There always were people who spoke – -as some speak today – namely, in an attack on humanism, philosophy, Aristotle. There was a man, Daniel Hoffman, who said: “The philosophers are the patriarchs of heresy.” Now that is what theologians sometimes say, even today, But if they then develop their own theology, then you can prove easily from which “Patriarchs of heresy: – namely from which philosophers – they have taken their category, That is an impossible way, But they said: “What is philosophically true is theologically wrong; the philosophers are unregenerated insofar as they are philosophers/” — This is a very interesting statement, which means there is a realm of life which, by itself, is unregenerated and obviously cannot be regenerated, .But this contradicts again the emphasis on secularism in Protestantism. “Philosophers,” said Hoffman, “try to be like God because they develop a philosophy which is not theologically given.” — Hoffman was not able to carry through his idea, but he produced a continuous suspicion against the philosophers, in the theological churches, a suspicion which is much greater than everything in the Roman church, And this suspicion, of course, is very much alive again in the present-day theological situation.
The final victory of philosophy within theology was the presupposition of all Orthodox systems. I will give you the man who developed the classical system of Protestant, especially Lutheran, theology: Johan Gerhard. He is a very great philosopher and theologian, in some way comparable with Thomas Aquinas for the Catholics. He represents the latest f lowering of Scholasticism, not only of the Church. He distinguishes articles which are pure and those which are mixed. Pure are those which are only revealed; mixed, those which are rational possible and at the same time revealed. He believes, with Thomas Aquinas, that the existence of God can be proved rationally. But he was also aware of the fact that this rational proof doesn’t give us certainty. “Although the proof is correct, we believe it because of revelation.” In this way we have two structures: the sub-structure of reason. the super-structure of revelation. The super-structure is the Biblical doctrines. What actually happened – and this is actually a preview of the next centuries – was that the mixed articles became unmixed, I. e., unmixed rationally, and that the sub-structure, namely rational theology, dispossessed the super-structure, drawing it into itself, and taking away its meaning. When this happens, we are in the realm of rationalism, or Enlightenment.
Protestantism, in the Orthodox doctrine, has developed two principles: a formal and a material principle of theology;(these are nineteenth-century terms, so far as I know). The formal principle is the Bible; the material, the doctrine of justification.
