152 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868- 



intellect, the assertion of man s natural ability to know the 

 things of the Spirit of God quite apart from the question 

 whether it is by Revelation or not that these spiritual 

 things are first set before man s reason. The true anti 

 thesis to Rationalism is the position which the Reforma 

 tion theology justly urges, that there can be no true theology 

 where there is no true Christian life, that no knowledge 

 of revelation will make a man a theologian without the 

 regenerating influence of the Holy Spirit. &quot; Theologia,&quot; 

 says Amesius, &quot;est doctrina Deo vivendi.&quot; &quot; Theologicae 

 vitae natura est vivere Deo.&quot; &quot; And this life,&quot; adds 

 Amesius, &quot; is the spiritual act of the whole man by which 

 he lays hold of God ; and therefore it is the will or heart 

 that is the proper seat of theology.&quot; 



It is obviously quite in the spirit, almost in the very 

 words, of these statements of Amesius that the recent 

 theology speaks of the Christian consciousness of fellow 

 ship with God through Christ Jesus our Redeemer, 

 as the necessary foundation of theology, or says in 

 the words of Neander, &quot; Pectus est quod theologum 

 facit.&quot; 



The older theologians failed, however, to carry this 

 view in its full force all through the system of theology. 

 So long as revelation was treated not as a revelation of 

 God s person but as a communication of doctrine, so long 

 as doctrine was regarded as even in a secondary sense the 

 object of faith, the great principle which was always 

 acknowledged at starting could hardly fail to get im 

 prisoned under the rubrics De Analogia Fidel or De 

 Fundamentalizm. For if there are certain theses which 

 are of such a kind that, to speak with Turretin, to believe 

 in them necessarily brings salvation, while to be ignorant 

 of them is damnable, to doubt dangerous, to deny them 

 impious, the postulate of theological life naturally resolved 

 itself into the postulation of these theses as the rule or 

 analogy by which all doctrines must be tried. 



Yet this apparently obvious step is in reality dangerous, 



