The GOSPEL TRUTH A GENETIC HISTORY OF THE
NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY
By
FRANK HUGH FOSTER
1907
CHAPTER XVII: Edwards A. Park
We have now arrived in the progress of our history at the close of the New England development, having considered all the great productive minds which contributed to the erection of this system of thought. The impression made upon the mind of the reader must still be somewhat discordant, for the history has been one of many differing tendencies, which have as yet been brought into complete and comprehensive expression by no one theologian. If the history had to close here, it would appear like a broken column in the great edifice of human thought. So far as it is a history of printed systems, it must close here; but there is a system which, though it does not exist yet in printed form, and may never do so, is still in existence in so many students' notebooks, and in so complete and careful reports, that it may be included among the materials of this history, and will serve the essential purpose of representing New England theology in its most perfect systematic form. Professor Edwards Amasa Park, of Andover, was himself the ripest fruit of New England, and was one of her most loyal sons. His theology summed up in the most perfect form the long line of her theological discoveries and ratiocinations. He himself was contemporary with some of her greatest and her latest theological innovators. He continued to lecture till all the original contributions of the last explorers had been brought in, and while he lectured he thought critically upon all that was proposed, and incorporated what seemed good into his instruction and his system. Thus closing his lectures in 1881, he was among the last, though not the very last, representative of New England theology; and he might thus, for this reason alone, be placed at the end of the historical account of the school. But the relation of the material contents of his system to that of his predecessors makes such an arrangement imperative upon the historian. Even the results of that theologian who taught and published after the close of Park's public labors, President Fairchild, had been weighed and discussed before 1881; and these two may certainly be said to have been the last of our public teachers of theology who were controlled by the unmodified tradition of New England alone.
It is important to note, first, that Park had come squarely upon the ground of the Scotch school of philosophy. We have already noted this in part in the chapter upon the will. There his adoption of the threefold division of the faculties of the mind was shown to have modified his theory of the will. But he adopts quite as earnestly the intuitive element of that philosophy and its realism of "common-sense." The Berkeleian sublimation of the material world into one merely ideal received no countenance with him. His sarcastic wit delighted in the practical answer of the philosopher who kicked a stone to prove its objective existence. Both the beginning of his reasoning and its entire method rested upon the Scotch principles and precedents. The names of Reid and Stewart were often upon his lips; and, if he did not give so large a place to Hamilton, it was because he regarded him as having passed off somewhat from the sound basis of the school upon questionable ground. To this result both Woods and Taylor had contributed; for Park had heard both Woods in the regular progress of an Andover education, and Taylor upon a special residence in New Haven for the purpose. Park was a pupil of Taylor more than of Woods, to whom he seldom referred and whom he probably did not fully appreciate. Taylor captivated his imagination by boldness of speculation and led his judgment into substantial agreement with himself. He even accepted the "power to the contrary," while remaining much more completely upon Edwards' ground as to the will than Taylor did. This complete adoption of the late change of philosophical base in the school becomes, therefore, both decided and of large influence upon the whole structure of his system.
Professor Park's theology was, first of all, a system. He began with a principle--"Every event has a cause"--but this was not assumed till it was shown to be a fundamental postulate of thought, and involved in all our thinking. When he had thus proved his principle, so far as it admits of proof, he proceeded to build up his system upon it step by step, proof by proof, proof resting in every case on what had been proved before. Thus his system was not a system in the sense of a mere orderly arrangement of parts, each, however, standing by itself, in no inner and vital connection with the rest; but it was a system in the sense that it was one linked process of proof, every step preparing for, and not depending on, the following, every step adequately prepared for by, and naturally flowing out of, all the preceding. It was like the wall of the cathedral, resting on footing-stones laid deep in the earth, course rising on course, each depending on what was beneath it and capable of bearing all that was to be above it, till the last pinnacle stood in its place perfect, secure in the security of the whole wall. In this respect Professor Park's system presented a great contrast to that of his contemporary and friend, Henry B. Smith, who wrote, in his Faith and Philosophy:
Systematic Theology is not a mere arrangement of the facts and doctrines of the Bible in a lucid order; it is not a series of unconnected doctrines, with the definitions of them, it is the combining of doctrines into a system: its parts should not only be co-ordinate, they should be regularly developed. It should give the whole substance of the Christian faith, starting with its central principle, around which all the members are to be grouped. It must defend the faith and its separate parts against objections, and show that it is congruous with well-established truths in ethical and metaphysical science.
Park said all that, but much more. Hence his system was always the system of a progress from the known to the unknown by rational examination and logical proof. If he failed at any point, it was not for lack of effort or for forgetfulness of the necessities of such a method of procedure.
The method of proof was the inductive, or the a posteriori. Park always proceeded from the known to the unknown, from the facts to the principles involved in them, from elementary principles to those pertaining to detail. Hence his theology was always subject to revision. Give him a new fact, and you have made necessary a new induction, and perhaps a new conclusion. Hence he was always open to new light, and manifested the most remarkable hospitality for new ideas. "Take them in," he said once, "and entertain them as you would guests at your table, until you know them; and then you can estimate their worth and their bearing on the truth." Textual criticism never disturbed him. If a text had to go, he looked to see if anything had been built on it alone, and to cast out such an element of his thought; for error eliminated he thought to be truth gained. The new theory of evolution did not trouble him. It had not "come to itself" during Park's day, and neither friends nor foes understood it. But while Professor Hodge, in his little book, was styling it bluntly "Atheism," Professor Park observed a scarcely interrupted silence upon it, except as he was ready now and then to ask what effect it would have on theology if it were to be found true. The present writer remembers very well asking him one day, on one of those walks and talks which he delighted to take with inquiring students, what the bearing of the doctrine of the origination of man by evolution would be on the doctrine of original sin. "What do we need," I asked, "to maintain universal depravity? If the race originated at several independent points, do we need to suppose anything more than an early sin, at one or more of these points, and the involvement of all mankind, by whatever process, in this early sin, to have all the elements now given in the common idea of the fall of Adam, and all the consequences that can legitimately be drawn from it?" His answer was, "No." And the discussion, as it went on, showed how deeply interested he was in the adjustment of theology and evolution, though not yet ready to adopt either evolution or any such adjustment.
The treatment of the propositions discussed was predominantly rationalistic. True, the starting-point was the biblical; but the method was rational, and the cogent elements of the proof, exciting the greatest interest of both teacher and pupils, were the rational. Not that the doctrines were formulated with little reference to the Bible, or that the Bible was belittled whether by the formal treatment it received or by implication. Professor Park's exegesis was always accurate, and quite in accord with the best of the exegetical departments under his younger colleagues, Professors Mead and Thayer. But theology in his conception was the philosophy of Christian truth. The Bible gave that truth, but why it was so, and how it could be defended, and what, precisely, it meant to the modern mind, were all rational questions, and constituted the burden of theology. The biblical argument hence sometimes tended toward the dry and formal. Sometimes its force had been so anticipated that it seemed almost superfluous. Even before the days of modern criticism, it had lost something of its power. The system must, therefore, be weighed rather as a rational creation than as a biblical elaboration. Nor did the historical argument, either the critical or the positive, receive due attention from Professor Park. It was sometimes appealed to in a general way, as when "the general opinions of men," or "the voice of Christian experience," were alluded to. But such a thing as the "verdict" of the scientific history of Christian doctrine for or against any position was never heard of in the lecture-room in systematic theology. Professor Park's education had, in fact, scarcely fitted him for such an appeal to history. He knew the history of New England theology intimately and well, and understood its current of progress and the intellectual forces that bore it on. But the appeals of Anglicans and Catholics to the church "fathers," by their specious adulation and irreverent reverence for mere men, and often for men of little training and feeble intellectual grasp at that, awoke a scorn in the mind of the practical American theologian, who was as strong in the element of common-sense as he was in intellectual acumen. "Fathers!" said he once, with a flash of his sarcastic wit, "They would better be called the church babies!" The elaborate efforts of the brilliant Professor Shedd at Andover to bring history, in a totally unhistorical and really a crypto-dogmatical method, to the defense of an exceedingly "old" form of Calvinism, had not tended to help Professor Park to a better understanding or use of history. To its formal and real disadvantage his system was essentially unbiblical and unhistorical in style, and occasionally in substance.
The simplest method of gaining a clear conception of Park's theology would be to set forth the great determining principles which made it what it was, and then trace their influence upon the several doctrines, passing over those in which he did not differ from his predecessors and other evangelical theologians. With the advantage of simplicity would, however, be combined the disadvantage of losing some of the most important lessons which he has to teach us, particularly in the department of theological method, where he was an unsurpassed master. We shall therefore follow his lectures in the order of their delivery, and this, in the early part of the system, quite strictly.
Professor Park adopted and employed the distinction which had been handed down from the days of the deistic controversy, and had been so ably used by Paley, between natural and revealed theology. His object, as already said, was proof. He desired to put the biblical doctrines upon a sure basis of irrefragable proof. This, and this only, would lift them from the rank of mere pleasing opinions, of more or less value, of that of the truth, upon which men might venture their immortal destinies; and truth was alone a worthy object of consideration to a Christian theologian.
Now, to the proof of the Christian doctrines, the proof of the Bible, from which they are derived, is essential. If the Bible is such an authority as the church has always said, it is a revelation from God. To prove the Bible, you must therefore first prove the being and benevolence of God; and you must do it without the Bible, since you are not permitted to commit any circle in your reasoning. Hence natural theology must precede revealed. Professor Park therefore begins here, and lays down as his first proposition that every event has a cause. But here he meets at once with a principal difficulty of theology. To prove the Bible he has to prove a benevolent God, because a God not benevolent could never be relied upon to give a revelation to man, however great man's need. But the benevolence of God is not a doctrine of pure natural theology, which can never either originate or prove it, and has never done so; but it is historically and logically itself a doctrine of the Bible. Hence, if you need a doctrine of the divine benevolence to prove the Bible, you need a Bible to prove the divine benevolence. How shall this circle be escaped? Ritschl recognized this peculiarity of the argument, and stated it better than any recent theologian, but Park also fully perceived it, and sought to do full justice to it. In fact, its necessities determined the entire course of the argument of the natural theology.
Park, therefore, began by giving "some elemental idea of God, not the whole being." He defines God as "the Mind which other minds are obligated to worship, because they are ultimately dependent upon it." The existence of such a being can be proved by logical arguments from nature proceeding on the basis of the principle of causation; and to establish this is, for the time, Park's sole effort. He takes up successively the arguments for a creator, a preserver, a contriver, a natural governor, and a moral governor. In the discussion of these, however acute, comprehensive, and profound it was, there was nothing which differed essentially from the general positions of natural theology as developed by his predecessors. Yet one innovation had already been made, and this was the introduction of a "biblical argument" on point after point. He expressly says that he takes the Bible for these arguments only "as a book written by sages," or as "containing the wisdom of the world." But when the argument is completed, he devotes more careful attention to this biblical argument. He remarks that "some men believe that all truths in natural theology are derived from the Bible: others believe that the Bible is drawn from natural theology." His own position is that the Bible is "a part of natural theology." just as we infer a God from the solar system considered as a fact, so we infer God from the perfectness of the biblical description of Christ. The Bible, as a record of assertions, rests upon natural theology, and it proves the existence of God, not by the assertion that there is a God, as an assertion, but by the fact that it makes such an assertion, by this act; just as Webster proved he was alive, not by the assertion "I still live," but by the act of speaking. The Bible as it is, with all its contents of natural theology, demands a cause, and that cause must be God.
How happens it that we may find in the writings of Peter a system of Natural Theology more in accordance with later times than in Aristotle or all the ancients? Philosophers grasped only by piecemeal that which fishermen have given in fullness and perfection. All the results of modern investigation can detect no fallacy in the statements of these fishermen who purport to have been divinely inspired.
The accord of the Bible with natural theology is also seen in the fact that the Bible is explained, in passages otherwise dark, by natural theology; and this, as a fact, demands an explanation, which it finds only in the existence of God.
This is the first stage of Professor Park's answer to the problem of getting a true order, which shall avoid the fallacy of circle, into the argument. He has incidentally brought out the fact that the Bible, as a textbook of natural theology, precedes the modern treatises. He now takes up successively the "natural attributes" of God--his self-existence, omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, eternity, immutability, and unity--in treating all of which he introduces, on the same basis as above, the "biblical argument." He is thus brought finally to the benevolence of God. How does he prove this attribute, to the proof of which the Bible is essential?
It is characteristic of the method of Professor Park that he often makes an objection against one point of his argument the gateway through which he introduces the following point. Thus each argument, like the pinnacle of the flying buttress, solidifies and strengthens by its weight that which goes before, while itself dependent upon it. From the proof of the omnipotence of God arises the question: How can he then be benevolent, when he has not prevented sin? He could but would not, or else he did not because he could not. The last alternative being excluded by the argument for God's omnipotence, is not his benevolence impugned by his permission of sin? Before he advances to the positive argument for the divine benevolence, Park therefore discusses the prevention of sin, and as a preparatory argument to this, a lemma, if I may so say, he discusses the immortality of the soul.
The argument for immortality is relatively weak and somewhat inconclusive. Park was accustomed to acknowledge this; but he added immediately: "We do not need much proof of such a proposition." He "took" it (lemma), in part, as a hypothesis, more or less reasonable, and helpful for his argument even in this hypothetical form. But he felt, no doubt, also that there was little real disposition or ground for denying it. He practically rolled the burden of cogent proof upon the shoulders of the deniers. Yet he presented such an argument as his inability to use at this point the testimony of Jesus, who "brought immortality to light," left to him. There is nothing decisive (in the phenomena of death, etc.) against the supposition that the soul is immortal. The fact that the soul exists up to the moment of death, and our belief that nothing that has once existed has ever been annihilated, point to the probability of immortality. Then, man is fitted for immortal existence by the scope and character of his powers which find only a partial employment here upon the earth. In fact, he has generally to die just as he is on the brink of some discovery or achievement greater than any he has been able to make; and, so far as we can see, he might go on developing greater powers of acquisition and labor forever. He is made for eternity, and he ought to have eternity in which to realize the idea implanted in his very being. This argument is confirmed by the character of God, who, whether benevolent or not (the point under argumentation), is certainly skilful and cannot be believed to have done so unskillful a thing as to make such a creature as man, for a brief space of an existence of seventy years! Man, if destined to extinction at death, is out of place, and constitutes the greatest riddle of the universe, and cannot be so explained as to leave the universe of which he is so important a part, rational. This preparatory, and chiefly negative, argument is reinforced by the biblical statements, which are given in all their fullness; but the Bible is still "a collection of wise sayings," and not a source of decisive authority.
The idea of immortality partially answers those objections to the goodness of God which have been already summarized. All that is incidental--the pain in the world, the frustration of powers in the range of their expected and appropriate accomplishment by death, and all the other disorder of the world--presents no serious obstacle if it is understood that there remains another life in which inequalities shall be removed and mysteries resolved. But there still remains a fundamental difficulty. Pain may be disciplinary, and may lose its appearance as an evil in view of the greater good to come. But sin is different. It is rebellion against God; it is moral disorder of the soul; it introduces disharmony and disease into the very highest and most central that there is in man, into his conscience and all his moral faculties. It is structural evil. How can it be explained or palliated? And how can God be truly good, and have his highest choices fixed on holiness, if he permits it? These questions lead to the deeper problem, that of the permission of sin.
It will at once be recalled that this topic had engaged the attention of our divines from the beginning. The answer which Bellamy and Hopkins had substantially given to the question why God permitted sin, was that it is the necessary means of the greatest good. Taylor had been unable to accept this position, and had substituted for it the supposition that God could not prevent sin in a moral system. He had done this in consequence of the new position to which he had come upon the freedom of the will. He taught a "power to the contrary" which constituted a real freedom, and which placed man beyond the control even of motives, so that in a system in which free will was a component part, though this or that sin might be prevented, all sin could not be because prevention would make impossible that which was constitutionally and permanently possible. And yet, as heretofore pointed out, he held the further position, which was quite irreconcilable with this, that all moral events were previously certain.
Park took up the discussion where Taylor had left it. He did not meet Taylor squarely upon the doctrine of the will, in which he held a position more Edwardean than Taylor's; for to both of these theologians their disagreement was obscured by their supposed agreement with Edwards. Nor did he by any means oppose Taylor at every point. He says, on the contrary, that "the New Haven controversy has brought out the fact that sin is not the necessary means of the greatest good." With the hypothetical form in which Taylor stated his theory Park was satisfied, and indeed regarded it as a distinct advantage for the construction of the apologetic argument, for both Taylor and he were laboring to remove objections to God's benevolence, and "a reasonable hypothesis is as complete a refutation of an objection as a positive fact." If God cannot prevent sin, then he is benevolent, although sin exists. But the New Haven answer did not commend itself to Park in another aspect. It was "unphilosophical," because inventing one hypothesis to explain something that could better be explained by another hypothesis; and "too specific," because fixing the difficulty in the freedom of the will, whereas it might lie elsewhere. Indeed, Park said explicitly that it did lie elsewhere, for to him freedom--Edwards' freedom--was perfectly consistent with the control of all action through motives. Accordingly, to the question, "Can God prevent sin in a moral system (i. e., a system of agents possessing free will and governed in accordance with that fact)?" Park with Hopkins replied directly, "Yes." The argument for the answer is, in a word, that it involves no breach of a man's freedom to prevent him by persuasives from doing what he is still perfectly able to do; and the argument is reinforced by the example of the angels in heaven. He thus rejected the original and favorite solution which Taylor had given to this vexed question; but even here he was not abandoning Taylor, for he did this only to bring forward with great power the alternate suggestion which Taylor makes in his Moral Government, that perhaps God cannot prevent sin in the best moral system, or--what is the same--wisely and consistently prevent sin in the best moral system. Both of them thus held the Leibnitzian optimism which was now the common possession of the New England school. This hypothesis Park adopts as his answer to the question as to the divine permission of sin. The leading thought under this department of the discussion is that the prevention of all sin might require a degree of direct oversight of the members of the system, a degree of tutelage, and a consequent degree of dependence, inconsistent with their moral strength; and greater strength with some sin (finally overruled) may be better than unbroken holiness and the consequent weakness.
The force of this position, whether in Taylor's hands or Park's, depends on the view held in respect to the nature of the moral universe. Park regards it as constituted by God as a system, or, to use modern phrase, under general laws. Among the facts of the system are free will, and its correlate, that a free will is to be governed only by persuasives and never by forces. These "persuasives" constitute the great mass of things, principles, and events in the world. Not independent of God, they proceed under his divine government; but they have been wisely established and are not to be interfered with, even by God himself, except for great and wise reasons. It is better that man should grow into righteousness and true freedom under such system, than that he should have righteousness thrust upon him, and be maintained in it, even by persuasives alone, if for the sake of these extraordinary persuasives, the constituted system should be destroyed.
Although Park has thus varied somewhat from Taylor in the interest of a stricter adherence to the standard of the school, the Edwardean theory of the will, he affords here an instance of that larger doctrine of the will which he really held, as has been brought out in the chapter dealing with that doctrine. There can be no more "weakness" under a providential course which excludes all sin, upon the strict Edwardean theory, than under one which permits sin; for motives are no more controlling, and no more of direct divine origin, in the one case than in the other. When Park uses the language he here does, he is giving a large play to the free will of man, is emphasizing the value set by God upon it, and the sacredness with which he has invested it.
Park's final answer, therefore, to the objection against the benevolence of God, derived from the existence of sin is this, that our limitations and our ignorance are such that we must acknowledge the possibility that sin was permitted for wise and good reasons. Thus he comes to the question of the benevolence of God unhampered by this objection, and can answer directly from the facts that God is good. The conduct of the argument is so characteristic of Park that we may profitably devote more attention to it than to any hitherto.
After calling the attention to the fact that the previous course of argument has now removed objections to the divine benevolence arising from the existence of sin, of the various other moral evils (such as indolence), and of pain, Park argues (1) from God's natural attributes to his benevolence. "Thus far we have found God absolutely perfect; therefore we anticipate the same in all his attributes." This form of argument, an application of the principle of the continuity of the universe, was a favorite one with him. "If a rope sustains a certain weight and gives no signs of breaking, we unhesitatingly intrust more weight to it. If it has borne so much, it will bear more." He then proceeds: "The natural attributes present him the strongest motives to be, and take from him all motives to be otherwise than, benevolent and good." Men are inclined to envy and other sins because they have so vague ideas of the real meanness of these sins, and so obscure ideas of the opposite virtues. But the omniscience of God lifts him above all such obscurity. He has no motive to be malevolent. Again (2) the natural emotion, the taste for the noble and beautiful, argues for benevolence; for sin is most ignoble, and virtue, benevolence, is most sublime. A being having infinite conceptions of the grandeur of virtue could not fall into sin. (3) The phenomena of the universe constitute another argument. Its physical phenomena, for "we might have been in such a state that every ray of light would pierce the eye as a dagger and every taste be acrid. But happiness is the law, misery the exception." "The vast preponderance of contrivances are for our good." The moral phenomena furnish a parallel argument.
We might have been constituted so as to feel joy at the sight of pain; but now, when we commit a vile act we are ashamed, and pain in others calls forth our pity. We must take the future life into account to get the full force of this argument. The tendencies here are towards good: they will have become prevailing and exclusive of all others there. Now, the fact that God has made us with these moral feelings, inclining us to the right, indicates that he is good, for no Creator would surrender it necessary for his creatures to despise him. But if he is not morally good, his creatures must feel that they occupy a higher moral level than he.
Professor Park was accustomed, like other great thinkers, to make sudden plunges to the very depths of thought. Such a plunge occurs at this point of his argument. He enters here, according to his custom, certain "objections." Among them is this, that "after all, God, to make us more miserable, may have deceived us, and made himself appear to us benevolent, while he actually is malevolent." Park shows that this objection involves the fundamental skepticism of doubting the trustworthiness of our faculties. Lotze says in his Metaphysik, when a man comes forward with this "groundless perhaps"--perhaps everything may be other than it necessarily seems--"I simply turn my back upon him and go my way." Park's answer was that such a position implied substantial falsehood.
Then (4) the moral instincts of men, (5) the accordance of the divine benevolence with the nature of things (contrivances for pain may be for our good), and (6) the general opinions of men, are urged.
Finally (7) the biblical argument, the Bible's direct assertions, its structure, and particular doctrines, like the atonement, is presented. The argument is still from the Bible as a wise book, and may be thus expressed: The greatest scheme of thought which the world has ever produced, the biblical, teaches the benevolence of God; therefore it is true.
Now, this, we submit, is a great and a valid argument. It has committed no circles, but has marched straight from the first premises to the final conclusion. It makes the benevolence of God credible and reasonable--vastly more reasonable than the conception of his indifference to human needs or his malevolence. It gives a ground of belief, and of further argument. Nor can it be said that it draws its materials improperly from the Scriptures. Ritschl says that the idea of order is a biblical idea. This is true; but it is also a pre-biblical idea, for Plato has the idea of order and of justice, though not of the divine goodness, in its full Christian sense. Park rests heavily upon order and reason in the argument. But the argument may be criticized as not being complete. It does not give the full Christian idea of the divine benevolence. We do not see "the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." It is a "benevolent" God, but not a "Father," and not "the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." Park would undoubtedly have admitted this objection at once. He would have said: "But I am not done yet." He has not got the full idea of God now, any more than at the beginning; nor can he get it till the entire dogmatic process is performed. But he has enough even now to base his next argument upon, enough to prove that we have a God who, in condescension to man's need, will make revelation of himself and provide a Bible. And then, having at last a Bible, he can use the biblical argument as sufficient and final, and present the benevolence of God in its full sweep as that love of God by which he "sent his only Son."
But the treatment of the divine benevolence, even at this stage, is not yet done. Great ideas are never satisfactorily disposed of in Park's view till they have been fully defined and exhibited in their various relations; and this labor he proceeds now to perform.
It is Park's position not merely that God is good, but that the divine goodness comprehends his entire moral nature. God has but one, comprehensive moral attribute, and that is benevolence. He here follows Edwards, in his posthumous treatise on virtue. We enter into moral relations with all sentient being, and that which. constitutes the basis of these relations is the capacity of feeling itself. Happiness, the gratification of the feeling, is the object sought ultimately in all moral action, and when a sentient being is perceived to be in want, conscience at once and imperatively enjoins upon us the duty of satisfying that want, so far as possible. The active choice to do this is benevolence, and it is the primary and fundamental moral action. Happiness is, of course, not to be taken in so restricted a sense that it shall embrace nothing but physical gratification. The highest happiness of the highest beings is derived from the approbation of conscience, and thus requires their holiness. The "sentient" being who is also a moral being, finds his happiness chiefly in this highest element of his nature. But, high or low, that which calls out moral choice in respect to him is his capacity of feeling, his value, his worth; and the benevolent choice of his worth, the choice to promote it--holiness first, but happiness finally--is virtue, and this alone is virtue.
These are, according to Edwards, the fundamental principles of human ethics; and both Edwards and Park apply them immediately to God. We know God by knowing ourselves. His "great, generic moral attribute" is love, and every other moral attribute is only a new application of this attribute according to the differing circumstances in which God is placed. He views men (and other beings) primarily as simply capable of happiness; and he then chooses their happiness. Viewed as having moral character, men are regarded by God with "complacential benevolence"--that is, either approved as holy or disapproved as sinful. God "loves all men" with primary benevolence, but "hates the wicked" with complacential benevolence--for benevolence can hate, must hate the wicked. But there is a "consequential benevolence," or justice, which Park defines as "the cherishing of the love to the right character of sentient beings followed by the cherishing of the desire to reward the character--or the reverse, a hatred of the wrong character and desire to punish it." This justice is of two sorts, "distributive" and "public." The former is "a choice to make such an expression of approval or disapproval to an obedient or disobedient agent as shall be to that agent a merited recompense to his act." The latter is "a choice of expressing complacency or displacency to an obedient or disobedient agent on the ground of, and in proportion to, the usefulness of the expression." The latter definition was not the one always given by Park, and the idea may, perhaps, be better expressed for the present time if public justice be defined as "such treatment of an agent in view of his obedience or disobedience as shall most promote his and all others holiness and happiness." Consequential benevolence is also "grace," which is "the choice of a ruler to bestow favor upon a subject when the distributive justice of the ruler prompts him to inflict evil on that subject," or it is "a choice to favor the guilty."
As to justice, two things are to be noted as we pass on. Park teaches distributive justice, but he does not teach that there is an eternally fixed relation between offenses and punishments, founded in exact and undeviating fitness, to be inflexibly executed. He declares many times that "distributive justice may be forever unsatisfied"--in fact teaches that it is unsatisfied and must be in regard to all those who are forgiven. They are still guilty (in the sense of having done the wickedness) and still deserve all the punishment they ever did. Park's "justice" is always determined by the relations of the act. The penalty justly due to any act is determined by all the relations in which the act stands. If "distributive justice" be defined so that these general relations be ignored, Park denies such justice. There is always to him a view of the great universe of fact in determining what a given choice shall be, and so the most distributive of his distributive justice has an element of "public" justice in it, or of regard to the public interests, the general whole of things.
Then, again, the "public justice" is not to be distinguished from benevolence. It is "consequential benevolence," but the epithet might be suppressed. It is simply "general love," a choice as to individual beings determined by the interests of all beings, a choice of "the good of being in general," as Edwards would have phrased it.
Park's view of the love of God thus emerges from the profundities of careful definition and dogmatic discussion, and becomes visible and capable of estimation. God's love is his sole moral attribute. Every other attribute, apparently diverse though it may be, is resolved ultimately into love, since it is a form of love's manifestation, and has no virtue apart from the love that it expresses and conveys. The love of God is thus the determining principle of Park's theology. We have seen, under the subject of the Will, that it meets certain restrictions in its application. Nevertheless the statement made remains true.
But Love, according to Park is no mere ill-regulated emotion. It does not desire simply the sensuous gratification of God's creatures. It does not lead to making each individual "happy" considering each by himself alone. It regards principally that lofty happiness which consists in holiness. Hence it necessitates "hate"--indeed, includes it in itself. If God loves holiness, he must in the same act hate sin. Love of holiness and hate of sin are the same thing, the two sides of one choice, as the piece of paper has two inseparable sides. This is of the utmost importance in following out Park's theology. It is not like a low landscape, basking in a tropic sun, every hill crowded with monotonous vegetation. It is rather like the Sierras, rising here and there into sublime heights, crowned with the eternal purity of everlasting snows. Will Park, who teaches that God is love, interpret that love in a way to lead to Universalism? Not while he holds fast to the eternal "displacence" of God toward sin!
A brief quotation will illustrate the inclusiveness of Park's conception of love:
The comprehensive truth may be stated thus: Our benevolent Father does not administer his moral government under the influence of a limited attribute alone; not under the influence of mercy or grace or distributive justice without any regard to the general welfare; not under the influence of a choice of the general welfare without any regard to the demands of retributive justice or the pleadings of mercy or grace; but he administers his moral government under the influence of a general attribute looking at sin and at pardon in all their relations, and providing for the greatest and highest welfare of the universe. Under the influence of this general attribute our benevolent Father resists the plea of mercy and of grace when the safety of the universe requires him to resist it; he yields to the demand of distributive justice when the general good requires him to comply with it; his distributive justice holds the scales and his general justice holds the sword; the former urges its claims and the latter complies with them on the ground of their rectitude and on the condition of their necessity for the general welfare. The punishment which our Father inflicts is useful, but its usefulness rests on the ground of its being deserved; the justice of it comes first, the usefulness comes afterwards; the punishment cannot be useful unless it be just, and it must be useful if it is just, unless an atonement intervene. The fact that punishment is deserved rests on the ground that sin is intrinsically evil; the intrinsic evil of sin consists in the fact that it is a preference for the inferior above the superior good, it is a love of self or the world rather than of Him who comprehends in his own being the welfare, not of the world only, but of the universe also; it is opposition to general benevolence, to general justice, to Him of whom our text affirms, "God is love."
In the development of the system the point has now been reached where the Bible must receive a more careful consideration. It has been found to exist in the world and to demand, as a fact of natural theology, constant attention. But Christianity is peculiarly the religion of the Bible. The doctrine of God and of his goodness does not constitute the whole of Christianity, nor even its peculiar and distinctive portion. There are other doctrines which are not attested by nature; as, for example, the doctrine of atonement. If they are true, they must derive their proof from the Bible, for they must depend on a revelation, such as the Bible professes to be. Hence before we come to them, we must discuss the authority of the Bible. Men need these doctrines; we must look to God for the revelation of his will in respect to them; and we come to look for such a revelation with the antecedent probability that so great a God, infinite in his power and moved by love, will in some suitable way make revelation of himself. The proof of the Bible thus rests upon the proof of the benevolence of God. But we need further to examine the facts in order to ascertain whether God has carried out his benevolent purpose for men by giving them the particular book of revelation which we call the Bible.
The argument contains nothing particularly striking. The Westminster argument from the "witness of the Spirit" is not even mentioned--abandoned, apparently under the rationalizing influence of the Unitarian controversy. Park proceeds, according to the method of that day, from the genuineness of the books to their authenticity, and thence to their claims and their inspiration. He arrives at the same rejection of verbal inspiration and emphasis of the infallibility of the Bible as is to be found in all the preceding members of the school.
But a new era, the era of modern science had already arrived, although previous to the issue of the Origin of Species, in 1859, it had not exercised the modifying influence upon theology which it was destined to do thereafter. The question of miracles, as supposed violations of the constituent laws of the universe, was becoming a little more serious, though nothing had yet appeared more thoroughgoing than Hume's discussion in the eighteenth century. In 1866 Graf's epoch-making efforts in the higher criticism of the Old Testament appeared, and it was soon evident to Park that "the question of our day is not what the Bible means, but whether we have any Bible; and even whether we have any God." But the forces wrapped up in both higher criticism and evolution, of which the one is merely a form of the other, did not fully reveal themselves till just about the time when Park's public labors ceased (1881). He was therefore not prepared to say anything that he regarded as conclusive upon the great topics which he saw rising into new prominence. The time for the work of the dogmatician had not yet come. But the apologist already had a task, and this was to prepare for the coming discussions. He did this by the simple process of scrutinizing the traditional dogmatic positions very keenly for their content of exact truth. He redefined the inspiration which the Bible possesses, and stripped the doctrine of much of the exaggeration and detail with which Protestant scholasticism, in a false ambition for a perfect system, had incumbered it. Distinguishing between "revelation," as God's action in unfolding his truth to men, and "inspiration" as the method under which the Bible, as a collection of writings, has come into existence, he makes a number of valuable, and sometimes radical, modifications in the teachings of our historical Calvinism. His inspiration is mostly a divine "superintendency" so exercised over the writers that the Bible is perfectly according to the divine will, and thus Perfect for the Purpose for which it is intended. A mere abstract and unrelated perfection is never claimed for it by Park. Inspiration, also, pertains to the writers of the Bible and not to their writings.
Before defining inspiration Park lays down certain preliminary cautions. We are not to say that the Bible is, or is not, correct in mere matters of science. Again, we are not to affirm or deny that the Bible is correct in mere history. Affirmation or denial here is aside from the dogmatic problem, because science and history are both aside from the purpose of the Bible, which is, in a word, to save men. Hence the definition of inspiration which he next proceeds to give is: "The inspiration of the Bible denotes such a divine influence upon the minds of the writers as caused them to teach in the best possible manner, whatever they intended to teach, and especially to communicate religious truth without any error either in religious doctrine or religious impression." What did they intend to teach? The phenomena in any case must show. Where is our emphasis to be laid, and as to what may we be sure that they are right? Religious truth! With one stroke of definition Park has thus rendered unnecessary volumes of current discussion and irrelevant pages of denunciation of critics and scholars. He has done what Ritschl had in mind as his own chief service to theology; but, as we shall see, he did not later follow Ritschl into his many denials of elements of positive truth.
Incidentally to this larger discussion the subject of the biblical miracles received a careful review. The treatment given them does not meet the modern objection to them derived from an evolutionary revival and reinstatement of Strauss's mythical theory of their origin. That theory was supposed by Park to have been forever discredited. But the main philosophical considerations which connect the possibility of miracles with the personality of God, so that one cannot deny them without impairing that, are fully brought out; and, accordingly, discussion will always have to come back to the principles laid down by Park. He begins, as always, with careful definition. Four definitions are rehearsed. A miracle is (1) "that work which is produced immediately by such an interposition of God's bare volition as constitutes a phenomenon which without that interposition could not have taken place." Or (2) "a miracle is a work wrought by the interposition of God producing what otherwise the laws of created nature must have prevented, or preventing what the laws of created nature must otherwise have produced." Or (3) it is "a work wrought by the immediate volition of God interposing and violating the laws of created nature in their established method of operation." Under this definition he discusses Hume, who, he says, committed a sophism in his definition, for "he defined a miracle as a `violation of the laws of nature.' He objects to the existence of God, being a skeptic, and hence in a miracle has an event without a cause. But when we admit the being of God, a miracle is no violation of the laws of nature, for it is a law of nature that matter obey its Creator." And (4) he defines: "A miracle is an event which occurs without a cause in created nature, without regularity in the times and places of its occurrence, and in manifest opposition to all those natural laws which have been observed in other events."
Thus possible, miracles need a sufficient occasion for their occurrence, which Park finds in the necessity of making a revelation to man. Miracles attest the divine commission of the bearers of this revelation, and were necessary to convince men of their commission. He recognizes also the fact that at this point of time miracles themselves need proof, and so proceeds to ask whether they were actually wrought in attestation of the Bible. By a characteristic turn of the argument, he first establishes their antecedent probability, and then, remarking that they need very little evidence to prove their reality, cites their unequivocal character and the repute, concurrence, and devotion of the witnesses, as sufficient proof of their actuality.
From this point on, the argument of Park's system rests upon the sure foundation of the Scriptures. He begins this portion of his discipline, which he was accustomed to call "revealed" theology, with the doctrine of 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, it will be remembered, had abandoned the word "person" as descriptive of the three elements of the Trinity, substituting for it the less definite word "distinction." With this had gone 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."
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 investigator, the humanity.
As to this, comparatively little is said. The ordinary and simple New Testament evidence of a genuine human body and soul are presented, and the conclusion of true humanity drawn without great elaboration. No special controversy existed in New England over this point. Simple facts, like Christ's ignorance of the condition of the fig tree and the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, are noted without further comment. They serve to help prove that Christ was truly man.
When the argument passes to the divinity of Christ, however, the combatant has evidently come forth in his full armor. The sole question is: "What is the fact?" and that fact is the biblical fact. Consequently the whole argument consists in a biblico-theological discussion of the New Testament; but it is conducted in the most elaborate manner, with the marshaling of innumerable texts, and under eleven general heads. Christ is God because (1) he is called so; (2) is said to be equal with God in condition; (3) does the works, and (4) has the attributes of the Supreme Being; (5) receives divine honors; (6) has applied to him in the New Testament the same passages elsewhere applied to the supreme God; (7) left the impression on his contemporaries that he was God; (8) the Scriptures make this impression on the masses of men; (9) Christ's divinity commends itself to the moral nature of man; (10) the concurrence of these proofs is itself a distinct proof; (11) no other supposition will reconcile the Scriptures and consciousness.
As one re-reads the argument today, he is struck with its scrupulous accuracy in the use and interpretation of the texts. Under the first head, 1 Tim. 3:16 is not cited, because "the external [MS] evidence is against the reading `God,' although the internal is for it." Nor is Acts 20:28 adduced, because "God" is also disputed here. In treating Rom. 9:5 the argument is contextual, and the sense is relied on to show that the Christ is called "God blessed forever." The most impressive argument is drawn from Christ's work of creation, preservation, raising the dead, the judgment of the earth--which cannot run off into mere verbal discussion.
I have already said that Park did not advance in any respect beyond the Chalcedon positions as to the person of Christ--two natures, human and divine, each perfect and entire, in the unity of one person. He consented to follow his Calvinistic predecessors in the Nestorianizing distribution of ignorance to the humanity and omniscience to the divinity of respect to the same thing and at the same time. How was any "unity of person" possible under such a view? Park does not seem to have really raised this question. He illustrates what he himself says of Julius Muller, whom he always styled (while he lived) "the greatest of living theologians," that "his greatness is nowhere better seen than in this monstrous blunder." The remark was made of Miller's efforts, by means of a doctrine of "kenosis," to solve the Chalcedon paradox. Park was therefore not ignorant of this most strenuous effort of German evangelical theology to solve the difficulties of the theme; but he rejected it. It is not plain that he fully understood it, for he says, in explanation of the remark, that the theory is "absurd." "A being who is weak cannot by his weakness turn himself into omnipotence." No kenotic ever thought he could. But one must make such a criticism of the acute and indefatigable Park with caution. If he did not understand the kenotics, it is perfectly certain that they did not understand one another. Like evolution, kenotism was long in "coming to itself;" if, indeed, it has yet done so.
The chief difficulty of the doctrine of the Trinity was met when the divinity of Christ was proved, for those who have accepted this element have never found special difficulty with the personality of the Holy Spirit. But Park gives an independent and thorough investigation to this remaining portion of the theme, that, when independently proved, it may lend corroboration, by its reflex influence, to the doctrine of the divinity of Christ. We need not follow him through this proof, which is exclusively biblical. At its close comes the summary of the whole doctrine in the form of definitions of the Trinity. The first and best of these is this: "The Father is God: the Son is God: the Holy Spirit is God. Neither is God without the others. Each has a property incommunicable to the others. There is only one God." There is no attempt at a rationale of the doctrine. Various objections are answered and misunderstandings cleared away; but the doctrine is confessedly a mystery resting on revelation, and only partially revealed. Although Park had studied Hegel under the guidance of no less a man than Kahnis, there is no trace of acceptance of Hegel's "construction," or of interest in it.
The treatment of the Trinity then closes with a couple of sections on the sonship of Christ and the procession of the Spirit. The term "Son" is applied in the New Testament to the historical Jesus Christ, and designates him as miraculously conceived and especially dear to the Father. Modern biblical theology has so generally followed this position that we need say nothing further on it here. But as this was the first distinctive point (formally) of the "new school," and was always introduced by Park as such, it is interesting to note his remarks made here on the characteristics of the school. "The New School," he says, "avoid those technical terms which will suggest a false idea, unless the terms are explained away (e. g., `eternal generation'). They refuse to convert figurative, poetical phrases into metaphysical dogmas (e. g., the phrase `This day have I begotten thee,' Ps. 2:7, into an assertion of `eternal generation'). They refuse to substitute metaphysical theories for plain biblical teaching." In the first of these sentences speaks the dogmatician; in the second, the preacher of the sermon on "The Theology of the Intellect and That of the Feeling;" and in the last, the practical New England pastor.
Thus it appeared that New England theology as represented by Park no less than by Stuart was to fail to answer adequately the searching questions put it by the Unitarian leaders. The Trinity remained a doctrine reduced to its lowest terms--depotentiated--and having but one element of practical application to life, the true divinity of Christ. This element was in turn embarrassed with difficulties, for the Chalcedon specifications of supposed fact needed adjustment. What meaning had unity of person when the elements of the personality were things as diverse as divinity and humanity? All the old methods of bringing them into harmonious adjustment had proved failures. Was there still a method? Or was it to be confessed that the problem had been wrongly conceived, and that the two natures, or else the unity of person, must be surrendered? These questions are now thrust upon the modern public with terrific earnestness, and the old formulations of doctrine seem crumbling on every side. They were no less imperatively thrust upon the theology we are now reviewing. If to leave them unanswered then was not a confession of incompetence to meet the issues of the day, it was a certain and decisive disqualification for the more strenuous conflicts into which the American churches were soon to come.
The progress of our study is thus gradually, but only gradually, bringing us to a view of the distinctive theology of Professor Park. Most of his teaching was identical with that of all evangelical theologians. But one great distinctive position has been as yet noticed, and that only partially his position on the nature of virtue as applied to the character of God. I do not include the so-called "first peculiarity of the New School," on "eternal generation," because, after all, that is not characteristic or determinative of his thought, however peculiar to the new school it may have been. We are to find our next distinctive position in his treatment of the will. It might conduce to clearness if we had placed that topic at this point. We actually encounter next, in the course of Professor Park's own development of his system, the subject of decrees; and faithfulness to him, as well as the necessity of letting him speak in his own way if we wish to gain the fullest knowledge of his innermost thought, compels us to attack decrees before the will. It was the inductive character of his system that prompted this order. The theory of the will is chiefly valuable as a means of explaining and defending decrees. The fact must come before the theory of the fact, and hence decrees before the will.
Whatever else Park was, he was a Calvinist. He used sometimes to say that Calvinism was the only "respectable" theology. This was a specimen of his playful sarcasm; but "many a truth is spoken in jest," and his sarcasm often covered his most profound convictions. He was also a High Calvinist. He was of the strain of Hopkins, in the New England theology. Other theologians might weakly leave something to the ungoverned freedom of man, as even Augustine seemed to leave the fall of Adam, but Hopkins, and Park after him, included the fall as fully in the decree of God as the sending of the Son or the election of an individual to salvation. And hence the subject of decrees was begun by Park with a definition: "The decrees of God are his plan so to constitute and circumstance the universe as to secure the previous certainty of ALL events which actually occur."
Park derives his doctrine fundamentally from the sovereignty, or supreme causality, of God. His whole theology follows the Calvinistic tendency to exalt God. It is wise, best, desirable, and really accepted by all men (when in their right minds) that God should govern all things. Methodists and Calvinists really agree. If the latter say that God intends to do, a thing, the former say he does it intentionally! And it is a fundamental idea that decrees are no greater, and no other thing in religion than in ordinary affairs. God "foreordains whatsoever comes to pass actually."
The development of the subject is therefore primarily apologetic. The word "decree" is a bad word. "Plan" would be much better. It pertains primarily to what God himself will do, and only secondarily to what his creatures are to do, as the certain, but not necessary, consequence of his action. The connection here is made under the Edwardean theory of the will, which Park maintained. God acts, and he knows exactly how men will act, and thus, by decreeing his own action, he plans, decrees, secures, but does not force or compel the action of man. No sooner does Park thus make a definition than he laments its terms; "predestination," "election," "reprobation" are all "unfortunate."
For the sake of illustrating both his doctrine and some of the elements of his method, I subjoin here, as I have hitherto refrained from doing, Park's treatment of one point of the subject of decrees. What follows are merely heads: the illuminating and enforcing discussion of the heads, their "development" in no ordinary sense of that word, we must dispense with. It was always extempore, and is gone into the great abyss of time, except as preserved in the memories of hearers. But something of the real Park will here be seen by all readers, and more will be recalled to some who were once hearers.
2. The doctrine of Reprobation is not inconsistent with benevolence.
a) It is for the best that God should not prevent sin, and he does not. It is best that he should leave some men to themselves, and he does leave some to themselves. The greater part he elects, the few he permits to perish. We have a right to make the supposition that the proportion of those lost to those saved, in this and other worlds, is as one grain of sand to the myriad grains of the seashore.
b) It is not unjust for God to leave the reprobate to themselves for they deserve nothing.
c) He does leave men to themselves; therefore it is right for him to decree to leave them to themselves.
d) God does place and constitute some men so that they will sin. Then it is right for him to do so.
e) All the arguments which prove that it is benevolent for God to permit sin, prove also that it is benevolent and just to decree to permit sin.
f) All the arguments which prove that it is best for God on the whole to permit sin, prove that it is for the best that he decree to permit sin.
Remark: All these objections to the doctrine of decrees lose their force when we consider that men are free, notwithstanding the decrees.
We are now brought, in the regular progress of the system, to the subject of the will. For purpose of a more connected view of the New England speculations upon this important subject, a separate chapter has been assigned to this theme, and Park's work has been included there with the rest. Suffice it here to say that, while nominally holding to Edwards' determinism, Park had emphasized certain elements of Edwards and of consciousness, so as to modify greatly the substance of the Edwardean theory. In fact, a new thought, new for Calvinism, was struggling in Park's mind, as yet not quite able to come to the birth. It was the idea of freedom. Not of a "gracious freedom," such as Arminians had taught, but a new natural, constitutional, and inalienable attribute of man. On the side of the theory of decrees and the will, it did not find consistent expression; but in the doctrine of sin it did. It begat a new bearing toward these doctrines. and toward all the remaining doctrines of theology; for it introduced into them, for the first time with completeness and power, the ethical conception. The mind of man is an ethical agent, possessed of freedom and influenced by motives. And all the great processes of redemption--the atonement as well as regeneration, conversion, and sanctification--are to be explained by this conception of his nature. We shall see how thoroughly controlled Park is by this idea as we proceed; and it needs no elaborate exhibition to show every theologian how great a modification in past theories, this fact must produce. It was nothing less than an ethical revolution in the theological system which New England theology in Park's hands now effected.
The next topic in the system is sin. As a follower of Taylor and of Emmons--or, it might better be said, as a follower of Edwards, whose the phrase is--Park had already laid down the position that "all moral agency consists in choosing." Nothing which goes before the choice is part of man's moral agency, and nothing that comes after it. Hence, when he came to define sin, he put it tersely as "the voluntary transgression of known law." He proves his proposition from the testimony of conscience and the common opinions of men, and from a long review of the biblical use of the various words for sin.
This view would at once meet with opposition from those who maintain that men are sinners by nature previously to any act on their own part. Many of their objections are met by a more delicate analysis than they had been wont to apply. That "profound" objection that "men generally feel that sin lies deeper than action," is admitted; but it is shown in reply that the chosen definition of sin does not mean that it is only the outward transgression. It is chiefly the ethical process, the act of choosing. When sin is said by Park briefly to be an act, he always means an act of the will, a volition. The objection, again, that "sin consists in something permanent, but actions are not permanent," is answered by showing that the sinner is "permanently choosing." Going still deeper, the reply uncovers the nature of character by showing that, even if moral action be interrupted, it always is sinful when resumed, for the sinner "sins whenever he can;" and even the citadel of his opponents is invaded by the further reply, that, "if a man's nature is such that he will sin whenever he can, then he may be called a sinner, even though he does not sometimes act it out."
Another definition of sin as "a preference of the less and lower above the greater and higher good," and of virtue as it is a preference of the greater and higher above the less and lower good," and still another, "a preference of the world, or of self and the world, above God," bring Park to the question whether sin may be defined as consisting in selfishness, which he answers in the negative.
Such are Park's definitions of sin. As he defines virtue as consisting in love--love to God supremely and to our neighbor as ourself, or, more abstractly, love to being according to its worth--so he sometimes defines sin as any choice not consisting in such love or intended to carry it into execution. And it is in this sense particularly that the force of his doctrine of "depravity" appears. He makes this universal (all men sin) and total (none of the moral acts of the individual sinner are virtuous prior to regeneration). In a word, only the regenerate exercise Christian love. Stated thus, the principle seems axiomatic.
All this is simply the common result of the New England school. So far as it is speculative, it tarries wholly in the region of the appeal to consciousness and the commonsense of mankind. But church theology raises further questions, for so universal and so deep a fact as sin must have an adequate reason. Its cause, properly speaking, is the will of the sinner himself acting efficiently in producing it. But wills are led to choices by motives. Hence the question rises as to the motives leading to universal and total depravity or its occasion. Park specifies two occasions--the proximate and the remote. Of the former he says: "Total depravity may be referred to a disordered state of man's constitution, existing previously to man's voluntary moral acts and occasioning their uniform sinfulness." He further defines this "disordered state" as consisting in a disproportion in his sensibilities and moral powers. Since universal sin is a fact of man's active life, the cause must be found in his nature, and this cause is his disorder. He is not fitted, in the actual world into which he comes, to lead a perfectly holy life. This disorder of nature being antecedent to every moral act, and operative from the beginning, it is necessary to conclude that man begins to sin as early as he begins any moral action. Thus he never passes through a period of holiness before beginning to sin. But Park carefully avoids various unwarranted extremes into which theologians had sometimes fallen; such as, that infants begin to sin as soon as they are born.
We are thus brought to the doctrine commonly called "original sin." So far as it taught the corruption of human nature Park thoroughly accepted it. But when corruption was denominated, in the language of Westminster, as "truly and properly sin," he recurred to his definition of sin as consisting in wrong choice, and denied the name sin to that which has come upon man without his own voluntary action. The central point and chief interest of original sin lay, however, in its connection with Adam. Park is thus brought, as well as by the course of his own argument, to the connection of Adam's sin (the fall) and our general depravity. He answered the question as to the proximate occasion of total depravity by saying it was the corruption of man's nature; he now asks the occasion of that corruption, or the remote occasion of depravity, and answers it by the fall of man in Eden.
The fall is thus defined: "That sin of Adam by which it was rendered certain that all the moral agents descended from him should be totally depraved, and necessary that all the members of the race (Christ only excepted) should suffer appropriate evil." The proof of such a connection between Adam's sin and ours is purely biblical, and does not differ from that employed by all other Calvinistic theologians.
What, now, is the link that connects Adam's sin and the disorder of nature in all his descendants? Edwards had made it all a "divine constitution," as he was most naturally led to do by his idealistic philosophy, which makes all connection of things a connection of ideas, and teaches that all ideas arise in us immediately by the operation of deity. It is remarkable that Park adopted the same view, so far as he adopted any. He does not seem to have relished the speculations into which some of his predecessors had gone. He follows neither the divine efficiency of Emmons, nor the theory of the prior preponderance of the sensual proposed by Taylor and adopted by Finney. As at many other points, he maintained great reticence. The relation was established by God. Why? We do not know. How? Here he is equally silent. A suggestion at one point that heredity may have had something to do with it, is the only hint pertinent to this question. Of one thing, however, Park is certain--that it was not by identification with Adam in his sin ("sinning in Adam"), nor by imputation of Adam's sin to us. We are better off today under the larger view of heredity given us by evolutionary studies. We now know how necessary it is, in accordance with the very principles which have brought the physical and even the mental nature of man to its present condition, that, when sin has once occurred, every descendant of the sinner should be profoundly, affected by it; and how increasing sinning should enlarge the affected area of the soul; how individual sins should become first habitual, then automatic, and then hereditary; so that there should be finally racial tendencies to evil rendering, by the balance of the nature thereby created ("corruption"), actual sins by all the individuals of the race certain.
The treatment of these topics lacks a certain vigor because Park could never persuade himself to take sides clearly with either of the parties to the old dispute between the "exercise" and the "taste" schemes. What was handed down by Adam to all his descendants? A nature. Was it sin? No! Was it sinful, so as to need a renewing by some divine change of its balance? Park was inclined to say "Yes." His treatment was not merely agnostic, where agnosticism becomes us; it was hesitating and not altogether consistent.
The defects of his positions in these portions of the system are nowhere better brought out than in his treatment of the salvation of infants dying in infancy. He should have said, in consistency with his fundamental principle that sin consists in the "voluntary transgression of known law," that infants dying before the age of moral consciousness and responsibility have not sinned and do not need saving in the sense in which we speak of saving sinners. Hence their salvation is as certain as that of angels who have never sinned. But he only ventures to say that infants may sin from the first moment of their birth, and probably do sin at an early period. They need regeneration because of their participation in universal human corruption; and they are saved by the atonement.
The whole impression of reason and of the Bible is that infants begin to sin very early. We have an instinctive hope that infants are saved. We cannot perhaps prove it. The true remark would be: I have an instinctive hope that they will be saved. Yet I cannot prove it, and am willing to leave them in the hands of God.
Yes! so must we all be! But, "shall not the judge of all the earth do right?" And can souls that have not sinned be lost? Certainly Professor Park might have said more at this point! His result falls far below the truth.
We are now brought to the subject of the atonement, in reference to which Professor Park rendered, perhaps, his largest service to theology. We have traced in a previous chapter the progress of those modifications in the doctrine of the atonement in New England which had brought its theology in general to the acceptance of several positions: that the atonement was meant for all men, consisted in the sacrifice of the God-man by himself upon Calvary; that his sufferings, while not satisfying distributive justice or paying the debt of the sinner, did render it consistent with the interests of the divine government for God to forgive repentant sinners; that the divine motive and regulating principle in all this was love; and that both the imputation of our sins to Christ and of Christ's righteousness to us were artificial elements, which should be excluded from the doctrine. The various writers on the subject did not, however, explicitly go back to the beginning of the theme and take their start from a new principle, although they had such a principle in the theory of virtue which Edwards had left them, but were led by the particular circumstances of the controversy to redefine the old terms and preserve, in general, the tone and method of the older theology. At many a point the influence of the new theory appeared, as when general justice was explicitly defined by some of them as benevolence. But they still employed chiefly the analogies of earthly governments in the formulation and defense of their positions. And their new theory received the name of "the governmental theory."
By the time that Park appeared upon the scene the theory of virtue was much better understood. Its application to the character of God, and the development of the system of Christian duties in accordance with it, had given it a new scope and importance. Professor Park had a larger comprehension of its meaning and of the range of its application than any of his predecessors had had. It might have been a question of great interest, when he first began the presentation of his views upon the atonement, what he would do; whether he would reject all idea of atonement in deference to the supposed requirements of the love of God which should need no propitiation; whether he would develop it afresh from the theory of virtue as a starting-point, exhibiting its ideal side and setting it free from a certain bondage to mechanical relations in which it had hitherto been confined; or whether he would let it stand substantially where his predecessors had left it. His historical sense, and his intense admiration of his predecessors and loyalty to them, finally cast the scale in the last direction. He continued to use the governmental analogies, which were rapidly becoming offensive to his times; and this fact, more than anything else perhaps, prevented him from coming to an understanding with the greatest thinker upon the atonement among his contemporaries, Horace Bushnell, or from doing much to prepare for the new epoch that was coming. There is something sad, if not tragic, about this, for Park studied every new writer upon this theme diligently, and has left incorporated in his lectures what he considered best and truest among their contributions to the theory.
As always, Park began with definition. The atonement is "that sacrifice of the God-man which is substituted for the punishment of men, and which therefore forms the sole ground on which God is justified and satisfied, and the chief motive by which he is influenced and by which he exerts an influence, in directly blessing men."
The definition is highly technical. By "directly blessing men" is meant converting and saving them. The "sole ground" is the last cause on which God directly depends for blessing men. The term "propitiation" is later defined in exactly the same words as atonement, except that the words "and by which he exerts an influence" are omitted. He hastens in this connection to guard against the idea that God antecedently to atonement was "too angry to favor sinners."
God is made propitious by the sacrifice of Christ in the sense that it is made consistent and justifiable for him now to bestow blessings which it was not antecedently consistent for him to do. Therefore it is figuratively that God is propitiated. He is propitiated in the sense that the atonement is a new motive for him to bestow blessings upon men. Also in the sense that he changes his outward conduct just as if he had changed his moral purpose.
The definitions also introduce a number of weighty modifications of old conceptions of the atonement. Park employed the word "satisfied" in his principal definition. But satisfaction was not the rendering of the strict equivalent in distributive justice. On the contrary, he defines "satisfaction" as "that sacrifice of Christ by which it is made consistent with God's blessedness that he waive the exercise of distributive justice." What he meant by distributive justice has been fully explained on a former page. He was thus gradually stripping off the artificial distinctions which had formerly incumbered the theory. He completed this process by his rejection of the application of the idea of imputation to the atonement. Christ's righteousness could no more be imputed to us than Adam's sin. In both cases the law holds that character is not transferable, since it is always produced by the individual choice. Something is done for us by the obedience of Christ, so that we receive the benefits of his death. But neither that obedience nor any other is imputed to us, for it is forever his obedience and not ours.
One other element which needs to be noted before we proceed to the more systematic development of Park's argument is the largeness of outlook given by his conception of the atonement as having relations to the entire universe. In this he was following his predecessors. The suffering of Calvary was not an event done upon a small planet in one comer of the stellar universe, without relation to other worlds and beyond the knowledge of other intelligent beings. Neither did it provide for the salvation of men alone nor, much less, for the salvation of some limited portion of the human race who might happen to hear of it. But it was the display, once for all, of the divine character, and it formed the ground of all forgiveness which should anywhere take place throughout all space and time. When God has once made himself fully known, then it is forever and everywhere consistent with his "justice" that he should be the "justifier of him that believeth."
The next step in the development of the atonement is its analysis, which was conducted under three heads: (1) the facts which are involved in it; (2) the facts which constitute it what it is; (3) the essential relations of it.
1. We have seen how Park guarded against the idea that God was an angry and implacable God without the atonement. He now again emphasizes the truth by placing at the very head of facts involved in the atonement the fact:
(a) that the atonement has its origin in the grace of the Father. "God sent his Son," "God so loved the world," "I come to do thy will, O God," are the texts he cites. Christ is not more amiable than the Father, and it is infelicitous and injurious to give any such impression.
(b) The second of these involved facts is the divinity of Christ. In making the atonement he needs perfectly to represent the will of God; which is possible to God only. And then, all those expressions which represent the sacrifice of Cod in making the atonement require the Godhead of him who was thus sacrificed. The reverse of this idea was also in Park's thought; for if the one great work of atonement which required the divinity of Christ were denied, there would remain no necessity for any such divinity. Like Henry B. Smith, he adopted the thought expressed by the phrase "incarnation unto redemption." Remove the redemption, and you have removed the occasion for the incarnation. In this view of the essential connection of ideas, both these men showed their greatness. It is not a chance phenomenon of earlier times that the denial of an objective atonement has led to the denial of the divinity of Christ: the two doctrines are so connected by the internal necessities of thought that they stand in any system or fall together.
(c) The third involved fact is the humanity of Christ. He must be a man fully and genuinely to represent man. We see here the influence of Macleod Campbell upon Park's course of thought. His views were carefully and not unsympathetically reviewed in the Bibliotheca Sacra. by Professor Park himself; but, long before, his great idea, that the atonement was the confession of humanity, had been fully incorporated in the theory. But while Campbell had rejected other elements in favor of his own newer light, Park, with his characteristic breadth, did not reject one truth because he had found another. The atonement makes forgiveness "consistent," and a profound confession of humanity's sin by the God-man adds another element to that consistency, but does not take away every other.
2. Passing now to the facts constituting the atonement, Park mentions (a) the sacrifice of the God-man. Sacrifice is so often conceived mechanically that Park's understanding of its meaning will have a permanent interest. Says he:
A sacrifice is a confession of the guilt of the person for whom it is offered. It is an expressive gesture, a symbol. It is thus an acknowledgment of the rectitude of the being to whom it is offered. It is an acknowledgment that the sin may be deservedly punished by the being to whom it is offered. It is an acknowledgment that the sin must be followed by some pain of the person by whom the sacrifice is offered. Thus the sacrifice of the lamb without blemish by the ancient Hebrews was not merely the loss of so much property, but was a crossing of the affections. It is also a prayer for the person in whose behalf the sacrifice is offered. It a public avowal of the offerer's intent to honor the being to whom the sacrifice is offered. And, finally, it is an avowal that the sufferings of one being are substituted for the punishment of another. The sufferings of the lamb are substituted for the punishment of the Jew: the sufferings of the Lamb of God are substituted for the punishment of the world.
(b) The second fact constituting the atonement was the death of Christ. Park conceived this in a large way. It was not the mere physical sufferings of the moment of death which constituted the atonement, but all Christ's sufferings, both physical and mental, culminating in Calvary. Park emphasized also the "Public and judicial character of his sufferings;" and here he introduced to the confusion of the argument, as it will seem to most--the attempt to connect the human government, cruel as it was upon the side of the Jews, weak and subservient upon the side of the Romans, with the divine government, so that the act of the one should be the act of the other. "He suffered at the hands of the rulers who are in this respect symbolical of the power of God." This element, it is true, plays no essential part in Park's theory, but it was introduced, apparently under the influence of the word "government" itself. It would much better have been omitted.
(c) "The atonement consisted in the sacrifice of the God-man substituted for the punishment of sinners." The proof of the substitution is derived from the use of the word ____ in Matt. 20:28 and parallel, from the word ____ which, while not so distinct, "in its connections denotes substitution," and from the other great cardinal passages of the New Testament, especially those which dwell upon the voluntary character of Christ's death. It is noticeable that Isa. chap 53, is not employed in this argument.
3. Park now passes to another grand division of the theme--to the essential relations of the atonement. These are relations to the created universe, to the sinner, and to God. He embraces them under the general word "appeal." The atonement is an appeal to the universe for God the Father. It expresses his love to his Son, to the universe, to the race of men; and it expresses his justice. It is an appeal for the God-man, who is an object of regard to angels, principalities, and powers. It is an appeal for the perfected race, since "the perfect representative man acknowledges by his sacrifice that God is right and man is wrong."
"Appeal" has therefore the meaning in this connection of a solemn setting-forth of the elements of the case and the demand for a proper attitude in reference to it. Park accordingly goes on to say that this appeal to the created universe exhibits and honors the justice and holiness of God as much as these attributes could have been exhibited and honored by the punishment of sinners; it exposes also the vileness of sin as much as this would or could have been exposed by the unconditional punishment of sinners. We begin, therefore, already to see what Park has not yet stated, that the atonement is intended to accomplish in one way exactly what the punishment of the sinner would accomplish in another way.
But the atonement has relation to the sinner. It is an appeal to the sinner to repent and be saved. God appeals: "Behold, how I love thee;" the God-man appeals: "I have come to suffer for thee;" and the perfected race appeals, because that race will universally desire the conversion of every sinner. And then there is the relation of the atonement to God. It takes away the motive for punishing the sinner, since the end of punishment has been perfectly gained; and it presents a positive motive for forgiveness. Park is aware that this last statement will meet with objection. God saves men to promote his own glory; but his greatest glory is the glory of his grace, and the atonement is the fundamental act of his grace. And then, the atonement is God in Christ; and to glorify the God-man expressing the desire of salvation is to glorify God himself.
With these many definitions and qualifications, suggesting repeatedly very broad conceptions of the atonement, Professor Park has now come to the "principle upon which the atonement operates." By this he means, of course, the theory of the atonement. We shall give the statement of this principle in his own words, but it is our purpose, in the further explanation of the theory to depart now from the exact reproduction of the form in which he expresses his thought and to strip it of the governmental analogies by which it was enveloped and possibly obscured. It is possible that thereby the suspicion may be aroused that a departure is being made from Park's real theology. But in fact an explicit reference might be given for every statement that is to be made. If there is any difference from Park's own statements, it is one merely of form, and scarcely of that.
1. First, then, for the formal statement of the principle. It is this:
The atonement exhibits and honors the holiness, distributive justice, and law of God, and it promotes the holiness and happiness of the universe, so as to make the conduct of God in forgiving men consistent with the honor of his holiness, distributive justice, and law, and so as to satisfy his general justice in rescuing sinners from unconditional punishment, in adopting measures for inducing them to repent, and in eternally rewarding them if they do repent.
2. Second, for a running account of this theory:
The theory of the atonement begins in the theory of man. Park has given to men the attribute of freedom, and, whether successfully or not, has labored to establish the principle that all influence over their action, whether on the part of their fellow-men or of God, must be exerted by means of motives. We may speak of the divine "government;" or we may call God "Father," and seek to find the principles upon which he exercises his fatherly office in seeking and saving men; but, however we put it, men are controlled or led through motives.
As to these motives, Park has the further idea which exercises, as we have seen, a large influence at various points of his theology--the idea of "system," law, general methods; the same idea, in fact, which appears in the scientific emphasis of "natural law." God is not restricted to these methods so that he cannot follow anything else, but he proceeds upon great general principles from which he does not depart (as, for example, to perform a miracle) except for grave reasons.
God has, therefore, established a system of moral influences designed to lead men to salvation. One element of this system is the law, involving threat of punishment, and summarily comprehended in the verse: "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." This whole system, including the law, originates in the love of God. He is seeking the holiness of man, and he surrounds him with all appropriate influences which will tend to promote his holiness, exhibiting the attractiveness of holiness and the repulsiveness and danger of sin. All this is alike the outworking of the same love.
But if love originates such a system, then, while love prevails in the councils of God, the system must be maintained. This is true of the law. It was fully understood, its meaning carefully weighed, the possible results which might flow from its promulgation clearly foreseen, before it was ever proclaimed. When man has sinned, if he is to be saved, the penalty of the law must be waived, for to execute it would be to destroy the race; but, if it is waived, it must be so waived that the system of moral influences designed for man's good shall remain unimpaired. If man is not punished, then all that punishment would effect in the way of moral influence upon man must still be effected. His forgiveness must be made consistent with the maintenance of the moral system, with the undiminished total of moral influences tending to promote holiness and deter from vice, or else be cannot be forgiven: love forbids it.
It will be noted that this view of the case exalts the positive character of the law. God might have written his moral law in the nature of men as he has natural law upon the phenomena of nature, and left man to find it out in the same way. But that would have meant the destruction of men. He therefore adopted the method of revelation, of the communication of his law through chosen agents to men. He has declared his law and announced the penalty; and now he comes, and, with equally distinct objective declaration, he sets forth his Son as the sacrifice for sin, saying explicitly that his sufferings are substituted for the punishment of all who will accept of his salvation by believing on him. Park did not suppose this declaration a matter of necessity in the nature of things. If his Son had come and quietly endured the sufferings which actually came to him without any explanation, the mere fact that God so hated sin, and had so involved all beings in its consequences that not even his own Son could come into the world, sinless though he was, without suffering, would declare his righteousness and the seriousness of the threat of the law, and thus maintain its honor. But this is not God's method, because we are under a system of grace. God has declared what Christ does by his death. He takes the place of sinners before the law.
What, when thus viewed, does the suffering of Christ effect? Precisely that, all that, and even more than, the punishment of guilty but repentant men could effect.
To understand this reply, we need to ask what, in Park's thought, the punishment of men was designed to effect. It must be designed to effect something good, for else it could not be inflicted. Punishment, like every other act of God, must be performed under the influence of love, or else his act in this case is not holy. To ask what punishment effects is therefore to ask what good it effects. Does it do any good to the sinner? Park's answer is, "No." He thus rejects the idea of the reformatory design of punishment. When man is finally adjudged guilty before the bar of God, the time for benefiting him through painful discipline is past. Such discipline is properly called chastisement, not punishment. Punishment, when it is inflicted, is to the sinner nothing but an unmitigated evil. Still it must do some good somewhere; and this must be among the innumerable intelligent spirits, men and angels, who may hear of this punishment. With them it will effect two principal things: it will vindicate the character of God as having no pleasure in sin, but as eternally opposed to it; and it will powerfully deter them from sin, since it exhibits sin's true nature in the awful consequences which ultimately follow upon its commission.
All this, and more, the sufferings of Christ upon Calvary effect. They (a) vindicate the holy character of God. Did he really express his holy attitude and the profound truth of things when he promulgated the terrible threat of the law? Does he unspeakably hate sin? When he forgives it, is there no trace of carelessness in him, no complicity of heart with it, no relaxation of his moral earnestness, no giving of the lie to the solemn implications of the threat of death to the sinner? All these questions might be raised, if God forgave sin without an atonement.
What would it be to have such questions raised? Take the repentant sinner himself, what would it be to him? It would destroy his repentance; for why should he repent of that about which God cared so little? It would destroy his God; for he would find himself upon a higher level in repenting than that occupied by God in forgiving and thus reversing the law without a given reason, since he would exhibit a greater sense of the meaning of sin. What would it be to angels but to teach them that they might indulge in the pleasures of sin, if they seemed attractive, without much hesitation, since God thought far less of it than his law seemed to indicate, and the danger of transgression was small?
But the atonement forever shuts off such questions. God waives the punishment of the repentant sinner, but he does it for a great reason. His own dearly beloved Son comes and takes upon himself the suffering of the cross. This is the suffering of God. Man was to suffer to express the infinite ill-desert of sin, but now God suffers to bear testimony to the same thing. If man suffered, the suspicion might possibly arise in some mind that the suffering was inflicted in a mechanical manner or a routine spirit, and did not mean so much after all. But when God suffers, no such suspicion can arise. God is intensely opposed to sin, his law expresses the ultimate relations of things and his own most unchangeable attitude toward all sin, if, in order to waive the punishment of the law and relieve man from eternal suffering, God himself must first suffer. Such is the unavoidable impression of the beholder, be he angel or man.
But (b) the sufferings of Christ deter all intelligent beholders from the commission of sin as effectually as, and even more effectually than, the punishment of guilty men could. One might suspect that God had grown indifferent to men, and punished them without deep feeling; but no one can suspect this when he "sends his only-begotten Son." The threat of the law remains in all its terror. If God makes exception to its execution in the case of those who repent, what will he do to those who rush forward consciously into sin, are thus from the beginning unrepentant, and have no sort of warrant in themselves that they ever will repent? And to those souls to whom the thought of the vileness of sin is a greater deterrent than the thought of the danger involved, how much clearer is its essential odiousness in the sight of God, and of all holy beings like the Son, when God will not pass it over without so great a reason as the sacrifice of his Son, and that Son voluntarily takes the cross that sin may be condemned in the act of its forgiveness!
Thus, when Christ has suffered, the object of punishment in the case of the repentant man has been secured, and it is now consistent with God's honor and the honor of his law, and with the interests of all holy beings everywhere, that he should be forgiven. And, since he is now, by repentance and faith, brought into harmony with God, the love of God positively prompts him to receive into his fellowship one who is now fit for it. Thus love in all its aspects is fulfilled by the forgiveness of the sinner.
This is the form of the theory resulting from the introduction of positive law into the universe. Dropping this fact now from view, the atonement may be considered, in conformity to that ultimate principle already enunciated, as the means by which, when sin has once entered the world, man may be saved and still the "system of moral influences" originally inaugurated be preserved. Those moral influences are exerted substantially through the combined faculties of the intellect and the conscience. In the voice of conscience and in the teachings of history as interpreted by the faculty of the reason lie the great natural influences which are designed to restrain men from sin and lead them to holiness. If man repents of his sin, however blindly he may grope for the truth, and however little he may know of himself or of God, he is received by the forgiving act of God into the divine fellowship. It might be that, in a limited sense and for a time, a man ignorant of the atonement might find holy influences impaired by the very freeness of the divine approach to his soul. But the ultimate revelation of the atoning death which Heaven will make, the fact of the cost of sin, and hence the cost of forgiveness, to God, as shown in the sufferings of the Son of God, would so reinforce the voice of conscience and the lessons of history that the soul would ultimately rest in the eternal meaning and validity of its earliest impressions of righteousness. And thus God's intent in surrounding it and filling it with such moral influences in favor of righteousness would be both justified and maintained.
Into the remaining portions of Park's treatment of the atonement it is not necessary for us to enter. Enough to say that he thoroughly discussed, along lines which will be easily surmised by the trained reader, the old theories which the New England speculations were intended to replace. He then passed to the "fact" of the atonement, which he elaborately proved from the Scriptures. He derived its "relative necessity" from the principles we have already passed in review. And he taught that it was "general" that is, made the salvation of all men possible. It is easy to see that if the atonement makes it "consistent" for God to forgive one sinner, it makes it equally consistent for him to forgive all. In these discussions Park displays all his characteristic acuteness and profundity.
For a time the theory of the New England theologians which Park presented received a very large acceptance among Congregationalists. It became the working theory of the great majority of practical ministers. But the original minds which were pressing on to new views of truth and felt most fully the influences of the new forms of thought which from time to time appeared, did not accept it. They did not even become acquainted with it. This was undoubtedly the effect of Park's error in following too loyally the modes of presentation of his great predecessors, as has already been suggested. It is quite possible that more attention may be paid to him in the near future, and that the main results of his studies may, under the interpretation of some appreciative student who possesses the necessary familiarity and sympathy with later speculations, supply the necessary corrective to too exclusively subjective theories. Almost all those who have recently gained the ear of the theological public have, more or less clearly, explicitly acknowledged the necessity of just that element which Park placed at the center of his theory, that men "must be made to feel, in the very article of forgiveness, when it is offered, the essential and eternal sanctity of God's law." These are the words, not of Park, but of Bushnell, who was prevented from giving his adhesion to the New England theory by confounding it with the older Calvinism, as I have elsewhere shown. William N. Clarke, who has removed most of the objective elements from Christian theology in favor of the subjective, lays great stress upon the manifestation of God's righteousness in connection with forgiveness. He says that Christ does not satisfy law or punitive justice, but he has in mind here the elder ideas of satisfaction which Park also rejects. He speaks of the "gladly endured pain of saving love," and adds that it "is a substitute for punishment which God is offering." Again: "Whatever exhibits God's righteousness, or rightness of character and conduct respecting sin, has the character of a propitiation." He thus approaches very near to Park.
One would suppose that in entering upon the topic of regeneration, where so much of Dr. N. W. Taylor's strength had been spent, Park would take the same position toward his labors as he had done in the discussion of the prevention of sin. But this was not so. On the one hand, he followed Taylor in the most important part of his labors: he rejected, as Taylor did, Burton's change in the taste, leading by necessity to a change in the sensibilities; he rejected also Emmons' immediate creation of holy exercises; he adopted the doctrine that the means of regeneration is the truth; and he insisted that, whatever preparation for regeneration there might be and however long this might last, regeneration, as the last final presentation of truth by the Holy Spirit and the consequent yielding of the soul to it in conversion, was all one indivisible and instantaneous event. But, on the other hand, he manifested no interest in Taylor's eagerness to establish the existence in the soul of a neutral point to which the truth could appeal; he did not discuss the whole philosophy of the "selfish principle" and its "suspension," nor adopt any of the phraseology by which Taylor hoped permanently to advance the theme. In fact, while he emphasized for the practical work of the pulpit the freedom of man, and thus followed Taylor, in his theory he reacted fully to the Edwardean doctrine of the will. He did not feel the need of Taylor's neutral point because, whether there was a neutral point or not, motives could be presented to the will in such a way that holiness would appear the greatest good and would be chosen. Thus, while preserving the most important of Taylor's results in his system, he was prevented from unreservedly placing himself in the position which he really occupied with reference to this great teacher by his remaining amount of adhesion, real and imagined, to Edwards.
His definition was careful. Regeneration is "the change from a state of entire sinfulness to a state of some degree of holiness." As such, it was "the first change," differing from all other, subsequent changes, such as the repentance by which a Christian who has fallen into sin comes back to his duty, both in its origin and in the fact that it is of a fundamental character. It is also viewed by Park as the whole of the complex change from sin to holiness, and not merely, as some say, the divine side of the change. Regeneration thus embraces two elements, divine and human; but they are not so separated by Park as to assign them two separate terms, regeneration and conversion. Such a distinction had its advantages, but upon the whole Park preferred merely to say that "conversion was the most important part of comprehensive regeneration."
Analyzing it more particularly, regeneration involves a change of the primary, predominant choice. It may be questioned whether there is any such fixed and conscious choice before regeneration, but after it there is such a choice, which is recognized by the Christian as determinative of his whole life. It has "stopped the old habit of uninterrupted sin" and has "introduced the new habit of holiness." "It is not merely a holy choice, but the first one of a series; and not merely that, but an influential choice which stands so related to the former and subsequent states of the moral agent that it breaks up the continuity of the sinful habit and introduces a new habit." It also involves a change in the sensibilities and a change in the intellect, such that, in the order of nature, the change in these precedes that in the will; but in the order of time there is no priority of either over the other, for, as a whole, regeneration is instantaneous.
These preliminary and explanatory considerations are no sooner completed than the fact becomes clear that the treatment of the subject is to be determined by the philosophy of revivals which had grown up in the revival atmosphere of New England in the early half of the last century. Professor Park had himself been a revival preacher, and drew to the last some of his most illuminating illustrations from his experience with his parishioners in Braintree in revival times. The two perpetual tendencies of his system join here again in conflict: the Calvinistic tendency to exalt God, which is brought out in his doctrine that God is "the sole author" of regeneration; and the practical interest of the pastor to clear away obstacles and stimulate activity on the part of sinners and so eventually to elicit the act of conversion. These chapters contain, therefore, a philosophy of revivals.
Thus, in the very "analysis," with the main points of which we were just now busy, he guards against the idea that the advocated "change in the intellectual view" of the man should necessarily involve new knowledge; for then the unrepentant man would not be responsible for not having yielded to knowledge which he did not have. It may be merely a new vividness of the old ideas. The emphasis placed by the very term "regeneration" upon the agency of the Holy Spirit is not to lead to inactivity, for man is not responsible in any way for what God does; but he is responsible for repenting. This he can do, this he ought to do, and this he is to be exhorted to do immediately. This is the fullness of man's liberty.
The means of regeneration is the truth. By this Park does not mean the Bible, but any truth; it may be simply the truth of conscience. "God may regenerate little children by the truth which their own consciences give to them. God may regenerate heathen by the truth which their consciences and the volume of nature give them." We are thus incidentally brought to the fact that he followed the tendency of our theologians to emphasize the freedom of the working of the Spirit of God among all men, and the consequent possibility of the salvation of the heathen. He reduced the condition of salvation to its ultimate ethical element, the act of the will in view of truth. If a man knew of Christ, he must believe in Christ, but the essential element of this faith was the "affectionate reliance" on the atonement of Christ. This reliance was choice, and this choice, when reduced to its elements, was Edwardean love. "There is no holiness in religious faith or Christian faith unless there be love to being in general." Let any man anywhere submit to the truth, more or less ample, which he understands; let him exercise a disinterested love toward such being, and such a God as he knows about, or thinks he knows about; and that man is right, because his will is right, and will receive the forgiving grace of God. This position, which was later designated as the holding of salvation by the essential Christ, rather than by the historical Christ, was not the result of the rationalizing tendency of our theology, but was believed to be an interpretation of Scripture; for example, of such passages as Rom. 2:14, 15; 4:4.
And now, with his usual breadth, Park refuses to limit regeneration to any one fixed scheme. Some revivalists were always attempting, as some do still, to produce a single type of experience, their favorite type, which they understood most fully and could guide most easily to the best final result. Thus, while the "antecedents of regeneration" were defined as "increased thoughtfulness, fear and alarm, conviction of sin, endeavor to secure the favor of God, despair of securing this by works," he said most explicitly that "we must not insist upon these antecedents in the order specified above, nor in any uniform degree, nor must we insist upon them at all as the ultimate or chief aim of the sinner, nor regard them as conditions which ensure regeneration." Experience varies as the individuals which undergo it vary. There is one, and one only, condition of salvation, and that is repentance and faith. We are to insist upon this one thing only, and to admire the ways of God in what he otherwise gives and does.
And now there enters again, and for the last time in this review, that strange hesitation upon Park's part between freedom and determinism which characterizes his treatment of the will, to modify his treatment of regeneration. He is about to prove that God is the author of regeneration. By author, in this connection, he means the one who plans for a certain end, chooses it, adopts the means to bring it about, and actually employs these. God is the only one that thus has regeneration in mind, and thus effects it, and hence he is its only author. Park might have advanced here upon the straight road that lies before the determinist. He would then have said: God acts upon the sensibilities and the intellect directly and indirectly, and also sets in action trains of motives operating upon the will, and thus determines the whole man to the new act of repentance. God would thus have been made the author of conversion. But of this, because it is the act of the will, God could not be the author without becoming also the author of every other act of the will, and thus of sin. Hence man must be made the sole author of conversion, and God's authorship of regeneration must be proved by a method which shall leave out this element. But there is enough place, in the composite thing which regeneration had been defined to be, in the change of the intellect and the sensibility, for the action of God; and here it can be said to be a special, supernatural (in distinction from miraculous) exercise of his almighty power. Thus Park was landed in the strange position that God was the sole author of the whole comprehensive change called regeneration, while man was the equally sole author of the act of conversion, which is the central and vital thing about it all. He could have made a better distinction, and one which would have better conveyed, I am persuaded, his real thought, if he had asked the question: Who is the author of conversion? and had answered this question by saying that both God and man are its authors--God in the sphere of influence, as the source of that series of influences which in their combined working lead ultimately to repentance, so that without them the man never does repent; man in the sphere of power, because the final action which constitutes conversion, the choice, is entirely his, as the work of his free sovereignty.
Into the further definitions and distinctions of this subject we do not need here to enter, for it will be readily understood that Park would teach that the soul is both active and passive in regeneration, and that regeneration, while theoretically resistible, is practically unresisted. We pass, therefore, at once to the subject of sanctification.
This, according to Park, is the gradual development of holiness in the Christian under the guidance and by the agency of the Holy Spirit. The question is immediately suggested: What is holiness? And to the answer of this he turns first. One would think that it had already been abundantly answered in the discussions upon virtue which have been earlier reviewed. But Park now goes into the matter afresh, partly because he is considering it upon its human side, and partly because, since this is the place for the entrance of "ethics" into the system, it is the place to come to an understanding with divergent theories of morals, such as the utilitarian.
Virtue is therefore defined afresh, and this time as follows: "the preference of the greater and higher sentient being, on the ground of its value, above the less and lower sentient being." The definition does not differ in meaning from those already given, and we need spend no time now in elucidating that meaning.
The discussion of Utilitarianism is introduced under the head of an objection to Park's own theory, that it is in essence the utilitarian theory. The utilitarian theory, he says,
pronounces happiness and the means to happiness, the chief good and only good. This theory, on the contrary, makes happiness the lower good and holiness the higher. The utilitarian theory teaches that we have no idea of right apart from the tendency of an act to happiness. This theory asserts that right is a distinct idea. The utilitarian theory teaches that a thing is right because of its tendency, and hence that the love of the general happiness would be wrong if it did not promote the general happiness. This theory is that a thing has its tendency to happiness because it is right, and that right would be right whatever its tendency might be. In fact, there is a universally acknowledged distinction between the right and the useful.
Neither is a thing right because it is agreeable to the will of God. Benevolence, for example, is agreeable to the will of God, but it would be right and possess the attribute of imperative obligation if it were not agreeable to the will of God. Nor is right right because it is agreeable to the fitness of things. In opposition to all such theories Park taught that:
right is a simple term, which can only be defined by reference to the occasions when the idea arises in the mind. Rightness, virtuousness, is that quality of an act which conscience approves, obligates us to practice, and feels complacence in; and which has a desert of reward. In other words, right is the correlate of conscience which perceives the right immediately and affirms our obligation to perform it.
And, again: "benevolence is right in itself, eternally and immutably. It is right because it is right." Park sometimes called himself, in distinction from Utilitarians, a Rightarian.
Sanctification is the production of this holiness more and more in the heart and life of the Christian. The agent of sanctification is the Holy Spirit. The means is, the truth. It differs in no essential respect in its nature from regeneration, except that that is the introduction of the holy life, and is a fundamental reversal of what has gone before, while this is the consistent development of what is already begun, and the strengthening and deepening of holy habits, or distinct holy choices, in accordance with, and in consequence of, that first "primary, predominant" choice. We need, therefore, spend no more time upon this topic. Of course, the great historical controversies into which American theology had fallen over these themes were sketched and illuminated; Oberlin had its share of attention, with sharp criticism of certain points, but in the most kindly spirit; but Park came out in nothing peculiar or calling for especial attention today.
Of justification it is also unnecessary to add more than that he made it synonymous with forgiveness, stripping it of the forensic elements of the older Calvinism; and that he grounded it wholly in the atonement of Christ.
We close our review of Park's system with an account of his eschatology. He brought the New England answer to the Universalists, which had occupied the school from the very beginning, to its conclusion, and thus completed the New England attempt to render a service at this important point to the general cause of Christian theology as well as to preserve its own borders from the intrusion of what was regarded as a dangerous error. For this reason alone it is important to know what Park had to say. But in a peculiar degree is it necessary that any history of New England theology should close with a statement of the positions upon eschatology at which it arrived, because it was at this point that the "new theology" which has succeeded it among the Congregational churches first manifested itself. In the theological seminaries, it was at Andover itself, and among former colleagues and pupils of Park's, that a proposition was made looking to a modification of the severity of the New England conception as to the condition of the heathen, which proved the entering wedge of a new eschatology and a new theology of atonement and incarnation. The new will not be understood except this New England background is clearly understood.
We may limit our discussion to the question of future punishment, for this was to Park, and is still in the thinking of the day, the crucial point of the whole theme. It has been already pointed out that Park did not suppose that the great majority of the race would be lost, but he did believe that those who were finally impenitent when overtaken by death would remain in sin and would be punished by God forever. It is his support of this doctrine to which our attention is now called.
The evils which come upon men in consequence of sin and which possess the character of moral discipline are divided by Park into two classes, chastisement and punishment. Chastisements are all those pains inflicted upon a sentient being to prevent or correct sin, or to secure or increase the holiness of himself or other beings. All the evils coming upon us in consequence of sin in this life are of the nature of chastisement. They come under the head of grace, and are reformatory, corrective, and directly beneficial in their character. Punishment is, however, something radically different. "Real punishment is pain inflicted by the Lawgiver upon the transgressor for the purpose of satisfying the Lawgiver's distributive justice. The pain must be inflicted by the Lawgiver, upon the law-breaker, because it is deserved, and in order to satisfy distributive justice." The meaning of distributive justice as earlier brought out must be held constantly in mind. It is determined by benevolence; for, as Park adds immediately to the definitions just given, "the design of distributive justice is to promote the welfare of the universe."
With these distinctions as to discipline, Park now proceeds to a more careful explanation of the design of punishment. "What is the design of God in satisfying his distributive justice? Why can he not let it go unsatisfied, as men often do?" This question he answers:
1. Punishment is designed to vindicate the character of the law. The threats of the law are necessary to the very idea of law. The infliction of the penalty is necessary to the reality of the threats, and hence to the maintenance of the character of the law.
2. Hence punishment is designed to honor the character of the Lawgiver. It expresses his benevolence, because he thereby inflicts those evils which are necessary to the promotion of good. It honors his distributive justice, his holiness, and his veracity.
3. Hence the design of punishment is to prevent sin in the subjects of the law, and to promote their holiness.
Up to this point many of the advocates of final restoration would be willing to keep company with Park. He has put punishment directly upon the basis of the divine benevolence. But he next lays down the principle that "the punishment of the wicked will be eternal." In preparation for the proof of this principle, he lays down a number of preliminary propositions which contain substantially his apologetic for the doctrine. Thus he says:
God's government respects other worlds than this. The Universalist says that it is impossible to believe that God will make a race and punish the majority of that race. But he might punish all for the benefit of another race, or for many races, and still be benevolent. Positive benefits flow to others from condign punishment. One generation receives benefits from the summary visitation of the law upon a previous generation. Still we suppose that the majority of this race will be saved. Hell in the universe will occupy no greater place in comparison than the state's prison in the commonwealth. Again, man is free. He knows that if he sins he shall be punished, and he is free to sin or to refrain. It is the overlooking of this fact that gives so much difficulty with the subject of punishment.
But Park went even farther than this in his apologetic. Universalism proceeds upon the supposition that wicked men will finally repent. Park meets this position by the proposition that "men may be punished even if they are penitent." He may have believed, upon the whole, that every penitent being would somehow be saved. He is reported to have once said that if the Devil would repent, God would find some way to save him. I myself never heard this remark, and have heard him say that "no atonement had been provided for the devils in hell"--which at least hints strongly at the impossibility of their salvation even if they should repent. All such questions, however, he regarded as belonging in the region of groundless and unprofitable speculations, for he believed firmly that men dying impenitent and the devils would continue obstinately in sin, and that eternally. Still he would invalidate the last refuge of his opposers, and hence he maintained, whatever might be our speculations, that even repentance did not carry with it the certainty of forgiveness, for "even Christ, though he was holy, was not perfectly happy, but was the greatest of all sufferers." He even said: "The holier a man is, the greater his remorse for his past sins. How the redeemed spirits can be happy in spite of their past sins is the mystery of the atonement of Christ."
The last turn of thought suggested the further remark that the distinctive punishment of hell is remorse and the other painful emotions of conscience. Punishment is rational, that is, it is
produced according to the nature of the mind. If there be physical punishment, it is only to excite the action of conscience. If a man sin, he shall forever reflect upon his sin, and shall let conscience work according to its own laws. This is the doctrine of eternal punishment.
Park is now prepared to begin his proof of the doctrine. He sets the rational arguments in the front.
1. Sin deserves eternal punishment. Sin deserves remorse of conscience. This is an axiom. Now, remorse is perpetual. Guilt is personal and eternal. It is contrary to the first principles of the mind that punishment should diminish guilt. Once guilty, always guilty. This eternal remorse is eternal punishment. "The whole idea of hell is this: You have been free, you have chosen to pursue a certain course, you must reflect on it forever." Thus Park adopted what Emmons called his own special contribution to the subject of future punishment.
2. The nature of conscience proves eternal punishment. There is a presumption that the mind will always act in accordance with its present laws. It is a law of conscience to inflict pain for sin. Left to itself, conscience will always reprove men of sin. If this is not to be so, God must interfere to prevent the normal action of this power which he has given men. He is under no obligation to do this, there is no evidence that he will, and the very nobility of the faculty of conscience shows how irrational it is to suppose that he will interfere. Men will be left to themselves.
3. The fitness of eternal punishment to the nature and tendencies of sin. , The tendencies of a single sin are to unending evil. Every sin adds to the facility of committing another, and the sin of one man tempts another to sin. It is fit that the pain which thwarts these tendencies should be unending also.
4. Men may be punished as long as they sin, and they will sin forever. The mere possibility of eternal sin renders it impossible to prove universal salvation; for if men sin forever, they will be punished forever. But there is more than a probability here. There is evidence that the impenitent at death will sin forever. Their persistence in sin to the end of this life leads us to infer that they will sin forever, unless we have evidence to the contrary, and there is no such evidence. They have remained depraved in spite of good influences, and we infer that they will remain so forever. More, they grow worse and worse under good influences. Affliction and chastisement serve only to harden them if they remain impenitent. And, then, the Bible represents the impenitent as continuing in sin, as long as it speaks of them at all, for they are sinners through life, at death, in the intermediate state, at the judgment. Now, after the judgment certain great advantages will be lost to them; "from him that hath not shall be taken away that which he hath." And there will be positive disadvantages: the power of habit, intensified and accumulated, the exasperating effects of unsuccessful punishment, etc. All these things will operate to perpetuate sin, just as similar things will operate to secure the eternal holiness of the repentant. In one passage eternal sin seems to be asserted of a certain class: "Whosoever shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit . . . is guilty of an eternal sin" (Mark 3:19).
5. The holiness and sincerity of God. God is infinitely holy. He must be sincere in expressing this feeling, and the sincere expression of God's abhorrence of sin is eternal punishment.
6. The benevolence of God. We have already touched upon this argument, and remarked that Park could not maintain eternal punishment upon his theory of the divine action, unless he could show how benevolence required it. This he now more fully undertakes. Avoiding the unfortunate expressions of Hopkins, he still follows the essential lines of his argument. His successive points are:
a) The eternal and deserved punishment of sin does good. It results in an increase of holiness in the universe, because men are deterred from sin by the fact of punishment. It thus promotes the general good.
b) As sin tends to work unending injury, benevolence requires that it have an unending connection with pain which will counteract the tendency of sin. This would not be so if men did not deserve to suffer, but they do deserve to suffer all that is useful in counteracting the evils which their sin has wrought.
c) Benevolence requires of God to hate sin more than any object in the universe, and particularly to hate sin far more than pain; and benevolence requires him to express this hatred, for otherwise it cannot enter into that system of moral influences by which he is guiding the world to its salvation. The only fit expression of this hatred is eternal punishment.
d) In the long run, benevolence requires what is fit and just; and eternal punishment fits eternal sin.
e) Facts confirm the supposition that benevolence requires eternal punishment. In proportion to men's conception of the evil of sin they are convinced of the eternity of punishment. Even men who doubt it are obliged to use the scriptural threatenings to the evil-doer. The tendency of men is to form low estimates of any punishment that will end; eternal punishment is adapted to this peculiarity of the human mind.
7. The veracity of God proves eternal punishment.
Up to this point we have been busy with the rational argument which Park brings in favor of the doctrine. With this head he passes to the biblical doctrine; for it is his position that the Bible, which is God's word, has plainly declared that there will be eternal punishment, and hence if God has told us the truth--that is, if he is Truth himself--punishment for some must be eternal. As this is, after all, his decisive argument, we shall trace it somewhat carefully.
a) Some sins are certainly threatened with eternal punishment, as the sin against the Holy Ghost (Matt. 12:31, 32), the sins "unto death" (1 John 5:16, 17), and those who fall away into wilful sin (Heb. 6:47-8; 10:26, 27; 2 Peter 2:20-22).
b) Some sinners never will be saved, e. g., Judas (John 17:9-12; cf. Mark 4:21).
c) The Scriptures declare that some men receive their good things chiefly in this life (Luke 6:24; 16:25; Ps. 17:14).
d) The Scriptures declare that men of a certain character shall not be saved (John 3:36; Luke 4:24).
e) The Scriptures declare that some men shall perish, or be destroyed (2 Thess. 1:9, etc.).
f) Some sinners shall be subjected to the action of instruments of punishment which shall be eternal (Matt. 3:12, etc.).
g) The circumstances under which sinners are said to be excluded from the kingdom of heaven imply the doctrine of eternal exclusion (Luke 13:23-28; Matt. 7:21-23; Luke 16:26. Note that there is no intimation in these passages of repentance upon the part of the excluded.).
h) The doctrine of election implies hopeless punishment of the non-elect.
i) The constant and great contrast between the state of the righteous and the wicked.
j) The express assertions that the punishment of the wicked shall be eternal. (1) The only works which writers of the New Testament had to express eternity (____, _______), they used. (2) The same words are used to express eternal misery as to express eternal happiness, or (3) to express the eternal attributes of God. (4) The same words are used to express the happiness of the righteous and the misery of the wicked in the same verse (Matt. 25:46). (5) As to the words ____ and _______ the predominant usage is in favor of their meaning unlimited duration. When not so used, their signification is limited by the nature of the thing to which they are applied, or by positive announcements. There are no such limitations in respect to these words when used of future punishment. Our own use of the words "always" and "forever," "eternal" and "eternity," corresponds exactly to the biblical usage, and will suggest the modes in which they are used in the Bible.
k) The Bible has taught the doctrine of eternal punishment in every way consistent with its style. It never says "eternity in the strict sense of that word," but that is not the style of the Bible. It does, however, teach it by assertion and implication, in positive and negative forms, with all variety and great intensity. It could do no more.
Thus we close our review of the greatest of the New England systems. For logical concatenation and power, for argumentative force, for comprehensiveness, for genuine liberality in the treatment of principles and the emphasis placed upon the essentials, for clearness and luminousness of discussion, and for loyalty to the great doctrines of evangelical theology, it is unsurpassed, if not unequaled, in the history of Protestant dogmatics. It is a permanent loss to the cause that its author did not himself issue it in the form of a treatise. Its defect was its failure to compose the strife between the idea of liberty involved in its fundamental theory, that of the nature of virtue, and its theory of the will. Park did, as we may believe, the best that can be done with the elements which had been delivered to him. His failure at this point forces irresistibly upon us the question as to the possibility of success in the task which New England theology had set before it--to free Calvinism, while it still retained its characteristic features, from the paralyzing load of a doctrine of inability. Our task will therefore not be done till we have raised this question.
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