Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadJonathan Edwards Collection: Edwards, Jonathan - Rational Biblical Theology: Chapt 14 Edwards Historical Influence
TOPIC: Edwards, Jonathan - Rational Biblical Theology (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: Chapt 14 Edwards Historical Influence
Other Subjects in this Topic:
Any effort to restrict this chapter to the preaching of Edwards, apart from its general theological effect, is impossible, for his preaching was his theology and his theology was his preaching.
While the sermons are never pedantic they are often technical. He never uses the language of the schools in his preaching, but he uses the thought of the schools. This is true of others besides Edwards, and this is one of the influences of Edwards, that the New England theology had for its professors the preachers; for its classroom, the meeting house; and, for its desk, the pulpit. One could construct the entire theology of Jonathan Edwards from his sermons. Every basic point he has ever made in the Inquiry, Religious Affections, History of Redemption, End of God in Creation, Original Sin, is found in the sermons. Even refutation of fine errors appear in detail in his preaching, as the ten-fold annihilation of the subtle theological heresy that justification is by faith, apart from the works of ceremonial law. His sermon on Gen_3:11 gives a clearer analysis of original sin, on some points, than his great treatise on that subject. His greatest work, Miscellanies, constantly refers to sermons for points not there developed.
In assaying the influence of Edwards’ preaching, we must see the position he holds in relation to the subsequent development of doctrine in general. After all, not only did Edwards preach his theology, but everyone else necessarily preaches his own theology. If one does not have any, he preaches that. Theology is the basis of preaching and preaching is the expression of theology. A brief survey of the post-Edwardsian theological development may, therefore, not be out of place.
Before we make this survey, however, we should notice some significant but incidental details. For one thing, Edwards influenced subsequent preaching by providing a good many of the preachers. That is, many who followed were not only Edwardsian in spirit, but a number of them were Edwardsian in genealogy.
Secondly, in addition to his own natural descendants, he influenced many others, especially toward “metaphysical preaching.” While such highly intellectual preaching was assumed among Calvinists in general, and Puritans in particular, there is no question that because of his natural ability, Edwards outdid his forbears in analysis and greatly augmented its development in the New England school. Although Hopkins and Emmons and Bellamy and many others did not have the genius of their master, they had the same appetite for rational preaching. Emmons is a particularly good example of this, as easily seen in his six volumes of published sermons. *1*
Coming now to a brief survey of the theological impetus of Edwards we first consider the Calvinism of Jonathan Edwards, representative extraordinary of this tradition. Smith nicely states the point when he concludes:
If we were to select America’s contribution to the gallery of the world’s indispensable thinkers, we must mention James, and we must mention Edwards, and after that we must hesitate and weigh. Standing on his lonely pinnacle, with the Antinomians screaming at him from one side and the Arminians sneering at him from the other, both biding the moment to crucify him, Edwards, more than any other of record, portrayed in his life and his expressions that delicate line of Truth, running between Emotion and Reason, which is Puritanism. As Professor Miller says, the simplest way to define Puritanism is to say it is what Edwards was. *2*
Allen has written that Edwards was the “one large contribution which America has made to the deeper philosophic thought of the world,” *3* and Sperry in his Religion in America says, “American critics are inclined to say that of all the speculative thinkers whom we have produced Edwards is probably the most distinguished.” *4* Many others have made similar testimonies to Edwards’ intellectual ability as well as to his moral character and spirituality, but since we are here primarily concerned with his significance for Calvinistic history we cite two recognized Calvinists of the Princeton school who have appraised him, to wit, John De Witt and B. B. Warfield.
At a celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Edwards, Professor De Witt concluded with this tribute:
Let me say again, that I am deeply grateful to you for the opportunity you have given me to unite with you in this commemoration of the man we so often call our greatest American Divine. He was indeed inexpressibly great in his intellectual endowment, in his theological achievement, in his continuing influence. He was greatest in his attribute of regnant, permeating, irradiating spirituality. It is at once a present beatitude and an omen of future good that, in these days of pride in wealth and all that wealth means, of pride in the fashion of this world which passeth away, we still in our heart of hearts reserve the highest honor for the great American who lived and moved and had his being in the Universe which is unseen and eternal. *5*
The same sentiment could be shown to be that of Archibald Alexander, Samuel Miller, Charles Hodge, Francis L. Patton, and B. B. Warfield - in a word, of “Old Princeton.”
Warfield argued that due to Edwards’ labors “the elimination of Calvinism as a determining factor in the thought of New England, which seemed to be imminent as he wrote, was postponed for a hundred years.” *6* Speaking more personally of Edwards, the Princeton scholar wrote, “the peculiarity of Edwards’ theological works is due to the union in it of the richest religious sentiment with the highest intellectual powers.” Warfield concluded: “his analytical subtlety has probably never been surpassed.” *7*
Space precludes the possibility of setting forth Edwards’ theology or indeed anything more than indicating some of the areas in which he contributed significantly to the Calvinistic tradition. First, his Inquiry into the Freedom of the Will, while classically Calvinistic in its position, was at the same time the most thorough speculative philosophical statement of Reformed anthropology ever given, as well as the most devastating critique of the Arminian anthropology ever articulated. Again his eight sermons on Justification by Faith *8* are at once pure Calvinism and, at the same time, probably the most penetrating statement and defense of it (and at that in its essence originally only popular sermons preached to a congregation of farmers, by which his first great revival was occasioned). Also Edwards in the Miscellaneous Observations as well as in some of his published and unpublished sermons makes a noble defense of the justice of God and its bearing on punishment and satisfaction. *9* The Miscellaneous Observations also contains reflections on the decrees which yield to no Calvinistic divine in their profundity, their superiority as a polemic against Arminianism, and in their loyalty to Reformed theology (incidentally, in this treatment Edwards lays heavy stress on the permissiveness of the decree of reprobation). *10* Edwards made innumerable other contributions to Calvinism, not the least of which was his preaching of these truths to his people without technicalities, but without adulteration either. Allen calls Edwards the greatest preacher of his age. *11* Gardiner says that he preached his theology; *12* and we add, that theology was Calvinism.
In spite of Edwards’ stature as a Calvinistic theologian of great importance, some Calvinists find him guilty of more or less deviation and some lay at his door the blame for later New England defection. Charles Hodge was a very mild critic of Edwards, whom he admired and to whom he acknowledged his indebtedness. Referring to moral dispositions in distinction from moral acts, Hodge wrote, “years ago, when we were harassed by the same difficulties, we derived more satisfaction from Edwards on the Religious Affections, and from his work on Original Sin, than from any other source.” *13* Hodge found Edwards in error in his view of virtue as love to being in general, and in his mediate imputationism. Hodge did not regard the former point as very important, being merely a speculative opinion. He also thought that Edwards erred in his view of the prerequisites for church membership but did not seem to think this error inconsistent with his Calvinism, it being found in Marck and other Dutch Calvinists as well. Inasmuch as other Calvinists and Calvin himself, in his commentary on Rom_5:12-19, taught mediate imputation, this view, even if Edwards held it, could not be said to be utterly uncalvinistic. However, we feel that Hodge was misled by some of the phraseology of Edwards and that Edwards actually did teach immediate imputation. Warfield has correctly said that Edwards taught immediate imputation in the language of mediate imputation. *14*
Others holding that Edwards was a mediate imputationist, have charged him with being responsible for the ultimate rejection of original sin by the New England school. Dr. Peter Y. De Jong, for example, says that Edwards denied this federal headship of Adam and that this militated against the conception of the covenant. “To this,” he continues, “was added his insistence on creatio continua, which removed the whole problem into the realm of the metaphysical and did not a little toward weakening and finally destroying belief in original sin.” *15* De Jong finds a later theologian Webster using Edwards’ theory of the voluntary nature of all sin “to advance the age-old Pelagian contention that if sin is truly voluntary, there can be no imputation of guilt from one person to another mediately or immediately.” *16* More superficially Shelton Smith states that Edwards “gave little attention to the federal theory, a fact which probably indicates that he doubted that it significantly safeguarded the principle of direct participation.” *17* G. P. Fisher also believed that Edwards held the realistic view of representation. *18* And Boardman found mediate imputation in Edwards. *19*
However, what Edwards seems to be saying is that inasmuch as Adam truly represented mankind in the probation, there was a divinely constituted unity between Adam and those he represented. This constituted unity, being a fact, when Adam sinned, all sinned. The order of imputation is actually the same in Adam and in mankind: first, sin; second imputation of guilt; third, pollution. This is implicit in any view of immediate imputation and quite different from Placaeus and mediate imputation. While some later theologians took this latter view, they cannot properly call Edwards their father. As we will see in our fuller treatment of Edwards’ doctrine of sin, he saw a constituted unity between Adam and those he represented. So “in Adam’s sin we sinned all.” This is standard orthodoxy. Where Edwards differs is in explaining this. God made Adam mankind’s representative by constituting an actual oneness between them. That is ultimate federalism. All the orthodox say that we acted in Adam; Edwards says the same with a vengeance.
A more recent attack on Edwards’ credentials as a Calvinist evangelist can be found in an essay by Allen C. Guelzo, assistant professor of church history at Reformed Episcopal Seminary. *20* There he argues that “the patterns of much of American evangelicalism,” particularly as they result from the thought and ministry of Charles G. Finney, “were drawn” by Jonathan Edwards. Justification for this astounding proposition, that Pelagian Finney is the fruit of Calvinist Edwards, is offered in Guelzo’s attempt to show a clear “transmission” of Edwardsian patterns from the work of Edwards’ followers (Hopkins, Bellamy and the New Divinity) to Finney. This, Guelzo argues, is the “real legacy of Jonathan Edwards.” *21*
This “legacy”, according to Guelzo, comes to us through the developments of certain doctrines found seminally in Edwards’ writings. Of the various ways in which the New Divinity men are supposed to have developed Calvinistic theology following the lead of Edwards, none was as sensational in its departure from Reformed orthodoxy as their abandoning of the doctrine of a particular and substitutionary atonement in favor of the so-called governmental theory.
Guelzo sees this departure as following properly from Edwards himself, thus weighing in on the New England side of what appears to be the latest round of a match that in the past pitted New England Congregationalists against Princetonian Presbyterians. *22* From the beginning of the 19th century onward writers such as Miller, Atwater, Hodge and Warfield *23* emphasized the discontinuities between Edwards and the New Divinity men, arguing that, in the words of Atwater, “We think it easy to show . . . that the distinctive feature of this New Divinity, in all its successive forms, are utterly abhorrent to [Edwards’] entire system.” *24* On the contrary, argues Guelzo, the facts prove continuity, the New Divinity movement devising a “startling departure from Calvinist doctrine” that “represented hardly more than an elaboration of the foundation Edwards himself had laid.” *25*
This contention Guelzo attempts to justify in four arguments: (1) that by abandoning the imputation of Adam’s sin as the ground of natural depravity, Edwards undercut any similar imputed connection between Christ and the elect; (2) that the doctrine of limited atonement was in conflict with Edwards’ notion of the natural ability of all sinners to repent; (3) that though nothing in Edwards’ published works openly embraces a governmental or unlimited atonement, in his private notebooks Edwards “inclined sharply toward such a view;” *26* and (4) that Edwards’ approval of Bellamy’s True Religion Delineated, as shown in the preface he provided for the work, demonstrates his sympathy with the thought of one of the primary advocates of the heterodox views.
All of Guelzo’s fine scholarship notwithstanding, however, David Coffin has recently shown the frailty of these contentions in an essay which critically examines Guelzo’s thesis. *27* After close scrutiny of each of Guelzo’s arguments, Coffin demonstrates that in not one instance are they able to withstand criticism. In particular, he notes several plain indications which ought to lead even the casual reader of Edwards’ writings to the conclusion that Edwards vigorously opposed an exclusive adoption of the governmental theory of the atonement and defended the classic Calvinistic doctrines of Christ’s work in redemption.
For example, Coffin cites Edwards’ conclusion to his great treatise on the will where he argues that it is the foundation, not for undermining, but for vindicating Calvinism, particularly with regard to the atonement:
From these things it will inevitably follow, that . . . there must be something particular in the design of his death, with respect to such as he intended should actually be saved thereby. . . . God has the actual salvation or redemption of a certain number only. . . . God pursues a proper design of the salvation of the elect in giving Christ to die, and prosecutes such a design with respect to no other, most strictly speaking. . . . *28*
Even those most zealous to claim Edwards’ “mantle” have typically noticed the New England Theology’s defection from their “leader” on question of the atonement. Thus when Noah Porter, student, as well son-in-law, of N. W. Taylor set out to defend Taylor’s continuity with Edwards, he frankly admitted the point in question:
Porter did not attempt to show that the substance of New England Theology had been carefully preserved from generation to generation. . . . [but that] Edwards’s spirit had been the motivating force. . . .
Porter. . . . conceded that contemporary New England theologians held to propositions that differed from Edwards’s . . . that Jesus’s death was a demonstration of God’s moral government rather than a placation of divine wrath. *29*
Further, Coffin shows how Guelzo’s unfortunate perpetuation of the myth that Edwards denied the Puritan doctrine of “seeking” serves to distort Guelzo’s grasp of Edwards’ evangelism, and his relation, or lack thereof, to Charles Finney. *30*
We will consider briefly only one other point at which Edwards is thought to have departed from Calvinism and to have led others astray also. Burggraaf says that Edwards’ statement concerning the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit can easily lead to a transplanting of emphasis from the objective to the subjective. *31* After discussing Finney’s virtual Pelagianism, Burggraaf lays the blame at Edwards’ door. “Pelagianism,” he says, “was one of the legitimate offsprings of the Edwardsian theology.” *32*
To show that this charge is as inaccurate as it is severe, we will cite a few passages on this subject which we think show Edwards to have safeguarded objectivity as carefully, if not more so, than Calvin himself in his classic treatment in the Institutes. We need only cite the sermon on Mat_16:17, published in 1734, the doctrine of which is, “That there is such a thing as a spiritual and divine light immediately imparted to the soul by God, of a different nature from any that is obtained by natural means.” Edwards says that this light does not communicate new truth but “only gives a due apprehension of the things that are taught in the Word of God.” It is a real sense and apprehension of the divine excellency of things revealed in the Scripture. He distinguishes a two-fold knowledge: notional and the sense of the heart. The divine light is the latter and is dependent on the former. From the divine light comes the conviction of the truth of the notional. It makes speculative ideas more lively and removes prejudices against them. This is intuitive but it enables us to understand discursive ideas better as in a better light we can see better. This sermon is characterized from beginning to end by a perfect balance between the necessity of sound doctrinal knowledge and of the divine and supernatural sense of the soundness and sweetness of that doctrine. Calvin said that this inner testimony leads the elect to “acquiesce” in the truth of God. Also consider the Westminster Confession of Faith. After giving the arguments “whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God,” the Confession concludes, “yet notwithstanding our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth, and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.” *33* Edwards with different words said exactly the same thing.
As we come to the end of the eighteenth and into the nineteenth century, our story becomes more complicated and therefore more difficult to present briefly. We shall attempt merely to suggest the subsequent theological developments in relation to Jonathan Edwards and his Calvinism. First, there was the Arminian reaction against Edwards leading into Unitarianism. Second, there were two deviations from Edwards both of which led into semi-Pelagianism and Pelagianism, one via hyper-Calvinism and the other via hypo-Calvinism. Third, there was the continuation of Edwardsian Calvinism, especially in Princeton Seminary and Old School Presbyterianism.
Unitarianism was the outgrowth of the Arminianism against which Edwards contended so mightily. It is one of the distinguishing merits of Burggraaf’s work that he demonstrates this derivation. “Neither Socinianism, nor Deism, nor English Unitarianism” he concludes after an extensive survey, “are to be considered as remote causes for the Unitarian movement in America.” Arminianism was the real root; through Grotius to England, from England back to Holland, and thence to America. *34*
This change can be seen in America. For example, the contemporary and opponent of Edwards, Charles Chauncy, was really an Arminian theologian with some traces of the Arian heresy. *35* His noted difference however, concerns not God so much as man. There is really very little difference between the nominally Puritan Chauncy and the recognized father of Unitarianism, W. E. Channing, as the former was less conservative and the latter more conservative than is sometimes realized. Ernest Gordon has observed in Leaven of Sadducees that the rear guard of the Puritan movement was the vanguard of the Unitarians:
Early Unitarianism in its right wing was much nearer to evangelical Christianity than one would imagine who knows it in its modern phases alone. Emerson wrote of old Dr. Ezra Ripley of Concord [who indeed could say of himself, “I am not sensible of having departed in any degree from the doctrines properly called the doctrines of grace”], “He seemed in his constitutional leaning to their religion one of the rear-guard of the great camp and army of the Puritans.” And there were many such. Emerson’s own father could declare, “This doctrine of human depravity, whose truth is sanctioned by universal observation and experience is a doctrine of the Christian revelation and he who preaches it preaches Jesus Christ and Him crucified. For this purpose was the Son of God manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil. By his sufferings and death He proves the inherent and unchanging mercy of God, moves sinful men to penitence and reformation and thence expiates their guilt and procures them pardon of sin.” *36*
Channing’s “Unitarianism” (belief in one person in the Godhead) is not at all conspicuous. He is more concerned to say that Christ is more than man, than he is to say that Christ is less than God. He is not at all embarrassed to acknowledge the miracles of Christ, but points to them as necessary to His being the founder of our religion. So far from rejecting the Bible, he, as did almost all early Unitarians, appeals to it as authority for the Unitarian view. Of course, his real test of authority implicitly was human consciousness, but he never repudiated, as did later Unitarians, an explicit adherence to the Bible. It is in statements such as the following that the heterodoxy of his opinions appears: “I am concerned that virtue and benevolence are natural to man. I believe that selfishness and avarice have arisen from ideas universally inculcated on the young, and practiced upon the old.” *37* It is not surprising that Channing would present the role of Christ as teacher and example to the exclusion of sacrifice and justifier. *38*
From this mild beginning the development of Unitarianism was very rapid. It was in 1819 that Channing delivered his famous Baltimore address at the ordination of Jared Sparks and American Unitarianism was born. In 1838 Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Divinity School address at Harvard marked a radical new phase as Unitarianism became more frankly humanistic and less Christian. In 1841 Theodore Parker’s sermon “The Transient and Permanent in Christianity” saw the distinctive features of Christianity as transient and the non-distinctive but general principles shared with all theistic religions as the permanent. This radicalism took away the breath of Unitarianism which began to cry heretic. As Platner observed, this sermon introduced a new chapter in American Unitarianism, dividing the movement into liberal and conservative. *39* But by 1880 a new creed was prepared that embraced the more liberal Unitarianism and in 1885 the Unitarian Association published Parker’s works.
The Unitarian Frederick Henry Hedge, noted various differences between the earlier and later Unitarianism, such as a depreciation in the estimate of Christ, though they still made Christ a super-man. The fathers received the Bible as infallible authority in all fact and doctrine, but the sons decide truth for themselves. Revelation used to be thought of as from without man, whereas later Unitarianism found it from within. ** Also, as Earl Morse Wilbur has noted, miracles had, by the time of Parker, become a crucial remaining issue: “men supposed to be transcendentalists were narrowly treated by those who made belief in miracles practically a test of one’s Christianity. . . .” *41*
Beside the plain abandonment of Christianity by the Unitarians, there were two main deviations from Edwards, not hostile, nor even always conscious: they were hypo- and hyper-Calvinistic. We note first the hypo-Calvinistic, and then proceed to consider the hyper-Calvinistic and the way both roads led to semi-Pelagianism.
Joseph Bellamy (1719-1790) may be regarded as the trail-blazer of the hypo-Calvinistic path to semi-Pelagianism. While Bellamy is generally in line with Edwards, and in many respects the brilliant popularizer of his system, by graphic and paradoxical expressions his minor deviation is seen in certain respects. First, he tends to explain God’s ways a bit too much. Second, especially, he appears to explicate the permission of sin just a bit too far. *42* Haroutunian may be excessive but not altogether unreasonable in his contrast of Bellamy and Edwards at this point:
Nevertheless, Bellamy’s vindication of the ways of God represents a significant deviation from the spirit of Edwards’ work. Bellamy has accepted the challenge of the new age that God’s permission of sin be justified on the basis of its conduciveness to greater human happiness. *43*
Third, there appears the slightest concession to the governmental view of the atonement. “God did not judge it suitable to the honour of his majesty . . . to pardon . . . without a mediator.” *44*
Between Bellamy and Nathaniel Taylor some notable figures appear. Jonathan Edwards, Jr., (1745-1801) while loyal to his father’s views in some respects, advocated the governmental view of the atonement. John Smalley seems to have held the same position. *45* And Timothy Dwight, the grandson of senior Edwards was a transitional figure who moderated the ‘consistent Calvinism’ of the Edwardsians. *46*
With Nathaniel Taylor (1786-1858) the deviations came to a semi-Pelagian head. Dr. Beecher, quoting a letter from Dr. Porter, tells of the beginnings of this serious defection in the days when Taylor first came to teach at Yale:
Arminianism received from the hand of Edwards its death blow, of which it lingered more than half a century in New England and died. Our orthodoxy had settled into a solid, tranquil, scriptural state; and perhaps no body of ministers since the world began have been so united, and so manifestly blessed of God, as the ministers of New England.
Such was the state of things, when, as Dr. Porter says, “A battery was opened in Connecticut, a standard raised, and a campaign begun.” *47* That Taylor was a repudiation of Edwards has been the contention of many, especially the Princeton School, all along. Charles Hodge and B. B. Warfield had no hesitation in declaring Taylor to be semi-Pelagian and even Pelagian. Barnes, tried for heresy in the Presbyterian Church because of his New England leanings, finally concluded that Princeton was right: New England theology and the Westminster Confession of Faith were incompatible. *48* Sidney Mead in his biography of Nathaniel Taylor seems to have arrived at a similar conclusion though by an independent study and with a different estimate of the Calvinism before Edwards. He writes:
When I began this study, it was with the common notion that Dwight, Beecher and Taylor were the theological heirs of the Edwardians or Consistent Calvinists of the period before the Revolution. But further study seemed to make it more probable that the basis of their thought was a legacy from the Old Calvinists. . . . It is possible, in brief, that Edwardianism or Consistent Calvinism was never the New England theology. *49*
We think there are many controversial incidental points in Mead’s statement, but the main point is the recognition of the significant difference between Edwards and Taylor. There would appear to be truth as well as poetry in the lines:
Immortal Edwards, whom religion hails
Her favorite son, John Taylor overthrew;
A (Nathaniel) Taylor now the great man’s ghost assails,
His doctrine doubts, and errors vamp anew.
Nathaniel Taylor was so subtle and elusive a theologian that a conclusive demonstration of his Pelagianism would require as much space as this whole chapter contains. We can only say here that we think it clear that Taylor taught: first, that God was unable to prevent sin in a moral system; second, that only voluntary acts can be sinful; and third, that grace is irresistible. It is this first point, with its implications, which is incompatible with Jonathan Edwards.
The second deviation from the Calvinism of Edwards which ended in semi-Pelagianism began with the hyper-Calvinism of Samuel Hopkins (1721-1803), intimate friend and admiring biographer of Edwards. Charles Hodge, rather characteristically of the Presbyterian tradition, refers to the “hyper-Calvinism of the Hopkinsians.” *50* Some of the ideas on which this serious charge is based we will mention. First, Hopkins stressed the necessity of being willing to be damned for the glory of God. It was essential to being saved to be willing to be damned. *51* The hyper-Calvinism of this sentiment is seen in the fact that for a person to be willing to be damned is to be willing to be utterly damnable or wicked. Such sentiment is clearly incompatible with a regenerate or saved person, whose very nature is to “hunger and thirst after righteousness.” So a Christian cannot be willing to be damned, as Jonathan Edwards himself had insisted. *52* Second, a corollary of the first, is a tendency to identify self-love with sin and disinterested love with virtue thus making sin and virtue into something ultimately metaphysical rather than moral. It is to be remembered that while Hopkins showed the above tendencies, in the main he was not hyper-Calvinistic but merely a “consistent Calvinist,” as when he says that the convicted (not converted) sinner is worse than the unconverted because he is more concerned with his sinful, unregenerate self. *53*
Nathaniel Emmons (1745-1840) “was, by common consent, the boldest thinker and writer in the whole school” wrote Boardman. *54* Bold indeed for he does not hesitate to think of God as the author of sin. “It is,” he wrote, “as consistent with the moral rectitude of the Deity to produce sinful, as holy exercises in the mind of man.” *55* “Our moral exercises are the productions of the divine power;” *56* bare motives cannot produce volitions; God produces the volitions - good and evil. The same boldness is displayed in Emmons’ dealing with children. God “works in them to will and to do of his good pleasure; or produces those moral exercises in their hearts in which moral depravity properly and essentially consists.” *57* That this is antithetical to Jonathan Edwards is obvious.
Passing over Leonard Woods and others we come to Edwards A. Park (1808-1900), thought by Foster to be a greater thinker than Jonathan Edwards himself. Given his father’s name, Calvin, and his own name, Edwards, he felt himself to be squarely in the middle of the Calvinistic stream. “We are Calvinists” he said,
mainly, essentially, and in all essentials of our faith. And the man who, having pursued a three years’ course of study, - having studied the Bible in the original languages, - is not Calvinistic, is not a respectable gentleman. *58*
He is called by Frederick T. Persons, “the last teacher of Calvinism at Andover.” *59* In spite of his own and some others’ judgment of him, he is more commonly regarded as a “modified” Calvinist. In a system which does not admit of any modification of the system, that is suspicious itself.
In at least three important respects Park modifies essential Calvinism as it had been taught by Jonathan Edwards. First, the vulnerable point in New England theologians, imputation of guilt, is no better in Park. He taught that a corrupt nature came upon men as a result of Adam’s sin, but not guilt and exposure to punishment. This maintains the untenable notion that a person may be justly polluted by Adam’s sin, but not justly punished for Adam’s sin, as if pollution itself were not a punishment.
Second, he divorces knowledge and affections, which, as we have already shown, Edwards did not do. Charles Hodge replies to Park by saying, “There can be no right feeling but what is due to the comprehension of truth.” *60* Jonathan Edwards would have preferred to say: “There can be no right feeling but what is inextricably connected with the comprehension of truth.”
Third, Park breaks with Edwards and Calvinistic certainty by denying the causal connection between motive and will. Still he says that though the will might not always follow the greatest apparent good, it actually always does. *61* Surely this is eating one’s cake and having it too.
This succession of theologians in the Hopkinsian line appears to be quite different from the other New England line. After all, the Andover Seminary of Woods and Park has been long regarded as the foe of the developing “new divinity.” G. P. Fisher, for example, viewed Leonard Woods of Andover as an opponent of Taylor. And Edwards Park was very touchy about his Calvinistic orthodoxy as we have already seen, and as Charles Hodge, his Calvinistic critic, had reason to know.
In spite of all this avowal of Calvinistic orthodoxy, Andover was on a different tack from the beginning. It was distinguished from Hopkins in an essential and crucial point: a gradualism in regeneration. As Williams observes in his Andover Liberals:
[O]ver against the Hopkinsian statement that there is no instant of time in which the human heart is not either wholly rebellious or wholly regenerate, Andover, under the influence of the developmental concept, said that there is no instant of time in which man is not in process of growth. *62*
No man is completely saved or completely unsaved.
The foundation of Andover itself in 1807 was indeed a reaction of conservatism against the Unitarian tendencies at Harvard. However, its conservatism was of a mediating sort, attempting to reconcile the “old” and the “consistent” Calvinists by its doctrine of “means” of grace. We have already noted that its view of regeneration allowed for degrees. “Means” were thought of as contributing to these increasing degrees. When it comes right down to it, Park and Taylor are not far apart as Sidney Ahlstrom has shown:
[Park on the] place of reason in theology was more advanced than Taylor. On the question of freedom of will he took the position of Scottish introspectionist thought. He found what Reid had found: a free will that made man responsible for his acts and which ruled out any doctrine of man’s passive sinfulness. The “theology of the feelings,” he admitted, often spoke in violent paradoxes on this subject; but not the theology of the intellect, for it proclaims only the “certainty of wrong preference” not the “inability of right.” Park stood with Taylor. *63*
From here on the two streams of thought flow together. They are like the merger of the Blue and White Nile at Khartoum. When they first join the two streams are still clearly distinguishable though flowing in one channel. After a while, the two streams are not only inseparable but indistinguishable. So, while for some time after the death of Taylor in 1858 (an even century after the death of Edwards) the Andover men appeared more conservative than the Yale men, in time they capitulated just as the conservative Unitarians in time yielded to the more liberal Unitarians.
With Horace Bushnell (1802-1876) we may view the “new divinity” as essentially one stream. The rapprochement which he accomplished and which Theodore Munger called a Copernican revolution *64* was effected by undermining meaning in theological terminology:
‘What are these impressive terms,’ he asked, ‘but words, and what are words but figures whose root is in the common soul of everyday sensuous life. . . .’ ‘Words, words, words, - what is it all but this? Are we to be the dupes of these unstable phantasmagoria, imagining them to be the very substance of truth itself? *65*
Bushnell calls the terms which he rejects (the Calvinistic meanings) “theology” and those which he accepts (for he, too, uses language), “divinity;” of course, the former is dead while the latter is living experience. *66* The various tenets of traditional New England thought are not so much rejected outright as rejected implicitly by a re-interpretative de-naturing process. Thus, in Ritschlian fashion, he accepts the trinity, incarnation, atonement and other traditional doctrines as
verities addressed to faith; or what is not far different, to feeling and imaginative reason - not any more as logical and metaphysical entities for the natural understanding. *67*
“Penal substitution” is not “interpreted,” however, but rejected as a “horrible doctrine.” In spite of his semantic observations, Bushnell too, ends up with recognizable dogma. Dorner saw it as “Sabellianism in a theopaschitic form.” *68* Bushnell goes back to the affectional element in Edwards, *69* but we have already shown that Edwards never used this element independently of the intellectual and metaphysical nor to the detriment of orthodoxy. So Bushnell, rather than simplifying theological language, complicates it, by giving us a second set of meanings alongside the first. This theological double-talk caused Charles Hodge to despair:
We know Dr. Bushnell has said that such is the chemistry of thought, that any form of words can be interpreted to mean anything; and that another distinguished man has said he could sign any creed which his opponents could write. *70*
The rest of Bushnell’s highly influential thought is better known and less crucial - we pass over it here as we will present a somewhat more expanded summary of the New Divinity in Gladden below. His view of the supernatural is tantamount to equating it with the personal, and his famous doctrine of Christian nurture led D. C. Macintosh to say “Bushnell did more than any other preacher to discredit the old fashioned teaching, Ye must be born again.” *71*
Many others of note appear in the tradition of Horace Bushnell. Theodore Munger, Lyman Beecher, Henry Ward Beecher, Lyman Abbot, Washington Gladden and more. Henry Ward Beecher, the celebrated preacher, is typical. In his resignation from the New York and Brooklyn Association of Ministers he labeled the “decrees, election and reprobation of the Westminster Confession of Faith” as instances of “spiritual barbarism.” “There were days and weeks,” he said,
in which the pall of death over the universe could not have made it darker to my eyes than those in which I thought, ‘If you are elected you will be saved, and if you are not elected, you will be damned, and there is no hope in you.’ *72*
E. T. Thompson notes this marked shift in Beecher:
[T]here is plainly a movement away from Calvinism, a growing distaste of creed and increasing dislike of ‘theology,’ and evident weariness with theological disputes. Old dogmas were being discarded or if retained, retained only in form - among them belief in predestination, the Fall, total depravity, original guilt, substitutionary atonement, inerrant inspiration, and eternal punishment. *73*
We note, by the way, that Beecher was bested by W. G. T. Shedd on this last subject. *74*
To show more specifically the thought of the New Divinity in its matured Liberalism we present a very brief summary of the representative and lucid work of Washington Gladden which was published the very last year of last century, How Much Is Left of the Old Doctrines? *75* In a forthright manner he begins on page one: “Orthodox we know that we are not, if that implies subscription to creeds framed in the sixteenth century. . . .” What about the Bible? “[T]he Bible has plainly told us that it is not the kind of book we once thought it to be.” *76* He notes a number of fallibilities. *77* Evolution is his controlling theme and he applies this to the doctrine of God to see what is left of the older teaching. While he writes that “the substance of the old truth remains,” the only remainder we could find was the mere existence of God and that without any proof. *78*
Following squarely in the Bushnellian tradition, Gladden illustrates the new conception of the supernatural as the personal by turning off the light on his desk.
It was a supernatural power which extinguished and relighted that lamp. Every free personality is a supernatural power. It is not under fixed law. It is over fixed law, and it uses fixed law, in myriads of ways, to accomplish its own intelligent purposes. *79*
God, he concludes, must be such a free Person.
Gladden not only denies the doctrine of the trinity but attempts to show that the doctrine is essentially equivalent with the Unitarian doctrine. Citing three Unitarian hymns, he observes:
There is no orthodox Christian who cannot pour out his whole soul in these Unitarian praises of Father, Son and Spirit. And no Unitarian who sings these hymns should be too swift to deny that a great truth underlies the doctrine of the Trinity. When we philosophize and argue we often fall apart, but when we sing and pray we come together. Logic divides us, but love unites us. Let us argue less and worship more. . . . *80*
Gladden denied the doctrine of predestination in the supposed interests of free will *81* and was able to support the Presbyterian Van Dyke in support of his view. “That is the kind of doctrine,” he went on, “which is heard today in the strong, leading Presbyterian pulpits of this country.” *82*
In his doctrine of the Incarnation, Gladden falls far short of the old theology but does not escape entirely from the exceedingly high regard for Christ which characterized Bushnell and even Channing:
If now, we are able to grasp the fact that Nature herself is in all her origins, in all her central forces, supernatural, we shall not find it difficult to understand that humanity, in its essential nature, is divine; that he who is perfect man is by that fact the perfect revelation of God to man. *83*
Beyond this point he cannot go. *84*
Sin and grace are greatly changed. “The doctrines that held us responsible for the sin of Adam, and deserving of punishment because of his offense, do not any longer command the credence of thoughtful men.” *85* No matter how low you may be, by heredity, “God is your father, his life is in you, and working to save you.” Christ’s role in salvation is thus described:
[It is] by bringing us into the same mind with himself, by filling us with his own abhorrence of sin; by bringing us to look upon the selfishness and animalism of our own lives with his eyes, and to recoil from them as he recoiled from them, that he saves us. *86*
The eschatology of the new divinity is of a piece with what goes before. Gladden starts with the assurance that heaven is a sinless state of the heart. Both his denial of a local heaven and his optimism about the heaven of which he does conceive, he bases on pure speculation, with an appeal to poetry and without any reference whatever to the Bible. *87* Appropriately enough, “The Thought of Heaven” is the last chapter and there is no mention of hell.
In the nineteenth century the Calvinism of Jonathan Edwards lived possibly most purely and certainly most influentially in Princeton Seminary and Old School Presbyterianism. The mantle of Edwards fell not on the Taylors, Bushnells, Parks, Beechers and Gladdens, but on the Alexanders, Miller, the Hodges, Patton and Warfield. As a matter of fact, the only question is not whether Princeton was thoroughly Calvinistic but whether Edwards was. But Edwards was indeed. The great historical irony is that he gave his name to the school which came to advocate the very views he had refuted; while the Princeton school, which upheld the system he had so ably defended, is often thought to be opposed to him.
As we have previously noted, there were many other Calvinistic traditions in the various Reformed denominations in this country which were faithful but not so well known. Indeed Union Seminary in New York, while never completely Calvinistic, to the end of the last century numbered some able Reformed thinkers among her faculty such as H. B. Smith and W. G. T. Shedd.
It is this Calvinistic affinity which explains the futilely attempted cooperation with Princeton Seminary with which we close our survey. Professor Loetscher gives an account in his Broadening Church. *88* In 1880 C. A. Briggs and A. A. Hodge began the Presbyterian Review as co-editors. The statement of policy by Briggs was sufficient to allay any suspicions which Hodge or his friends had:
It will be the aim of the Review to treat all these subjects in a broad and catholic spirit, comprehending those historical phases of Calvinism which combined in the Presbyterian church of the reunion. *89*
Briggs assured A. A. Hodge that he was fully convinced of the infallible truth and divine authority of our whole Bible. Deviations from this assurance, however, caused Hodge to resign, and his successor, F. L. Patton to resign, and Patton’s successor, B. B. Warfield, to come to a literary blow-up that ended the paper. Briggs was tried for heresy and suspended from the Presbyterian ministry by the General Assembly. Thus ended the life of Calvinism at Union Theological Seminary. And thought that life continued robustly on at Princeton as the century ended, trouble was ahead.
However, while in general Calvinism was in deep decline at the end of the last century, this century has demonstrated that it is far from defunct, even in New England. At Yale, for example, Jonathan Edwards has virtually risen from the dead in the pages of Yale University Press’s publication of the definitive edition of his Works. And as the “solitary figure” haunts academe through the revival of scholarly interest stirred by the new publication of his writings, Iain Murray’s Life *90* shows that Edwards is as much beloved as ever by those who, by God’s grace, have come to love the “doctrines of grace.”