Man has no deeper or wider interest than theology; none deeper, for
however much he may change, he never loses his love of the many
questions it covers; and none wider, for under whatever law he may live
he never escapes from its spacious shade; nor does he ever find that it
speaks to him in vain or uses a voice that fails to reach him. Once
the present writer was talking with a friend who has equal fame as a
statesman and a man of letters, and he said, 'Every day I live,
Politics, which are affairs of Man and Time, interest me less, while
Theology, which is an affair of God and Eternity, interests me more.'
As with him, so with many, though the many feel that their interest is
in theology and not in dogma. Dogma, they know, is but a series of
resolutions framed by a council or parliament, which they do not
respect any the more because the parliament was composed of
ecclesiastically-minded persons; while the theology which so interests
them is a discourse touching God, though the Being so named is the God
man conceived as not only related to himself and his world but also as
rising ever higher with the notions of the self and the world. Wise
books, not in dogma but in theology, may therefore be described as the
supreme {vi} need of our day, for only such can save us from much
fanaticism and secure us in the full possession of a sober and sane
reason.
Theology is less a single science than an encyclopaedia of sciences;
indeed all the sciences which have to do with man have a better right
to be called theological than anthropological, though the man it
studies is not simply an individual but a race. Its way of viewing man
is indeed characteristic; from this have come some of its brighter
ideals and some of its darkest dreams. The ideals are all either
ethical or social, and would make of earth a heaven, creating
fraternity amongst men and forming all states into a goodly sisterhood;
the dreams may be represented by doctrines which concern sin on the one
side and the will of God on the other. But even this will cannot make
sin luminous, for were it made radiant with grace, it would cease to be
sin.
These books then,--which have all to be written by men who have lived
in the full blaze of modern light,--though without having either their
eyes burned out or their souls scorched into insensibility,--are
intended to present God in relation to Man and Man in relation to God.
It is intended that they begin, not in date of publication, but in
order of thought, with a Theological Encyclopaedia which shall show the
circle of sciences co-ordinated under the term Theology, though all
will be viewed as related to its central or main idea. This relation
of God to human knowledge will then be looked at through mind as a
communion of Deity with humanity, or God in fellowship {vii} with
concrete man. On this basis the idea of Revelation will be dealt with.
Then, so far as history and philology are concerned, the two Sacred
Books, which are here most significant, will be viewed as the scholar,
who is also a divine, views them; in other words, the Old and New
Testaments, regarded as human documents, will be criticised as a
literature which expresses relations to both the present and the
future; that is, to the men and races who made the books, as well as to
the races and men the books made. The Bible will thus be studied in
the Semitic family which gave it being, and also in the Indo-European
families which gave to it the quality of the life to which they have
attained. But Theology has to do with more than sacred literature; it
has also to do with the thoughts and life its history occasioned.
Therefore the Church has to be studied and presented as an institution
which God founded and man administers. But it is possible to know this
Church only through the thoughts it thinks, the doctrines it holds, the
characters and the persons it forms, the people who are its saints and
embody its ideals of sanctity, the acts it does, which are its
sacraments, and the laws it follows and enforces, which are its polity,
and the young it educates and the nations it directs and controls.
These are the points to be presented in the volumes which follow, which
are all to be occupied with theology or the knowledge of God and His
ways.
A. M. F.
'O.'
{ix}