Zachary Groff is the Director of Advancement & Admissions at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and Pastor of Antioch Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Woodruff, SC.
John Lafayette Girardeau (1825-98) occupies a significant place in the history of American Presbyterianism. His importance is most evident in his record of service to the Church as a preacher, pastor, churchman, and seminary professor. In 1875, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS) voted to replace William Swan Plumer with Dr. Girardeau as Professor of Didactic and Polemic Theology at Columbia Theological Seminary in South Carolina. On this development, Dr. C. N. Willborn notes, “For the next twenty years, [Dr. Girardeau] carried forth the Thornwellian tradition from the theological chair in Columbia. . . . Girardeau committed himself to working on those areas of doctrine Thornwell had not been able to complete.”[1]
The profundity of Dr. Girardeau’s theological thought is demonstrated in the important (and posthumously published) volume recently posted to Dr. Girardeau’s Log College Press author page: Discussions of Theological Questions. In this anthology of articles and essays, Dr. Girardeau develops a definition (and division) of theology along the lines of his teacher and predecessor at Columbia, Dr. James Henley Thornwell (1812-1862). In doing so, he identifies and confounds variants of the aberrant theology he denominates as Rationalism, including pantheism, intuitionalism, deism, technical rationalism, mysticism, and Romanism. Beyond the discussion of theology as such, the volume includes a brief article on the person of Christ and a very significant contribution to the development of the doctrine of adoption in Christian soteriology.
Students of American Presbyterian theology will mine rich rewards from a careful consideration of Dr. Girardeau’s Discussions of Theological Questions. What follows here is a brief introduction to the volume by way of a consideration of Dr. Girardeau’s definition of theology as an objective scientific discipline distinguishable from – but necessarily correlative to – subjective religious experience.
When Dr. Girardeau joined the faculty of Columbia Theological Seminary in 1875, he possessed the Thornwellian definition of theology as “the science of religion” available to him to accept, reject, or refine. Though his modifications were not great in number or substance, he did propose several refinements to the Thornwellian understanding of the relationship between theology and religion. In agreement with his predecessor, Dr. Girardeau regarded theology as an objective scientific discipline with a clear definition derived from its object of study. However, Dr. Girardeau further refined the relationship between doctrine and devotion as necessarily correlative.
For his inaugural address as the Seminary’s new Professor of Didactic and Polemic Theology, Dr. Girardeau took as his subject “Theology as a Science, Involving an Infinite Element,” delivered before the General Assembly of the PCUS on May 23, 1876 (available from LCP). The working definition he proposed in that address he further elaborated on in his essay “The Definition of Theology,” included as the opening chapter of Discussions of Theological Questions. In this important essay, Dr. Girardeau put forward the goal of theology as a scientific discipline: to “reduce the crude mass of facts into the coherence of a system” through “voluntary reflection” or discursive reasoning (“The Definition of Theology,” 3). These “facts” he identified with “the objective contents of the Scriptures” (18).
However, Christian theology is in no way coordinate with the theology of other world religions. Dr. Girardeau contended that the Christian religion “utterly rejects the hypothesis that it is merely a specific instance of a generic religion, and absolutely claims for itself the competency and the right to be the only religion of the [human] race” (5). The science of Christian religion stands apart from the science of non-Christian religion. The separation is insuperable, the distinction incontrovertible, and the differences irreconcilable. Dr. Girardeau’s words at this point seem to threaten his own definition of theology as the science of religion. He wrote, “Although, then, the broad definition, Theology is the science of religion, is upon logical grounds justifiable in the general, it is for all practical purposes inoperative and nugatory. It is not a working definition. It possesses only a theoretical value” (13). His solution was to specify the religious content of theology as being that of Christianity alone. He continued, “We are warranted in narrowing [the definition]. Since among the religions of mankind only one is entitled to be considered as true, we may define theology as the science of true religion – meaning the Christian religion” (13). Therefore, true theology as such involves the systematization of the raw data of Christianity. For Dr. Girardeau, the objective science of theology must be biblical from beginning to end. There must not be any subjective element allowed into the object-matter of theology. In other words, Dr. Girardeau limited the object-matter of theology to the content of the Bible. His emphasis on the objective nature of theology as a science matched his equally strong emphasis on theology’s necessary correlation to subjective religion.
Dr. Girardeau emphatically and indivisibly connected theology and religion as correlative pursuits – the first objective and scientific, the second subjective and practical – distinguishable from and mutually dependent upon one another. In order to be substantively biblical and orthodox, religious devotion needs true theology. “It is God’s external, verbal, authoritative delineation of the standard to which subjective religion, of the religious life, ought to be conformed, and by which it is to be judged” (18). On the other hand, scientific theology is utterly useless without spiritual vivification brought on through the regenerating activity of the Holy Spirit. “It is, therefore, not to be supposed that theology possesses any inherent power to produce true internal religion. It is an instrument adapted with exquisite wisdom to all the needs of the soul, but it is only an instrument requiring, in order to accomplish the end designed by it, the quickening, illuminating and applying energy of the Holy Spirit. The agent who makes it efficacious is the Spirit, and the organ through which he exerts his grace is faith. The spiritual knowledge, thus resulting, transmutes the frozen system of speculative science into a living scheme of saving truth” (20). Implicit in Dr. Girardeau’s definition of theology as an objective science is a necessary correlation to subjective religion as the end and aim of all such science. Theology without religion is pitifully incomplete, just as religion without theology is woefully incoherent. Dr. Girardeau went so far as to conclude, “Theology, consequently, is both the theory of true religion and the application of that theory to the concrete cases of religious experience” (18).
The correlation between theology and religion is, in Dr. Girardeau’s estimation, indestructible. He argued, “The very end of supernatural revelation is holiness of life to the glory of God. There is an indestructible relation between the Bible as the standard of religious truth and the religious character which was designed to be formed in accordance with it, between the mould and the life which is to be adjusted to it” (18-19). Theology as an objective science proceeds along the same lines as any other science: discursive reasoning concerning a specified set of facts and propositions. Theology as necessarily correlative to subjective religion departs from all other sciences in that it will be doomed to failure and uselessness without the active intervention of its ultimate principle, which is the Triune God Himself.
As much as we might admire Dr. Girardeau’s careful reasoning, his definition of theology was not without deficiencies. The principal weaknesses appear in the realm of the devotional life of the soul. As we have seen, Dr. Girardeau emphasized the necessary and mutually dependent correlation between the objective science of theology and the subjective practice of religion for either doctrine or devotion to thrive. However, theology as such is better understood to correspond – and not merely to correlate – to the practice of religion. Doctrine and devotion are enmeshed one with another. For true theology maximally to regulate religion, it must admit the centrality of devotion to its own purview. Such is reflected in the following definition of theology: the true doctrine of living unto God the Father, through God the Son, by God the Holy Spirit. Such a definition addresses a second weakness in Dr. Girardeau’s definition of theology. Dr. Girardeau’s definition lacks an explicitly trinitarian understanding of God in the definition itself. Whereas the doctrine of the Trinity is unavoidably to be inferred from Girardeau’s presentation of the correlation between objective doctrinal truth (the Word) and subjective religious devotion (made possible by the Spirit), the Triune God Himself must be central to any definition of true theology. Nonetheless, Dr. Girardeau’s refinements on the Thornwellian definition of theology mark a positive development in the theological tradition of American Presbyterianism in that Dr. Girardeau proposed a necessary correlation (tending toward true correspondence) between theology as such and religion as lived.
[1] C. N. Willborn, “John L. Girardeau (1825-98), Pastor to Slaves and Theologian of Causes” (PhD diss., Westminster Theological Seminary, 2003), 304, 305.