Orthodox Rationalism [pp. 294-312]

OR THODOX RATIONALISM.
under the vivifying influence of Jesus' simpler and more spiritual
sense of the heavenly Father. For example, the idea of power
torn asunder from its dependence upon the whole moral nature
of God, and magnified into the idea of isolated Omnipotence,
has lent additional perplexity to the old problems concerning
the origin of evil and the prevention of sin. Could not Omnipotence prevent sin? But God's power is not God, and his relation to his creation is at all times a relation of the whole
Godhead, and not of any single attribute. What Omnipotence
might do is one question-a question of an abstract theology;
what God can do is another question-a question of real history to be determined, so far as we may hope to answer it, in
the light of what God has done. So also the idea of knowledge
expanded into Omniscience, and the idea of will increased to an
all-efficient causation, and treated in an abstract isolation, almost as tho these attributes were God, have led theologians to
plunge into extreme theories of foreordination and decrees, and
involved evangelical faith in metaphysical difficulties which the
Scriptures in their simple, real sense of the living God neither
raise nor solve. Even worse confusion and disaster to faith has
resulted from the separation of the moral aspects of the divine
nature into distinct and even opposing attributes, into which the
prevalence of rationalistic modes of thinking, lacking in ethical
and spiritual discernment, has too often betrayed even evangelical theology. Righteousness and mercy have been set over
against each other; justice has been divided, in theological lectures, into several different kinds and species; and then the doctrine of the atonement has required labored ingenuity on the
part of theologians to show how attributes of God so opposing
were reconciled in Christ; and some of the moral elements of
the divine nature are sometimes represented as demanding still
the punishment of sin. So does unconscious rationalism in the.ology corrupt the simplicity of the Gospel! A father, a mother,
suffering the shame of a son's sin, and forgiving it, knows, with a
deeper insight than any theology of the mere intellect can gain,
the divine necessity of forgiveness through the Cross!
It has been questioned by a profound critic whether Calvinism does not introduce dualism into the very nature of God
{Dorner, "Geschichte der prot. Theologie," s. 392). An all-wise
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