Columbia Theological Seminary Bulletin, 5, number 1, July 1912

Vol. V.

No. 1

Columbia Seminary Bulletin

July, 1912

Inauguration of President

May 7th, 1912

Entered as Second-class Matter July 11, 1908, at the Postoffice at
Columbia, S. C, Under the Act of July 16, 1894

Vol. V. No. 1

Columbia Seminary Bulletin

July, 1912

Inauguration of Rev. Thornton Whaling, D. D., LL. D.,

as President of the Columbia Theological

Seminary, on May 7th, 1912,

INCLUDING

Charge Delivered by the Rev. W. J. McKay, D. D., President of
Board of Directors of the Seminary,

Inaugural Address of the President-elect

THE R. L. BRYAN COMPANY

COLUMBIA, S. C.

1912

Faculty of the Seminary

Thornton Whaling, D. D., IX. D.,

President and Professor of Didactic and Polemic Theology.

\V. M. McPheeters, D. D., LL. D.,

Professor of Old Testament Literature and Exegesis.

H. A. White, Ph. D., D. D., LL. D.,

Professor of New Testament Literature and Exegesis.

R. C. Reed, D. D., LL. D.,
Professor of Ecclesiastical History.

R. G. Pearson, D. D.,

Professor of English Bible, Pastoral Theology and Sacred
Rhetoric and Director of Religious Work.

J. O. Reavis, D. D.,

Instructor in Home and Foreign Missions and Comparative

Religion.

Patterson Wardlaw, LL. D.,
Instructor in Pedagogy and Sunday School Work.

INAUGURATION OF
PRESIDENT

t

CHARGE

Delivered to Rev. Thornton Whaling Upon His Inauguration as
President of Columbia Theological Seminary

By
REV. W. J. McKAY, D. D.

My Honored 'Brother:

Familiar as you already are with the history and traditions,
the aims and purposes, the needs and aspirations of this vener-
able school of the Prophets, which has called you to its head, it
would seem a work of supererogation that I be required to
remind you of the duties, opportunities and responsibilities inci-
dent to the exalted office with which we now invest you.

As the fi rst president of the institution, it will devolve upon
you in some respects to blaze your own trail. With entire faith
in your wisdom, tact, prudence and energy we confidently expect
that in you will be found a worthy and adequate representative,
advocate and executive of the institution, which we believe to
be so vital to the enlargement and prosperity of this part of our
Lord's kingdom on the earth. We also feel complete assurance
that in the classroom that type of theological instruction which
has been in some respects peculiar to this school of sacred learning,
will continue to find in you an able and faithful expounder and
defender.

And so, in addition to the exacting duties that will devolve
upon you as president, we now intrust to your hands the duties
incident to the Chair of Didactic and Polemic Theology that
supremely important department of sacred instruction, which
in this institution has been hallowed by the distinguished services
of such able and consecrated men as Goulding, Leland, Thorn-
well, Plumer, Girardeau and Hall. And in so doing we are confi-
dent that in your hands this vital development of Seminary
training will suffer no detriment.

It is said that when Angelo would paint a great picture he
fashioned his own brushes. May God so use you here as to
fashion such human instruments as shall be fit to paint the
radiant likeness of our Divine Redeemer upon human hearts.

The Theological Seminary Today

INAUGURAL ADDRESS

Delivered in Smith Chapel, Columbia Seminary, Tuesday
Evening at 8 O'clock, May 7th, 1912

By

REV. THORNTON WHALING, D. D., LL. D.

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the 'Board of Directors:

I thank you for the distinguished opportunity of useful service
to which you have summoned me in calling me to the professor-
ship of theology and the presidency of the Columbia Theological
Seminary. Conscious of my own weakness, I feel comforted by
your confidence and by the conviction that the great Head f
the Church has appointed for me the delightful tasks, which I
am now to receive as official duties from your hands as represent-
ing Him.

I rejoice in this opportunity of testifying that I believe in the
Columbia Theology. A singularly strong series of gifted theo-
logians have filled the chair of theology in your institution from
Leland to Hall, but in particular, two of them, Drs. Thornwell
and Girardeau, working as if one single genius and impulse had
inspired them, wrought out the most biblical, the most rational,
the most truly advanced and liberal type of Calvinistic theology
which has appeared in the history of the Christian Church; and,
taught by one of these masters, it is my ambition to travel in
their footsteps, developing a theological system which will rest
upon the foundations they have laid, and harmonize with the
monumental structure which these master builders have erected.
As an alumnus of your Seminary I share in the doctrinal and
historical heritage with which Columbia makes all of her sons
rich. I can never forget the fifty years of heroic service which
that prince in our Southern Presbyterian Zion, Dr. George
Howe, gave to this institution, nor the encyclopedic scholarship
and the adamantine patience and the well nigh infinite skill

8 INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT

which that matchless teacher, Dr. James Wood row, devoted for
over a quarter of a century to the interests of generations of
admiring students ; but the time would fail me to tell of Adger
and Wilson and Plumer and Palmer and others, both living and
dead, who are a part of the imperishable splendor which shines
around this venerable school of the prophets.

I need hardly recite as a part of my creed at this hour my faith
in the future efficiency and enlargement of this sacred school.
Four great Synods in one of the most prosperous and enlightened
sections of our country support her, and the challenge of loyalty,
duty and self-interest which is to be loudly rung out through
the confines of each of these Synods must rally them all in
increasing degree around this necessary center of vitality and
aggressiveness, this only effective key to the ecclesiastical and
spiritual life of Presbyterianism in the four great States of South
Carolina, Georgia. Alabama and Florida, viz., the Columbia
Theological Seminary.

It is to be your study, gentlemen, and mine, to make this
Seminary minister more effectively to the life of the Church in
our day and in our own favored region. Xo institution can pre-
serve a rigid and iron inflexibility from generation to generation
and be really alive ; there must be the delicate and successful
adjustments which proclaim a living organism relating itself to
the changing conditions which confront all life everywhere. In
considering the work of the Seminary today, there are three
fundamental questions which may be helpful in regulating our
thinking and which revolve the whole theological encyclopedia
before our vision.

First, from the standpoint of the truth ; what are the
modes in which the Seminary is to give to its students the
truth which they in turn are to preach and to teach? The
answer, of course, points us to the Book which contains the
record of the revelation which God has given to men, and which
must of necessity occupy always a unique and supreme place
in the curriculum of the Theological Seminary. The usual
fundamental disciplines can never be displaced, but must ever
remain the chief features of the prospective minister's prepara-
tion for his work. For example, the Exegesis of the Old and
New Testaments in the original language can never go out of

INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT 9

date, because nothing else can give the well equipped preacher
the same conscious certitude in his pulpit exposition or impart
to him the same authoritative influence in convincing and
instructing his hearers. The Greek and Hebrew have come to
the Seminary to stay, and adjustments which wipe them out
represent not progressive evolution, but degeneration and decay.
Again, the history of the Church, especially of the development
of doctrine within the church, is equally indispensable, because
we have found out in our day that no one understands anything
who does not know that thing genetically. A cardinal truth
like that of the atonement, for illustration, is best grasped
in all its full significance, as the student sees in turn the efforts
of the Patristic, Mediaeval, the Reformation and the Modern
Mind to scientifically state in well defined terms the essence of
this divine idea, with its necessary implications for ethics and
philosophy and certainly Historical Theology has an enduring
field pre-empted as its inalienable possession. Still again, Sys-
tematic Theology will always remain the crown and completion
of any rational course of theological study, for it is the aim of
this discipline to present the substance the very essence of
revealed truth in the light of the best philosophy and science
of its own day. The system does not change, but the angle from
which it is viewed may alter and the emphasis upon its parts
may be modified to meet the changing and shifting heresies of
every new human day. The systematic theologian has not done
his duty, if he relates his scienoe to Neo-Platonism, or Mediaeval
Scholasticism or even the Spencerian Agnosticism which was in
vogue twenty-five years ago, but his science must have its forti-
fications today built facing or not just as the facts require the
Naturalism, Idealism, Pragmatism, and New Realism of the year
1912. Now, these fundamental disciplines of Exegetical, Historical
and Systematic Theology must stand as the classic and essential
elements in a well ordered course of theological study.

But are there any others which may be added, and which the
dawn of tomorrow will demand shall be added? I venture to
think there are. I mention three: (1) Christian Ethics is yet
to come into its own. No theological seminary, so far as I can
learn, either at home or abroad, gives the subject its due place
in the curriculum. That Ethics is a science and that Christian

10 INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT

Ethics may be a science, goes without saying. That the preach-
er's staple subjects are largely ethical, in the sense of biblically
and Christianly ethical, will be admitted without argument.
That the preacher ought to have the ethical ideas and ideals
which he desires from the Scripture built into a system, in order
that he may handle them like a master, is just as necessary as
that he should have the doctrinal ideas derived from the Scrip-
tures built into a system. The source of much of the haziness and
uneasiness regarding the intrusion of what is called Sociology
or Christian Sociology into some of the seminaries is due to
the fact that any valid biblical Sociology would be only a sec-
tion of biblical or Christian Ethics, and could only be handled
scientifically and rationally, as related to the whole sum of
human duty, as stated in the Scripture. To try to teach Sociol-
ogy as an independent, self-containing unity, apart from ethics,
would be like trying to teach the verb in Greek or Hebrew apart
from the other parts of speech apart from the language itself.

(2) Experiential or Experimental Theology is yet waiting for
Orthodox recognition. I recall a little history here, which will
show that Columbia Seminary is in the lead in this field. A
third of a century ago Dr. B. M. Palmer was called to a pro-
fessorship in this Seminary, largely that he might use his splen-
did gifts in developing this great unexploited field. He saw the
opportunity. He accepted the appointment. Unfortunately the
Presbytery of New Orleans w r as shortsighted enough to veto his
plans. And orthodoxy yet waits for some master to do the
work which would have been a fitting crown to our great leader's
career. We have many so-called interpretations of the Chris-
tian Consciousness from the standpoint of rationalism or hetero-
doxy, but none by a competent hand from the standpoint of
belief in the full inspiration of the Scriptures, combined with
adequate philosophical and theological attainments, and united
with a sincere and glowing religious faith. Dr. Palmer's unful-
filled ambition still remains a beacon beckoning some worthy
successor who one day shall carry to completion what remains as
yet a splendid ideal a real scientific construction of the Christian
Consciousness.

(3) The English Bible has had a hard fight to win its way to
its rightful place, and even yet has in some quarters a grudging

INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT 11

and stinted recognition. But surely it is evident that the Eng-
lish Bible is the Bible of the people, and is the Bible which the
preacher will use most largely. A mastery of the factual con-
tents of the English Bible, of the Biblical History, Biblical
Ethics and Biblical Theology can be had from the study of the
English Bible alone, and every theological student is entitled to
have his theological seminary compel him to the mastery of
the contents of the English Scriptures. If the preacher is weak
at this point, he will be like Daniel's famous image, his head may
be gold, his breast silver, his thighs brass, his legs iron, but his
feet will be of clay, or of iron mixed with clay, and will break
in pieces and there will be little spiritual movement, certainly
no gallant speed in pulpit and pastoral work. How can a man
preach to the people unless he know the people's Bible?

But there is a second fundamental question. From the stand-
point of the people : How is the Seminary to prepare its students
to know the condition of the mind and character of those to
whom the truth is to be directed? Some necessary theological
studies emerge at this point.

(1) The psychology and the philosophy of religion are of the
highest value in -equipping the preacher for the skillful presenta-
tion of the truth to the human nature he must understand if he
would not blunder. There is a biblical psycology and a biblical
philosophy which can be educed from the Scripture and taught
the student just as truly as the biblical ethics or the bib-
lical theology. Every ethical and every theological system
has psychological and philosophical foundations, and if these
foundations be left to haphazard, the ethical and theological
superstructure is built as in our Lord's parable, upon the sand,
and the record must be, "The rain descended and the floods came,
and the winds blew and beat upon the house ; and it fell : and
great was the fall of it." The systematic theologian may erect
a vast architectonic system, and the Christian moralist may con-
struct his biblical ethics by its side, but they will both dissolve
and, like the "baseless fabric of a vision, leave not a wrack
behind," unless they are builded upon enduring philosophical
foundations. The situation is not peculiar today, but has
obtained in all days; that there is no more fundamental work
possible in the theological seminary than to lay bare the founda-

12 INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT

tions which have been laid in the biblical psychology and philoso-
phy in order to erect theology solidly upon these.

(2) Apologetics cannot be ignored, whose mission it is to fur-
nish the rational refutation of the objections made now against
our construction of Christianity. Historical Apologetics, while
valuable, is not sufficient, the objections made in the name of
twentieth century science and philosophy must be answered. It
is the duty of the Apologete to furnish a map of the intellectual,
moral and spiritual condition of the world and to show our
Christianity as it is related to the present intellectual, moral and
spiritual condition of our own age. The Seminary graduate
ought to know the orientations of the period in which he is really
to live. I met recently a very bright theological Seminary grad-
uate who said, "I have been trying to find out where I am at."
No particular section of theological study has been more domi-
nated by an antiquated scholasticism which presented answers to
past attacks and ignored the battle which is raging today than has
Apologetics. To answer the Humian attack on miracles or to
expose the subtle materialism of John Stuart Mill is good, but to
uncover the subtler naturalism of that most seductive and attrac-
tive of our modern popular psychologists, James, or the still more
subtle idealism of Royce is better still, in equipping the student
to live in the intellectual life of his own times ; and he cannot
really live in any other time. Nor need Apologetics be alto-
gether polemical, for an Irenic Apologetics may show how much
current philosophy and science may be appropriated by theology,
or regarded as matter of indifference so far as the queen of all the
sciences is concerned.

Neither of these great fields has yet had adequate cultivation and
development, or adequate recognition in the Seminary curricu-
lum, viz. : First Biblical Psychology, and the Biblical Philosophy
of religion; and, second, Apologetics, Historical, Polemical and
Irenic. Either of these departments is of the first rank from
either the utilitarian or disciplinary point of view, and they
cannot much longer be ignored by any theological seminary,
which is not the fossil product of a past age, but which lives to
"serve its own generation by the will of God."

The third fundamental question is to be asked from the stand-
point of method : How shall the Seminary train the minister

INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT 13

to present the truth to the mind and consciousness of his own
time? The whole field of Practical Theology here rises into
view, but I can only sketch in vague outline its different sections.

(1) Homiletics, or the Science and Art of Preaching. There
is no need to emphasize this discipline, for the Church long suf-
fered from the mistake that the sole business of the minister was
to preach, and has just discovered that he has other duties which
are just as important.

(2) Pedagogy, for the minister following the example of the
only perfect and ideal model of his profession is both to teach
and to preach. The one is just as important as the other.
Homiletics may tell him how to preach, but will not tell him
how to teach. Pedagogy is the only discipline which instructs
one to teach, and it ought to have equal dignity and scope in the
Seminary curriculum with Homiletics. The minister who can-
not teach his teachers, and who cannot also teach his teachers
how to teach, is going to be without a job in a shorter time than
some whose eyes are looking backward can be made to believe.
The teachers' meeting where the pastor as teacher teaches his
teachers will soon be, and ougitt to be, as essential a part of the
life of the Church as the Sunday morning service, where the
pastor as preacher preaches to his people; and the Seminary
which does not prepare its graduates to do both is a hopeless
anachronism.

(3) Missions are to the front on all accounts, and the Theo-
logical Seminary ought to occupy the position of missionary
leadership by teaching both the science and the art of Mis-
sions. Whether to qualify future missionaries for their service
on the foreign field, or future pastors for their service on the
home field, the history, principles and methods of missions ought
to be taught in logical and systematized form by a competent
instructor to every theological student. There is a magnificent
opportunity here for the right man to blaze the way for the
whole Christian world in making clear the place of missions on
the Seminary curriculum. And I believe that the man and the
opportunity have met in the instructor who in behalf of a waiting
world now faces this problem in Columbia Seminary a mission-
ary expert, a missionary pastor and now missions professor in
our Seminary.

14 INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT

(4) Personal Work and Evangelism taught thoroughly and
practically by the same teacher, who also assumes the function
of Director of Religious Work. These subjects can be reduced
to systametic form and taught as a science, and they can also
be practised as an art under the direction of a master and spe-
cialist. The principle of the Clinic and Dissecting Room can thus
be applied in theology, and practice may re-enforce theory and the
art based on the science be incarnated in deed while the doctrine
thus becomes truly pragmatic and influential. Now all these
departments of Practical Theology are capable of being made
just as scientifically accurate and scholastically exacting as
any of the other theological departments, and, therefore, their
disciplinary value may be as great, while their utilitarian and
practical use puts them in the very front in fact, entitles them
to contend for the primacy in the theological curriculum. The
other great department of Exegetical, Historical and Systematic
Theology are means to the end which is found in Practical Theol-
ogy, which in its field uses the materials gathered by Exegetical,
Historical and Systematic Theology. From this point of view,
therefore, Practical Theology is the crown and consummation of
the whole territory of the Theological Encyclopedia.

This rapid survey of Theological Encyclopedia which I have
asked you to take with me shows that there are four great words
which must soon be taken account of. (1) Expansion of the
traditional curriculum cannot long be delayed. Christian Ethics,
Experimental Theology, Apologetics, Philosophy of Religion,
Pedagogy, Missions, Personal Work are not consenting today
to the small recognition accorded them. If the older disciplines
become jealous and refuse to admit the newer, the Theological
Seminaries will languish and finally die. (2) Extension of the
Time of Study is a practical issue. Both Law and Medicine have
lengthened the period of study required for their professional
degrees, and three years is too short a time for theology to
require for its degree in divinity. The Southern Baptist Semi-
nary has blazed the way by having three degrees, the Bachelor's,
Master's and Doctor's Degree demanding a longer time and more
scholarship than usually is the case. (3) The principle of elec-
tion is already knocking at the door. Some men who do not
choose Hebrew or Greek may be, yea, are called to the ministry

INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT 15

even in the Presbyterian Church, and ought to have the option
of studies which are of equal disciplinary and utilitarian value.
In this day when the B. S. and B. A. degrees are given upon so
many scientific courses, the graduate upon such courses who
chooses the ministry ought to find a seminary adjusted to his
needs, with a curriculum just as scholarly and exacting for him
as the old curriculum manufactured for the traditional B. A.
degree on the old classical foundations. I visited recently a great
university with six hundred students and found that there had
not been in that institution a student of Senior Greek for four
years. This is an example of a condition of things of which no
one ought to approve, but as bluff Grover Cleveland is reported
often as saying, "Only a fool butts his head against facts." (4)
Increasing specialization is in evidence everywhere, and the
breadth of the Christian Ministry calls for its application. A
curriculum which prepares preachers alone is onesided. The
teacher is scriptural and historical and there well might be groups
of courses designed to prepare the teacher, as well as others fitted
for the preparation of the Missionary. It may well be that the
Theological Seminary is yet to undertake the work of organiz-
ing courses which will prepare all those who are to hold office
in the Church, or even further than this to prepare those who
seek to render the highest forms of effective service in the king-
dom of which they are capable. Ezra Cornell said, "I wish to
found a university where anybody can study any subject," and
the Theological Seminary may eventually become a Theological
University where any qualified person may study any theological
subject they may elect.

Brethren of the Board of Directors, I have frankly given you
the ideals by which, as president, I shall be dominated; and I
confidently hope that the Church of fifty or a hundred years to
come will not find the program of your first president a petty and
inadequate one. We are serving a great and rapidly growing
constituency, and nothing will rally them to their utmost enthu-
siasm for us except a plan which they believe is really worth
while. We are not likely to err by projecting our institution
upon too high a plane, with too lofty standards, for we have all
the years in which to grow "into the measure of the stature of
the fitness of these ideals. We shall not reach them in one swift

16 INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT

leap, nor in a brief term of years, but by a steady and persistent
advance which knows no pause and no retreat. Our most win- %
ning appeal shall be that we have here a Theological Seminary
which conserves all the rich fruits of the past, but is living today
to serve the strenuous and insistent present, while its outlook is
toward the ever widening future, where the golden consumma-
tion always lies. May He whose wisdom never fails guide us
by His unerring counsel that through us His Spirit may give the
largest measures of usefulness to our Beloved Seminary.
Amen and amen.