J. Gresham Machen And The Theology Of Crisis

By Annette G. Aubert

[Annette G. Aubert is a Ph.D. student in Historical Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary.]

I. Introduction

J. Gresham Machen (1881–1937), the brilliant biblical and New Testament scholar and apologist, is typically considered to have been a leading conservative in the Modernist-Fundamentalist conflict at the beginning of the twentieth century. There is no doubt that Machen was a man who engaged in the great debate for the defense of Christian truth. A large number of historical scholars identify Machen as a Fundamentalist;[1] however, closer examination suggests that there exists an alternative view regarding the question of whether Machen may be called a Fundamentalist.

In this study it will be suggested that Machen maintained some positions of the Fundamentalists[2] but not enough to justify the label “Fundamentalist.” To be sure, Machen was “not just another Fundamentalist” like William Jennings Bryan, as Mencken, Machen’s contemporary, has rightly concluded. Rather he was a man of fine scholarship and of distinct wisdom.[3] Along similar lines, John Murray noted that “Machen was in the first rank of Christian scholars.”[4] At this point it is important to note the fact that those who were Fundamentalists were identified by a strong “anti-doctrinal, anti-intellectual, and anti-liturgical” disposition.[5] Giving consideration to these observations, it is argued that it is more appropriate to classify Machen as a scholar who both preserved historic Christianity and advocated the orthodox faith.[6] Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to manifest how Machen was distinct in his scholarship and methodology from the Fundamentalists of his time.[7]

In order to demonstrate that Machen’s scholarship was distinct from that of the Fundamentalists, special attention will be paid to Machen’s encounter with European scholarship, especially with Neo-orthodoxy. As a result, it will be important to discern the manner in which Machen could have explored a synthesis between the Ritschlian school and the Barthian movement. Before considering Machen’s assessment of Neo-orthodoxy it is essential to discern Machen’s theological methodology; therefore, the first part of this paper explores the method that Machen employed in the study of the New Testament. The second part of this paper analyzes Machen’s encounter with Neoorthodoxy, particularly his analysis of Karl Barth. In order to understand fully both Machen’s theological method and his appraisal of Neo-orthodoxy, it is necessary to survey Machen’s historical-religious context. For the sake of brevity, this paper will limit this background survey to a few aspects only.

II. Historical-Religious Background

As early as 1870 the intellectual and cultural seeds that cultivated liberalism could be noticed in the United States, and the effect of liberalism on Protestantism in Germany was a well-recognized fact.[8] American theologians were aware that German scholars set forth hypotheses that caused divisions over the Bible and its relation to history and science.[9] Ira Brown is of the opinion that the adaptations in theology at the end of the nineteenth century are more important than the ones that were part of the Reformation.[10] One of the major shifts to occur was that theology was adapted to fit the science of evolution.[11] Moreover, when American biblical scholars embraced higher criticism from Germany, German theology was furthered in American academia and remained part of American academic endeavor into the new century.[12]

Two figures can illustrate briefly this migration of theological tendencies from the German to American academic arena. Charles A. Briggs (1841–1913), well known for his heresy trials, offended many orthodox Presbyterians through remarks made on the authority of Scripture during his inaugural address for his chair in biblical theology.[13] Walter Rauschenbach’s idea of the social gospel, adapted from the theology of A. Ritschl, became a powerful influence on both the popular and scholarly levels. He believed that redemption was “the voluntary socializing of the soul.”[14] In their own ways, both men help to exemplify the existing tension between conservatives and liberals over doctrines relating to Scripture and salvation.

Not only did the American academy embrace liberalism, but, as William Hutchison clearly shows, by 1920 the views of liberalism “had become accepted and respectable in more than a third of the pulpits of American Protestantism and in at least half the educational, journalistic, social, and literary or theological expressions of Protestant church life.”[15] Especially noteworthy is the appearance of Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878–1969), who was one of the most important supporters of Protestant liberalism.[16] The modification of theology to modern culture resulted in the emphasis of the immanence of God in culture, the excellence of human beings, the kingdom of God, religious feeling, and morality in religion.[17] Conservatives, however, did not remain silent about the changes that took place. For example, William J. Bryan (1860–1925) opposed the teaching of evolution and criticized liberalism in his books and “Bryan Bible Talks.”[18] Between 1910 and 1925 a twelve-volume series of treatises was compiled, The Fundamentals, which reflected the views of the historical Protestant faith.[19]

By 1924 a work by Shailer Mathews entitled The Faith of Modernism was published, containing many thoughts that reflected much of the scientific ideas of his time, viz., religion did not have its foundation in an “objective knowledge of God,” but is rightly discerned by “social or historical development.”[20] The Christian church of the United States faced a dilemma of faith identical to that which faced evangelicals in Europe half a century earlier.[21]

Witnessing how liberalism became a current religion and how conservatives failed to engage in a theological dispute caused Machen distress.[22] Unlike many of the conservatives of Machen’s time, he engaged in the battle against Modern Liberalism in a scholarly fashion.[23] Not only did he oppose the liberal phenomenon that occurred in his own denomination, the Presbyterian Church of the United States, but he also kept up with the study of European developments and engaged in providing a response to some of the continental liberal trends. In Machen’s The Origin of Paul’s Religion and The Virgin Birth of Christ his interaction with European scholarship is most notable. It is important to acknowledge that Machen, in challenging Modern Liberalism, did not confront just a theological idea, as Clair Davis rightly observes, but rather a dynamic and living trend.[24]

III. J. Gresham Machen and Liberalism

While engaging in the fight against liberalism, Machen was certain that a plain disagreement with the adversary was not a persuasive argument; hence, he concluded that “before a man can refute successfully an argument of an opponent, he must understand the argument that he is endeavoring to refute.”[25] The basic point for Machen was that one needs to possess knowledge about a subject in order to point to its error. This was a general principle that Machen applied in his own approach to liberal scholarship. It was essential for Machen to know fairly well the theoretical bases of the liberals to provide an answer; hence, he familiarized himself with their primary sources. In contrast to Machen, many of the Fundamentalists of Machen’s day thought it to be irrelevant to be informed about liberal scholarship.

It is helpful to recall briefly that Machen himself encountered German liberalism firsthand while he was a student in Germany and during his years as a student at Johns Hopkins University. It is to be noted, however, that the liberalism that Machen encountered in Germany was more thoroughgoing than that at Hopkins and raised some doubts about his Christian faith.[26] The mental and spiritual confusion that Machen experienced was due to the encounter with liberal theology, not only before his coming to Germany but also after he left.[27] Most likely it dealt with matters of the historical legitimacy of the records of Jesus in the New Testament and of Christianity’s origin.[28] Hence, it is preferable to interpret Machen’s experience in Germany as an event that in the end strengthened his faith and helped him to provide a clear response to liberal theology.[29] This may also explain his strong emphasis on the historicity of Christianity; maintaining the oneness of “history and faith.” As a result, of Machen’s own conclusions he produced various addresses and writings that dealt with subjects like the incarnation and resurrection of Christ, where he clearly presented the historical credibility of the account of Scripture while disproving the approach of modernism.[30]

IV. Machen’s Method of New Testament Study

Before we discuss in more detail Machen’s encounter with Neo-orthodoxy it is essential to pay brief attention to Machen’s methodology of the study of the New Testament. As Deane Ferm has correctly pointed out, Machen cannot be considered a “biblical literalist.”[31] He distinguished himself from the literal approach of the Fundamentalists of his time. While Machen studied at Johns Hopkins University he was introduced to the modern scientific method of study of ancient books, and he considered it quite valuable to employ this method in examination of the writings of Scripture.[32] It also is to be recognized that when Machen studied the New Testament at Princeton Seminary, William P. Armstrong, the director of the New Testament department, used the modern scientific method.[33] Accordingly, Machen continued to employ the modern scientific method that he was taught at Princeton to the study of the New Testament. Further, Darryl Hart reminds us that the Reformed concept of concursus and providence played a significant role in Princeton Seminary’s doctrine of Scripture.[34] Machen himself adopted this doctrine of the Scripture in his approach to the New Testament. Moreover, it ought to be noted that while Machen appreciated suggestions of contemporary critics, he considered with caution the “historical and linguistic” evidence; at the same time, he upheld the notion “what shall we think of Jesus Christ?” should not be abandoned.[35]

Machen mentioned on one occasion that modern scholars labored diligently in their “quest for the historical Jesus”; in fact, he believed that they did a distinguished work.[36] At the same time, he affirmed that their endeavor resulted in error.[37] According to Machen, modern criticism readily allowed the Gospel accounts to be historical, but from their perspective they ought not be interpreted supernaturally. Rather, all the events were to be explained naturally.[38] Machen disagreed strongly with this approach. By taking the supernatural from the study of the Gospels, “the historian finds to his dismay that he has cast doubt upon much that remains, and that he is constantly approaching the absurd view that no such person as Jesus ever lived.”[39] One of the root problems with liberalism’s approach to the New Testament is that it originated from Naturalism, whereby all “creative power of God” is disputed.[40] It is significant to note that the new method whereby every book ought to be studied as any other human book belittled the divine element of the Bible, leaving the interpreter to deal mainly with the “historical and critical” issues.[41] Machen had shown with particular clarity that when the natural and supernatural are separated from the Gospels, as in modern liberalism, a “liberal Jesus” was the necessary result.[42]

Although Machen himself employed modern scientific method in the study of the New Testament, it is clear that unlike the liberals he maintained a supernatural interpretation of the Bible. In Christianity and Liberalism he remarked that

the distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’ does not mean, indeed, that nature is independent of God; it does not mean that God brings to pass supernatural events, natural events are not brought to pass by Him. On the contrary, the believer in the supernatural regards everything that is done as being the work of God.[43]

Machen has noted here an important feature about his theological foundation. His statement that God governs both the natural and supernatural allows him to employ the modern scientific method without rejecting the divine element.

V. Religion and Science

Not only did Liberal Modernism deny the supernatural interpretation of Scripture; it also undertook to maintain religion by making a separation between religion and science.[44] For Machen it was not new that theologians in the United States forsook the “historic principium of the Reformed Theology.”[45] He mentions in one of his letters that the refusal of the grammatico-historical exegesis appears to be a typical feature of the “anti-intellectualism” of his time.[46] While Machen himself affirmed the correlation between orthodoxy and science, he preferred to call his method “scientific historical method.”[47] At this point it is useful to look at Harry Emerson Fosdick’s views in contrast to Machen’s method. For Fosdick, the original intention and meaning of an author of Scripture becomes increasingly foreign to the modern man as scientific scholars try to understand the Bible’s “historic significance.”[48] Machen has shown that one of the weakest points of Fosdick’s The Modern Use of the Bible is his refusal to apply the historical method.[49] Fosdick presented a Christianity that resembled a “progressive movement,” meaning that Christianity adapted to the surrounding and transforming culture.[50] Accordingly, this approach advocated by Fosdick did not stand on objective facts; rather, Christianity was most clearly recognized by “social or historical development.”[51] Machen’s method dealt largely with objective facts. For him Christianity rested on historical facts and not historical developments, implying that religion could not be separated from science.

In his book What is Faith? Machen revealed his clearest opposition to the departure of religion from science.[52] Machen noted that the current “religious literature” that rejected the “scientific historical method” was indeed a significant issue, even among those who believed that they were partaking in the scientific development.[53] In Machen’s opinion,

It is highly misleading, therefore, to say that religion and science are separate, and that the Bible is not intended to teach science … the Bible does teach certain things about which science has a right to speak. The matter is particularly clear in the sphere of history. At the very centre of the Bible are assertions about events in the external world in Palestine in the first century of our era—events the narrating of which constitutes the “gospel,” the piece of good news upon which our Christian faith is based.[54]

It was essential for Machen to stress that the gospel message itself is based on historical events. Consequently, what is certain of Christianity is that it relies upon “facts in the external world,” facts that science may justifiably address.[55] Machen understood that there were those who believed that Scripture would not lose any of its orthodox significance even in the case where scientific history would prove that Christ’s resurrection never took place, but this is not a Christian attitude.[56] The proper approach was to consider the facts.[57]

In Religion and Facts Machen showed very clearly how Modernism understood itself as isolated from science.[58] For Machen, the historical events of the New Testament cannot be separated from science. To illustrate this, when the Bible recorded the event of Christ’s resurrection it clearly illustrated science.[59] Machen claimed that “true science” considered not only a few facts, but every fact.[60] The Bible becomes ineffectual unless it is a book that is based on facts.[61] And for Machen it was very clear that “there is nothing in modern science that invalidates the teaching of the Bible regarding God’s care for His creatures; nay, there is much that wonderfully confirms it.”[62]

If Christianity is established on facts, said Machen, then it cannot be denied that it has dependence on science, since every fact “must be brought into some sort of relation.”[63]To be sure, the “true sphere of history” deals with the foundation of each reality.[64]

Naturally, the question is raised, if Christianity and modern culture stand in such opposition, can the problem only be solved by the demolition “of one or the other of the contending forces”?[65] Machen suggested that the solution was not to abolish one or the other, but to introduce the idea of “consecration.”[66] Science should not be rejected or viewed as insignificant; instead, scientific knowledge should be acquired “with all the enthusiasm of the veriest humanist” and yet should also be dedicated to God’s benefit.[67] For Machen, “consecration” of man’s control to the creator did not demolish man’s control but increased it. However, conformity to any mortal government would result in the deadly end of both art and science.[68] Consequently, what was required, according to Machen, was attention to the care for the “problems of theological science.”[69] Machen’s analysis of some of the liberals as unscientific placed the demand upon conservatives to be rigidly scientific in order to support their claim for the truthfulness of Christianity.[70]

VI. The Urge for Historical Study

Machen’s method for studying the New Testament must be examined in proper relationship to his understanding of history and truth, which is to say that his notions of history and faith rely on Scottish Common Sense Realism. While the Princetonians adopted Common Sense philosophy to oppose “the skepticism of Hume,” Machen more specifically used its epistemology to provide an apology for the historicity of Christianity.[71]

In his study of historical awareness, Grant Wacker observes that Machen’s view of history highlighted human beings and concerns that he selected from former times; yet in the end, because Machen made much of eternal truths, it appeared to be a “world without history.”[72] Wacker’s analysis of Machen is certainly mistaken when he concludes that Machen was a-historical. While looking at Machen’s writings one will notice how great an emphasis he places again and again on the importance of the historical approach to the study of the New Testament. The fact that Christianity is based on historical facts was indeed one of Machen’s main premises. Machen showed himself to be ill at ease with the a-historical method of the study of the New Testament of his day. In the section below it will become evident, pace Wacker, how Machen himself promoted the opposite of the a-historical approach. Similarly, George Marsden, showed that Machen struggled indeed with the whole matter of history, which in fact was a decisive concern of his time.[73] Terry Chrisope moved along similar lines of interpretation while viewing Machen as a great example for the historical approach to Scripture.[74]

Particularly notable was that at Machen’s inauguration as Assistant Professor at Princeton Seminary on 3 May 1915, he himself chose to speak on the subject of “History and Faith.”[75] This inauguration address already indicated how essential this matter was to him. At the opening of his inaugural speech he emphasized that the one who studied the New Testament must be essentially an “historian.”[76] In Machen’s own words, “The center and the core of the Bible is history. Everything else that it contains is fitted into an historical framework and leads up to an historical climax.”[77] The New Testament is fundamentally an historical writing; therefore, it must be analyzed like an historical subject.[78] Since Christianity was established on facts of history, claimed Machen, it needs to be studied like history.[79] Faith and history cannot be separated, since “true faith involves an intellectual element.”[80] To be sure, Machen’s affirmation that faith had its foundation on knowledge stands in complete opposition to the religious Weltanschauung of his day.[81]

It is instructive at this point to compare Machen to the German scholar Adolf von Harnack and his views on history. Both Machen and von Harnack promoted the historic study of the New Testament, but they certainly differed in their presuppositions and conclusions. Interestingly, von Harnack presented a lecture in Berlin in 1895 entitled “Christianity and History” in which he sought to demonstrate how Christianity could be articulated so as to rely on facts of history.[82] What is remarkable is that Adolf von Harnack expressed a view similar to Machen’s with regard to one’s approach to the Bible and Christianity. Martin Rumscheidt reminds us that von Harnack’s discipline was theology, yet the method that he applied as theologian was that of “the modern science of history.” Therefore, von Harnack was as a theologian an “historian.”[83] Both men stressed the importance of approaching Scripture as an historian. Though Machen and von Harnack may have agreed on the importance of the study of history, it is clear that von Harnack began from a presupposition totally different from Machen’s and that in his application of the historical scientific method he had a different agenda. As it has been noted earlier, Machen could employ the modern scientific method yet at the same time he held to a supernatural view of the Bible as his presupposition, whereas von Harnack’s presupposition to the study of the New Testament depended on autonomous reason. He had no room for the supernatural interpretation of Scripture. Von Harnack’s theological task was to return to the essence of Christianity. He attempted to reconstruct the gospel of Jesus from the initial outlook of the Christian religion. The result of von Harnack’s reconstruction was the “liberal Jesus.” Machen’s aim was not to reconstruct the Christian message, but rather to maintain the historicity of Christianity and its message—the Good News which is based on historical facts.

Machen stressed throughout his writings the idea that Christianity was a religion based on historical facts. The entire corpus of the New Testament relies on one happening, argued Machen, the redemption that Christ supplied is based on His death and resurrection.[84] Equally important, to neglect this essential event of the New Testament makes impossible reliable historical exegesis.[85]

In the Witness of the Gospels Machen noted that Modern criticism applied a method to the New Testament that all was a-historical.[86] He stressed that many aimed to divorce Christianity from history, which was in fact a false endeavor.[87] Again it is interesting to see how Adolf von Harnack in his strong emphasis on historical study continued along parallel lines with Machen, declaring that the attack in the eighteenth century against the correlation between “religion and history has, in fact, proved to be a failure.”[88]

A mere philosophical theism without history, stated Machen, is ultimately bankrupt.[89] It may result in a high morality, but it will not preserve the gospel, which has its foundation in history.[90] As Machen made so clear, a gospel without history did not exist.[91] Machen took into account that if a person considers all historical knowledge then he will be persuaded to the Christian faith. He also acknowledges that one cannot assess each truth if the truth of sin is dismissed.[92]

What is important to note concerning Machen’s historical approach is his notion that the New Testament provides not only pure facts, but also maintains the implication of these facts. The implication of these facts is derived from “supernatural revelation.”[93] For Machen, historical facts and doctrine could not be divorced from each other. The apostles not only stated the mere fact that “Christ died”; they stressed the doctrine that “Christ died for our sins.”[94] The situation of the day was that Modern Liberalism advocated a view that placed experience prior to doctrine. In response Machen spelled out the importance of historical facts and their doctrinal implications, remarking that “it is quite incorrect to say that not only the historical facts about Christ but also the facts of Christian experience come first and then the doctrinal interpretation of these facts comes afterwards. On the contrary, it is of the very essence of Christianity that doctrine comes before Christian experience.”[95] Elsewhere Machen stated that Scripture brings first forth “truth,” both truth that is immutable with respect to God and truth dealing with “redemptive facts of history.” On this truth support is found for moral requirements within culture.[96]

Having noted these elements of Machen’s methodology, we may conclude that Machen remained faithful to the modern scientific method of New Testament study that he had adopted at Johns Hopkins University and Princeton Theological Seminary. As we have seen, a common methodology of Modern Liberalism was to deal only with the human aspect of Scripture, but Machen maintained a divine and a human approach to Scripture. The notion that Christian religion is based on historical facts is a dominant and consistent idea in Machen’s writings. Additionally, Machen’s scientific historical method of New Testament Study continued unwavering, always stressing the importance of the union of religion and science. Likewise he maintained the harmony of history and faith. Machen could speak positively about those with whom he ultimately disagreed, such as von Harnack. Both men stressed the importance of the historical approach to the establishment of Christianity, yet arrived at different conclusions.

VII. Machen’s Assessment of Neo-orthodoxy

Due weight should be given to the fact that Machen did not pen a large work on Karl Barth as did his colleague Cornelius Van Til. It also is essential to note that initial interpretations of Barthian teaching in the United States began only in the late twenties through different articles and book reviews, whereas significant evaluations in book form did not appear before 1930.[97] As early as 1928 Machen expressed some initial thoughts in a paper entitled “Karl Barth and the ‘Theology of Crisis’,” which presented an assessment of Neo-orthodoxy. Machen voiced his opinion in other sources about this new movement as well. For example, in Machen’s correspondence with various individuals he shared his viewpoints about Neo-orthodoxy and Karl Barth. It is necessary to integrate these varied writings by Machen in order to provide a clearer picture of his position. Additionally, this study will deal briefly with the historical question as to how various other theologians of Machen’s epoch responded to the rise of Neo-orthodoxy.[98]

According to Machen’s own assessment it appears that when Neo-orthodoxy or the so-called Barthian movement first emerged he himself was not too well acquainted with this movement.[99] Still, Machen read sufficiently enough to spark his interest in the movement, particularly in his reading of Emil Brunner’s work Die Mystik und das Wort, and also Der Mittler.[100] Considering the fact that the “theology of crisis” crossed the Atlantic slowly, Machen was rather familiar with some of its principal beliefs. As Chrisope rightly pointed out, Machen continued to keep up with the scholarly world in Europe. Machen’s discussion of Karl Barth as early as 1928 shows clearly his maintaining familiarity with European scholarship, likewise his interest for the preservation of the historicity of Christianity.[101] It is interesting to note that a few of Machen’s contemporaries made a comparison between Machen and Barth. At this point we shall give attention to Albert Knudsen’s view on Karl Barth and J. Gresham Machen. For him Karl Barth applied a new method to this Christian doctrine—this “new theology” combines “the old and the new,” whereas Machen did not bring a new interpretation of the traditional doctrines, but rather remained faithful to the essential doctrine of historic Christianity.[102]

Machen in his paper on “Karl Barth and the ‘Theology of Crisis’,” which he presented to a group of ministers in Philadelphia on April 23, 1928,[103] mentioned that to comprehend the whole teaching of the Barthian movement was not an easy task, and it may be that further acquaintance with it might alter his comprehension of this movement.[104] Nevertheless Machen rightly identified Karl Barth with “the theology of crisis,” which compels an individual to make a decision when he faces the “dreadful antinomy between time and eternity, the world and God.”[105]

VIII. A Critique of Modern Liberalism

While looking at Machen’s interpretation of Karl Barth, it must be noted that both men shared some similar positions. Both men criticized and reacted against Modern Liberalism.[106] PaulWoolley agreed with Machen that the great benefit of Barth’s teaching was its refutation of those that tried to base “their weak theories on the sufficiency of man.”[107]

Some of the similar positions between Machen and Barth that are mentioned below may be explained by Barth’s attempt to return to the application of some Reformation doctrines.[108] In spite of similar convictions, it is surely not to suggest that Machen was a Barthian. But Machen may appear in some respects to be closer to Barthian teaching that Modern Liberalism. However, in his core beliefs and epistemology he is in disagreement with Barth.

With respect to the development of dogma, Machen pointed out that Barthian teaching marked a shift in the history of theology or dogma; hence, this teaching turned away from pantheism, mysticism, Schleiermacher’s idea of das absolute Gefühl der Abhängigkeit, Hegelian philosophy, and Ritschlian moralism.[109] Machen himself criticized the idea of pantheism,[110] and of equal importance, he clearly expressed his views against the whole idea of religious experience without doctrine. Machen did concur with Barth’s belief against Modern Liberalism that the basis of Jesus’ life was not what he taught or his pattern for living, but rather his redeeming work.[111] In “Christianity vs. Modern Liberalism,” Machen suggested that Modern Liberalism missed the chief “life purpose” of Christ which was found in his “atoning death.”[112] Although both Barth and Machen may agree on the importance of Christ’s redeeming work, Barth differs sharply from Machen’s view of the historical Jesus.

Though Machen praised liberal scholars for their interest in “the historical Jesus,” at the same time he concluded that the result of “the liberal Jesus” disagreed with Scripture itself.[113] Barth rejected the liberal Jesus since it began with man; hence, destroying the “qualitative distinction” that existed between God and man and it does not share anything with the “Jesus of the Bible.”[114] Certainly, Machen would delight in the Barthian dismissal of “the liberal Jesus.”[115] And when Machen spoke about the Barthian teaching that God could not be recovered in the experience of man, he may have reflected on his own views as expressed in some of his writings, rejecting the mere experiential emphasis in modern theology.[116]

Machen clearly recognized that the core of Barth’s thought was expressed in the schlechthin Andere [“completely other”], which showed the immense dualism that exists between man and God.[117] Here Machen certainly agreed more with Calvin than with Barth; the former said that “nomancan survey himself without forthwith turning his thoughts toward the God in whom he lives and moves.”[118] Yet for Barth this dualism had its source in sin, and Machen observed in this notion a significant Christian feature.[119] In fact, for Barth one of the principal mistakes of Modern Liberalism was the annihilation of the wall between God and man which existed because of sin.[120] Barth defined sin as man considering himself to be God [ jene Vergöttlichung des Menschen].[121] To illustrate some of the liberal notions of Machen’s day, wemay observe once again the presuppositions Harry Emerson Fosdick set forth. Fosdick rejected “the old dualism against which the ancient church had so long and fierce a conflict, but a gladly recognized affinity between God and man. In our theology no longer are the divine and human like oil and water that cannot mix; rather, all the best in us is God in us.”[122] What is important to note here is that Machen himself accused Modern Liberalism of having missed the chasm that existed between God and man.[123]

Likewise it is valuable to compare both Machen and Barth regarding sin. Machen accused Modern Liberalism for losing the realization of sin; in fact, he believed that “according to Modern Liberalism, there is really no such thing as sin.”[124] For Barth it was clear that this separation between God and man could only be bridged by God approaching man through special revelation, which came senkrecht von oben [“directly from above”].[125] Modern Liberalism overstressed the immanence of God, argued Barthianism, so that the separation between God and man was eradicated.[126] Barth himself went so far as to reject any natural revelation. Over against Barth, Machen believed that, “Revelation of God through nature” was still a living aspect of theology and should not be rejected.[127] Regarding the word of God, it was clear that Barth would not seek to objectify God’s word or to understand it as fixed, as for example in Machen’s notion where God’s word is the “supreme text-book” regarding the matter of faith.[128] In contrast to Machen, for Barth the Bible itself turned into only God’s word to man in the existential hour.[129]

Machen explained how Barth stressed God’s wrath as being the core of the Bible, which was in clear opposition to the Ritschlian idea of a loving God.[130] Interestingly, while speaking about the doctrine of salvation in Christianity and Liberalism Machen made the point that the modern liberals dismissed God’s wrath because of their blurry notion of sin.[131] Machen clearly maintained God’s wrath, viz., claiming that each human being through the Fall was placed under “God’s wrath and curse.”[132] “For salvation presupposes something from which a man is saved,” contested Machen, “it presupposes the awful wrath of a righteous God.”[133]

IX. Karl Barth’s Notion of Faith and History

The concept of faith played an important role in Barthian theology. Faith was God’s work in man.[134] For Barth it was obvious that the essential element by which Christianity could be discerned was “faith.”[135] Here it is important to acknowledge that in Barthian teaching Christianity was not understood and based on history, but was established on faith. Machen pointed out that in Barth’s teaching one found a strong accentuation that miracles such as the incarnation and others were received by faith, because such phenomena could not be comprehended by the human mind.[136] As it has been clearly shown, Machen placed much emphasis on the historical approach to the New Testament; hence, for Machen it was not clear if these Neo-orthodox theologians upheld the miracles’ historicity.[137]

Regarding the virgin birth, Machen insisted that this event must be recognized as a “fact of history.”[138] “We are often told,” said Machen, “that if the virgin birth is accepted, it can only be accepted as a matter of “faith,” and that a decision about it is beyond the range of historical science. But such a distinction between faith and history is very unfortunate.[139] It is important to note that for Barth miracles of the Bible are only “illustrations of the miracles”; thus, one cannot speak about their historicity.[140] As a matter of fact, miracles symbolize “das Ungeschichtliche” [“the unhistorical”], said Barth.[141] This view of Barth illustrates that he did not hold to the miracles’ historicity as Machen did. However, it must be kept in mind that for Barth the incarnation, resurrection and other supernatural events were “historical events,” but they were discerned only as historical happenings and these happenings are never an element of faith.[142] This was a basic element in Barth’s notion of faith. We may recall here that Barth owed much to Overbeck for finding another foundation for faith instead of history.[143] The dilemma of “history and faith” is not clarified by attempting to bring faith into dependence of a historical fact, yet “history and faith” are to be perceived in their dialectical relationship.[144] Barth made a clear division between history and faith to which Machen was surely opposed. Again, turning to one of Machen’s contemporaries, Zerbe expressed very clearly that Barth made a clear distinction between “faith and knowledge.”[145]

X. J. Gresham Machen’s Approval of Karl Barth

It is not surprising that Machen in his interpretation of Karl Barth believes that various elements of his theology are a reappearance of “evangelical Christianity.”[146] It is worth considering what Machen said elsewhere a few months later, he assessed it as a vast fallacy to understand Barthian thought “as a real return to the Lord Jesus Christ.”[147] Machen saw in Barth’s position numerous beliefs that were similar to his Reformed view. For example, he valued the fact that Barth reestablished theology by furnishing it with true honor.[148] Surely, Machen agreed with the idea that “the word of God is prior to Christian experience.”[149] As it has been already said in Christianity and Liberalism and elsewhere, great stress had been placed on the notion that doctrine came prior to Christian experience and Christian experience was always based on doctrine.[150] Machen certainly welcomed the Barthian teaching that opposed subjectivism.[151]

The positive attitude of Barthians towards “divine revelation,” like Machen, stood in stark contrast to the common perspective in his own day.[152] 2Yet it must be borne in mind that for Barth “the Bible has only one theological interest: the interest of God himself.”[153] 3AndonlyGodhimself is able to communicate reality about God.[154] Barth would certainly object to Machen’s view that “if a man were truly scientific, we think, he would be convinced of the truth of Christianity whether he were a saint or a demon; since the truth of Christianity does not all depend upon the state of the soul of the investigator, but is objectively fixed.”[155]

XI. The Shortcomings of Karl Barth

Machen in his assessment of Neo-orthodoxy certainly displayed his disagreements with this movement. First, Machen contended that the Barthians maintained a different epistemology, and second, they had a different understanding of historical data in Scripture.[156] Although Machen praised the recent theology in its opposition towards the “anti-intellectualism of the modern church,” he still wondered whether their “knowledge of God” was any true “knowledge at all.”[157] It is not surprising that Machen did raise this question, since he was highly interested in true knowledge and true facts which are the foundation of Christianity—the gospel itself.

For Machen, Barth’s view that God’s word was only acquired by faith was insufficient, saying that “we could never indeed reason out the truth of the things that God has told us in His Word, but to accept it as God’s Word is not contrary to reason but on the contrary is possible only when reason, by the act of God’s Spirit, ceases to be blinded by sin.”[158] Rev. Jenkins, one of Machen’s contemporaries, observed in his analysis of Karl Barth that the categorical removal of reason to obtain “knowledge” was the most essential and harmful aspect of Barthian’s thought and epistemology.[159] Machen made his view clear in a letter to Corum, indicating that the Barthian’s system rested on “a skeptical epistemology.”[160] His concern here was that Barth put aside “the objectivity of truth” and employed subjectivism by making, for example, the redeeming work of Christ only truthful if one accepts it by faith.[161] Machen noticed clearly that Barthians severed faith from “scientific history” concerning Christ’s existence.[162]

This phenomenon of the separation of science and faith that Machen observed among Modern Liberals was noted earlier. John McConnachie, in his assessment of Barth, made a similar observation. While making a comparison between Machen and Barth, McConnachie highlights the fact that Barth believed that the content of the New Testament was only a testimony for the first-century Christians, whereas the contemporary interpreter did not have “scientific facts” such as those with which the historian interacted.[163] This method differs from the Christian approach, contended Machen. Although believing that Jesus is the only mediator between God and humans, Barthians appear to be detached about the discoveries of “historical research.”[164] This is clear when Barth does not even show interest in history and Bible criticism, and so for him the nexus between the Bible and science was even more unacceptable.[165] From a Barthian point of view, “scientific fact” is not able to validate knowledge about Jesus’ life, for example, “the empty tomb,” but by faith this can be confirmed.[166] Machen saw here a real problem with the Barthian teaching that undermining “scientific history” makes room for faith.[167] As Jenkins comments, this “new paradox theology” has been criticized most sharply by Adolf von Harnack, who says that Barth’s “anti-historical tendencies are ‘simply incomprehensible.’ “[168] While reading Karl Barth, then, Machen discovered some similar critiques of Modern Liberalism, especially as regards the divorce of religion from science.

XII. Some Reconsideration of Karl Barth

It is beneficial to view Paul Woolley’s comments on Machen’s assessment of Karl Barth. He believed that Machen’s view on Barthian theology was not sufficiently negative. Certainly Machen pointed out Barth’s weaknesses, but there seem to be more hazards in the Barthian teaching than Machen flagged.[169] It is worth noting that three months subsequent to Machen’s paper he noted in a letter to Paul Woolley that the excitement of evangelicals regarding Karl Barth’s teaching was capable of causing much damage.[170]

In his survey article, “Forty Years of New Testament Research,” Machen picked up Karl Barth in his discussion. The Epistle to the Romans by Barth received only little praise from Machen.[171] The one positive aspect that may be noted in this work, said Machen, is that it communicates the question of what a man shall do to receive salvation.[172] Still, Machen affirmed some views that he valued earlier in Barthian teaching.

There is no doubt that Machen had a “mixed impression” of the Barthian thesis, though he continued to praise Barth’s opposition to liberalism.[173] Machen indicated in a letter that Karl Barth’s “On Christian Doctrine” was at least inspiring

over against the kind of thing that we have been having, it seems like a breath from higher and better world. Instead of human experience, we seem to have here a true insistence on the transcendence of God. Instead in finding God in a mere feeling of man, these men seem, at first sight at least, to be listening to God’s Word.[174]

From this statement it can be perceived that for Machen one of the basic points that he valued in Neo-orthodoxy was its emphasis on the Bible and its denunciation of subjectivism. Likewise he seems to make clear in some respect that he applauded the new emphasis on the transcendence of God, which was nearly erased by the theology of immanence.[175] Again, we may consider Adolf von Harnack, who is a good example of this theology and who believes that God’s kingdom resides in each individual’s soul.

After having read more of Karl Barth’s writings, Machen expressed some of his more mature impressions. He believed that the Barthian teaching was a “subtle thing,” which was separated from the clarity of Christ’s gospel.[176] In spite of their return to some Reformation doctrines, Barthians fail to embrace the position of the “historical testimony” of the “Reformation and the New Testament.”[177] This is one of the root problems from Machen’s perspective, which he identified as early as 1928. Here we should pay attention to Machen’s contemporary, Zerbe, and his final assessment of Barth. In his critical evaluation he concluded that Barthianism did not display Protestant theology, but rather was a “cosmic philosophy” whereby the basic doctrine of the Bible possessed a new connotation from the ancient creeds.[178]

Having read by 1936 one subsequent edition of the Dogmatik, Machen was even more convinced that this work was “more clearly contrary to the heart of the Christian faith than the former edition,” and again he saw explicitly how Barth resisted the historical foundation of Christianity.[179] With Machen’s interpretation of Karl Barth, we may notice again that there was another movement, Barthianism, that tried to make the Christian faith autonomous from “historical criticism.”[180]

XIII. Rolston’s Comparison of J. Gresham Machen and Karl Barth

Interestingly, Rolston in his presentation of Karl Barth made a comparison between Machen and Barth. He illustrated very well Machen’s critical assessment of Barth, saying that “in his attempt to meet the modernists Dr. Machen puts forward the historical facts of Christianity as the one sure basis of faith. What the historian sees is for him fundamental. He exposes himself to the full force of historical criticism.”[181] Rolston believed that these statements, picked up from McConnachie about Machen, were clear statements of the view Barth protested.[182] Moreover, he noted that the true disagreement between Barth and Machen lay not in the question of “the historical Jesus,” as both believed in his existence. Rather, the distinction lay in the “starting point of faith,” for Machen believed that one needs to begin with the facts of history, whereas Barth maintained that one needs to begin with Scripture that communes to “the heart” of the converted person.[183]

From Rolston’s comparison of Barth and Machen it may at first glance appear that Machen was less orthodox than Barth, since Barth’s starting point was faith itself and Scripture that communicates to the heart of the believer. In fact, Barth sounded very pious in his position. Nevertheless, Barth himself ended up with a sort of subjectivism, and did not stand in the continuation of the Reformation, whereas Machen believed with Calvin that faith was built on knowledge.[184] To be sure, the dismissal of this historical presupposition is one of the major problems in Barthian teaching from Machen’s point of view. That Machen came to this conclusion can certainly be traced back to his overall concern to present a Christian religion that was based on historical facts.

XIV. Conclusion

Machen distinguished himself from Fundamentalism in the way he defended orthodoxy and historic Christianity through his outstanding and recognized scholarship. The fact that he was acknowledged by European scholars and his own interaction with critical European scholarship made him an unique scholar, in contrast to some of his fundamentalistic contemporaries.

It was essential to Machen that Christian religion not have its foundation on experience, but on “historical facts—the birth, the life, death, and bodily resurrection of Jesus—and should not to be reduced to subjective ideas disconnected from history and science, as Protestant liberalism appeared to be doing.”[185] The essential idea that Christianity is a message based on historical facts continued throughout Machen’s writings to be a consistent theme.

In The Origin of Paul’s Religion, Machen posited a synthesis between the Ritschlian school of interpretation which included the historical Jesus and the radicals’ view which entailed a supernatural Jesus. In this work Machen tried to establish the following synthesis:

1. that the ‘Liberal’ or Ritschlian historians were right over against Wrede and other radicals in insisting that Paul possessed and cherished a knowledge of the real Jesus, but 2. that the radicals were right over the ‘Liberals’ in insisting that the Jesus whom Paul’s religion presupposes is no mere teacher of righteousness but a supernatural Redeemer come into the world for the salvation of men. The true synthesis, I argued, is found only when that supernatural Redeemer, presupposed in the Epistle of Paul and presented in detail in the Gospel, is held to be the real Jesus who walked upon this earth.[186]

It could be suggested with respect to Machen’s assessment of Karl Barth that he could have posited a similar synthesis between Karl Barth and the Ritschlian school of interpretation. In Machen’s assessment of Karl Barth, he was able to welcome some aspects of his theology, especially his concern for the Word of God versus experience, the removal of the liberal Jesus, and a new emphasis on God’s wrath and sin. Although true, Machen seemed to indicate that Barth fell short in his notion of history, faith, the importance of science and religion against the liberals who cared strongly for the historicity of the Christian religion. One the one hand, Machen acknowledged some of the liberals who were concerned about the historical facts on which Christianity relied. Yet he could not accept their dismissal of the supernatural and their “liberal Jesus.” Hence, for Machen such liberals as for example Adolf von Harnack were correct against Barth with respect to their concern for the historicity of Christianity.

J. Gresham Machen set a model for today’s Christian scholarship in the way he was able to interact with mainstream liberal scholars. He did not retreat into a monastery, but rather tried to understand his opponents by familiarizing himself with their views. He was able to agree with some of their positions while not abandoning orthodoxy. At the same time, he was concerned enough to provide a scholarly response to his opponents by putting forth polemics to defend orthodoxy.[187] Therefore, Machen is still crucial today for his example of scholarship and his orthodox defense of historic Christianity.

Notes

1. See, e.g., Mark A. Noll, A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 376. Douglas Herman identifies Machen as one of the Fundamentalist leaders (“Flooding the Kingdom: The Intellectual Development of Fundamentalism, 1930–1941” [Ph.D. diss., Ohio University, 1980], 235). Likewise Bradley J. Longfield places Machen in the category of Fundamentalists in The Presbyterian Controversy: Fundamentalists, Modernists, and Moderates (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).
2. Machen maintained with other Fundamentalists the following doctrines: “1. The inerrancy of Scripture, 2. the virgin birth of Christ, 3. a substitutionary doctrine of atonement, 4. the bodily resurrection of Christ, 5. the veracity of biblical miracles” (Roy A. Harrisville and Walter Sundberg, The Bible in Modern Culture: Theology and Historical-Critical Method from Spinoza to Käsemann [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995], 188). Ned Stonehouse usefully observes that there were many crucial dissimilarities in positions between Machen and the Fundamentalists, yet Machen himself believed that the similarities that he shared with them were more basic than the dissimilarities. See Ned B. Stonehouse, J. Gresham Machen A Biographical Memoir (1954; repr., South Holland: Park Press, 1978), 338. Nevertheless, in “Christianity in Conflict” Machen communicates clearly that he does not call himself a Fundamentalist. See J. Gresham Machen, “Christianity in Conflict,” in Contemporary American Theology: Theological Autobiographies (ed. Vergilius Ferm; New York: Round Table Press, 1932), 270. Machen rather perceived himself as a Calvinist—”an adherent of the Reformed Faith,” according to Allyn Russell (“J. Gresham Machen Scholarly Fundamentalist” Journal of Presbyterian History 51 [1973]: 49).
3. H. L. Mencken, “Doctor Fundamentalis,” The Evening Sun ( January 18, 1937). It is worthwhile to note that Mencken’s high esteem of Machen must be viewed as exceptional considering the fact that Mencken rejected Fundamentalism. Cf. Tom Bisset, “Baltimore’s Late, Great Evangelical Superstar,” Baltimore Sun (September 10, 1978).
4. John Murray, “Dr. J. Gresham Machen,” The Covenanter Witness (February 10, 1937): 83.
5. Sydney E. Ahlstrom, “The Continental Influence on American Christian Thought since World War I,” CH 27 (1958): 258.
6. See Terry A. Chrisope, Toward a Sure Faith: And the Dilemma of Biblical Criticism, 1881–1915 (Fearn: Christian Focus Publishing, 2000), 18–19.
7. It is worth noting here, as Mark Noll has pointed out, that in America between 1900–1935 the number of Fundamentalist scholars engaged in biblical study declined. Noll attributes this decline to several elements: “the loss of institutional bases within the older dominations, a shrinking corps of active Bible scholars, the spread of dispensationalism, the ascendance of activism, the distrust of university, the disruption of the fundamentalist-modernist controversies.” Nevertheless, Noll shows clearly that orthodox scholars at Princeton Theological Seminary and Westminster Theological Seminary cannot be placed in the same category; their conservative scholarship proceeded in the engagement of contemporary issues via vital scholarly work. See Mark Noll, Between Faith and Criticism: Evangelicals, Scholarship, and the Bible in America (New York: Harper and Row, 1986), 60–61. Similarly, George Wright points out that “one of the chief characteristics of American fundamentalism of the twentieth century has been the steady decline of its scholarly work. The fundamentalist atmosphere of largely negative reaction has evidently not been conductive to the production of brilliant, flexible, highly trained, sensitive and scholarly minds.” George E. Wright, “The Study of the Old Testament,” in Protestant Thought in the Twentieth Century: Whence and Whither (ed. Arnold S. Nash; New York: Macmillan, 1951), 20.
8. George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism 1870–1925 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 51.
9. Nathan O. Hatch and Mark A. Noll, The Bible in America: Essays in Cultural History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 87.
10. Ira V. Brown, “The Higher Criticism comes to America, 1880–1900,” The Journal of Presbyterian History 38 (1960): 193.
11. Ibid. Science was responsible for the dismissal of “supernaturalism” and placed in its position the idea of the “continuation between nature, man, and God.” Kenneth Cauthen, The Impact of American Religious Liberalism (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 7.
12. Jürgen Herbst, The German Historical School in American Scholarship (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1965), 8.
13. See Richard L. Christensen, The Ecumenical Orthodoxy of Charles Augustine Briggs (1841–1913) (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1995), 2; and J. Gordon Melton, “J. Gresham Machen,” in Religious Leaders of America (ed. J. Gordon Melton; Farmington Hills: The Gale Group, 1999), 78.
14. Lloyd J. Averill, American Theology in the Liberal Tradition (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1967), 82. Sydney E. Ahlstrom, Theology in America: The Major Protestant Voices from Puritanism to Neo- Orthodoxy (New York: Boobs-Merrill, 1967), 531.
15. William R. Hutchison, The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1992), 3.
16. Deane W. Ferm, Contemporary American Theologies: A Critical Survey (New York: Seabury Press, 1981), 7.
17. Bradley J. Longfield, The Presbyterian Controversy: Fundamentalists, Modernists and Moderates (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 19.
18. Allyn Russell, Voices of American Fundamentalism: Seven Biographical Studies (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976), 179.
19. Daniel G. Reid et al., eds., “The Fundamentals” in Concise Dictionary of Christianity in America (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1995), 140. R. A. Torrey and A. C. Dixon, The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth (4 vols.; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1970). It may be noted with Noll that the scholarly world gave little recognition to the claims made in The Fundamentals (Noll, Between Faith and Criticism, 44). At this point it is interesting to compare the attention that Machen received in contrast to The Fundamentals. Machen received attention from such men as Mencken and Walter Lippmann. Lippmann, for example, praised Machen’s book Christianity and Liberalism, saying “it is an admirable book” (A Preface to Morals [New York: Macmillan, 1929], 32). Not only was he recognized by Americans, but also was read and acknowledged by European scholars. In Die Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition, Rudolf Bultmann referred to Machen’s work The Virgin Birth of Christ, p. 138, admitting readily that Machen stresses very well the relationship between Luke 1:34ff. and vv. 36ff. (Die Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition [4th ed.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1958], 322). Adolf von Harnack also voiced his opinion with respect to Machen’s article “The Hymns of the first Chapter of Luke and the Origin of the first two Chapters of Luke” (Princeton Theological Review 10 [1912]: 1-38, 212–77). Harnack welcomes Machen’s thorough discussion and remarks that this study deserves attention in Review of “The Hymns of the first Chapter of Luke and the Origin of the first two Chapters of Luke,” by J. Gresham Machen in Theologische Literaturzeitung 38 (1913): 7. It is interesting to observe these responses to Machen by liberal scholars in contrast to Fundamentalists. Tom Bisset points out that, for example, The Origin of Paul’s Religion was too scholarly for the public, and “the fundamentalists, never bothered to read it” (“Baltimore’s Late, Great Evangelical Superstar” [September 10, 1978]).
20. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 176. Notice also that for Shailer Mathews Christianity did not deal with “doctrine” but with “life.” Ibid., 177. In fact, he said Christianity “is a moral and spiritual movement, born of the experiences of God known through Jesus Christ as Savior” (The Faith of Modernism [New York: Macmillan, 1924], cited by George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 177). On the other side were such men as Shirley J. Case, who emphasized highly the study of “modern historical religion” in order to provide release from the captivity to antiquity as a model “for modern living” (“The Historical Study of Religion,” JR 1 [1921]: 15).
21. Harrisville and Sundberg, The Bible in Modern Culture, 189.
22. John R. Muether, “Machen: The Vision of Faithful Scholarship,” The Reformed Herald 42, no. 7 (1987): 12.
23. As already noted, for example, William Jennings Bryan is well known for his actions against liberalism. Yet as Marsden rightly points out, Bryan’s apology for the Christian faith was in essence “pragmatic” and was based on his understanding of society. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 134. Nevertheless, Fundamentalists, in contrast to Machen, while noticing the abandonment of conservative views regarding Christianity, expressed an unfriendly attitude towards intellectual thinkers. Critical scholars believed that the conservatives were anti-academic. Darryl G. Hart, “ ‘Doctor Fundamentalis’: An Intellectual Biography of J. Gresham Machen, 1881–1937” (Ph.D. diss., John Hopkins University, 1988), 16.
24. D. Clair Davis, “Machen and Liberalism,” in Pressing Toward the Mark: Essays Commemorating Fifty Years of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (ed. Charles G. Dennison and Richard C. Gamble; Philadelphia: The Committee for the Historian of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 1986), 248.
25. J. Gresham Machen, The Importance of Christian Scholarship (London: The Bible League, 1932), 26. Likewise Machen stressed that argumentation ought to be done in a scholarly manner. Additionally, it is to be taken into account that Machen in his arguments against his adversaries did not abandon a polemic way of putting forth his arguments. The Zeitgeist of Machen’s day reflected an opposition to polemic that was signified by decline, yet for Machen “the New Testament is full of polemics almost from the beginning to the end.” See J. Gresham Machen to Geo. Lillegard, 14 April 1928, Machen Archives, Montgomery Library, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pa.
26. Machen’s biographer, Ned Stonehouse, notes that Machen’s meeting with Wilhelm Herrmann “was responsible for one of the most overwhelming intellectual and religious experiences of his life, an experience which, though not the instrument of initiating indecision and doubt, seems to have been chiefly responsible for prolonging and intensifying his religious struggle” (Stonehouse, J. Gresham Machen, 105). In “Christianity in Conflict” Machen describes the anguishes that he experienced in Germany. In this environment the Christian faith had been forsaken long ago; therefore, Machen concluded that it was impossible for a believer to be in such a position without having critical doubts. See J. Gresham Machen, “Christianity in Conflict,” 261. Moreover, in a letter to Edward Rian, Machen mentioned that there was a “great struggle” in his time in Germany. See Machen to Edward Rian, 31 October 1927, Machen Archives, Montgomery Library, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pa.
27. Terry A. Chrisope, “The Bible and Historical Scholarship in the Early Life and Thought of J. Gresham Machen, 1881–1915” (Ph.D. diss., Kansas State University, 1988), 143.
28. Ibid.
29. Terry Chrisope interprets Machen’s crisis as a critical developmental moment of his life, from which his more “mature” thoughts of the Bible, historical study and the essence of Christianity originate (Chrisope, “The Bible and Historical Scholarship,” 143).Wayne Headman points out that the main question with which Machen grappled in Germany was “Is Christianity true or not?” The answer to this and other questions established some essential views which he maintained throughout his lifetime. See Headman, “A Critical Evaluation of J. Gresham Machen” (Th.M. thesis, Princeton Theological Seminary, 1974), 20.
30. W. Stanford Reid, “J. Gresham Machen,” in The Princeton Theology (ed. David Wells; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1989), 96.
31. Ferm, Contemporary American Theologies, 11. Because space will not allow a full elaboration of the Fundamentalists’ approach to the Bible, it may be helpful to mention a few examples viewed as distinct from Machen’s method. It was common among Fundamentalists to interpret the Old and New Testament through the studies of words as it was done by Donald G. Barnhouse. While he interpreted a text, he would diagram important words through the whole Bible, e.g., Exposition of Bible Dictionary (10 vols., 1952–1963). Cyril J. Barber and Robert Krauss, An Introduction to Theological Research (2d ed.; New York: University Press of America, 2000), 76. One of the most common methods of interpretation of the Bible was James M. Gray’s “synthetic method.” The aim of this method was to bring the contents of the Bible together instead of separating them. Additionally, William Evans was an advocate of the “book-method of Bible study,” meaning the reader covers each book at once, and rereads it prayerfully without exterior aid. See Hatch and Noll, The Bible in America, 112.
32. Machen, “Christianity in Conflict,” 251–52.
33. Ibid., 252. In Machen’s words, “It seemed significant to me then, as it seems today, that, applying such modern methods of criticism to the New Testament, he [Armstrong] could arrive at a result confirmatory, and not destructive, of the trustworthiness of the New Testament” (253).
34. Darryl G. Hart, “J. Gresham Machen,” in Historical Handbook of Major Biblical Interpreters (ed. Donald K. McKim; Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 595. The doctrine of concursus views the Bible as both human and divine. For further reading on the doctrine of concursus see, e.g., Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1999), 1:598–605.
35. Noll, Between Faith and Criticism, 55. Dallas M. Roark seems to make a useful point by saying that Machen was not challenging the “methods of higher criticism,” but rather their presuppositions and results (“J. Gresham Machen and His Desire to Maintain a Doctrinally True Presbyterian Church” [Ph.D. diss., State University of Iowa, 1963], 82). William Masselink in his dissertation discusses the “Modernistic movements” that Machen opposed. While doing so he pays attention to Machen’s critique, but he misses completely that Machen also had something positive to say about his adversaries. See Masselink’s “Professor J. Gresham Machen His Life and Defence of the Bible” (Th.D. diss., Free University of Amsterdam, 1938), 31–39.
36. J. Gresham Machen, “Is Christianity True?” The Bible Today 17 (1923): 198.
37. Ibid.
38. J. Gresham Machen, “TheWitness of the Gospels,” in What is Christianity? And Other Addresses (ed. Ned B. Stonehouse; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1951), 58.
39. Machen, “Is Christianity True?” 198.
40. J. Gresham Machen, “Christianity vs. Modern Liberalism,” Moody Monthly 23 (1923): 349.
41. Louis Berkhof, Principles of Biblical Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1950), 32.
42. J. Gresham Machen, “History and Faith,” in What Is Christianity?, 176.
43. J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (New York: Macmillan, 1923), 99.
44. J. Gresham Machen, “Religion and Fact,” The Real Issue 1, no. 3 (1924): 3-6. John Draper in his History of the Conflict of Religion and Science [1873] should here be noted as an advocate of the idea that science and religion were not in harmony since religion claimed its authority by the “institutionalized Church.” In contrast science’s goal was to shatter the Church’s pretensions to authority by revealing that all institutions of religion are derived from mortal sources. Edward A. White, Science and Religion and American Thought (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1952), 2.
45. R. Mackay to Machen, 7 March 1928, Machen Archives, Montgomery Library, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pa.
46. J. Gresham Machen, “Modernism and the Faith,” Letter from Professor Gresham Machen The British Weekly (September 11, 1924): 74. Elsewhere Machen notes that “a generation or so ago that feature of scientific method was exalted to the dignity of a principle.” J. Gresham Machen, What is Faith? (1925; repr., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1962), 24. The aim of the “grammatico historical exegesis” lies in the distinction between what the modern scholar would wish the author would have said and the intention of the original author. Ibid.
47. Darryl G. Hart, “The Princeton Mind in the Modern World and the Common Sense of J. Gresham Machen,” WTJ 46 (1984): 8, 12.
48. Harry E. Fosdick, The Modern Use of the Bible (New York: Macmillian, 1925), 36.
49. Machen, “The Modern Use of the Bible,” in What is Christianity?, 187.
50. Harry E. Fosdick, Christianity and Progress (New York: Revell, 1922), 128–36.
51. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 176.
52. Darryl G. Hart, Defending the Faith: J. Gresham Machen and the Crisis of Conservative Protestantism in Modern America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 91. Dr. Hart points out that when Machen speaks of science he identified it frequently with “systematic inquiry and organized learning” (Defending the Faith, 93). It is perhaps worth noting here that Dispensationalists believed that their system of separating and categorizing was the only “scientific method” (see Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 60). Classic dispensationalism in its hermeneutical method aims to separate Scripture correctly into various stages and divine enterprises and afterwards rejoins them in a difficult practice (Hatch and Noll, The Bible in America, 114).
53. Machen, What is Faith?, 24.
54. Ibid., 241.
55. J. Gresham Machen, The Christian Faith in the Modern World (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1936), 62.
56. Ibid., 63.
57. Ibid. Charles Hodge makes a similar point as does Machen by stressing the authority of facts, saying that the interpreter of Scripture must interpret it in agreement with instituted facts (Systematic Theology, 1:57).
58. Machen, “Religion and Fact,” 3–6.
59. J. Gresham Machen, “The Relation of Religion to Science and Philosophy,” Princeton Theological Review 24 (1926): 50.
60. Ibid., 52.
61. Machen, The Christian Faith, 65.
62. J. Gresham Machen, “God’s Works of Providence,” in The Christian View of Man (1937; repr., Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1999), 98.
63. Machen, What is Faith? 242.
64. J. Gresham Machen, The Virgin Birth of Christ (1930; repr., New York: Harper and Brothers, 1932), 219.
65. Machen, “Christianity and Culture,” in What is Christianity?, 160.
66. Machen, “Christianity and Culture,” 160.
67. Ibid.
68. Ibid., 163.
69. Ibid., 164.
70. Certainly Machen did not alter this conclusion. See Douglas Jacobsen, “From Truth to Authority to Responsibility: The Shifting Focus of Evangelical Hermeneutics, 1915–1986,” in Theological Themes in the American Protestant World (Modern American Protestantism and its World 4; ed. Martin E. Marty; Munich: K. G. Saur, 1992), 376.
71. See Hart, “Princeton Mind,” 10.
72. Grant Wacker, Augustus H. Strong and the Dilemma of Historical Consciousness (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1985), 22.
73. George M. Marsden, “J. Gresham Machen, History, and Truth,” WTJ 42 (1979): 159.
74. Chrisope, Toward a Sure Faith, 18.
75. Ned B. Stonehouse, introduction to What is Christianity?, 11.
76. Machen, “History and Faith,” 170.
77. Ibid.
78. J. Gresham Machen, A Rapid Survey of the Literature and History of New Testament Times, Teachers Manual (The Westminster Departmental Graded Series; ed. JohnT. Faris; Philadelphia: The Presbyterian Board of Christian Education, 1914), 3.
79. J. Gresham Machen, The New Testament: An Introduction to its Literature and History (Carlisle: Banner of Truth, 1976), 17.
80. Machen, What is Faith?, 40.
81. Ibid., 46.
82. Martin Rumscheidt, Introduction to Adolf vonHarnack: LiberalTheology at its Height (The Making of Modern Theology; ed. Martin Rumscheidt; London: Collins, 1989), 63.
83. Rumscheidt, “Introduction,” 42. For Harnack it is clear that there is something very solid in history that provides important facts that cannot be disputed. Adolf von Harnack, “What Has History to Offer?” in Adolf von Harnack, 48.
84. Machen, “The Modern Use of the Bible,” 191.
85. Ibid., 192.
86. Machen, “The Witness of the Gospels,” 60.
87. Machen, “What is Christianity?” in What is Christianity?, 22.
88. Von Harnack, “Christianity and History,” in Adolf von Harnack, 65. Likewise, von Harnack concluded a fact relevant in the first century is irrelevant today because of the progress of science is an unreasonable assertion.
89. Machen, “History and Faith,” 171.
90. Ibid.
91. Ibid.
92. Machen, What is Faith?, 130.
93. Machen, “The Relation of Religion to Science and Philosophy,” 42.
94. Ibid.
95. Ibid., 43.
96. Machen, “The Modern Use of the Bible,” 196.
97. Dennis N. Voskuil, “America Encounters Karl Barth, 1919–1939,” in Theological Themes, 256. In 1928 Douglas Horton provided the first translation of Karl Barth’s work Das Wort Gottes und die Theologie (ibid., 255). Elmer Homrighausen suggests that Americans did not readily receive Barth’s theology of crisis, since nobody in America encountered the affliction that Europeans had to suffer. See Elmer G. Homrighausen, “Barth and the American Theological Scene,” Union Seminary Review 46 (1934-35): 289, 291.
98. A correlation between Machen’s assessment of Neo-orthodoxy and the review of some other American scholars will be helpful in our study. We should note how some other theologians made similar observations as Machen in the analysis of Karl Barth. According to Rolston, in the early thirties two books appeared that criticized Barthianism: Alvin S. Zerbe, The Karl Barth Theology: Or the New Transcendentalism (Cleveland: Central Publishing House, 1930), and Wilhelm Pauck, Karl Barth: Prophet of a New Christianity? (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1931). See Holmes Rolston, A Conservative Looks to Barth and Brunner (Nashville: Cokesbury Press, 1933), 207. Zerbe, an orthodox Calvinist, penned the first book evaluation of Barthiansim (see Voskuil “America Encounters Karl Barth,” 257). Besides these critical works by Zerbe and Pauck three appreciative books towards Barthianism emerged: Birch Hoyle, The Teaching of Karl Barth; John McConnachie, The Significance of Karl Barth; and J. A. Chapman, The Theology of Karl Barth.
99. In a letter to Stonehouse on 25 February 1928, Machen writes that “my own acquaintance with the Barthian movement is very much more limited than it would be if we had not been kept during this year in such a constant disturbance at Princeton as to prevent real intellectual labor in our own field” (Machen to Stonehouse, 25 February 1928, Machen Archives, Montgomery Library, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pa.). Almost one year later, Machen received a letter from Dr. Horton asking him for help regarding who could write a review of the just published work by Karl Barth Das Wort Gottes und die Theologie. Machen did not take on the task to review the book, but he referred toDr. Hodge as a competent man for a review (Dr. Douglas Horton to Machen, 11 March 1929, Machen Archives, Montgomery Library, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pa.).
100. Ibid. It is worth noting here that Brunner himself was informed about Machen; and in fact, he praised Machen’s work highly (Horton to Machen, 11 March 1929). Machen himself had the privilege to meet with Brunner at Princeton, having a lengthy personal discussion with him (Machen to Corum, 18 July 1931, Machen Archives, Montgomery Library, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pa.).
101. Terry A. Chrisope, “J. Gresham Machen on Barthianism,” The Banner of Truth 330 (1991): 17.
102. Albert Knudsen, “German Fundamentalism,” The Christian Century 45 ( June 14, 1928): 762.
103. J. Gresham Machen, “Karl Barth and the ‘Theology of Crisis’,” 23 April 1928, Machen Archives, Montgomery Library, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pa.
104. Machen, “Karl Barth,” 2.
105. Ibid.
106. A further point ought to be noted here, in that both men were students of Wilhelm Herrmann. Initially Machen was greatly impressed by Wilhelm Herrmann’s views, yet later he rejected his theology and discerned that the Christ of Herrmann did in reality never exist. Stonehouse, J. Gresham Machen, 106–8. “We must experience the personal life of Jesus as a real power,” stated Herrmann. Wilhelm Herrmann, Der Verkehr des Christen mit Gott (Stuttgart: Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1908), 62.Machen was certain that revelation is objective and not an experience (Roark, “J. Gresham Machen,” 76). It is to be noted that in his early career Barth stressed in his sermons “life” or “experience” ( Jack B. Rogers and Donald McKim, The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible: An Historical Approach [San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1979], 408). In 1920 Barth indicated that when he came to Marburg he was already a convinced Marburger, but in the course of time he distanced himself from Herrmann. See Karl Barth, Die Theologie und die Kirche (Zürich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1920), 240–41. Berkhof noted that soon Barth definitely turned against the school of Herrmann and established his theology on the foundation of “the unabrogable subjectivity of God.” See Hendrikus Berkhof, Two Hundred Years of Theology: Report of a Personal Journey (trans. John Vriend; 1985; repr., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 200–201. Barth clearly disagreed with Herrmann’s attempt to establish theology on “experience” (Theologie und Kirche, 199). It is inconceivable to obtain the existence of God from “religious experience and its object” (ibid.). As a result, both Machen and Barth dismissed Herrmann’s subjectivism.
107. Woolley to Machen, 20 July 1928, Machen Archives, Montgomery Library, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pa. Harrisville and Sundberg are indeed correct when stating that both Barth and Machen’s critique was an attack against an “entire movement” (Harrisville and Sundberg, The Bible in Modern Culture, 200). Yet it must be remembered that one of Barth’s critiques of liberal theology rested on the fact that liberals attempted to apply “the scientific examination” to the data on which Christianity is established. See Wilhelm Pauck, Karl Barth: A Prophet of a New Christianity?, 43.
108. Not only was Karl Barth influenced by Luther and Calvin, but he took hold of the dialectic of Sören Kierkegaard. See John McConnachie, The Significance of Karl Barth (New York: Richard R. Smith, 1931), 26.
109. Machen, “Karl Barth,” 2. McConnachie in Significance of Karl Barth also observes a turn in the history of the church, noting positively that the coming of Karl Barth at this gloomy junction of the history of the church can only be interpreted as an act of God to help this present generation (McConnachie cited by Rolston, A Conservative Looks to Barth and Brunner, 17).
110. Yet Modern Liberalism is not always “pantheistic,” but it makes the attempt to erase the creator and creature distinction. See Machen, “Christianity vs. Modern Liberalism,” 350.
111. Machen, “Karl Barth,” 16.
112. Machen, “Christianity vs. Modern Liberalism,” 351.
113. Hart, “‘Doctor Fundamentalis,’” 75.
114. Rolston, A Conservative Looks to Barth and Brunner, 102.
115. Machen, “Karl Barth,” 17. Yet as it is unfolded in this study, Machen cannot agree with Barth’s notion of history.
116. Machen, “Karl Barth,” 3.
117. Ibid.
118. John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion (trans. Henry Beveridge; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 1.1.1. Jenkins shows how Barth differs clearly from Calvin and the early Fathers in his dualism. F. D. Jenkins, “Germany’s New Paradox Theology,” BSac 83 (1926): 436.
119. Machen, “Karl Barth,” 3.
120. McConnachie, The Significance of Karl Barth, 251.
121. Karl Barth, Der Römerbrief (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1926), 169.
122. Fosdick, Modern Use of the Bible, 266.
123. J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (New York: Macmillan, 1923; repr., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 117–56.
124. Ibid., 64-65.
125. Machen, “Karl Barth,” 5. To compare Barth to Machen, one of Machen’s sermons reads that “we are unworthy to lift our eyes unto God. But as we shrink in guilty fear from these high things, God has put forth His hand to draw us near. He has come in the Person of the Son and borne our guilt.” Hence, the frightful “curtain” between God and men was raised by revelation which finds its meaning in an “act of love.” J. Gresham Machen, “God Transcendent,” in God Transcendent (ed. Ned B. Stonehouse; 1949; repr., Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1982), 20.
126. McConnachie, The Significance of Karl Barth, 249. Barth went to the other extreme, God is not manifested “in the heart of man” neither “in human nature.” Hutchison, The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism, 293.
127. Machen, “God Transcendent,” 18–19.
128. McConnachie, The Significance of Karl Barth, 254.
129. Ibid.
130. Machen, “Karl Barth,” 5.
131. Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, 131.
132. J. Gresham Machen, The Christian View of Man (1937; repr., Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1999), 222.
133. Machen, What is Faith?, 58.
134. Machen, “Karl Barth,” 7. In Der Römerbrief Barth defined “faith” as being silent and to worship in ignorance [“nicht-wissen”] (Karl Barth, Der Römerbrief, 182).
135. Pauck, Karl Barth, 124.
136. Machen, “Karl Barth,” 6.
137. Machen to Stonehouse, 25 February 1928, Machen Archives, Montgomery Library, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pa.
138. Machen, The Virgin Birth, 218.
139. Ibid. Keeping in mind that Machen published the first edition of The Virgin Birth in 1930, it may be the case that while making this statement he had in mind the Barthian teaching.
140. Karl Barth, Das Wort Gottes und die Theologie (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1925), 96.
141. Ibid.
142. Rolston, A Conservative Looks to Barth and Brunner, 189. When Barth remarks that the resurrection is unhistorical, the word “historical” denotes a different meaning, whereby the resurrection is part of God’s world and “it is in history but it is not of history” (196). Barth admits that God operates in history; nonetheless, history does not take part in revelation. Berkhof, Two Hundred Years of Theology, 214.
143. McConnachie, The Significance of Karl Barth, 37.
144. Pauck, Karl Barth, 123.
145. Zerbe, Karl Barth Theology, 77.
146. Machen, “Karl Barth,” 8.
147. J. Gresham Machen, “Forty Years of New Testament Research,” Union Seminary Review 11 (October 1928): 10.
148. Machen, “Karl Barth,” 9.
149. Ibid., 10.
150. See Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, 21.
151. Machen, “Karl Barth,” 12.
152. Ibid., 10.
153. Barth, Das Wort Gottes und die Theologie, 84.
154. McConnachie, The Significance of Karl Barth, 254.
155. Ibid.
156. Machen, “Karl Barth,” 9. It is important to see how Caspar Hodge reacted to Machen’s assessment. He avoided Machen’s criticism of history and focused on the “philosophical foundations of Barthian’s epistemology.” In contrast to Machen, Hodge believed that Barth’s view would not change regarding this historicity of the Bible because of his “epistemological implications.” See Darryl G. Hart, “Machen on Barth,” WTJ 53 (1991): 193-94. Edwin Rian was in his interpretation closer to Machen. He believed that the theology of Barthianism is in two points distinct from the view of old Princeton: (1) regarding the authority of Scripture and (2) regarding the notion of history. For him the establishment of the Christian religion is eradicated by the Barthian’s view of history. See Edward H. Rian, The Presbyterian Conflict (Philadelphia: The Committee for the Historian of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 1940), 52–53.
157. Machen, “Karl Barth,” 11.
158. Ibid., 11-12.
159. Jenkins, “Germany’s New Paradox Theology,” 438.
160. Machen to Corum, 16 July 1931, Machen Archives, Montgomery Library, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pa. William Robinson, in his critical evaluation, points out that the first problem is the “doctrine of divine inspiration” and the second is related to the doctrine of redemption. William C. Robinson, “The Theology of Karl Barth a Protest and a Standpoint,” Union Seminary Review 40 (1928–29): 121. This evaluation by Robinson clearly reflects a Fundamentalist critique of Karl Barth. It must be borne in mind that in Christianity and Liberalism Machen did not critique “the doctrine of divine inspiration” as the first weak element in Modern Liberalism (see 72–79).
161. Machen, “Karl Barth,” 12.
162. Ibid., 13. Jenkins in his interpretation of Barth makes a similar observation, Jesus as “true divine reality” is not historical; for Barth, Paul provided the super-historical connotation of Christ that the Synoptics completely lack. Jenkins, “Germany’s New Paradox Theology,” 459.
163. McConnachie, The Significance of Karl Barth, 255.
164. Machen to Corum, 16 July 1931, Machen Archives, Montgomery Library, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pa.
165. Zerbe, Karl Barth Theology, 131.
166. Machen, “Karl Barth,” 13.
167. Machen, “Karl Barth,” 14. Barth attacked the entire idea of “history” that was linked with the “historical method,” asserting that the interpretation of Scripture must begin with “faith.” Rogers and McKim, The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible, 424. For Barth the initial meaning to the first readers did not matter; it was more essential to relate the text to the present context of modern man. In Barth’s exegetical task the Bible ought to be understood as God’s word and not “as a collection of human documents.” See Werner B. Kümmel, The New Testament: The History of the Investigation of its Problems (trans. Howard Clark Kee; New York: Abingdon Press, 1970), 363.
168. Jenkins, “Germany’s New Paradox Theology,” 428. Likewise his former instructor Adolf Schlatter [a positive theologian] remarked that it is inconceivable that “a scholar” would belittle “scientific exegetical procedures.” See Rogers and McKim, The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible, 410. It is perhaps worthy to pay notice to von Harnack’s and Barth’s correspondence regarding this whole debate. Von Harnack himself provided fifteen questions forKarl Barth, whom he considered as the “despiser of scientific theology” (see his “Revelation and Theology: The Barth-Harnack Correspondence,” in Adolf von Harnack, 85). Viewing this correspondence clarifies more of Barth’s problematic views, as Machen himself definitely observed. In his fourteenth question von Harnack asked Barth, “If the person of Jesus Christ stands at the center of the gospel, how else can the basis for reliable and communal knowledge of this person be gained but through critical-historical study so that an imagined Christ is not put in the place of a real one? What else besides scientific theology is able to undertake this study?” (ibid., 87). Barth in his reply to von Harnack articulated clearly that the Verstehen [Understanding] of the Bible is not to be apprehended by “historical knowledge and critical reflection,” but rather by the “virtue of that Spirit which is identical with the content of the Bible and that by faith” (ibid., 88). In contrast to Barth, von Harnack believed that the assignment of theology is in agreement with the assignment of science (ibid., 91). Here we may note that Machen is closer to von Harnack’s view in his relation to science and history.
169. Woolley to Machen, 20 July 1928, Machen Archives, Montgomery Library, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pa.
170. Machen to Woolley, 16 July 1928, Machen Archives, Montgomery Library, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pa.
171. Machen, “Forty Years of New Testament Research,” 10.
172. Ibid., 10. In his introduction to Der Römerbrief Barth notes that the whole summa of the Bible is for him the relationship of God to man (Barth, Der Römerbrief, 13).
173. Machen to Corum, 18 July 1931. This letter reveals clearly that Machen by 1931 had read several works by Karl Barth and two works by Emil Brunner.
174. Machen to Corum, 18 July 1931.
175. Regarding transcendence, Machen declared that there “are two great presuppositions of everything else that the Bible contains; the two great presuppositions are the transcendent God and the guilt and misery of man in his sin.” Machen, The Importance of Christian Scholarship, 39. Machen had a high view of the notion of the transcendent God, yet I don’t suggest that Machen’s notion of transcendence is analogous to Barth’s. In Barth’s notion God has become so transcendent that there is no difference for human beings if he is present or not. Halford Luccok, “Reconstruction,” in American Protestant Thought in the Liberal Era (ed. William R. Hutchison; Lanham: University Press of America, 1968), 202. For Machen “the transcendence of God, what the Bible calls the “holiness” of God—is at the foundation of Christian faith.” (What is Faith? 65).
176. Machen to Corum, 18 July 1931.
177. Ibid.
178. Zerbe, Karl Barth Theology, 270.
179. Machen to Caspar W. Hodge, 18 February 1936, Machen Archives, Montgomery Library, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pa.
180. Machen, “Karl Barth,” 17.
181. McConnachie, The Significance of Karl Barth, 254.
182. Rolston, A Conservative Looks to Barth and Brunner, 200.
183. Ibid., 201.
184. Calvin states in his Institutes clearly that “faith rests on knowledge.” See John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (ed. John T. McNeill; trans. Ford Lewis Battles; London: S.C.M. Press, 1960), 3.2.2.
185. J. Gresham Machen cited by Russell, J. Gresham Machen Scholarly Fundamentalist, 46.
186. Machen, “Christianity in Conflict,” 266. Machen here refers to his earlier work The Origin of Paul’s Religion (1921).
187. In fact, this was one of the purposes for which Machen founded Westminster Theological Seminary, viz., “that the Christian religion as so set forth requires and is capable of scholarly defence” (ibid., 270).

The Fundamental Meaning Of Theology: Archetypal And Ectypal Theology In Seventeenth-Century Reformed Thought

By Willem J. Van Asselt[1]

[Willem J. Van Asselt is a senior member of the Church History department in the State Theological Faculty at the University of Utrecht.]

I. Introduction

In his Vorgeschichte des Rationalismus and in his Geschichte des Rationalismus, the nineteenth-century pietist theologian F. A.G. Tholuck (1799–1877), professor of theology at the university of Halle (Germany), defended the thesis that post- Reformation Protestant scholastic theology was one of the important causes that effected the rise of Enlightenment rationalism.[2] His idea that post-Reformation Protestant theology was an essentially rationalistic project leading up to the Enlightenment was taken up by historians and theologians of the twentieth century, who connected it with some other ideas regarding the development of Reformed theology during this period. First, it was argued by Karl Barth that post-Reformation Reformed theology tended to create an abstract doctrine of God’s sovereign power (Deus nudus) as supreme being and ruler of the universe, as opposed to a God whose love for us is revealed in Jesus Christ.[3] Following Barth, Ernst Bizer claimed that this abstract doctrine of God created a radical separation of natural knowledge of God from the saving knowledge of God and, thus, the possibility of knowing God apart from the knowledge of his grace and mercy.[4] This separation resulted in an independent theology of the first article: God as Creator.[5] According to Paul Althaus the duplex cognitio or twofold knowledge of God as Creator and Redeemer was reflected in the development of a positive locus of natural theology independent of Scripture and soteriology.[6] Like Barth, both Althaus and Bizer declared that the gradual development of natural theology and the positive use of reason in post-Reformation Reformed theology represented a turn towards Enlightenment rationalism. Finally, Otto Weber summarized this Barthian approach to seventeenth-century Reformed theology by asserting that many of the Reformed scholastics came to view special revelation as no more than a completion of our natural knowledge of God. The Reformed scholastics assumed that Christian knowledge fits very well into the model of rational knowledge.[7] Consequently, the Reformed tradition could define the eternal decrees of predestination and providence of God “only on the basis of speculation about the absolute power of God, who is the first cause of all things, without even mentioning what God has done and promises to do in Jesus Christ.”[8]

Although the Reformed scholastics did use distinctions between God as Creator and God as Redeemer, and between non-saving natural knowledge and saving revealed knowledge of God, the issue is not quite as simple as the bifurcations used by Barth, Althaus, Bizer and Weber would indicate.[9] At the basis of these distinctions lies a more fundamental paradigm. The Reformed orthodox theologians posited these distinctions within a much broader epistemological context in their discussion of their theological prolegomena. This broader context was discussed in terms of the categories of theologia vera and, subordinate to that, theologia archetypa and theologia ectypa.

In what follows I will address the epistemological discussion and foundation for Reformed theology as developed in the so called theological prolegomena of the Reformed systems. The main thesis of this article is that modern criticism of Reformed theology is not aware of the Protestant scholastic discussions of archetype and ectype and their relation to the doctrine of trinity and christology.[10] By mispresenting this fundamental christological and, thus, the trinitarian structure of Reformed theology one unfortunately perpetuates the myth that identifies scholasticism with rationalism.

II. The Rise of Reformed Prolegomena

Although early Reformed theologians did not provide explicitly a rationale for the systematic organisation of Reformation doctrine, this organisation became necessary in the later institutional and academic setting.[11] It was only when Reformed academies and universities were established that formal discussion of the status and task of theology and its connection with other disciplines, especially philosophy, became urgent.

In their prolegomena the Reformed thinkers explicitly set out the premises, presuppositions, or principles of their system of thought and provided an interpretative paradigm. One of the fundamental issues in the prolegomena of the Reformed orthodox systems was the meaning and usage of the term “theology,” its parts and divisions, genus, subject and object. Franciscus Junius (1545–1602), who spent the last ten years of his life at Leiden as professor primarius of theology, was a man whose teaching on this topic is of considerable interest.[12] In his De theologia vera (1594)[13] Junius provided argumentative prolegomena in which he elaborated the influential and basic twofold division between theologia archetypa, God’s knowledge of himself and his works, and theologia ectypa, creaturely knowledge of God and his works. Junius’s De theologia vera seems to be the first Protestant work to employ this division and to make a threefold distinction in the theologia ectypa.[14]

III. Origins of the Distinction between Archetypal and Ectypal Theology

Because the topic de theologia was not treated methodologically by Luther, Calvin, or their contemporaries, later generations of Protestant theologians fell back upon the theological prolegomena written by the great scholastics.[15] According to Junius the concept of archetypal and ectypal theology can be traced back to the medieval scholastic distinction between divine self-knowledge and human knowledge of God. Junius’s use of this distinction is a good example of the critical reception of the Christian tradition by Reformed theology. He refers to the orthodox Fathers who used the term archetypos to indicate a theologia exemplaris of divine and immutable character, and the term ectypa to point to theology that God accommodated to human understanding. More recent theologians (recentiores) call the first theology secundum se, the latter theology secundum quid. Archetypal theology, however, is theology in its proper sense being the same as the infinite wisdom of God concerning himself and his works as they are necessary to him and ordered by him in a perpetual relationship according to his infinite reason; but ectypal theology is the wisdom creatures in their way have concerning God, and about the things that are ordered towards God, communicated by him. These two sorts of theology are so disparate that it is impossible to subsume them under one common chapter or sort of truth.[16]

According to Junius’s contemporary, Amandus Polanus (1561–1610), who was a professor of theology in Basel,[17] the distinction can be traced back to Scotus’s commentary on the Sententiae in which he introduced the concepts of theologia in se and theologia nostra. In order to construct a Reformed discipline of theology Polanus refers to this medieval author for definition. Junius’s discussion of archetypal and ectypal theology also reminds us of Scotus’s definition of theology.[18]

The importance and impact of this Scotistic division on post-Reformation Reformed theology in all its variety should not be underestimated. The discussion of this topic can be found in almost all the important dogmatic systems. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century the distinction between archetypal and ectypal theology was treated at great length by Johannes Polyander in the Synopsis purioris theologiae (1625), the best-liked compendium in this period.[19] In 1630 Johannes Alsted, professor of philosophy and theology at Herborn (Germany) and later in Weissenburg (Transylvania), published his Encyclopaedia septem tomis distincta, the first modern encyclopedia in which he summarized the sciences of the day, particularly theology. Alsted also used the distinctions Junius made concerning theology.[20] They can also be traced in the thinking of Lutheran dogmaticians. Johannes Gerhard (1582–1637), who is generally considered to be the most prominent Lutheran theologian after Luther, followed the very order of Junius’s discussion.[21] In fact, there is little difference between Lutheran and Reformed theology on these points, except on the matter of the theologia unionis, which will be discussed below.

During the second half of the seventeenth century Junius’s classification became normative for many Reformed theologians in their approach to the issue of theology as a discipline. It is found not only in high orthodox systems of Melchior Leydecker, Petrus van Mastricht, and Franciscus Turrettinus, but also in the prolegomena of federal systems like that of Johannes Cocceius, Franciscus Burman, Johann Heinrich Heidegger, Abraham Heidanus and Johannes Braun.[22] Its use was not confined to continental Reformed theology, it can also be found in circles of English puritanism.[23]

In this respect it is important to note that a great variety of theologians followed Junius’s De vera theologia on the division and classification of theology. This should warn us against any facile juxtaposition of federal-biblical theology with scholastic-dogmatic theology, such as those found in many of the discussions of federal theology.[24]

Furthermore, the division was still prominent in the prolegomena during the era of late orthodoxy in the eighteenth century. To give an example: Johannes à Marck and Bernadinus de Moor very carefully worked out Junius’s views on this matter.[25] Finally, some nineteenth- and twentieth-century authors, such as A. Kuyper, H. Bavinck, L. Berkhof, and W. Pannenberg commented on Junius’s innovation.[26]

The distinction also stands in continuity with earlier Protestant thought. According to Muller traces of it can be found in Luther’s distinction between theologia gloriae and theologia crucis, and in Calvin’s distinction between the eternal word of God and the revealed word of God.[27]

In the following sections we turn to Junius’s discussion of these divisions. As will become clear, the importance of this distiction is that it serves to clarify the idea that the Reformed conception of Christian theology is fundamentally a relational enterprise, determined by and determinative of the divine-human relationship.

IV. The Existence of True Theology

As we have seen, the presentation of theology according to its origin, nature, forms, and parts occupies a central position in the early orthodox prolegomena. In his presentation of the subject matter Junius follows the standard scholastic pattern of argumentation as given in the questions, An sit? Quid sit? and, Qualis sit? The first question is answered in the affirmative: there exists something like theology. According to Junius, the existence of theology can be proved formally from the discussion of the etymology of the word “theology,” but also from natural light (naturae lux), the consensus of all people (consensus omnium populorum) and the subject matter of theology itself (res ipsa).[28] If God is the principle of all good in the nature of things, than the conclusion can be drawn that in some way all mankind has a knowledge of God and therefore knows the possibility and existence of theology.

The affirmation of the existence of theology gives reason to pose the second question concerning the nature of theology. But before answering this question Junius wants the reader to know that a distinction should be made between false and true theology for the sake of clarity:

Although the existence of theology is generally accepted, the term theology is employed homonymously: for it is either true or false and mere opinion. The equivocation we here conclude is effected by the truth of the subject matter compared with the falseness and corruption of our judgment and senses. For the truth of the subject matter qualifies [theology] as wisdom concerning divine things; it determines what its quality is and to whom it belongs and, therefore is called true: However, the depravation of our judgment and the phlegm ( pituita) of the senses that takes away the taste for spiritual things from our minds, in this case as well as in any other instances, is the very serious cause for embracing something false as true.[29]

Although Junius declares that a full discussion of false theology is a waste of time and not useful for Christian theology, he gives a short definition and classification of it. False theology is duplex: it can be vulgaris or philosophica. The vulgar form of false theology is a theology that subsides in the imperfect principles of our nature. The philosophical formof false theology entails false conclusions by erroneous arguments and is the root of the three branches of mythical, physical and political theology. This division is essentially an assimilation of the distinction made by the Stoic philosopher Varro (116-27 B.C.) and is generally followed by most Reformed scholastics. According to Junius, Augustine has transmitted this threefold division to the Christian tradition.[30] Junius bypasses this paradigm because he wants to concentrate on the exposition of the truth of salvational theology. Since Junius’s object is limited at this point, i.e. true theology, pagan natural theology does not play a role in his treatise on true theology. This is also true for later Reformed orthodoxy.

V. True Theology as Sapientia

No one denies that true theology exists, so Junius proceeds immediately to the question Quid sit? What is it? Determinative of Junius’s view of theology are his answers to two other questions: first, whether our theology is a science and, second, whether this theology is theoretical (contemplative) or practical.[31] First of all, Junius asks whether theology is intelligentia, scientia, ars, prudentia or sapientia. This classification comes from an important discussion in the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle.[32] From the early thirteenth century onward the medieval doctors assimilated this paradigm and used it in their discussions of genus of theology. Because it was not specifically addressed in the theology of the Reformers, the Reformed scholastics drew upon this Aristotelian classification in order to identify their view of the genus of theology. According to the Aristotelian paradigm the academic disciplines are intellectual dispositions (habitus intellectuales) which are included within the basic habitus sciendi. Using Aristotle’s five basic ways of knowing (intelligentia, scientia, ars, prudentia, and sapientia) Junius next asks whether true theology can be correlated with any of the recognized genus of academic discipline. Theology, he says, is unlike intelligentia, since intelligentia is identified as knowledge of principles but not of conclusions: theology consists both in principles and conclusions drawn from them. Nor can theology be identified with scientia or drawing conclusions; nor is theology identical with ars which proceeds from intelligentia and scientia and which intends to terminate in some external work. Thus, theology must be viewed as sapientia, i.e., wisdom in the sense of a gathering of all theoretical and moral dispositions or capacities:

Our true theology embraces all these [intellectual dispositions] simultaneously: knowledge of principles, knowledge of conclusions and the salubrious art of our working insofar we reach out for God: only wisdom can be said to judge certainly, to organize things fittingly and to practice all these things in a beneficial way. Given this, it is impossible to attribute to theology any other genus but wisdom, which not only judges in the intellect the principles of the sciences and the conclusions drawn from them, but also embraces by its own nature (vi sua) all those things which are necessary for the perfection of the good, and which uses everything most wisely.[33]

From this discussion it appears that Junius was profoundly aware of the importance of the medieval debate over this issue. Although he did not cite the medieval theologians directly, he drew substantively upon them. Moreover, his words seem to suggest that this debate originated in Augustine’s distinction of sapientia from scientia according to which sciences dealt with temporal things and wisdom with eternal things.[34]

The second question Junius discusses in the section Quid sit theologia? is whether theology is contemplative or practical. Although he believes the issue is important, he deals with it briefly because his conclusions concerning the genus of theology entail that theology must be viewed as both theoretical and practical, consisting of things to be believed and things to be done. Theology defined as wisdom is “the surest index of principles: the greatest chief of all theoretical and practical sciences, and the wisest judge of all actions and plans without exception.”[35]

VI. The Divisions of True Theology

Having discussed the definition of theology, the possibility or existence of true theology and its demarcation from false theology (including the discussion of the genus of true theology) Junius proceeds to elaborate the question Qualis sit? As already indicated Junius was the first to use the influential and basic division of theologia archetypa and theologia ectypa.[36] The best way of clarifying the divisions is perhaps by quoting theses 5–10 that accompany the treatise on true theology:

5. [True] theology is wisdom (sapientia) concerning divine things. 

6. This [true] theology is either archetypal, i.e. the wisdom of God himself, or ectypal, i.e., wisdom informed by God. 

7. Archetypal theology is divine wisdom concerning divine things. It can only be worshipped, not investigated into. 

8. Ectypal theology or theology considered simply (simpliciter) (as they say) or relatively (secundum quid) is wisdom concerning divine things informed by God from the archetype through the communication of grace in order to glorify God. 

9. The former (theologia simpliciter dicta) is the whole wisdom concerning divine things communicable to creatures in respect of the communicator ( pro modo communicantis). 

10. The latter (theologia secundum quid) is wisdom concerning divine things communicated to creatures in respect of themselves. It is communicated by union, vision or revelation.

In his comment on thesis 7 Junius defines archetypal theology as the theology in God himself. It is the theology according to which the triune God knows himself in himself and also knows everything that is outside him by an indivisble act of knowing. It is the eternal and essential wisdom, and therefore God’s essence itself in which all things are present without being the result of discursive process in God.[37] According to Junius, Job was referring to this archetypal theology (ch. 28). Archetypal theology is, therefore, uncreated and identical with the divine being itself. It is essential and most simple, eternal, intuitive, absolute, incommunicable, infinite and most perfect. It is infinite because as principle of all things it pertains to all universal and singular things; before God nothing is hidden, but all things are open and laid bare to his eyes (Heb 4:13). It is incommunicable for it belongs to God alone ( propria Dei): it cannot be comprehended by any creature; we adore it and do not search it out.[38]

Although similar statements are found in later Reformed scholastics, this use of the term “theology” for divine knowledge was not supported unanimously. According to Muller, Lucas Trelcatius (1573–1603) and F. Turrettinus (1623–1678) developed a simpler division of theology and limited the “proper” use of the term “theology” to human knowledge of God. Junius, however, shows no hesitancy in using the term “theology” univocally for the knowledge of God himself and human knowledge of God.[39]

This uncreated and essential archetypal theology differs entirely from ectypical theology which is accidental and finite and a sort of outflow and efflux (aporroe`) of the former: “Ectypal theology or theology simpliciter or theology considered according to something else (secundum quid), is wisdom concerning divine things informed (informata) by God from the archetype through the communication of grace in order to glorify him.”[40] With this definition Junius wants to make clear the different causes of ectypal theology. Although theology is preeminently in the mind of God himself, this divine self-knowledge is the causal basis for human theology. It is a theology created by God, who is its efficient cause. As the moon receives its light from the sun, so God communicates his true light to creatures.[41] As causa efficiens God is at the same time the causa finalis because ectypal theology is meant to glorify God. The material cause or the subject matter of ectypal theology concerns the res divinae. The formal cause is indicated by the words ex archetypo illa informatam per communicationem gratiae.

These considerations raise the issue of the Protestant scholastic use of causal language. According to popular scholarly mythology, this language has to be dismissed as a symptom of excessive Aristotelianism and, in the case of the Reformed orthodox, as a betrayal of the more biblical approaches to theology of the Reformers. It is even claimed as evidence of a metaphysical and deterministic interest. But Junius introduces the causal terminology of Aristotle for no other reason than to explain the origin of ectypal theology. Thereby he formalized and nuanced the discussion, providing a context within which the arguments concerning the distinction between archetypal and ectypal theology, could be understood. It was used by Junius, not as an overarching pattern but as a heuristic device designed to ground a whole series of issues explaining his theological epistemology.[42]

This becomes clear when we note how Junius elaborates his remarks on the causes of ectypical theology by making a distinction between (1) the internal concept of ectypal theology in the mind of God and (2) the external form in which God communicates this concept to human beings. The internal concept in the mind of God is his divine will and grace; the external form is the body of knowledge that God decided to reveal to mankind. Junius compares God’s internal concept of ectypal knowledge with a source (fons), the external form with a lake (lacus) derived from the source.[43]

Furthermore, the concept of ectypal knowledge existing in the mind of God must be distinguished from archetypal theology. Junius calls the former theologia simpliciter dicta which differs from archetypal theology in that the latter is incommunicable, while the former is communicable. When communication of ectypal knowledge takes place then theologia simpliciter dicta becomes theologia secundum quid, i.e., relational theology, for it depends upon God’s accommodation of himself to a form which finite beings are capable of grasping. Junius calls it a second order theology, ectypal theology simpliciter dicta being a first order theology.

Finally, Junius stresses the fact that both sorts of ectypal theology, simpliciter dicta and secundum quid, equal the distinction between theologia in se and theologia in subiectis. The former is communicable by God, but cannot be grasped by human effort. Ectypal theology in subiectis, however, is a mediated and communicated theology. It is an act of God’s will without which he would remain unknown and unknowable. Therefore, the main interest of theologians, Junius comments, should not be focussed on the theologia ectypa in se but on the theology secundum quid or in subiectis, i.e. the relational and communicated form of ectypal theology. In other words: there is no way from man to God, but only from God to man. Junius concludes this section by emphasizing “that our theology is most of all a communicated theology through which we all draw on the revelation which God chose to give us in Jesus Christ.”[44]

VII. Three Kinds of Ectypal Theology

Having discussed the fundamental distinctions between archetypal and ectypal theology, Junius proceeds to discuss three genera of ectypal theology (in subiecto), for it can be communicated in different ways and to different subjects: by union (unione) to Christ, by vision (visione) to the beatified, and by revelation (revelatione) to the pilgrim or viator. In descending order ectypal theology can be communicated to Jesus Christ, to the spirits in heaven, and to men on earth. When ectypal theology is communicated by union then the theologia unionis in Christo comes into being. It is the theology of Christ theanthropos or the theology of the Mediator. When communicated to the blessed in heaven it becomes theologia visionis; when communicated to men on earth it is theologia revelationis. Junius’s discussion of this threefold communication of ectypal theology is worth quoting:

The first theology [of union in Christ] is the highest and most perfect ( plenissima) form of ectypal theology on which we all draw: John 1. 16. It is in Christ according to his human nature. The second [theology of vision] is perfect ( plena) through which the blessed spirits obtain a glorious vision of God in heaven and through which we shall see him as he is (I John 3.2). Finally, the theology of revelation is not perfect in it self (non plena re ipsa), but more ( potius) through the revelation of faith. It is informed by the princples of the same truth in such a way that, in respect of ourselves, it can appropriately be called perfect: although it is imperfect when compared with the theology of vision for which we hope, as the apostle teaches the Corinthians, I Corinth. 13:12. This, indeed, is our theology.[45]

What is particulary interesting in Junius’s discussion of ectypal theology is that the discussion of the subdivisions of ectypal theology in subiecto is dominated by an unmistakable christological emphasis. This christological framework of ectypal theology is expressed by Junius’s saying that the theology of union in Christ is the principle of the two other forms of ectypal theology: the theology of vision and that of revelation. Whereas archetypal theology is the matrix of all forms of theology, the theology of union is the mother (mater) of the two other forms of ectypal theology, i.e., the theology of vision and revealed theology:

The former is the source ( fons) of all: the latter is like a common reservoir (commune castellum) or holder (conceptaculum). In two ways all creatures draw on the divine plenitude of this salubrious reservoir: some by vision coram Deo, others by revelation, like pilgrims being away from the Lord, 2 Corinthians 5:6, 7. From these two modi the other two sorts (genera) of ectypal theology have proceeded: The orthodox Fathers called the first one the theology of the blessed (beatorum), the other the theology of the pilgrims (viatorum). Thus, the second formof ectypal theology we can call the theology of the blessed or an exalted (excelsa) theology; the second form, the theology of the pilgrims or a humble (humilis) theology. Both forms of theology, therefore, Christ has sanctified in his Person: when he used the humble theology in the humility of the flesh, and the exalted theology in his exaltation through which he now is exalted above every name, in such a way that the principle of both forms of theology appears to be in him.[46] 

VIII. Christological Implications

This observation leads us to another related point. In order to evaluate the emphasis on the paradigmatic significance of the theology of union a brief comment should be made on the christological debate between the Reformed and Lutheran theologians during the seventeenth century. According to Junius and all his Reformed colleagues, the theology of union did not involve the communication of archetypal theology to Christ’s human nature. At this point later Lutherans took issue with the view of Junius and Reformed theology. Whereas Johann Gerhard simply stated that the theology of union was, by virtue of the personal union, a perfect knowledge of God and divine things, the Wittenberg professor Abraham Calov (1612–1686) went a step further, asserting that,

according to his human nature, the archetypal theology was in Christ’s possession too, by virtue of the exchange of properties between the two natures of Christ (communicatio idiomatum). According to Calov, this rested on the supposition that the unity of the two natures in Christ’s person demanded a real communication or sharing of attributes.[47]

The Reformed position was set forth in four concise arguments: (1) For the divine nature it is the same to know as to be. Just as the essence (esse) of the divine nature is not communicable, the knowledge it possesses is not communicable; (2) The human nature is no more capable of divine knowledge than of divine being. The finitude of the human nature means that it cannot grasp the infinity of God; (3) The personal union of the two natures in Christmust not be construed as a confusion or co-mingling of the two natures; (4) Christ was like us in all things, also in matters of knowledge.[48] According to Reformed teaching, the properties or attributes of each of the two natures coincide in the one person of Christ and could only be predicated to him. The exchange of properties, therefore, is understood as taking place at the level of the person and not between the natures. Because the communicatio idiomatum did not take place in the abstract—between the natures—but in the concrete—at the level of the person—archetypal theology was not in Christ’s possession.

Although a detailed description of this debate exceeds the limits of our intention, one is justified to say that the results of Reformed and Lutheran christology played a significant role in shaping the form and contents of the prolegomena. Christology articulates the presuppositions and approaches to theology in both Reformed and Lutheran orthodoxy.

IX. Pilgrim Theology

The last category of ectypal theology is that of the pilgrims on earth or theologia viatorum, a theology preceding the theology of the beatified in heaven. Here Junius draws, of course, upon the traditional distinction between pilgrims and blessed, with the corresponding in via and in patria, which concept goes back at least to some of Augustine’s writings and was used extensively by medieval theologians.[49] Commenting on 1 Corinthians 13:8 and 9 Junius declares that in contrast to the perfection and permanence of the theology of union and that of vision, the theology of the viator “is mixed with weakness and imperfection, for it comprehends solely the principles of that very perfect theology in heaven: by these principles, perfect in themselves, but imperfect in a certain way, we are

elevated to heavenly perfection.”[50] The language of in via and in patria points us to a strong teleological and eschatological orientation of Reformed theology. Theology here on earth is always a theology of pilgrims and, therefore, an imperfect theology until further orders.[51]

According to Junius, nature and grace are the two basic forms of communication of revealed or pilgrim theology. Nature represents an internal or immanent ground of communication of divine knowledge, grace represents an external ground of communication. On the basis of the former a natural (revealed) theology is constructed, on the basis of the latter we build a supernatural revealed theology.[52]

It is important to note here that natural theology is seen by Junius and his Reformed colleagues as belonging to the category of revealed theology and that it is not used as a separate and independent source of knowledge. What is more, in the Reformed archetype-ectype paradigm, a clear distinction has been made between two totally different forms of natural theology which are so often confused in contemporary literature: a pagan form of natural theology and a Christian form of natural theology. The first form of natural theology belongs to the category of false theology, the latter is discussed as a form of true theology under the category of ectypal theology with its christological orientation. Therefore, the modern attacks upon the Reformed distinction between natural and supernatural theology as being an inroad to the rationalism of the (early) Enlightenment rest upon a fundamental misinterpretation of the distinction insofar as natural theology is not viewed by the modern critics as a form of revealed theology or as distinct from the false natural theology of pagans. In other words, the bifurcation in Reformed theology made by the older scholarship between an independent and positive locus of natural theology isolated from the revelation of the triune God and soteriology does not stand.

X. Concluding Remarks

From this survey it becomes clear that Junius and the later orthodox utilized the insights of patristic, medieval, and reformation theologians. Their use of the archetypal-ectypal distinction, and the crucial significance of the theology of union in its relation to the two other forms of ectypal theology is a means of developing an understanding of the principles and task of theology which is determined by a strong trinitarian and christological—and, mutatis mutandis, a pneumatological—framework.

Moreover, the previous discussions on archetypal and ectypal theology as an overarching paradigm indicate that the Reformed orthodox never used the term “Deus” (as the principium essendi of theology) in a neutral or unqualified sense in order to construe a natural theology in a rationalistic way. What is more, from the very beginning the triune God or Deus foederatus in Christo was envisaged by the Reformed orthodox in their discourse about God as the object of theology. Like Junius, F. Turrettinus extensively argued that Christian theology never deals with God “considered exclusively under the relation of deity (…), but as he is our God, i.e., covenanted in Christ as he has revealed himself to us in his word not only in order to know him but also in order to worship him.”[53] All these observations show that there is enough evidence to falsify the claim of the Barthian school that in post-Reformation Reformed theology the doctrine of the Trinity was overshadowed by a “Deus nudus” as an axiomatic governing principle of theology.

Finally, from a historical point of view, two other observations must be made. First, it can be argued that the strong and unremitting opposition of the Reformed orthodox against Socinian unitarism gives ample evidence that the trinitarian God was presupposed by all doctrines discussed in the Reformed systems: e.g., the doctrine of Scripture, the doctrine of the divine attributes, the doctrine of the divine decrees, and the doctrines of creation and providence.[54] Secondly, it was exactly the Arminian rejection of the scholastic distinction between archetypal and ectypal theology that opened the way to rationalism. Contrary to Arminius himself,[55] later Arminian theologians like Simon Episcopius and Philippus van Limborch vehemently rejected the distinction between archetypal and ectypal theology as vain subleties without solidity and utility.[56] By giving up this distinction, however, their theological systems proved more open to seventeenth century rationalism, whereas the Reformed system—due to its archetypal and ectypal paradigm—presented a vital opposition to it.

Notes

1. I would like to thank the H. Henry Meeter Center for Calvin Studies for assistance in providing the resources on which this article is based. Further thanks are due to Dr. Carl Trueman of Westminster Seminary, Philadelphia, for his careful proofreading of this article.
2. A. Tholuck, Vorgeschichte des Rationalismus (Berlin, 1861); idem, Geschichte des Rationalismus: Erste Abtheilung, Geschichte des Pietismus und des ersten Stadiums der Aufklärung (Berlin, 1865).
3. K. Barth, Die kirchliche Dogmatik II/1 (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1932; Zurich: EVZ Verlag, 1938–65), 141.We are referring to Barth’s extremely sharp criticism of Article 2 of the Confessio Gallicana and the Articles 2–3 of the Confessio Belgica.
4. E. Bizer, Frühorthodoxie und Rationalismus (Zürich: EVZ Verlag, 1963).
5. See also Barth, KD II/1, 93.
6. P. Althaus, Die Prinzipien der Deutschen reformierten Dogmatik im Zeitalter der aristotelischen Scholastik (Leipzig: Deichertsche, 1914).
7. Otto Weber, Foundations of Dogmatics (trans. Darrell L. Guder; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 1981), 1:118: “The question of natural theology, already raised by biblical texts, was now set forth as a result of the interior structure of theological thought itself.”
8. S. C. Guthrie, Always Being Reformed: Faith for a Fragmented World (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996), 35.
9. R. A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1987), 1:183 (henceforth PRRD).
10. See also A. Baxter, “The Term ‘Archetype’ and its Application to Jesus Christ,” Heythrop Journal 25 (1984): 19-38.
11. See Muller, PRRD, 1:53–55.
12. For his biography, see J. Reitsma, Franciscus Junius, een levensbeeld uit den eersten tijd der kerkhervorming (Groningen, 1864); A. Davaine, Francois du Jon ( Junius): Pasteur et professeur en théologie 1545–1602. Etude historique (Paris, 1882; repr., Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1970);W. Geesink, Calvinisten in Holland (Rotterdam, 1887), 1–51; B. A. Venemans, Franciscus Junius en zijn Eirenicum de pace ecclesiae catholicae (Leiden: Elve/Labor vincit, 1977); Chr. de Jonge, De irenische ecclesiologie van Franciscus Junius (1545–1602) (Ph.D. diss., University of Leiden, 1980); Biografisch Lexicon voor de geschiedenis van het Nederalandse protestantisme (Kampen: Kok, 1978), 2:275–78.
13. F. Junius, De theologia vera, ortu, natura, formis, partibus, et modo illius (Lugd. Batav., 1594). See Opera Theologica Francisci Junii Biturgis Sacrarum literarum professoris eximii. Quorum nonnulla nunc primum publicantur. Praefixa est vita autoris. Omnia cum indicibus VII accuratissimis, s. l. (Heidelbergae: in officina Sanctandreana 1608), 1:1370ff. (henceforth OT). A revised version was published after his death in 1604. Before that, during his professorship at Heidelberg (1573–1578) he already drafted 27 theses on this subject. Three years after publication of Junius’s treatise Antonius Walaeus defended 12 theses de vera theologia under the presidency of Junius: Disputationum theologicarum repetitarum prima: de vera theologia. Quam … preside … D. Francisco Junio … : Sustinere adnitur Antonius Walaeus Gandensis. Die X. Decembris Anno 1597 (Lugduni Batav., ex officina Ioannis Patij). The treatise of 1594 contains 39 theses. Comparison of these publications does not reveal any spectacular new insights on the part of Junius. In 1882 A. Kuyper published an edition of some of Junius’s works, which contains the treatise De theologia vera: Junius, D. Francisci Junii opuscula theologica selecta (ed. A. Kuyper; Bibliotheca Reformata 1; Amsterdam, 1882), 45–101.
14. Althaus, Die Prinzipien, 230–31. Althaus argues that these formulations mark the introduction of Thomistic epistemology in the Reformed system. Muller, PRRD, 1:124, however, indicates that Thomistic epistemology was already present in Reformed thought from the time of Vermigli and Zanchi. Moreover, the distinction between God’s knowledge of himself and creaturely knowledge was a commonplace in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century scholasticism. According to Muller the distinction draws on the Scotist distinction between theologia in se and theologia nostra and harks back to the even more fundamental distinction between potentia Dei absoluta and potentia Dei ordinata.
15. See Joannes Altenstaig/Joannes Tytz, Lexicon Theologicum (Cologne, 1619; repr., Hildesheim: Olms Verlag, 1974), 907–11. See also Sebastian Rehnman, Divine Discourse: The Theological Methodology of John Owen (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002), 57ff. According to Rehnman the concept of archetypal theology can de traced back to Aristotle’s conception of a divine science that is most honourable and alone divine (Metaphysica 1.2.14). Pseudo-Dionysius supposed a theology of God himself, a theology of created spirits, and a theology of pagans. Similar divisions can be found in the twelfth century.
16. Junius, OT, 1376 (Opuscula [ed. Kuyper], 50): “Ac mihi quidem videtur archetypos illa Theologia ab orthodoxis patribus exemplaris olim appellata; ad cuius exemplar divinum & immutabile, altera haec conformata est a Deo pro creaturarum captu; recentiores vero illam Theologiam secundum se, hanc Theologiam secundum quid appellarunt. Est autem illa Theologia, eadem ipsa infinita sapientia, quam Deus de seipso habet rebusque omnibus, ut sunt ad ipsum necessario, proprie, et per se relatione perpetua ordinatae, secundum rationem infinitam ipsius: Haec vero Theologia, illa est sapientia, quam creaturae de Deo habent pro modo ipsarum, deque rebus ad Deum ordinatis, per communicationem ipsius. Atque haec quidem genera duo Theologiae ita disperata sunt, ut ad unum aliquod certum caput & genus commune ex veritate referri non possunt.”
17. Amandus Polanus von Polansdorf, Syntagma theologiae christianae (Hanover, 1609), cols. 11–12.
18. Duns Scotus, Lectura librum primum sententiarum, in Opera Omnia (Civitas Vaticana, 1950-), vol. XVI, prol. q. III, lec. iv: “Sacra theologia, sive in se considerata, sive prout est in nobis, tum quoad veritates necessarias, tum quoad contingentes, habet pro objecto primo, & adaequato ipsum solum Deum: quatenus tamen est de contingentibus, & est in Deo, vel beatis, habet pro subjecto essentiam divinam, ut est haec.”
19. Synopsis purioris theologiae, disputationibus quinquaginta duabus comprehensa ac conscripta per Johannem Polyandrum, Andream Rivetum, Antonium Walaeum, Antonium Thysium, S.S. Theologiae doctores et professores in Academia Leidensi (ed. H. Bavinck; 6th ed.; Leiden, 1881), 1.1.3–9.
20. Polanus, Syntagma heologiae christianae, synopsis Liber I (Hannover 1609); J. H. Alsted, Praecognita, 1.4.
21. For Gerhard’s dependence on Junius, see Robert D. Preus, The Theology of Post-Reformation Lutheranism (St. Louis: Concordia, 19), 1:114.
22. M. Leydecker, De Verborgentheid des Geloofs eenmaal den heiligen overgeleverd of het Kort Begrip der ware Godsgeleerdheid (Rotterdam, 1700), 1.1.4–6; P. van Mastricht,Theoretico-practica theologia (2d ed.; Utrecht, 1699), 1.1.15; J. H. Heidegger, Corpus theologiae christianae (2 vols.; Zurich, 1700), 1.1.1; F. Turrettinus, Institutio theologiae elencticae in tres partes distributa (Geneva, 1688), 1.2.5–8; Joh. Cocceius, Aphorismi per universam theologiam breviores, §2; idem, Aphorismi per universam theolgiam prolixiores, §3 (vol. 7 of Opera omnia; Amsterdam, 1673–75); idem, Summa theologiae ex Scripturis repetita (vol. 6 of Opera omnia), cap. 1, §3; F. Burman, Synopsis theolgiae & speciatim oeconomiae foederum Dei, ab initio saeculorum usque ad consummationem eorum (2 vols.; 2d ed.; Utrecht, 1681), 1.2.36–37; A. Heidanus, Corpus theologiae christianae (Leiden, 1686), 1.1-2; Joh. Braunius, Doctrina foederum, sive systema theologiae didacticae & elencticae (2d ed.; Amsterdam, 1702), 1.1.5.
23. See C. R. Trueman, The Claims of Truth: John Owen’s Trinitarian Theology (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1998), 54–64.
24. E.g., C. S. McCoy, The Covenant Theology of Johannes Cocceius (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1956), 89, 90, 236; H. Faulenbach, Weg und Ziel der Erkenntnis Christi. Eine Untersuchung zur Theologie des Johannes Coccejus (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1973), 46–47.
25. Joh. à Marck, Compendium theologiae christianae didactico-elencticum (Amsterdam, 1722); B. de Moor, Commentarius perpetuus in Johannis Marckii compendium theologiae christianae didactico-elencticum (7 vols.; Leiden, 1761), 1.1.7–11.
26. A. Kuyper, Encyclopedie der heilige godgeleerdheid (Amsterdam, 1894), 2:196–207; H. Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek (4th ed.; Kampen: Kok, 1928), 1:184–86; 2:163; L. Berkhof, Systematic Theology, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1949) 35;W. Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1988) 1:12–13.
27. Muller, PRRD, 1:125.
28. Junius, De vera theologia, OT, 1374 (Opuscula [ed. Kuyper], 46): “Esse autem theologiam res ipsa & consensus omnium populorum docent; res: nam Deus est, & idem principium est omnis boni in rerum natura, & loquitur, & agit ut Deus. Consensus: nam omnes ita esse agnoscunt naturae luce.”
29. Junius, De vera theologia, OT, 1375 (Opuscula [ed. Kuyper], 47): “Etsi autem ab omnibus creditur esse theologiam, in vulgo tamen homonumos dicitur. Est enime haec vera, illa falsa & opinabilis. Aequivocationem istam, quam hic statuimus, efficit rei veritas cum falso corruptoque nostro iudicio & sensu comparata. Nam ex rei veritate quidem est, ut sit sapientia rerum divinarum, qualiscunque illa tandem & cuiuscunque sit, etiamque vera dicatur esse: ex iudicii vero nostri depravatione, & quasi pituita sensum spiritualis gustus mentibus adimente est, quod in hac quoque (ut in caeteris) causa gravissima falsum pro vero amplectamur.”
30. Junius, De vera theologia, OT, 1376 (Opuscula [ed.Kuyper], 47): “Ex quo autem hic truncus quasi a radice illa vulgaris theologiae coepit procedere, statim diffusa est haec philosophica in tres ramos illos, quos suis nominibus ante distinximus, fabulosa puta, naturalem atque civilem theologiam; quemadmodum ex Varrone & Seneca Augustinus lib. 6. de civit. Dei, cap. 5 explicavit. Mythicum sive fabulosum dixerunt illi, quo maxime utuntur poetae ad theatricam voluptatem; naturale vel physicum genus theologia, quo philosophi ad mundi interpretationem & veri naturalis pervestigationem, in suis diaetis atque encycliis; politicum denique vel civile, quod potentiores adhibuerunt, ut civitatem rerumque publicarum leges quaedam religionis auctoritate stabilirent.”W. Pannenberg, Theology and the Philosophy of Science (trans. Francis McDonagh; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976), 7–8, points to Clement’s Stromata and to Aristotle.
31. It should be noted that the term “scientia” (science) as used by Junius and other seventeenth-century theologians indicated a disciplined body of knowledge resting upon evident principles. The rise of modern science was certainly evident in the seventeenth century, but the termscientia had not been restricted to the empirical and inductive disciplines. See R. A. Muller, “Scholasticism Protestant and Catholic: Francis Turretin on the Object and Principles of Theology,” in CH 55 (1986): 193-205.
32. See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 6.1139b16–1140a8.
33. Junius, De vera theologia, OT, 1375 (Opuscula [ed. Kuyper], 49): “At haec omnia simul theologia nostra comprehendit; principiorum intellectum, conclusionum determinationumque scientiam, & operis nostri, quatenus ad Deum contendimus, artem saluberrimam: quae omnia nihil plane, praeterquam sapientia, iudicare certo potest, aut commode ordinare, aut praestare salutariter. Quae cum sint, non potest theologiae statui ullum aliud genus, quam sapientia, de principiis scientarum in intellectu, & conclusionibus earum iudicans, & omnia vi sua complectens quae ad perfectionem omnis boni sunt necessaria, & iis omnibus utens sapientissime.”
34. See, e.g., Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana 1.8.17–19.
35. Junius, De vera theologia, OT, 1375 (Opuscula [ed. Kuyper], 48): “Ac primum quidem theologiam sapientiam eo appellamus, quod omnes omnino proprietates ad intellectum, scientiam, & usum salutarem pertinentes, ex natura & supra naturam, modo plane excellentissimo in sese complectitur; velut certissima principiorum index, amplissima scientiarum omnium θεωρητικῶν και πρακτικῶν princeps, & sapientissima omnium actionum rationumque arbitra, omni exceptione maior.”
36. See Althaus, Die Prinzipien, 230; Preus, Post-Reformation Lutheranism, 1:114, 168–72, Muller, PRRD, 1:124.
37. Junius, De vera theologia, OT, 1377 (Opuscula [ed. Kuyper], 51): “Haec vero sapientia aeterna est, essentialis, adeoque essentia Dei: cui omnia non ex ullis principiis, compositione, & divisione intellectus, ratiociatione, conclusionibus, scientia, judicatione, & ordinatione sunt praesentissima: sed simplicissime, unico omnium simul intuitu, ac non successive, ut fit creatis rebus: haec principia gignit ex se, non ex eis gignitur: haec intellectum, rationem, conclusiones, scientias, sapientiam in aliis efficit, in se immutabilis & invariata permanens.”
38. “Theologia archetypa est divinarum rerum divina sapientia, hanc vero nos adoramus, ac non investigamus” (ibid.).
39. For this debate among the Reformed scholastics, see Muller, PRRD, 1:131.
40. Junius, De vera theologia, OT, 1379 (Opuscula [ed. Kuyper], 53): “Theologia ektypos sive simpliciter (ut vocant) sive secundum quid considerata, est sapientia divinarum rerum a Deo ex archetypo ipsius informata per communicationem gratiae ad gloriam ipsius.”
41. “Est enim Deus ipse solus, non autem res creata ulla, efficiens causa istius habitus, quem theologiam appellamus (…) Quemadmodum igitur sol lunae foeneratur lucem; sic Deum in quo est lux, eaque lux vera illuminans omnem hominem venientem in huncmundum, Ioan. 1. 9” (ibid., 1379 [Opuscula (ed. Kuyper), 54]).
42. The work of Paul Oskar Kristeller, Charles Schmitt and Heiko Oberman, and its subsequent application to Protestant scholasticism by Preus, Muller and Trueman, has shown that this facile equation of Scholasticism and Aristotelianism is no longer tenable. See P. O. Kristeller, Renaissance Thought: The Classic, Scholastic, and Humanist Strains (New York: Harper and Row, 1961); Charles B. Schmitt, “Towards a Reassessment of Renaissance Aristotelianism,” in Studies in Renaissance Philosophy and Science (London: Variorum, 1981); Preus, The Theology of Post-Reformation Lutheranism, 1:72; Muller, PRRD, 1: passim; PRRD 2:232–35. In this regard the work of Carl R. Trueman is particulary helpful: see his The Claims of Truth, 34–46.
43. Junius, De vera theologia, OT, 1380 (Opuscula [ed. Kuyper], 54): “Ac proinde quemadmodum actus internus & externus in rebus nostris consideratur, ita & forma duplex, interna et externa. Internam appellamus illum veluti conceptum aeternum divinae voluntatis & gratiae in ipso Deo consideratum. Externam vero, illius aeterni conceptus, ut ita dicamus, factam suo tempore in alia influentiam. Utroque modo informat Deus, intus consilio sapientissimo, foris opere potentissimo hanc sapientiam. Sed quia duplex haec forma est, in Deo, tanquam in fonte subsistens; in alia, tanquam in lacus, derivata.”
44. “Nos autem in hac quaestione non tam theologiae illius simpliciter dictae, quam theologiae secundum quid rationem habituri sumus: quia haec nostra est maxime theologia, cuius communicationem omnes haurimus de plenitudine Dei in Christo Jesu, Ioan. 1. 16” (ibid.).
45. Junius, De vera theologia, OT, 1383 (Opuscula [ed. Kuyper], 56): “Prima theologia summa omnium ac plenissima est, de qua haurimus omnes: Ioan. 1. 16. estque in Christo secundum humanitatem eius. Secunda, plena, qua spiritus beati gloriosam Dei visionem obtinent in coelis, & nos Deum sicuti est visuri sumus: I Ioan. 3. 2. Tertia denique non est plena re ipsa, sed potius per revelationem fidei, sic instructa principiis eiusdem veritatis, ut plena respectu nostri commode dici & perfecta possit: quamvis imperfecta, si cum illa coelesti quam speramus, comparetur, ut Apostolus Corinthios docuit. I Cor. 13. 12. Atque haec nostra demum est theologia.”
46. Junius, De vera theologia, OT, 1387 (ed. Kuyper, 59): “Illa archetypa matrix est omnium: haec vero ectypa in Christo est reliquarum mater: Illa fons omnium: haec commune quasi castellum seu conceptaculum. De huius autem salutaris conceptaculi divina plenitudine res creatae duobus modis hauriunt: Una visione coram: Altera revelatione, absentes videlicet ac peregrinantes a Domino. 2 Cor. 5:6, 7. Ex his duobus modis illa duo Theologiae ectypae genera processerunt: quorum alterum Theologiam beatorum, alterum viatorum orthodoxi Patres appellabant. Itaque secunda forma Theologiae ectypae, Theologia beatorum seu excelsa: tertia, viatorum, sive humilis dici a nobis potest. Atque hanc utramque formam Theologiae sanctificavit in persona sua: quandoquidem cum humili Theologia usus est in humilitate carnis: tum excelsa utitur in illa exaltatione sua, qua nunc exaltatus est supra omne nomen: videlicet ut commune principium utriusque Theologiae sibi inesse ostenderet.”
47. For a detailed discussion on Calov’s reflections on archetypal and ectypal theology, see Preus, The Theology of Post-Reformation Lutheranism, 1:167–73.
48. E.g., Junius, De vera theologia, OT, 1382 (Opuscula [ed. Kuyper], 54–55).
49. See Augustine, De civitate Dei, passim; idem, De doctrina christiana: 1.5.10; 1.11.22; 1.17.34. For late medieval theology, see Altenstaig, Lexicon, 908–9. See H. A. Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism (Durham, N.C.: Labyrinth, 1983), 62–63, 77.
50. Junius, De vera theologia, OT, 1388 (Opuscula [ed. Kuyper], 61): “Sed perfectio eius cum nostra tenuitate & imperfectione contemperata est: quia principia solum perfectissimae illius in coelo theologiae comprehendit; quibus principiis perfectis quidem in se ipsis, sed imperfectis secundum quendam modum, ad perfectionem coelestem evehimur.”
51. See, e.g., J. H. Heidegger, Corpus theologiae christianae, 1.1.67: “Theologia viae, seu tradita in Systemate, seu, ut habitus mentem occupans, quamdiu peregrinamur a Domino, imperfecta semper est, & continuo profectu de die in diem perfici debet. In omnibus enim & singulis imperfectior, quam in via cognosci poterat. Quis enim vel Prophetarum vel Apostolorum omnia mysteria, quae in verbo Dei continentur, perfecte intellexit?”
52. Junius, De vera theologia, OT, 1390 (Opuscula [ed. Kuyper], 63–64): “Est igitur duplex theologiae communicandae modus, natura & gratia: illa velut internum principium communicationis; haec, velut principium externum illius, ex quo fit ut theologia una dicatur naturalis, & supernaturalis altera (…) Naturalem quum dicimus, hoc in loco nolumus accipi ea significatione, quam ex Varrone & Augustino supra capite primo ostendimus, sed proprio sensu atque simpliciter.”
53. Turrettinus, Institutio theologiae elenchticae, 1.5.4: “Sed quando Deus proponitur ut objectum theologiae, non spectandus est simpliciter ut est Deus in se (…), sed quatenus revelatus & ut se in verbo nobis patefacere dignatus est, ut revelatio divina sit ratio formalis quae in hoc objecto spectanda venit. Nec praecise considerandus est sub ratione Deitatis (…) sed ut est Deus noster id est foederatus in Christo, quomodo se nobis in verbo patefecit, non modo ut cognoscendum sed etiam ut colendum, quibus duobus vera religio quam theologia docet, continetur.”
54. See A. J. Beck, “Gisbertus Voetius (1589–1676): Basic Features of his Doctrine of God,” in Reformation and Scholasticism. An Ecumenical Enterprise (ed.Willem J. van Asselt and Eef Dekker; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001), 205–26.
55. For Arminius’s use of the distinction between archetypal and ectypal theology, see R. A. Muller, God, Creation, and Providence in the Thought of Jacob Arminius: Sources and Directions of Scholastic Protestantism in the Era of Early Orthodoxy (Grand Rapids: Baker 1991), 60–62.
56. See Simon Episcopius, Institutiones theologicae, in Opera Theologica (Amsterdam, 1650), 1:4: “Nec dicam operose de Theologia, quas vocant, speciebus, in quas Theologiam analogice dividere quidam solent, videlicet de Archetypo & Ectypo, sive ut barbare quidam loquuntur, Archetypa & Ectypa (…) quae vanitatis plus habent quam utilitatis, & subtilitatis plus quam soliditatis, imo quae etiam falsa sunt.” See Phippus van Limborch, Theologia christiana. Ad praxin pietatis ac promotionem pacis christianae unice directa (Amsterdam, 1686), 1.1.1: “Solet vulgo Theologia dividi in Archetypam, qua Deus se ipsum novit & omnia divina; & Ectypam, quae expressa sit ad illam ideam, & communicata tripliciter: 1. per unionem hypostaticam, Jesu Christo; 2. per visionem, Angelis; 3. per revelationem, hominibus. Sed vitiose. Theologia enim revelata non est expressa ad ideam cognitionis illius, qua Deus seipsum cognoscit naturaliter.