302 PROFESSIONAL RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 



The science of theology, to a marked degree hitherto, has afforded 

 an example of a branch of knowledge affected, if not retarded, in its 

 development, by artificial conditions. Among the most important of 

 those conditions is ecclesiastical authority. The restrictive and com- 

 plicating effects of ecclesiastical authority upon the science of theo- 

 logy present themselves to the view of the student of history. That 

 authority, once asserted in connection with other sciences, which, 

 one by one, have claimed and gained their freedom, still retains such 

 force in the realm of theology that whosoever shall advocate a teach- 

 ing of theology upon which churchly authority cannot impinge is 

 thought by many to be revolutionary. 



Nevertheless, it is the purpose of this paper to defend a plea for 

 the recognition of theology as a university discipline rather than an 

 ecclesiastical discipline. When our Lord presented himself upon 

 the scene as a teacher of the truth of God, his manner of presentation 

 smote with freshness on the jaded religious sense of Israel. In the 

 highest degree our Lord's teaching of theology was authoritative, 

 yet its spirit was unlike that which governed the teaching of the 

 scribes. Theirs was the authority of a preimposed system, whose 

 sanctions must be maintained by reiteration and by threatening. 

 His, the authority of a Person in contact with the sources of know- 

 ledge and filled with the spirit of power, of love, of right judgment, 

 of filial intercourse with the Father. He intended that that attitude 

 toward the knowable truth of God should prevail forever among 

 his followers. The guaranty of it in perpetuity was the Abiding 

 Comforter, the Spirit of truth, who, said he, shall guide you into 

 all the truth, who shall continue with you forever. Time passed. 

 Christ vanished from human sight. The Christian society took on 

 organic forms and functions. The ages of ecclesiasticism began. 

 The rise of ecclesiasticism as an administrative system involved the 

 growth of the idea that it is the duty of a church to control the beliefs 

 of its members and of those seeking to enter its ministry by the im- 

 position of fixed systematic interpretations of truth, in distinction 

 from the idea that it is the duty of a church to encourage its members 

 and its students of theology to seek truth for themselves, as the 

 children of light, dwelling in the freedom of the Spirit. 



Churchly authority, as exercised in the region of theological science, 

 utters itself, from time to time, in the course of history, under three 

 modes of expression: the authority of an imperialistic Catholicism; 

 the authority of rival protesting sects; the authority of popular 

 religious usage. Unequal in their powers of enforcement, diverse 

 in their spheres of influence, these several modes of authority rest in 

 common on their right to impose upon the individuals within their 

 respective jurisdictions predetermined interpretations of theological 

 ideas, together with the obligation to conform thereto in belief and in 



