Required reading
Systematic Theology by Charles Hodge (Vol 2) (Available from Amazon or free here) - Conclude Chapter 3 (Person of Christ).
My summary
Hodge now finishes with an overview of Schleiermacher's theology.
Hodge's objections give a good overview of Schleiermacher's teachings.
Hodge states that the system:
(i) is not and does not pretend to be Biblical;
(ii) is not what it purports to be;
(iii) is essentially pantheistic;
(iv) ignores the doctrine of the trinity;
(v) makes Christ a mere man;
(vi) is contrary to the Scriptures in what it teaches concerning man;
(vii) has a different plan of salvation.
What grabbed me
I appreciated Hodge's summary at the end of the chapter: 'As Christian theology is simply the exhibition and illustration of the facts and truths of the Bible in their due relations and proportions, it has nothing to do with these speculations. The "mediating theology " does not pretend to be founded on the Bible. It does not, at least in Germany, profess allegiance to the Church doctrine. It avowedly gives up Christianity as a doctrine to save it as a life. It is founded on "speculation " and not upon authority, whether of the Scriptures or of the Church. It affords therefore no other and no firmer foundation for our faith and hope, than any other philosophical system ; and that, as all history proves, is a foundation of quick-sand, shifting and sinking from month to month and even from day to day. Schleiermacher has been dead little more than thirty years, and already there are eight or ten different classes of his general disciples who differ from each other almost as much as from the doctrines of the Reformation. Twesten and Ullmann, Liebner and Thomasius, Lange and Alexander Schweizer, are wide apart, each having his own philosophical solvent of the doctrines of the Bible, and each producing a different residuum.
The simple, sublime, and saving Christology of the Bible and of the Church universal is : " That the eternal Son of God be- came man by taking to Himself a true body and a reasonable soul, and so was and continues to be God and man in two distinct natures and one person forever."'
No more needs to be said
Next week's reading
Read Chapter 4 (The mediatorial work of Christ) and Chapter 5 (Prophetic office).
Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.
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