Doctor of theology

“ Those Catholic scholars of Germany who are sound and strong alike in their faith and in their [341] science are beginning to see this, and are returning to the philosophy of the Angelic Doctor as the only fit companion to theology, the true wisdom in the rational order. Those who become the interpreters and teachers of this wisdom to the young are the most valuable and efficient of all laborers in the field of divine philosophy. ”

“ His work is a complete exposition of God, nature, and man, as conceived by mediæval theology, and is still taught by the Catholic Church as the true exposition of its doctrines. The grateful Church canonized him, his treatise being the miracles he had performed, and named him the Angelic Doctor. Those of us whose minds have no natural aptitude for scholasticism, find his views on purely earthly matters much easier to understand, and not uninteresting, as they throw light on the democratic character of the Church. ”

“ Many physicians know a great deal more about religious matters than they do about medicine. They have read the Bible ten times as much as they ever read any medical author. They have heard scores of sermons for one medical lecture to which they have listened. They often hear much better preaching than the average minister, for he hears himself chiefly, and they hear abler men and a variety of them. They have now and then been distinguished in theology as well as in their own profession. ”

“ The professions should be cordial allies, but the church-going, Bible-reading physician ought to know a great deal more of the subjects included under the general name of theology than the clergyman can be expected to know of medicine. To say, as has been said not long since, that a young divinity student is as competent to deal with the latter as an old physician is to meddle with the former, suggests the idea that wisdom is not an heirloom in the family of the one who says it. ”

“ It is beyond question that a faithful priest is, in his degree, a mirror of Christ, and helps men to see Him more clearly. But it is also true--and a truth worth underlining in these days--that the Doctor, too, is a symbol of what Christ means to be to men--nay, more, that there are respects in which the figure of a beloved physician of to-day comes nearer to the reality of the living human Christ than any other calling in the world. ”

“ Reverence for the true, the beautiful, and the good has characterized physicians in all times and climes. But little of the true, the beautiful, or the good crept into the transactions of the Church for many centuries, and we suffer, to-day, more from its interference in time past than from all other causes combined. The same may be said of theology, which is as separate from religion as darkness from light. Only when students of science emancipated themselves from the prejudices and superstitions of the theologians did medicine make more than barely perceptible progress. ”

“ In fact none can doubt that the minister of religion can bring a power to bear on the mind of a patient, which the doctor cannot.
Whatever his own personal belief may be, the medical man can of course only view religion from a philosophic or ethical stand-point. It is difficult for him to concern himself with dogma. The clergyman can help by administering suggestions of hope and encouragement. ”

“ They are attached forever to the doctorate, and that with such a solemn obligation that a man who is not a priest may indeed read the Bible, but the Sentences a priest must read. A married man, I observe, could be a Doctor of the Bible, but under no circumstances a Doctor of the Sentences. What good fortune can we expect if we act so perversely and in this way put the Bible, the holy Word of God, so far to the rear? Moreover the pope commands, with many severe words, that his laws are to be read and used in the schools and the courts, but little is said of the Gospel. ”

“ And he gave a long list of doctors who were not only Christians, but famous ones. I grant you, though, ministers and doctors are very apt to see differently in spiritual matters."
"That's it," said the Reverend Doctor; "you are apt to see 'Nature' where we see God, and appeal to 'Science' where we are contented with Revelation."
"We don't separate God and Nature, perhaps, as you do," the Doctor answered. "When we say that God is omnipresent and omnipotent and omniscient, we are a little more apt to mean it than your folks are. ”

“ On the one hand, in those passages of Scripture which have not as yet received a certain and definitive interpretation, such labors may, in the sweetly ordered providence of God, serve as a preparation for bringing to maturity the judgment of the Church. In passages already defined, a private doctor may do work equally valuable, either by setting them forth more clearly to the commonalty of the faithful, or more learnedly before the learned, or by defending them more powerfully from adversaries. ”

“ Out of this feeling had grown up another practice, which made the development of medicine still more difficult—the classing of scientific men generally with sorcerers and magic-mongers: from this largely rose the charge of atheism against physicians, which ripened into a proverb, "Where there are three physicians there are two atheists." ”

“ The priest used to tell the doctor that he would have been the best of Christians if he had only known it, and the doctor used to assure him in return that he would have been the best of men if only his mind had never been distorted by the fables of the Church. ”

“ For although it is right and proper that students in academies and schools should be chiefly exercised in acquiring- a scientific knowledge of dogma, by means of reasoning from the Articles of Faith to their consequences, According to the rules of approved and sound philosophy— nevertheless the judicious and instructed theologian will by no means pass by that method of doctrinal demonstration which draws its proof from the authority of the Bible; "for theology does not receive her first principles from any other science, but immediately from God by revelation. ”

“ And on the other hand, an attentive and intelligent hearer, listening to a succession of wise teachers, might become actually better educated in theology than any one of them. We are all theological students, and more of us qualified as doctors of divinity than have received degrees at any of the universities. ”

“ A doctor has in some sort a priesthood of his own. Admitted at all hours to the most secret intimacy of families, he knows, guesses, and is able to effect much. Like the priest, in short, he has the ear of the sick and the dying. ”

“ The world is hardly beyond the beginning of medical discoveries, yet they have already taken from theology what was formerly its strongest province—sweeping away from this vast field of human effort that belief in miracles which for more than twenty centuries has been the main stumbling-block in the path of medicine; and in doing this they have cleared higher paths not only for science, but for religion. ”

“ From that Thou must release me for this final sacrifice of mine." He said Yea, and upon that agreement I entered a Theological Seminary.
Sept. 18. Sunday. If Theology is a science in which there is nothing real and practical, it is not worth studying. True Theology, however, is something real, yea, more real than any other science. Medicine alleviates physical sufferings of man; Jurisprudence treats of the civil relations of man to man; but Theology looks into the very cause of physical diseases and civil disorders. The true Theologian is naturally an idealist, but he is not a dreamer. ”

“ If this is a general truth, with what special force must it not apply to the ministers of a religion the paramount and ceaseless aim of which is to make men holy, so that at times it has almost seemed as though the Church were indifferent as to whether they are learned or beautiful or strong? She pronounces no man a doctor unless he be also a saint ”

“ A mediocre knowledge of theology in a priest is not sufficient, especially in these days when the laity are educated, when theological questions are debated on all sides, and when so many outside the Church as well as in it are looking for help and light. ”

“ This science is yet the stranger within our gates that is not remembered even when its elevating effects are proving practically its divine origin. Theology includes no creed or faith sufficient to heal the sick; while our Master's first article of faith was healing, and he proved that faith by his works. The ancient Christians were healers. Our systems of religion are governed by our systems of medicine. ”

“ To some extent, no doubt, by professors in theological seminaries and universities. But the ordinary minister of the gospel cannot shirk his responsibility. It is a great mistake to suppose that investigation can successfully be carried on by a few specialists whose work is of interest to nobody but themselves. Many men of many minds are needed. What we need first of all, especially in our American churches, is a more general interest in the problems of theological science. ”

“ But it behoves the Doctor, if he will be called a Doctor, to study the whole Process, how God has restored the Universal in Man, which is fully clear and manifest in the Person of Christ, from his Entrance into the Humanity, even to his Ascension, and sending of the Holy Ghost. ”

“ Among the presidents of our colleges, where there is one man of science there are ten doctors of divinity. A system of education dominated by theology is one which embodies the theological spirit in its methods of culture. What that spirit is, as respects freedom of thought, and the duty of its teachers in the formation of their opinions, we have seen in the recent treatment, by large and authoritative bodies, of Blauvelt, Miller, and Smith. ”

“ The need of training, too, is obvious; he who is to be the physician of the soul ought to be as well acquainted with moral theology as a physician should be with medical science. Among the clergy of the Church of England there is an absolute want of theological knowledge. It would be hard to mention an Anglican book on any subject connected with moral theology. Anglican clergymen, even where they have learnt to believe many of the dogmas of the Catholic faith, are, generally speaking, ignorant of the difference between mortal and venial sin. ”

“ As early as April, 1866, this plan had been distributed to the archbishops and bishops, the heads of religious orders, and all others who of right were to be present at the council. He next convoked a body of theologians to initiate the preparatory studies. They were taken from the religious orders as well as from the secular clergy; many of them were or had been professors of theology or canon law; some were favorably known for high offices they had already held or for well-deserved reputation for learning. ”

“ Would to God we were worthy of having such doctors given us, be they laymen or priests, married or unmarried! But now they try to force the Holy Ghost to enter into popes, bishops, or doctors, though there is no sign to show that He is in them.
We must also lessen the number of theological books, and choose the best, for it is not the number of books that makes the learned man, nor much reading, but good books often read, however few, makes a man learned in the Scriptures and pious. Even the Fathers should only be read for a short time as an introduction to the Scriptures. ”

“ Men of all grades and classes appeal to and trust the Doctor. But how many of them realise that Jesus desires that men should come to Him and trust His willingness to help and save them, just as they would do to some good physician? How many men who have found comfort by taking their fears and forebodings to the Doctor and hearing his authoritative "Go in peace!" know or realise that just so would Jesus have us bring Him our unworthiness and shame and sin? Jesus never preached at those whom His compassion drew to Him. ”

“ I. By Theologians we mean men learned in Theology, who as members or masters of the theological schools which came into existence after the patristic era, taught and handed down Catholic doctrine on strictly scientific lines, in obedience to and under the supervision of the bishops. The title belongs primarily to the Schoolmen of the Middle Ages—the Scholastic Theologians strictly so-called ”

“ He’s a doctor—physics the people as well as preaches to them, you see, and that’s the kind of Christianity that appeals to untutored savages like his flock and mine. Well, I asked the bishop if he could send us up a man like that, and his chaplain answered that I was evidently not aware that the Church’s care was for men’s souls, not their bodies. ”

“ This work deserves careful analysis, not only as representing the highest and most approved university teaching of the time at the centre of Roman Catholic Christendom, but still more because it represents that attempt to make a compromise between theology and science, or rather the attempt to confiscate science to the uses of theology, which we so constantly find whenever the triumph of science in any field has become inevitable. ”

“ While the clergy maintain that a cure is only effected by God's will, the physician knows otherwise. The physician accomplishes his cures alone, and definitely cures and saves the lives of human beings by his own skill, intelligence, and application of methods which have been developed by the exercise of secular knowledge, not theological nonsense. ”