LIBERTY UNIVERSITY JOHN W. RAWLINGS SCHOOL OF DIVINITY
The Conception of Theology as a Science
A Paper Submitted to
the Faculty of the School of Divinity
in Candidacy for the Degree of
Doctor of Education in Christian Leadership (Ed. D) Department of Christian Leadership and
Church Ministries
By
Mary Gracias
Lynchburg, Virginia
9/2022
The Conception of Theology as a Science
If theology be a science at all, there is involved in that fact, as in the case of all other
sciences, at least these three things: the reality of its subject-matter, the capacity of the human
mind to receive into itself and rationally to reflect this subject-matter, the existence of media of
communication between the subject-matter and the percipient and understanding mind. There
could be no psychology were there not a mind to be investigated, a mind to investigate, and a
self-consciousness by means of which the mind as an object can be brought under the
inspection of the mind as subject. There could be no astronomy were there no heavenly bodies
to be investigated, no mind capable of comprehending the laws of their existence and
movements, or no means of observing their structure and motion. Similarly there can be no
theology, conceived according to its very name as the science of God, unless there is a God to
form its subject-matter, a capacity in the human mind to apprehend and so far to comprehend
God, and some media by which God is made known to man.
That a theology, as the science of God, may exist, therefore, it must begin by establishing
the existence of God, the capacity of the human mind to know Him, and the accessibility of
knowledge concerning Him. In other words, the very idea of theology as the science of God
gives these three great topics which must be dealt with in its fundamental department, by
which the foundations for the whole structure are laid- God, religion, revelation. With these
three facts established, a theology as the science of God becomes possible; with them,
therefore, an apologetic might be complete. But that, only provided that in these three topics
all the underlying presuppositions of the science of God actually built up in our theology are
established; for example, provided that all the accessible sources and means of knowing God
are exhausted.
No science can arbitrarily limit the data lying within its sphere to which it will attend. On
pain of ceasing to be the science it professes to be, it must exhaust the means of information
open to it, and reduce to a unitary system the entire body of knowledge in its sphere. No
science can represent itself as astronomy, for example, which arbitrarily confines itself to the
information concerning the heavenly bodies obtainable by the unaided eye, or which discards,
without sound ground duly adduced, the aid of, say, the spectroscope. In the presence of
Christianity in the world making claim to present a revelation of God adapted to the condition
and needs of sinners, and documented in Scriptures, theology cannot proceed a step until it has
examined this claim; and if the claim be substantiated, this substantiation must form a part of
the fundamental department of theology in which are laid the foundations for the
systematization of the knowledge of God. In that case, two new topics are added to the subject-
matter with which apologetics must constructively deal, Christianity–and the Bible.
It thus lies in the very nature of apologetics as the fundamental department of theology,
conceived as the science of God, that it should find its task in establishing the existence of a
God who is capable of being known by man and who has made Himself known, not only in
nature but in revelations of His grace to lost sinners, documented in the Christian Scriptures.
When apologetics has placed these great facts in our hands- God, religion, revelation,
Christianity, the Bible–and not till then are we prepared to go on and explicate the knowledge
of God thus brought to us, trace the history of its workings in the world, systematize it, and
propagate it in the world.
The Five Subdivisions of Apologetics
The primary subdivisions of apologetics are therefore five, unless for convenience of
treatment it is preferred to sink the third into its most closely related fellow.
(1) The first, which may perhaps be called philosophical apologetics, undertakes the
establishment of the being of God, as a personal spirit, the creator, preserver, and governor of
all things. To it belongs the great problem of theism, with the involved discussion of the
antitheistic theories.
(2) The second, which may perhaps be called psychological apologetics, undertakes the
establishment of the religious nature of man and the validity of his religious sense. It involves
the discussion alike of the psychology, the philosophy, and the phenomenology of religion, and
therefore includes what is loosely called “comparative religion” or the “history of religions.”
(3) To the third falls the establishment of the reality of the supernatural factor in history,
with the involved determination of the actual relations in which God stands to His world, and
the method of His government of His rational creatures, and especially His mode of making
Himself known to them. It issues in the establishment of the fact of revelation as the condition
of all knowledge of God, who as a personal Spirit can be known only so far as He expresses
Himself; so that theology differs from all other sciences in that in it the object is not at the
disposal of the subject, but vice versa.
(4) The fourth, which may be called historical apologetics, undertakes to establish the
divine origin of Christianity as the religion of revelation in the special sense of that word. It
discusses all the topics which naturally fall under the popular caption of the “evidences of
Christianity.”
(5) The fifth, which may be called bibliological apologetics, undertakes to establish the
trustworthiness of the Christian Scriptures as the documentation of the revelation of God for
the redemption of sinners. It is engaged especially with such topics as the divine origin of the
Scriptures; the methods of the divine operation in their origination; their place in the series of
redemptive acts of God, and in the process of revelation; the nature, mode, and effect of
inspiration; and the like.
The value of apologetics
The estimate which is put upon apologetics by scholars naturally varies with the conception
which is entertained of its nature and function. In the wake of the subjectivism introduced by
Schleiermacher, it has become very common to speak of such an apologetic as has just been
outlined with no little scorn. It is an evil inheritance, we are told, from the old
supranaturalismus vulgaris, which “took its standpoint not in the Scriptures but above the
Scriptures, and imagined it could, with formal conceptions, develop a ‘ground for the divine
authority of Christianity’ (Heubner), and therefore offered proofs for the divine origin of
Christianity, the necessity of revelation, and the credibility of the Scriptures” (Lemme). To
recognize that we can take our standpoint in the Scriptures only after we have Scriptures,
authenticated as such, to take our standpoint in, is, it seems, an outworn prejudice. The
subjective experience of faith is conceived to be the ultimate fact; and the only legitimate
apologetic, just the self-justifica-tion of this faith itself. For faith, it seems, after Kant, can no
longer be looked upon as a matter of reasoning and does not rest on rational grounds, but is an
affair of the heart, and manifests itself most powerfully when it has no reason out of itself
(Brunetiere). If repetition had probative force, it would long ago have been established that
faith, religion, theology, lie wholly outside of the realm of reason, proof, and demonstration.
It is, however, from the point of view of rationalism and mysticism that the value of
apologetics is most decried. Wherever rationalistic preconceptions have penetrated, there, of
course, the validity of the apologetic proofs has been in more or less of their extent questioned.
Wherever mystical sentiment has seeped in, there the validity of apologetics has been with
more or less emphasis doubted. At the present moment, the rationalistic tendency is most
active, perhaps, in the form given it by Albrecht Ritschl. In this form it strikes at the very roots
of apologetics, by the distinction it erects between theoretical and religious knowledge.
Religious knowledge is not the knowledge of fact, but a perception of utility; and therefore
positive religion, while it maybe historically conditioned, has no theoretical basis, and is
accordingly not the object of rational proof. In significant parallelism with this, the mystical
tendency is manifesting itself at the present day most distinctly in a widespread inclination to
set aside apologetics in favor of the “witness of the Spirit.”
The convictions of the Christian man, we are told, are not the product of reason addressed
to the intellect, but the immediate creation of the Holy Spirit in the heart. Therefore, it is
intimated, we may do very well without these reasons, if indeed they are not positively noxious,
because tending to substitute a barren intellectualism for a vital faith. It seems to be forgotten
that though faith be a moral act and the gift of God, it is yet formally conviction passing into
confidence; and that all forms of convictions must rest on evidence as their ground, and it is not
faith but reason which investigates the nature and validity of this ground. “He who believes,”
says Thomas Aquinas, in words which have become current as an axiom, “would not believe
unless he saw that what he believes is worthy of belief.”
Though faith is the gift of God, it does not in the least follow that the faith which God gives
is an irrational faith, that is, a faith without cognizable ground in right reason. We believe in
Christ because it is rational to believe in Him, not even though it be irrational. Of course mere
reasoning cannot make a Christian; but that is not because faith is not the result of evidence,
but because a dead soul cannot respond to evidence. The action of the Holy Spirit in giving faith
is not apart from evidence, but along with evidence; and in the first instance consists in
preparing the soul for the reception of the evidence.
Relation of Apologetics to Christian Faith
This is not to argue that it is by apologetics that men are made Christians, but that
apologetics supplies to Christian men the systematically organized basis on which the faith of
Christian men must rest. All that apologetics explicates in the forms of systematic proof is
implicit in every act of Christian faith. Whenever a sinner accepts Jesus Christ as his Saviour,
there is implicated in that act a living conviction that there is a God, knowable to man, who has
made Himself known in a revelation of Himself for redemption in Jesus Christ, as is set down in
the Scriptures.
It is not necessary for his act of faith that all the grounds of this conviction should be drawn
into full consciousness and given the explicit assent of his understanding, though it is necessary
for his faith that sufficient ground for his conviction be actively present and working in his spirit.
But it is necessary for the vindication of his faith to reason in the form of scientific judgment,
that the grounds on which it rests be explicated and established. Theology as a science, though
it includes in its culminating discipline, that of practical theology, an exposition of how that
knowledge of God with which it deals objectively may best be made the subjective possession
of man, is not itself the instrument of propaganda; what it undertakes to do is systematically to
set forth this knowledge of God as the object of rational contemplation. And as it has to set it
forth as knowledge, it must of course begin by establishing its right to rank as such. Did it not
do so, the whole of its work would hang in the air, and theology would present the odd
spectacle among the sciences of claiming a place among a series of systems of knowledge for an
elaboration of pure assumptions.
The Earliest Apologetics
Seeing that it thus supplies an insistent need of the human spirit, the world has, of course,
never been without its apologetics. Whenever men have thought at all they have thought about
God and the supernatural order; and whenever they have thought of God and the supernatural
order, there has been present to their minds a variety of more or less solid reasons for believing
in their reality. The enucleation of these reasons into a systematically organized body of proofs
waited of course upon advancing culture. But the advent of apologetics did not wait for the
advent of Christianity; nor are traces of this department of thought discoverable only in the
regions lit up by special revelation.
The philosophical systems of antiquity, especially those which derive from Plato, are far
from empty of apologetical elements; and when in the later stages of its development, classical
philosophy became peculiarly religious, express apologetical material became almost
predominant. With the coming of Christianity into the world, however, as the contents of the
theology to be stated became richer, so the efforts to substantiate it became more fertile in
apologetical elements. We must not confuse the apologies of the early Christian ages with
formal apologetics. Like the sermons of the day, they contributed to apologetics without being
it.
The apologetic material developed by what one may call the more philosophical of the
apologists (Aristides, Athenagoras, Tatian, Theophilus, Hermias, Tertullian) was already
considerable; it was largely supplemented by the theological labors of their successors. In the
first instance Christianity, plunged into a polytheistic environment and called upon to contend
with systems of thought grounded in pantheistic or dualistic assumptions, required to establish
its theistic standpoint; and as over against the bitterness of the Jews and the mockery of the
heathen (e.g. Tacitus, Fronto, Crescens, Lucian), to evince its own divine origin as a gift of grace
to sinful man. Along with Tertullian, the great Alexan-drians, Clement and Origen, are the
richest depositaries of the apologetic thought of the first period. The greatest apologists of the
patristic age were, however, Eusebius of Caesarea and Augustine. The former-was the most
learned and the latter the most profound of all the defenders of Christianity among the Fathers.
And Augustine, in particular, not merely in his “City of God” but in his controversial writings,
accumulated a vast mass of apologetical material which is far from having lost its significance
even yet.
The Later Apologetics
It was not, however, until the scholastic age that apologetics came to its rights as a
constructive science. The whole theological activity of the Middle Ages was so far ancillary to
apologetics, that its primary effort was the justification of faith to reason. It was not only rich in
apologists (Agobard, Abelard, Raymund Martini), but every theologian was in a sense an
apologist. Anselm at its beginning, Aquinas at its culmination, are types of the whole series;
types in which all its excellencies are summed up.
The Renaissance, with its repristination of heathenism, naturally called out a series of new
apologists (Savonarola, Marsilius Ficinus, Ludovicus Vives), but the Reformation forced polemics
into the foreground and drove apologetics out of sight, although, of course, the great
theologians of the Reformation era brought their rich contribution to the accumulating
apologetical material. When, in the exhaustion of the seventeenth century, irreligion began to
spread among the people and indifferentism ripening into naturalism among the leaders of
thought, the stream of apologetical thought was once more started flowing, to swell into a
great flood as the prevalent unbelief intensified and spread. With a forerunner in Philippe de
Mornay (1581), Hugo Grotius (1627) became the typical apologist of the earlier portion of this
period, while its middle portion was illuminated by the genius of Pascal (d. 1662) and the
unexampled richness of apologetical labor in its later years culminated in Butler’s great”
Analogy” (1736) and Paley’s plain but powerful argumentation.
As the assault against Christianity shifted its basis from the English deism of the early half
of the eighteenth century through the German rationalism of its later half, the idealism which
dominated the first half of the nineteenth century, and thence to the materialism of its later
years, period after period was marked in the history of apology, and the particular elements of
apologetics which were especially cultivated changed with the changing thought. But no epoch
was marked in the history of apologetics itself, until under the guidance of Schleiermacher’s
attempt to trace the organism of the departments of theology, K. H. Sack essayed to set forth a
scientifically organized “Christian Apologetics” (Hamburg, 1829; ed. 2, 1841).
Since then an unbroken series of scientific systems of apologetics has flowed from the
press. These differ from one another in almost every conceivable way; in their conception of
the nature, task, compass, and encyclopedic place of the science; in their methods of dealing
with its material; in their conception of Christianity itself; and of religion and of God and of the
nature of the evidence on which belief in one or the other must rest. But they agree in the
fundamental point that apologetics is conceived by all alike as a special department of
theological science, capable of and demanding separate treatment. In this sense apologetics
has come at last, in the last two-thirds of the nineteenth century, to its rights.
FOOTNOTES:
1 Text from “The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge,” edited by Samuel
Macauley Jackson, D.D., LL.D., i. pp. 232-238 (copyright by Funk and Wagnalls Company, New
York, 1908). Text now in the public domain.
