This excerpt is from William Burt Pope’s Compendium of Christian Theology (London: Beveridge and Co., 1879). Read more in Logos Bible Software, Google Books (links via Society of Evangelical Arminians), or PDF (scans from Fred Sanders).
The Lord has been pleased to commit His revelation, as finished in the Scriptures, to the keeping of His Church, under the control and supervision of the Holy Spirit. The Scriptures are the rule and standard and test of theology, which in this relation must be regarded as the whole sum of the Church’s Christian literature, gradually produced and variously modified: an extension of the term which is absolutely necessary, but requires to be guarded by the proviso that all sound theology is that which has its foundations and evidences in the Word of God.
The whole, so far as we have to do with it, is directly or indirectly the produce of the Christian Church.
The former part of this proposition must now be assumed: its discussion is reserved for a future place. Meanwhile, it may be said that there is nothing in theology which does not seek its authority in the Word of God: our science is the arrangement, development, and application of facts and principles given by inspiration. The authoritative volume has from the beginning been lodged in the Church. The early oracles were in the keeping of the covenant people; and the Christian Faith has been delivered unto the saints (Jude 3). The oracle has always had its ark. As the Church was enlarged the Bible was enlarged; but never was the one without the other in the world. Neither, however, without the Divine Spirit, Who has always watched over the growth of a theological literature around the Bible. Besides the fixed utterances of inspiration, the Holy Ghost has His own many other words (Acts 2:40) spoken by men under His more common influences; and Christian men have also theirs, which He overrules and controls. And all these are in their expansion theology, using the term in its widest latitude: a boundless mass of more or less systematised doctrine, the growth of all ages, of all kinds of soil, and of all zones of religious faith. The whole, so far as we have to do with it, is directly or indirectly the produce of the Christian Church: either as the formal arrangement of its own teaching, or as the result of false teaching which it condemns. And we have to consider its various characteristics accordingly.
But religious truth, as moulded within the Church, must be developed according to some laws. First, the requirements of teaching would insure the creation of a large body of various theology. Again, this has assumed specific forms as conformed to different types of doctrine within the Church: giving birth to a great mass of what may be called Confessional theology. And, further, there is a rich development that is governed by the law of adaptation to the internal and external circumstances by which the truth may be surrounded. The idea of evolution is all-pervading in this science; and we are safe in applying it if we remember that there is one law of development peculiar to Scripture, the law of progressive revelation, and another that governs the human systematisation of this. Divine doctrine is developed in the Bible; in the Church human dogma.
Both as teacher and as defender of the Faith the Christian Church was from the beginning under a necessity to create a theology: whether as the teacher of its converts or as their defender against error.
I. Both as teacher and as defender of the Faith the Christian Church was from the beginning under a necessity to create a theology: whether as the teacher of its converts or as their defender against error. Didactic divinity was the necessary expansion of what in Scripture is termed the Apostles’ doctrine (Acts 2:42). Its first and simplest form, as seen in the writings of the earliest Fathers, was Expository or practical, aiming at the edification of the flock; then followed the Catechetical, for the preliminary instruction of converts or Catechumens in order to baptism, conducted by pastors as Catechists, and formulated in the permanent Catechism; and thus were laid the foundations of all subsequent Biblical theology proper. Defensive assertion of truth was rendered necessary by heresies arising within the community, and by the duty of vindicating the Faith against those without. The latter obligation gave rise to Apologetics in all its branches, called in modern times Evidences: Apology having reference rather to the position of the Christian society as challenged by the world, Evidences belonging rather to its aggressive and missionary character. The former introduced Dogmatic Theology, taught first in Creeds—the Apostles’, the Niceno-Constantinopolitan, and the Athanasian; afterwards in specific expositions of those creeds, and their individual articles: this, as distinguished from Apologetic, is controversial divinity or Polemics. In later times, all these branches have been incorporated into the unity of what is called Systematic divinity, or the orderly arrangement of the doctrines of revelation, as they are Dogmas fixed in the decisions of the Church, defended against external assaults, and unfolded in the ethics of human duty. This is the normal development of the science within Christendom, and common to all its branches. Every Christian community presents in its own literature more or less systematically all these various forms of fundamental teaching.