Quotes from Charles Hodge

Fourth, Such is evidently the will of God. He does not teach men astronomy or chemistry, but He gives them the facts out of which those sciences are constructed. Neither does He teach us systematic theology, but He gives us in the Bible the truths which, properly understood and arranged, constitute the science of theology. As the facts of nature are all related and determined by physical laws, so the facts of the Bible are all related and determined by the nature of God and of his creatures.

The meritorious ground of justification is not faith; we are not justified on account of our faith, considered as a virtuous holy act or state of mind. Nor are our works of any kind the ground of justification. Nothing done by us or wrought in us satisfies the demands of justice, or can be the ground or reason of the declaration that justice as far as it concerns us is satisfied. The ground of justification is the righteousness of Christ.

If the facts of Scripture are what Augustinians believe them to be, then the Augustinian system is the only possible system of theology. If those facts be what Romanists or Remonstrants take them to be, then their system is the only true one. It is important that the theologian should know his place. He is not master of the situation. He can no more construct a system of theology to suit his fancy, than the astronomer can adjust the mechanism of the heavens according to his own good pleasure.

Theology, therefore, is the exhibition of the facts of Scripture in their proper order and relation, with the principles or general truths involved in the facts themselves, and which pervade and harmonize the whole.

It is conceded that nothing contrary to reason can be true. But it is no less important to remember that nothing contrary to our moral nature can be true.

There is in every department of investigation great liability to error. Almost all false theories in science and false doctrines in theology are due in a great degree to mistakes as to matters of fact.

Romanists argue that such is the obscurity of the Scriptures, that not only the people, but the Church itself needs the aid of tradition in order to their being properly understood. But if the Bible, a comparatively plain book, in one probable volume, needs to be thus explained, what is to explain the hundreds of folios in which these traditions are recorded? Surely a guide to the interpretation of the latter must be far more needed than for the Scriptures.

Some philosophical theologians seem to think that there is real antagonism between love and justice in the divine nature, or that these attributes are incompatible or inharmonious. This is not so in man, why then should it be so in God?

The Reformed Church in adhering to the doctrine as it had been settled in the Council of Chalcedon, maintained that there is such an essential difference between the divine and human natures that the one could not become the other, and that the one was not capable of receiving the attributes of the other. If God became the subject of the limitations of humanity He would cease to be God; and if man received the attributes of God he would cease to be man.

This is the foundation of the distinction between the scientia necessaria and the scientia libera. God knows Himself by the necessity of his nature; but as everything out of Himself depends for its existence or occurrence upon his will, his knowledge of each thing as an actual occurrence is suspended on his will, and in that sense is free. Creation not being necessary, it depended on the will of God whether the universe as an object of knowledge should exist or not.

To define, however, is simply to bound, to separate, or distinguish; so that the thing defined may be discriminated from all other things.

Wherever men exist, in all ages and in all parts of the world, they have some form of religion. The idea of God is impressed on every human language. And as language is the product and revelation of human consciousness, if all languages have some name for God, it proves that the idea of God, in some from, belongs to every human being.