ARTICLE VI.

PROFESSOR PARK'S THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM.1

BY THE REVEREND FRANK HUGH FOSTER, PH. D., D. D.

THE remaining portions of Park's theological system were treated by him under the heads of Regeneration, Sanctification, and Eschatology. They will possess interest for us rather as showing the application of his main principles, and illustrating more fully his theological spirit, than as presenting us with anything that is essentially new.

REGENERATION.

Park began, as usual, with pointing out the relation of regeneration to the other doctrines of theology. The doctrine did not stand alone, it was a doctrine in a system, depending upon others and itself contributing to still others.

His definition was careful. Regeneration is "the change from a state of entire sinfulness to a state of some degree of holiness." As such, it was "the first change," differing from all other, subsequent changes, such as the repentance by which a Christian who has fallen into sin comes back to his duty, both in its origin and in the fact that it is of a fundamental character. It is also viewed by Park as the whole of the complex change from sin to holiness, and not merely, as some say, the divine side of the change. Regeneration thus embraces two elements, divine and human, but they are not so separated by Park as to assign them two separate terms, regeneration and conversion. Such a distinction had its advantages, but

1 Concluded from p. 291.

upon the whole Park preferred merely to say that "conversion was the most important part of comprehensive regeneration."

Analyzing it more particularly, regeneration involves a change of the primary, predominant choice. It may be questioned whether there is any such fixed and conscious choice before regeneration, but after it there is such a choice, which is recognized by the Christian as determinative of his whole life. It has "stopped the old habit of uninterrupted sin" and has "introduced the new habit of holiness." "It is not merely a holy choice, but the first one of a series; and not merely that, but an influential choice which stands so related to the former and subsequent states of the moral agent that it breaks up the continuity of the sinful habit and introduces a new habit." It also involves a change in the sensibilities and a change in the intellect, such that, in the order of nature, the change in these precedes that in the will; but in the order of time there is no priority of either over the other, for, as a whole, regeneration is instantaneous.

These preliminary and explanatory considerations are no sooner completed than the fact becomes clear that the treatment of the subject is to be determined by the philosophy of revivals which had grown up in the revival atmosphere of New England in the early half of the last century. Professor Park had himself been a revival preacher, and drew to the last some of his most illuminating illustrations from his experience with his parishioners in Braintree in revival times. The two perpetual tendencies of his system join here again in conflict, the Calvinistic tendency, to exalt God, which is brought out in his doctrine that God is "the sole author" of regeneration; and the practical interest of the pastor to clear away obstacles and stimulate activity on the part of sinners and so eventually

to elicit the act of conversion. These chapters contain, therefore, a philosophy of revivals.

Thus, in the very "analysis," with the main points of which we were just now busy, he guards against the idea that the advocated "change in the intellectual view" of the man should necessarily involve new knowledge; for then the unrepentant man would not be responsible for not having yielded to knowledge which he did not have. It may be merely a new vividness of the old ideas. The emphasis placed by the very term regeneration upon the agency of the Holy Spirit is not to lead to inactivity, for man is not responsible in any way for what God does; but he is responsible for repenting. This he can do, this he ought to do, and this he is to be exhorted to do immediately. This is the fullness of man's liberty.

And, then, with his usual breadth, Park refuses to limit regeneration to any one fixed scheme. Some revivalists were always attempting, as some do still, to produce a single type of experience, their favorite type, which they understood most fully and could guide most easily to the best final result. Thus, while the "antecedents of regeneration were defined as "increased thoughtfulness, fear and alarm, conviction of sin, endeavor to secure the favor of God, despair of securing this by works," he said most explicitly that "we must not insist upon these antecedents in the order specified above, nor in any uniform degree, nor must we insist upon them at all as the ultimate or chief aim of the sinner, nor regard them as conditions which ensure regeneration." Experience varies as the individuals which undergo it vary. There is one, and one only, condition of salvation, and that is repentance and faith. We are to insist upon this one thing only, and to admire the ways of God in what he otherwise gives and does.

And now there enters again, and for the last time in this

review, that strange hesitation upon Park's part between freedom and determinism which characterizes his treatment of the will, to modify his treatment of regeneration. He is about to prove that God is the author of regeneration. By author,

in this connection, he means the one who plans for a certain end, chooses it, adopts the means to bring it about, and actually employs these. God is the only one that thus has regeneration in mind, and thus effects it, and hence he is its only author. Park might have advanced here upon the straight road that lies before the determinist. He would then have said: God acts upon the sensibilities and the intellect directly and indirectly, and also sets in action trains of motives operating upon the will, and thus determines the whole man to the new act of repentance. God would thus have been made the author of conversion. But of this, because it is the act of the will, God could not be the author without becoming also the author of every other act of the will, and thus of sin. Hence man must be made the sole author of conversion, and God's authorship of regeneration must be proved by a method which shall leave out this element. But there is enough place, in the composite thing which regeneration had been defined to be, in the change of the intellect and the sensibility, for the action of God, and here it can be said to be a special, supernatural (in distinction from miraculous) exercise of his almighty power. Thus Park was landed in the strange position that God was the sole author of the whole comprehensive change called regeneration, while man was the equally sole author of the act of conversion, which is the central and vital thing about it all. He could have made a better distinction, and one which would have better conveyed, I am persuaded, his real thought, if he had asked the question, Who is the author of Conversion? and had answered this question by saying that both God and man

are its authors,-God in the sphere of influence, as the source of that series of influences which in their combined working lead ultimately to repentance, so that without them the man never does repent,-man in the sphere of power, because the final action which constitutes conversion, the choice, is entirely his, as the work of his free sovereignty.

Into the further definitions and distinctions of this subject we do not need here to enter, for it will be readily understood that Park would teach that the soul is both active and passive in regeneration, and that regeneration, while theoretically resistible, is practically unresisted. We pass, therefore, at once to the subject of

SANCTIFICATION.

This, according to Park, is the gradual development of holiness in the Christian under the guidance and by the agency of the Holy Spirit. The question is immediately suggested, What is holiness? and to the answer of this he turns first. One would think that it had already been abundantly answered in the discussions upon virtue which have been earlier reviewed. But Park now goes into the matter afresh, partly because he is considering it upon its human side, and partly because, since this is the place for the entrance of ethics" into the system, it is the place to come to an understanding with divergent theories of morals, such as the utilitarian.

Virtue is therefore defined afresh, and this time as follows: "The preference of the greater and higher sentient being, on the ground of its value, above the less and lower sentient being." The definition does not differ in meaning from those already given, and we need spend no time now in elucidating that meaning.1

The discussion of Utilitarianism is introduced under the p. 688 ff.

1 See Bibliotheca Sacra, Vol. 1x.