Principles to be Deduced From Facts

Here Charles Hodge explains one of the key deficiencies in the vast majority of Christianity today. Truth is not subject to preconceived thought. Truth must form our thought and when shown what we have believed is wrong we must abandon such thought and give place to the revealed truth we have been shown.

Speculations on matters of science, unless sustained by facts, are worthless. It is no less unscientific for the theologian to assume a theory as to the nature of virtue, of sin, of liberty, of moral obligation, and then explain the facts of Scripture in accordance with his theories... It is plain that complete havoc must be made of the whole system of revealed truth, unless we consent to derive our philosophy from the Bible, instead of explaining the Bible by our philosophy... It would be easy to show that in every department of theology... men, instead of taking the facts of the Bible, and seeing what principles they imply, what philosophy underlies them, have adopted their philosophy independently of the Bible, to which the facts of the Bible are made to bend. This is utterly unphilosophical. It is the fundamental principle of all sciences, and of theology among the rest, that theory is to be determined by facts, and not facts by theory. - Charles Hodge, "Systematic Theology", vol. 1, pgs. 13-14