it has to exhibit the history of revelation and to reproduce the view which Holy Scripture itself has, we have nothing to do with ethnological and geographical research, and with attempts of harmonizing the Old Testament history of creation and other things of this kind with the propositions of the newer physical sciences.

§ 4. Sources of Old Testament Theology.

These sources must be limited to the books of the Old Testament Canon as received by the scribes in Palestine, and acknowledged by the Protestant Church, thus excluding the Old Testament Apocrypha. That the Canon of the Protestant Church is that of the Judaism of Palestine, as established in the last century before Christ, and then re-sanctioned after temporary hesitation at the Sanhedrim in Jamnia about A. D. 90, is not disputed. According to the declarations of Christ in Luke 24: 44; Matt. 11: 13, etc., and the whole Apostolic doctrine, there can remain no doubt as to where the Old and New Testaments are connected, since even the beginning of the New Testament history of revelation attaches itself directly to the close of Old Testament prophecy in Malachi (Matt. 11: 13, 14).

§ 5-8. Fuller statement of the scientific Standpoint of Old Testament Theology.

§ 5. Old Testament Theology considered from a Christian theological standpoint.

The view we have of the Theology of the Old Testament is already expressed in the name we give to this branch of theology, for we will not treat simply of the Jewish religion, but of the divine revelation of the Old Testament, which on the one hand is fundamentally different from all heathen religions, and on the other forms the preliminary stage to the revelation of the New Testament, which is with it comprehended in one divine economy of salvation. The entire Old Testament remains a sealed book, if we fail to see that the subduing of the natural character of the people is the whole aim of the divine tuition.

§ 6. The Biblical Idea of Revelation. General and Special Revelation. The Biblical idea of Revelation has its root in the idea of Creation. The production of different classes of beings advances teleologically, and reaches its goal only when God has created man in His own image. In this progression the foundation of revelation is laid. For revelation is, in general, God's witness and communication of Himself to the world for the realization of the end of Creation, and for the re-establishment of the full communion of man with God. God testifies, partly in nature and the historical guidance of mankind, and partly in each one's conscience, of His power, goodness, and justice, and thus draws man to seek God (Isa. 40: 21—26; Jer. 10: 1-25; Ps. 19: 1-6; 94: 8-10).

The original communion of man with God destroyed by sin, is not recovered by means of this general revelation. The living God remains to the natural man, in all his searchings, a hidden God (Isa. 45: 15; Jer. 23: 18; John 1: 18). It is only by God's stooping to man in personal testimony to Himself, and by the objective presentation of Himself, that a vital communion is actually established between God and man. This is the special revelation, which first appears in the form of a covenant between God and a chosen race, and the founding of a Kingdom of God among the latter culminates in the manifestation of God in the flesh, advances from this point to the gathering of a people of God in all nations, and is completed in the making of a new heaven and a new earth (Isa. 65: 17; 66: 22; Rev. 21: 1, 2), where God shall be all in all The relation between general and special revelation is such, that the former is the continual basis of the latter, the latter the aim and completion of the former.

(1 Cor. 15: 28).

§ 7. Historical character and general process of Revelation. Its supernatural character.

The special revelation of God does not at a bound enter the world all finished and complete, but as it enters the sphere of human life, it observes the laws of historical development which are grounded in the general divine system of the world. And because revelation aims at the restoration of full com

munion between God and man, it is directed to the whole of man's life, and not exclusively or mainly to man's faculties of knowledge. Biblical revelation, as here defined, is distinguished from the view of the older Protestant Theology in two respets: 1) In the older Protestant Theology revelation was essentially, and almost exclusively, regarded as doctrine. But Revelation cannot possibly confine itself to the cognitive side of man. Biblical Theology must be a theology of divine facts. 2) The Older Theology failed to recognize the general development which revelation passes through in Scripture itself. The Bible was supposed to attest equally, in the Old and New Testaments, the truths which the Church has accepted as doctrines. Revelation makes itself known as differing from the natural revelations of the human mind, not only by the continuity and the organic connection of the facts which constitute the history of salvation, but also in its special character (miracle), which points distinctly to a divine causality.

§ 8. The Old and New Testaments in their relation to Heathenism and to each other.

Revelation falls into two principal divisions, the Old and the New Testament, which stand to each other in the relation of preparation and fulfilment, and are thus, as a connected dispensation of salvation, distinguished from all other religions (Eph. 2: 12) But the unity of the Old and New Testament must not be understood as identity. The Old Testament itself acknowledges that the manifestation of God's Kingdom at that time was imperfect and temporary, and, indeed, at the very time in which the old form of the theocracy was overthrown, it predicted the new eternal covenant which God would make with his people (Jer. 31: 31-34). Still more distinctly does the New Testament emphasize the difference from the Old which subsists within the unity of the two Testaments. The eternal counsel of salvation, although announced by the prophets, is nevertheless not completely revealed till after its actual realization (Rom. 16:25, 26; 1 Pet. 1: 10-12; Eph. 1: 9, 10; 3: 5). The tuition of the law reached its goal in the grace and truth of Christ (John 1: 17;

Rom. 10: 4; Gal. 3: 24, 25). In the saving benefits of the new covenant, the shadow of the old dispensation passes into reality (Col. 2: 17; Heb. 10: 1—4); therefore the greatest man in the old covenant is less than the least in the kingdom of Christ (Matt. II II).

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§ 9-14. History of the Cultivation of Old Testament Theology in the Christian Church.

§ 9. Theological view of the Old Testament in the Early Church and Middle Ages.

Old Testament Theology, as an independent branch of study, is, like Biblical Theology in general, a modern science. During the whole development of Church doctrine down to the middle of the present century, no distinct line was drawn between the essential contents of revelation as they are laid down in the Scriptures and the doctrinal formulas elaborated from them; and still less were the successive stages of revelation and types of doctrine which are presented in Scripture recognized. The proposition, "the New Testament lies hidden in the Old, the Old Testament lies open in the New" (Novum Testamentum in Vetere latet, Vetus Testamentum in Novo patet), which is in itself correct, was so perverted as to be made to mean that the whole of Christian theology, veiled indeed, but already fully formed, could be shown to exist in the Old Test

ament.

We may regard the three books (Lib. XV-XVII) in Augustine's great work De Civitate Dei, as in a certain sense the first treatment of the Theology of the Old Testament, if we except the treatment of the Old Testament as found in the New Testament, especially in the Epistles to the Romans, Galatians, and Hebrews. The study of the Old Testament in the Ancient Church reaches its close with Gregory the Great. The cultivation of Biblical Theology as an historical science was not possible under the influence of the theology of the Middle Ages. True, much detached matter valuable for the Old Testament was brought to light in the Middle Ages, and especially on the Song of Solomon, in which the Mysticism of the Middle Ages lives and moves, as Bernard of Clairvaux's lecture>

on Canticles show,-but this is not anything belonging to Biblical Theology.

§ 10. Theological view of the Old Testament in the Age of the Reformation.

The Reformation principle of the supreme authority of Scripture drew the attention of theologians to the Old Testament as well as to the New. To Johann Reuchlin (d. 1522), the uncle of Melanchton, must be given the credit not simply of opening a path for the study of Hebrew in Germany, but also for so firmly maintaining that it is the duty of the expositor of Scripture to go back to the original text expounded according to its literal sense, and to refuse to be dependent on the Vulgate and the traditional expositions of the Church which are connected with it.

The recognition of the difference between the Law and the Gospel derived from Paul's Epistles was the first thing that gave the Reformers a key to the theological meaning of the Old Testament. They also correctly recognized, that even in the Old Testament a revelation of God's gracious will in the promise of salvation goes side by side with the revelation of the demands of the divine will in the law. Of all that is connected with this practical sphere in the Old Testament, Luther especially shows a profound understanding, springing from a lively personal experience. In the view which the Reformers (and especially Melanchthon) were fond of developing, that the Church began in Paradise and continues throughout all time, the whole emphasis is laid on the doctrinal unity of revelation, existing under all change of outward forms. The theological principle of exposition by the analogy of faith, that Scripture should be explained by Scripture, is a principle in itself perfectly correct, and to have stated it, is one of the greatest merits of Protestant theology, but the Reformers did not properly apply it; the unity of the Old and New Testament was conceived of not as produced by a gradually advancing process of development, but as a harmony of doctrine.