i8 7 o] A THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY 153 



even fatal, to a living theology. For even with regard to 

 the fundamentals of Christianity there is a wide difference 

 between an intellectual assent and an experimental con 

 viction. Granted that no true Christian could fail to 

 subscribe the &quot; fundamentalia,&quot; it was not made out that 

 a theology that held the doctrines was necessarily a 

 &quot; theologia regeneratorum.&quot; And then theology might 

 be quite orthodox and yet stand in no necessary relation 

 to the Christian life ; thus the living faith of the Reformers 

 passed over into the lifeless orthodoxy from which the 

 rationalism of the eighteenth century arose. In fact, 

 it was already rationalism to assert that intellectual 

 assent to certain fundamentals secured the existence of 

 the true Habitus Theologicus, without which divine truth 

 could not be understood. 



The merely formal conception of the analogy of faith 

 was surrounded also by theoretical difficulties. What is 

 the criterion of a fundamental doctrine ? How can we 

 know that a doctrine is necessary for salvation except 

 from the actual experience of the saved ? 



In the main, with some attempts to reach a firmer 

 basis, the criterion of a fundamental doctrine was sought 

 in an express declaration of Scripture. But then the 

 &quot; dogma de S.S. theopneustw, sola et perfect a fidei 

 regula,&quot; is in turn one of the fundamentals, and necessarily 

 that fundamental on which all the others rest. And does 

 not this position involve a vicious circle ? In what sense 

 is it possible that the authority and inspiration of Scrip 

 ture can be proved at once from its own words ? When 

 the question reaches this stage the original religious signi 

 ficance of the Analogy of Faith is lost altogether, and the 

 real basis of theology becomes (as we find it, for example, 

 in the manual of Hodge) an apologetical inquiry into the 

 evidences of Christianity with the view of bringing out 

 the doctrine of inspiration in isolation from all other 

 doctrines as the absolute prius in the system of Christian 

 theology, capable of being demonstrated by evidence 



