Lectures on Systematic Theology, embracing Lectures on Moral Government, together with Atonement, Moral and Physical Depravity, Philosophical Theories, and Evidences of Regeneration. By REV. CHARLES J. FINNEY, Professor of Theology in the Oberlin Collegiate Institute. Oberlin: James M. Fitch. Boston: Crocker & Brewster. New York: Saxton & Miles. 1846. pp. 587.—PRINCETON REVIEW, April, 1847.
THIS is in more senses than one a remarkable book. It is to a degree very unusual an original work; it is the product of the author’s own mind. The principles which he holds, have indeed been held by others; and the conclusions at which he arrives had been reached before; but still it is abundantly evident that all the principles here advanced are adopted by the writer, not on authority, but on conviction, and that the conclusions presented have all been wrought out by himself and for himself. The work is therefore in a high degree logical. It is as hard to read as Euclid. Nothing can be omitted; nothing passed over slightly. The unhappy reader once committed to a perusal is obliged to go on, sentence by sentence, through the long concatenation. There is not one resting-place; not one lapse into amplification, or declamation, from beginning to the close. It is like one of those spiral staircases, which lead to the top of some high tower, without a landing from the base to the summit; which if a man has once ascended, he resolves never to do the like again. The author begins with certain postulates, or what he calls first truths of reason, and these he traces out with singular clearness and strength to their legitimate conclusions. We do not see that there is a break or a defective link in the whole chain. If you grant his principles, you have already granted his conclusions. Such a work must of course be reckless. Having committed himself to the guidance of the discursive understanding, which he sometimes calls the intelligence, and sometimes the reason, and to which he alone acknowledges any real allegiance, he pursues his remorseless course, regardless of any protest from other sources. The Scriptures are throughout recognized as a mere subordinate authority. They are allowed to come in and bear confirmatory testimony, but their place is altogether secondary. Even God himself is subordinate to “the intelligence;” his will can impose no obligation; it only discloses what is obligatory in its own nature and by the law of reason. There can be no positive laws, for nothing binds the conscience but the moral law, nothing is obligatory but what tends to the highest good, and as a means to that end, which must be chosen not out of regard for God, not for the sake of the moral excellence implied in it, but for its own sake as what alone has any intrinsic value. All virtue consists “in obedience to the moral law as revealed in the reason.” 301. “Benevolence (i. e., virtue) is yielding the will up unreservedly to the demands of the intelligence.” 275. Moral law “is the soul’s idea or conception of that state of heart or life which is exactly suited to its nature and relations. It cannot be too distinctly understood, that moral law is nothing more or less than the law of nature, that is, it is the rule imposed on us, not by the arbitrary will of any being, but by our own intelligence.” P. 6. It is obligatory also upon every moral agent, entirely independent of the will of God. Their nature and relations being given and their intelligence being developed, moral law must be obligatory upon them, and it lies not in the option of any being to make it otherwise. “To pursue a course of conduct suited to their nature and relations, is necessarily and self-evidently obligatory, the willing or nilling of any being to the contrary notwithstanding.” P. 5. As man’s allegiance is to the universe—to being in general, and the rule of his obedience his own intelligence, God is reduced to the same category. He is “under moral law,” he is bound to seek the highest good of being, and as the highest well-being of the universe demands moral government, and as God is best qualified, “it is his duty to govern.” P. 19. “His conscience must demand it.” P. 20. Our obligation, however, to obey him rests neither on our dependence, nor on his infinite superiority, but simply on “the intrinsic value of the interests to be secured by government, and conditionated upon the fact, that government is the necessary means or condition of securing that end.” P. 24. God’s right is therefore limited by its foundation, “by the fact, that thus far, and no further, government is necessary to the highest good of the universe. No legislation in heaven or earth—no enactment can impose obligation, except upon condition that such legislation is demanded by the highest good of the governor and the governed. Unnecessary legislation is invalid legislation. Unnecessary government is tyranny. It can in no case be founded in right.” P. 24. The question is not, what form of truth may be conveyed under these expressions; we quote them as exhibiting the animus of the book; we bring them forward as exhibiting what we have called the recklessness of the writer; his tracing out his principles to conclusions which shock the ordinary sensibilities of Christians; which assume, to say the least, principles inconsistent with the nature of religion as presented in the Bible and as avowed by the vast body of the people of God. The Scriptures assume that our allegiance is to God, and not to being in general; that the foundation of our obligation to obey him, is his infinite excellence, and not the necessity of obedience to the highest happiness of moral agents; and that the rule of our obedience is his will, and not “the soul’s conception” of what is suited to our nature and relations. According to the doctrine of this book, there is no such thing as religion, or the service of God as God. The universe has usurped his place, as the supreme object of love; and reason, or “the intelligence,” has fallen heir to his authority. A very slight modification in the form of statement, would bring the doctrine of Mr. Finney, into exact conformity to the doctrine of the modern German school, which makes God but a name for the moral law or order of the universe, or reason in the abstract. It is in vain, however, to tell Mr. Finney that his conclusions shock the moral and religious consciousness; what right, he asks, has “the empirical consciousness” to be heard in the premises. “If the intelligence affirms it, it must be true or reason deceives us. But if the intelligence deceives in this, it may also in other things. If it fail us here, it fails us on the most important of all questions. If reason gives us false testimony, we can never know truth from error upon any moral subject; we certainly can never know what religion is, if the testimony of reason can be set aside. If the intelligence cannot be safely appealed to, how are we to know what the Bible means? for it is the only faculty by which we get at the truth of the oracles of God.” P. 171.1