays from influential theologians and biblical scholars including Philip E. Hughes on inspiration, Anthony A. Hoekema on the divine attributes, John Murray on sanctification, Cornelius Van Til on original sin, F. F. Bruce on the person of Christ, G. E. Ladd on the saving acts of God, Leon Morris on the atonement, and J. I. Packer on the nature of the church. This edition includes an introduction by Kevin J. Vanhoozer that lays out their original context and evaluates their ongoing significance. Approachable yet scholarly, Basics of the Faith is both a relevant systematic theology andacelebration of evangelical heritage.

Kevin J. Vanhoozer (PhD, Cambridge University) is Research Professor of Systematic Theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He is the author of several books, including Faith Speaking Understanding: Performing the Drama of Doctrine and Biblical Authority after Babel: Retrieving the Solas in the Spirit of Mere Protestant Christianity, both Christianity Today Theology Books of the Year (2015, 2017). He is married and has two daughters.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Henry, Carl F. H.

Leseproben

Chapter 1

GENERAL REVELATION AND SPECIAL REVELATION

ADDISON H. LEITCH

Addison H. Leitch (1908–1973) was a Presbyterian theologian who earned a PhD from Cambridge University and taught at Pittsburgh-Xenia Theological Seminary, Tarkio College (Tarkio, MO), and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (South Hamilton, MA). He is the author of Interpreting Basic Theology (1961) and A Layman’s Guide to Presbyterian Beliefs (1967).

It is the psalmist who sings “The Heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, their voice is not heard.” Men have known these things for generations. They have gloried in the glory of a God who manifests himself in his wonderous works. No speech nor language is spoken, it is not in the words of Greek or Hebrew or German or English; yet every day speaks and every night shows knowledge. The apostle adds in a later day “the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and godhead; so that they are without excuse …” Psalmist and apostle declare what no man can deny, that there is a God who can be known through his works and when we refuse to see him there, we are without excuse.

Such knowledge of God forced on us by the world around us has been recognized and accepted by believers in every generation. In some fashion it is the approach of Plato as he moves level upon level to his supreme Idea, an idea, which according to Plato’s thinking, necessarily has moral qualities which can be defined as an Ideal. In some fashion it is the approach of Aristotle as his system carries us from utter matter to perfect form or from the inanimate world to the high reaches of the Unmoved Mover. More specifically, in the Christian tradition, men have discovered in the world around them “proofs” for God, reasons for faith, necessities for believing, and, at least, in the direction of their thinking, they have been forced toward some knowledge of God. Arguments for the existence of God and in support of the nature of God are very old ones. They have been subjected to much criticism and therefore to considerable refinement in the history of thought. In spite of such criticism, however, they keep cropping up in one form or another, one argument, or one way of stating the argument, appealing to one generation more than to another; but none of the arguments ever quite disappears. That these arguments keep reviving is probably a reason for their fundamental strength; men feel under some duress to define what they know must be true about God from the evidence of the external world.

FROM EFFECTS TO THEIR CAUSE

Keeping in mind that these arguments say something about God’s attributes as well as giving reasons for his existence, we are justified in using them as supports in natural theology for our knowledge of God. In general, the arguments move under at least four titles: the Cosmological, the Teleological, the Anthropological, and the Ontological. These arguments all allow somewhat the same scheme, namely that an effect must have a cause equal to or greater than the effect itself. In the general scheme of things you cannot get something from nothing and, surely, one can observe a great deal of something in the world of nature; the question is, therefore, what is “the source, the support, and the end” of all these things about us? What is the explanation of their existence?

The easiest argument is The Cosmological. It argues from the existence of the Cosmos, the universe, what C. S. Lewis calls “the whole show.” Man does not need to be either clever or subtle merely to wonder about the world around him. How can one account for all these things he sees and experiences—the birds, the rocks, the trees, and the stars in their courses. This first argument in “natural” theology finds us unable to escape the belief that back of all this cosmos there is some thing or some one equal to bringing into existence (by what method we need not argue here) the universe within us, around us, and above us.

The Teleological argument is more reflective regarding the universe. Here our interest is focused on design and purpose as we discover the amazing intricacy with which all things are interlocked as if united in some grand mutual interdependancy, some basic design. These interlocked designs and purposes point to a designer, some intelligence with creative purpose. There are no isolated data, there is no item so small that it is not somehow interrelated with every possible other thing. Nothing ever “just happens.” You can never really say of anything that “it doesn’t really matter.” Butler in his Analogy, Paley in his Evidences, and in these latter days F. R. Tennant in his Philosophical Theology found this argument from design almost conclusive for the existence and the nature of God.

In his master work, Nature, Man and God, William Temple sets himself to examine the world of nature only to discover that nature includes man and that nature and man together point us to God. In some such fashion The Anthropological argument grows out of the Teleological argument, for nothing points more clearly to intelligence and design than the fact of man himself, man who is able to understand the design and to appreciate the designer. But beyond this is man as person. Man as a person has what we call personality. Will anyone seriously argue that personality can arise from some impersonal source? Will anyone seriously support accidents or material or both as sufficient to account for all the wonders in man? Since man is so creative himself, was the ground of his existence uncreative? Thus the argument runs. We cannot get something from nothing; we have something personal in man; we cannot believe that this personal end-product comes from impersonal sources.

The Ontological argument points to perfection or more exactly to the idea of perfection which we find inescapable in our ways of thought. To use our thinking about God as an example, how is it possible for us to talk about the perfections of God without some idea of perfection as a point of reference. Yet we are imperfect ourselves, we think imperfectly, we are surrounded by a world of imperfections. Since, once again, we cannot get something from nothing and since assuredly we have ideas of perfection which cannot be accounted for in the immediacies of our surroundings, the conclusion suggests itself that this idea of perfection must come directly from the perfect source, namely, from God himself.

It would appear from this brief treatment that we have at least four reasons for believing in God. (Some add the moral argument, that is, the inescapable sense of “oughtness” common to all men, Kant’s catagorical imperative. We believe that the moral argument which we have not here expanded can find a natural place in the Anthropological argument.) These tell us some very definite things about God’s nature—he is mighty enough to account for the universe itself, he is intelligent enough to satisfy its design, he is personal enough to account for man as person, and he is the ground of all our understanding and perfection. If we add creativity and morality as necessary to man as person, we may presume to have found as necessary a God who is almighty, intelligent, personal, creative, moral, and perfect. We are not far from the kingdom!

FROM NECESSARY PRESUPPOSITIONS

What has been said thus far usually comes under the heading of a posteriori reasoning, that is, reaching our conclusions inductively. There are others who prefer the a priori approach; this is, as a matter of fact, the approach of much of the theology of our day. Knowledge of God with this approach is not so much the result of our thinking as it is the starting place of our thinking. The starting place is always there, described sometimes as a first truth, and it is only in personal intellectual maturity or perhaps in the maturity of the race that man gets around to analyzing the nature of his starting place. Living as we do in an age dominated by scientific method, it is difficult for us to accept the fact that we operate even in science, even in our “proofs,” from the foundation of various presuppositions. For many, the fact of God is one of the necessary presuppositions.

All of us must accept some first truths about ourselves from the outset. We are alive and awake and sane; such truths about ourselves which we cannot prove objectively; we merely accept them as starting places. On a deeper level we base our thinking on the assumption that there are certain foundations of Truth and Reason from which we operate and to which we constantly return. We believe that truth has an interrelatedness in a universe (which is a single organizational principle of truth).

All serious thinking, especially the most objective scientific research, upholds the necessity of absolute honesty in methods and in findings, appealing therefore to a moral ground built into the structure of reality. In other directions our words betray us: “it stands to reason” or “that doesn’t make sense.” Thus we are insisting that our thinking, as well as our experimenting, demands a frame of reference that is sensible. Moreover, we appeal to one another on the grounds of a...