The GOSPEL TRUTH A GENETIC HISTORY OF THE
NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY
By
FRANK HUGH FOSTER
1907
THE GREAT CONTROVERSIES
CHAPTER X:
The Unitarian Controversy
From the digression which we have made in the last chapters, we must now return to the regular progress of our history. We had been brought to the year 1795, or thereabout, by which time the new doctrine of the atonement had been set forth, and the first system of theology, Hopkins', had appeared. It was a time of great theological ferment. The Unitarian controversy was impending, and already monitions of its outbreak had been frequent. In this year Timothy Dwight came to Yale as its president, to find the college honeycombed with French infidelity, the legacy of French co-operation in the War of the Revolution. We are therefore called next to the study of this great crisis in the history both of the theology and of the organization of the New England churches. Was the new theology, which had sought to prepare the way for more effective evangelistic work, to go down before the attacks of English rationalism within its own fold and of French materialistic infidelity from without? So it seemed for a time. But the stress into which it was brought served only to show the stuff of which it was made.
The Unitarian movement in Massachusetts can be understood only by a careful review of a long history. Its roots stretch back to the very beginning of English Protestantism. In the milder tendencies of the English Reformation is to be found in part the explanation of the Arminianism which, under the influence of the powerful reaction from the high Calvinism of the Commonwealth, culminated in various forms of heterodoxy after the Restoration. Arminianism developed into Latitudinarianism, and Latitudinarianism into Arianism and Unitarianism. Samuel Clarke, a powerful writer upon apologetics, was an Arminian with a strong leaning to high Arianism, to say the least. Daniel Whitby was first an evangelical Arminian, and then a Unitarian. And then came a number of lesser writers, such as John Taylor, of Norwich, whose treatise on Original Sin, it is interesting to observe, was answered by both Jonathan Edwards, the Calvinistic revivalist of America, and John Wesley, the Arminian revivalist of England; and such as Emlyn, the author of the Humble Inquiry into the Scripture Account of Jesus Christ, etc., etc. Meantime also Deism, beginning with Herbert of Cherbury away back in the time of James and Charles I, was running its course. By the time of Wesley there was desperate need of an evangelical revival, if English theology or the English church was to be saved from complete destruction.
Long before this final stage of degeneration was reached in England, a parallel history of decline had begun in New England. The history of this, so far as it was the result of purely indigenous causes, has been already traced. Incidentally we have also repeatedly seen the influence which English writers constantly exercised in New England, and how Clarke, Whitby, Taylor, and others were read. Theological degeneration followed upon religious and moral decline. The steps of it, it is difficult, if not impossible, to follow. The principal writers remained still orthodox. The dissenters said little and wrote less. Still, dissent existed. We have seen that Arminianism became "prevailing," in the opinion of Edwards. But there was deeper divergence than mere Arminianism. Unitarianism was not professed, or publicly advocated, in New England circles during the eighteenth century; but, if we may judge from the writings of orthodox divines, there must have been a good deal of favor shown it in private, for, beginning with Samuel Mather's tract on the Necessity of Believing the Doctrine of the Trinity, in 1718, there was a considerable series of defenses of the doctrine by divines little known, such as Kent, Burr, Barnard, and Alexander, the last of whom wrote in 1791. The leaders of New England opinion were no less concerned, for Edwards once wrote to Wigglesworth, professor of divinity in Harvard College, warning him against the rise of an alien system of thought, but to no purpose. In 1758 Bellamy printed a Treatise on the Divinity of Christ. exclusively exegetical. In 1768 Hopkins preached in Boston a sermon upon the divinity of Christ, "under a conviction," as he says, "that the doctrine was much neglected, if not disbelieved, by a number of ministers in Boston." There were some open signs of this fact, for in 1756 "a layman" had caused to be printed in Boston extracts from the Humble Inquiry of Emlyn, above mentioned, which gained an astonishing influence. The book is so essentially weak that it provokes examination to discover, if possible, why it seemed so convincing to many.
The argument of the first chapter is "that the term God is used in the Scriptures in different senses, supreme and subordinate;" and "that our Lord Jesus Christ speaks of another as God, distinct from him, and owns this God to be above or over him." The reasoning has no points of novelty to one acquainted with discussions upon the Trinity. Emlyn lays special stress upon the passage which speaks of the subjection of the Son, "that God may be all in all" (1 Cor. 15:24-28). The texts he quotes to show that there are different senses of the word "God" in the Scriptures are: Ps. 8:5; Ex. 4:16; Eph. 1:3, 17; that Jesus speaks of another God: Matt. 27:46; John 7:17; that the Father is superior to Jesus: John 14:28; 10:29; 5:20; 6:38.
All this contained nothing novel or in any way convincing to a theologian. The influence of the work must have largely depended upon the representations of the second chapter. Emlyn here argues that "our Lord Jesus Christ disclaims those infinite perfections which belong only to the supreme God, underived power, absolute goodness, unlimited knowledge." For this assertion he refers to the texts: John 5:30; Matt. 19:17; Mark 13:32. He then asks: What evidence is there of these "two natures" which are brought in to explain the difficulties presented by the passages cited:
Our Lord Jesus Christ, if himself was the supreme God in any nature, could not have said such things as that he "did not know the day nor the hour" etc . . . He puts not the distinction of two natures between the Son of Man and the Eternal Word, but between the Son and the Father, "not the Son knows, but only the Father."
Emlyn then dwells upon the necessity of taking Scripture in its obvious meaning, etc., etc. He thus sharply brought forward the question whether the orthodox party could maintain its ground in the forum of ratiocination. Was the theory of the two natures correct? Was it so managed as to meet the difficulties raised by the evident limitations laid upon the attributes of Christ? He thus smote the weak point of the historic Calvinism, which had been open, from the time of Calvin down, to the charge of substantial Nestorianism--not a Nestorianism of profession or intention, but of inability to bring the two natures of Christ into anything more than a formal union. Calvinism held to "the unity of the person" which Chalcedon had declared, but it treated the divinity and humanity so as to render any true unity impossible. The demand was now sharply thrust upon the Calvinism of New England either to justify her exegesis by a satisfactory theology, or to surrender her doctrine of the trinity. This was the significance of Emlyn's book, and, I think, the secret of its influence.
The confusion caused by the Revolutionary War put a stop to the open discussion of the subject, and the general unpopularity of Unitarian views led, by a natural tendency, to pass them over with little mention. But soon after the close of the war, King's Chapel in Boston, the original Episcopal church of Massachusetts, became Unitarian under the lead of its pastor, James Freeman (1785). The liturgy was modified to omit all passages objectionable to Unitarians. In 1786, Mr. Freeman sought ordination from Bishop Seabury in Connecticut. At an examination which he sustained before the convocation, he declared his belief in the unity of God and the entire distinction of Christ from God, and explained the divine attributes of Christomnipotence, omniscience, etc. as derived from the Father. He was accordingly refused ordination, and subsequently ordained by his own church, congregationally. He remained in the pastorate of King's Chapel till his death, exercising a wide influence. His preaching was attractive, polished, plain, and practical. That he never rose to the height of the sublimest themes of the gospel may easily be seen from the volume of sermons published in 1821. Upon Good Friday he preached upon "The Tenderness of Jesus," at Christmas upon "Jesus Christ the Prince of Peace," in which sermon, after mentioning the work of Christ as consisting in two particulars--that God in him reconciles us to himself, and that the Savior is the author of inward peace, or tranquility of heart--he goes on to discuss the latter under the heads that Christ (1) teaches us the value of true humility, (2) creates true piety, and (3) teaches us to practice true benevolence. Under (2) he incidentally gives us his view of the character of God, which is a kind of abridgment of his whole theology. He says:
He came . . . to reveal to the whole of the human race the most important of all truths, which was before known to one favored nation only--that there is one God, who has always existed and always will exist; whose power is unlimited, and who is everywhere present; who is not blind and insensible like fate, but who possesses moral attributes, and can be adored and feared and loved; who is wise, just, and good; who created the heavens, the earth, everything which we behold, and which we can even conceive; who gives us every blessing which we enjoy; who never sports with the miseries of his creatures, but who delights in making us happy, and whenever he afflicts us, has a wise and gracious design; who is not only our maker and governor, but our friend; who has compassion on our infirmities, is ready to pardon our sins as soon as we repent, and pities us as a father pities his own children; and who in particular so loved the world as to send his son to reveal these consolatory truths. We need hear no more. If there is such a being, our hearts are at rest. The prince of peace has expelled every doubt and terrour.
Thus Unitarianism in its essential features--in its denial of the divinity of Christ, of total depravity, of the expiatory nature of the atonement --and in the characteristic style of its preaching, was established in Boston before the close of the eighteenth century, though not yet in any of the original Congregational churches, at least professedly.
In Connecticut, two clergymen were removed from their parishes by council about the beginning of the century, one of whom, Rev. John Sherman, published at Worcester, in 1805, a work defending Unitarianism, entitled One God in One Person Only and Jesus Christ a Being Distinct from God, etc., in which he went over the entire argument for the Trinity and attempted to overthrow it at every point, principally by exegetical arguments. He was somewhat dependent upon Emlyn.
In 1795 Timothy Dwight had been called to the presidency of Yale College, to find that institution thoroughly permeated with the spirit of French infidelity. He grappled with the situation at once, and by the strength of his character as well as his mind soon produced a great revulsion of sentiment and a general return to evangelical religion. About the year 1800, largely in consequence of influences emanating from New Haven, a revival of religion spread over southern New England, resulting in a new period in the religion and theology of America. Massachusetts and Harvard had suffered in like manner with Yale, although the theological tendency was quite another, as our history has detailed. The revival seems to have had little or no influence here, and no such man as Dwight appeared who could reverse the current; and soon a decisive step was taken which confirmed the influence of Unitarianism for long years.
The chief position of theological influence in Massachusetts was the professorship of divinity in Harvard College, founded in the early part of the eighteenth century by Thomas Hollis, an English Baptist. This professorship fell vacant in 1803, and was filled in 1805, after a sharp contest, by the appointment of Henry Ware. It was generally understood, and soon became certain, that he was a Unitarian. Some discussion of the propriety of this step followed, and a good many fugitive tracts were published upon the main question, but no general controversy arose. It was, however, felt that Harvard would no longer be a suitable place for the education of orthodox ministers, and a theological seminary was founded in Phillips Academy at Andover (1808).
In 1810, appeared Noah Worcester's Bible News, one of the most original and respectable of these earlier discussions, the unsophisticated boldness of which was perhaps the chief reason why it seemed to have little influence on the Unitarian side. His doctrine is "that the self-existent God is only one person . . . that Jesus Christ is God's own Son . . . that by the Holy Ghost is intended the fullness of God, or the efficient, productive emanations of the divine fullness." "Person" he defines as "intelligent being," and therefore denies three persons in one God as being a contradiction.
The most important portion of the book is that occupied with the person of Christ.
Two ideas are naturally suggested by the title, the Son of God, viz., divine origin and divine dignity. By divine origin I do not mean that the Son of God is a created intelligent being; but a being who properly derived his existence and his nature from God . . . Adam was a created being; Seth derived his existence from the created nature of Adam . . . So it is believed that the only begotten Son of the Father derived his existence from the self-existent nature of God.
His argument for this position is the plain meaning of the term "Son." The divine dignity of the Son came from his divine origin and from the communication to him of the divine fullness, whereby he did divine works, creation, etc. This pre-existent Son of God "became the Son of man by becoming himself the soul of a human body." Incidentally Worcester brings out many suggestions as to the unity of the person of Christ to which the orthodox should have paid more attention, as when he speaks of the "identity of the Sop of God and the Son of man." The possibility of the suffering of Christ in his divine nature he grounds in his difference from the underived and self-existent God, who is impassible. To this Son are due divine honors because of "the will of God."
With such discussions as these Unitarianism progressed slowly. But without exciting much attention, till in 1815 there was republished in Boston a part of a life of Lindsley by Belsham, both English Unitarians, in which the progress of Unitarianism in America was described to Lindsley by letters from Unitarians in this country. The work was reviewed by the Panoplist, and a sharp controversy arose upon the necessity of a separation between the orthodox and the Unitarians. Channing wrote upon this topic; but the beginning of the theological controversy was made by him in a sermon preached at the ordination of Jared Sparks, subsequently president of Harvard College, in the year 1819.
Upon the eve of this controversy, by far the most important event in the history of Congregational theology, it is necessary that we pause to review briefly the leading positions which New England theology had gained. We have now followed it to a point of high development, from its very beginning. We have seen that the occasion of modification in every case was the presence of some real danger to the faith: with Edwards, of Arminianism; with the younger Edwards and his associates upon the doctrine of the atonement, of Universalism: or else it was the inherent power of a new principle; with Hopkins, that of disinterested benevolence; with Emmons, that of agency as exercise. In their own conception the New England fathers were always defending the truth, not by giving it up, but rather by stating it better. Thus they remained in conscious sympathy with their Calvinistic fathers, and thus called themselves Calvinists, and quoted and taught the Westminster Catechism, though in fact they had substantially abandoned the philosophy and many of the minor doctrines of the Westminster scheme. For the arbitrary will of God they had substituted his character, love; for a sinful nature, a nature occasioning sin; for imputation, a strict personal responsibility; for a limited, a general atonement; for a bound, a free will; for a satisfaction to justice in the atonement, a governmental example; for irresistible grace, unresisted. Not all points were clear; not all antitheses as sharp as later; not all necessary details worked out. Hence their reply, when they were first attacked, was bungling, confused, and largely ineffective. On the other hand, the assailant, Channing, was a product of advanced orthodox thinking. At first himself substantially orthodox, he had followed out certain of the principles of the new divinity far beyond their logical conclusions into an extreme which, while false, was so clear and comprehensible, as extreme positions when superficially considered often are, that it was rendered easy for him to avail himself of his great power of luminous and trenchant discourse to give plausibility, attractiveness, and large influence to his views. We shall see that the natural result followed, that the favorable moment of acknowledging what was good, of pointing out what was extreme in the positions of the Unitarians, and thus of winning them back to the evangelical theology, was lost, while only slowly did the orthodox learn what the controversy had to teach them, and that at the expense of costly contentions among themselves.
Channing's sermon, preached upon the occasion of the ordination of a professed Unitarian, in a city, Baltimore, where such views were novel and regarded with the greatest suspicion, left the usual path of ordination discourses for an elaborate exposition and defense of Unitarianism. It treated its subject under two heads: principles adopted in interpreting the Scriptures, and the doctrines drawn by this interpretation from the Scriptures. Under the first head the principles of interpretation generally recognized by sound exegesis were detailed, such as the necessity of attention to the context, the subject discussed, the purpose, etc., of the writer, and the genius of the language employed. In all this there was little to be criticized, except some indications of the manner in which the principles enumerated would be applied. A defense of human reason is also introduced, denying its depravation so as to be unworthy of our confidence, emphasizing our responsibility for a right use of it, and rejecting the possibility of believing manifest contradictions under the guise of truths above reason.
We ought, indeed, to expect occasional obscurity in such a book as the Bible, which was written for past and future ages as well as the present But God's wisdom is a pledge that whatever is necessary for us, and necessary for salvation, is revealed too plainly to be mistaken, and too consistently to be questioned, by a sound and upright mind. It is not the mark of wisdom to use an unintelligible phraseology, to communicate what is above our capacities, to confuse and unsettle the intellect by appearances of contradiction. We honor our Heavenly Teacher too much to ascribe to him such a revelation. A revelation is a gift of light. It cannot thicken our darkness and multiply our perplexities.
Under the second head the first doctrine considered was the unity of God, "or that there is one God, and one only."
We understand by it that there is one being, one mind, one person, one intelligent agent, and one only, to whom underived and infinite perfection and dominion belong . . . We find no intimation that this language was to be taken in an unusual sense, or that God's unity was a quite different thing from the oneness of other intelligent beings.
He continues:
We object to the doctrine of the Trinity that, whilst acknowledging in words, it subverts in effect, the unity of God. According to this doctrine, there are three infinite and equal persons, possessing supreme divinity, called the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Each of these three persons, as described by theologians, has his own particular consciousness, will and perceptions. They love each other, converse with each other, and delight in each other's society. They perform different parts in man's redemption, each having his appropriate office, and neither doing the work of the other. The Son is mediator, and not the Father. The Father sends the Son, and is not himself sent; nor is he conscious, like the Son, of taking flesh. Here, then, we have three intelligent agents, possessed of different consciousnesses, different wills, and different perceptions, performing different acts, and sustaining different relations; and if these things do not imply and constitute three minds or beings, we are utterly at a loss to know how three minds or beings are to be formed. It is difference: properties, and acts, and consciousness, which leads to the belief of different intelligent beings, and, if this mark fails us, our whole knowledge falls; we have no proof that all the agents and persons in the universe are not one and the same mind. When we attempt to conceive of three Gods, we can do nothing more than represent to ourselves three agents, distinguished from each other by similar marks and peculiarities to those which separate the persons of the Trinity; and when common Christians hear these persons spoken of as conversing with each other, loving each other, and performing different acts, how can they help regarding them as different beings, different minds?
This is the principal argument, though the usage of the New Testament is variously urged. "We challenge our opponents to adduce one passage in the New Testament where the word God means three persons, where it is not limited to one person, and where, unless turned from its usual sense by the connection, it does not mean the Father." The impossibility of stating the doctrine in scriptural language is urged. The injury of the doctrine to devotion, "not only by joining to the Father other objects of worship, but by taking from the Father the supreme affection which is his due and transferring it to the Son," is commented upon. "The worship of a bleeding, suffering God . . . awakens human transport rather than that deep veneration of the moral perfections of God which is the essence of piety."
The second doctrine considered is the unity of Christ. Channing delivers his objection to the orthodox doctrine in the following terms:
According to this doctrine, Jesus Christ, instead of being one mind, one conscious, intelligent principle, whom we can understand, consists of two souls, two minds; the one divine, the other human; the one weak, the other almighty; the one ignorant, the other omniscient. Now we maintain that this is to make Christ two beings. To denominate him one person, one being, and yet to suppose him made up of two minds, infinitely different from each other, is to abuse and confound language, and to throw darkness over all our conceptions of intelligent natures. According to the common doctrine, each of these two minds in Christ has its own consciousness, its own will, its own perceptions. They have, in fact, no common properties. The divine mind feels none of the wants and sorrows of the human, and the human is infinitely removed from the perfection and happiness of the divine. Can you conceive of two beings in the universe more distinct? We have always thought that one person was constituted and distinguished by one consciousness. The doctrine that one and the same person should have two consciousnesses, two wills, two souls, infinitely different from each other, this we think an enormous tax on human credulity.
He objects to the orthodox doctrine, therefore, principally in the name of simplicity and clearness of thought, but he also urges against it the teaching of the New Testament.
Other Christians, indeed, tell us that this doctrine is necessary to the harmony of the Scriptures, that some texts ascribe to Jesus human, and others divine properties, and that to reconcile these we must suppose two minds, to which these properties may be referred. In other words, for the purpose of reconciling certain difficult passages, which a just criticism can in a great degree, if not wholly, explain, we must invent an hypothesis vastly more difficult, and involving gross absurdity. We are to find our way out of a labyrinth by a clue which conducts us into mazes infinitely more inextricable.
In opposition to this he propounded the doctrine that Christ was "one mind, one being, and a being distinct from the one God." The Scripture argument may be compressed in the single paragraph:
He is continually spoken of as the Son of God, sent of God, receiving all his powers from God, working miracles because God was with him; judging justly because God taught him, having claims on our belief because he was anointed and sealed by God, and as able of himself to do nothing. The New Testament is filled with this language. Now we ask what impression this language was fitted and intended to make? Could any who heard it have imagined that Jesus was the very God to whom he was so industriously declared to be inferior?
The argument from the relations of the doctrine to the atonement is also considered, and the infinity of the atonement denied because only the human nature could have suffered. Indeed, this fact reduces, according to Channing, the whole humiliation to a fiction, since the God, who was the real Christ, "was infinitely happy at the very moment of the suffering of his humanity."
What exactly Christ was, whether mere man or angelic being, Channing does not at all attempt to say.
Up to this point Channing had said little to betray his own connection with the New England school. His vindication of the reason was, indeed, the position which anyone who had at all imbibed the spirit of the bold speculation of these theologians from Edwards down must take. He is presenting a new issue, and forcing it upon the attention of his contemporaries. It is the same great objection which Emlyn had made--the call for a justification or a surrender of an unintelligible doctrine of God and Christ. What had been done in public consideration of that objection as yet was entirely inadequate. Channing not only demanded, he secured a new consideration. This was his position and service in the controversy.
He advances next in the Baltimore sermon to the "moral perfection of God."
We believe that God is infinitely good, kind, benevolent, in the proper sense of these words--good in disposition as well as in act; good not to a few but to all; good to every individual, as well as to the general system.
He maintains also God's justice, but it is a justice consistent with the benevolence of God, which he defines as "God's infinite regard to virtue or moral worth expressed in a moral government; that is in giving excellent and equitable laws and conferring such rewards and inflicting such punishments as are best fitted to secure their observance." All this is in entire agreement with Hopkins, from whom Channing cordially acknowledged that he had received many ideas. But the application of the principle was entirely different from that of Channing's New England predecessors. The two doctrines of total depravity, both in its original Calvinistic form, and in the form which it had taken under the modification of Edwards, and of election, are declared inconsistent with God's moral perfection, and to be rejected.
According to the plainest principles of morality, we maintain that a natural constitution of the mind, unfailingly disposing it to evil, and to evil alone, would absolve it from guilt; that to give existence under this, condition would argue unspeakable cruelty; and that to punish the sin of this unhappily constituted child with endless ruin would be a wrong unparalleled by the most merciless despotism.
The next doctrine considered is the atonement. Jesus came to effect "a moral or spiritual deliverance of mankind." He accomplishes this by a variety of methods, by his instructions and example, and by his death. As to the force of his death, Channing says that Unitarians are not agreed. Some think "that we ought to consider this event as having a special influence in removing punishment, though the Scriptures may not reveal the way in which it contributes to this end." He strongly objects to all views, as dishonorable to God, which maintain that his disposition toward men is changed by the death of Christ; and, particularly, the doctrine of satisfaction to justice, even in the form that the death of Christ is in any sense an equivalent for the punishment of men, is unbiblical and impossible. "According to this doctrine, God, instead of being plenteous in forgiveness, never forgives."
The sermon closes with a head upon the nature of Christian virtue, in which the positive doctrine is Edwardean, but the negative part consists in objections to irresistible grace and infused character, with remarks upon the duty of charity and love, against which nothing is to be said, except that possibly a subtle plea for latitudinarianism was hidden under the phraseology employed.
Channing engaged again in the controversy, but, except in form, or in greater fullness at certain points, he added little to the contribution which he made in this historic sermon. In the sermon upon "Unitarian Christianity Most Favorable to Piety" (1826) he objects very strongly to the doctrine of the incarnation as infringing upon the spirituality of God, and renewed his objections to the doctrine of an infinite satisfaction for sin, comparing the cross to "a gallows in the center of the universe," and terming the idea of a satisfaction "wholly delusion." Nowhere is his power of felicitous statement more conspicuous than in this sermon, and nowhere is his fundamental objection to all Calvinism more evident. He rejects it because it is, as he thinks, a contradiction of the reasonableness of the divine love.
Thus we see that Channing was intimately acquainted with the teachings of our New England leaders, especially with those of Hopkins, and that in some respects his positions had grown out of theirs and represented the extreme to which those positions could be pushed. It was therefore incumbent upon New England orthodoxy, not only because of the force with which he had presented it with a new issue, vital to itself in common with all evangelical theology, but because its own essential character and the validity of its own positions and their evangelical soundness were all put to the question, to answer Channing thoroughly.
The challenge of Channing was taken up by Moses Stuart, professor of sacred literature in Andover Seminary, in Letters published at Andover (1819). He accepted with some slight criticisms Channing's general discussion of the principles of interpretation, and then passed to the treatment of the main doctrines discussed.
On the Trinity he began the discussion with the words:
Admitting that you have given a fair account of our belief, I cannot see, indeed, why we are not virtually guilty of tritheism, or at least of something which approximates so near to it that I acknowledge myself unable to distinguish it from tritheism. But I cannot help feeling that you have made neither an impartial nor a correct statement of what we believe and what we are accustomed to teach and defend.
But it is evident that some justification for his understanding of current orthodoxy might have been urged by Channing, as even Stuart was ready to admit. Emmons, for example, who had been, ten years before, the most prominent figure among the New England leaders, uses the following language in his sermons upon the Trinity:
The Scripture represents the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost as distinctly possessed of personal properties. The Father is represented as being able to understand, to will, and to act of himself. The Son is represented as being able to understand, to will, and to act of himself. And the Holy Ghost is represented as being able to understand, to will, and to act of himself. According to these representations, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are three distinct persons or agents.
He speaks also of "Society" in the Godhead, of the different persons making a "covenant of redemption," and teaches that there are three persons, not in one person, but in one being. This is a denial of the uni-personality of God. In a word, almost all the phrases to which Channing objects are to be found in Emmons, as well as in many a lesser light of orthodoxy.
Stuart's positive reply to Channing consisted in emphasizing, first, the numerical unity of the Godhead.
I am now prepared to say that I believe that God is one, numerically one, in essence and attributes. In other words, the infinitely perfect Spirit, the Creator and Preserver of all things, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, has numerically the same essence, and the same perfections, so far as they are known to us. To particularize; the Son possesses not simply a similar or equal essence and perfections, but numerically the same as the Father, without division, and without multiplication.
He next affirms that "the Son (and also the Holy Spirit) does, in some respect truly and really, not merely nominally or logically, differ from the Father." The objection of Channing had been, however, that this difference was so conceived as to destroy the unity which Stuart had just now reasserted. He consequently felt himself compelled to adjust the two ideas, which he attempted to do by a discussion of the word "person."
The common language of the Trinitarian symbols is, that there are three persons in the Godhead." In your comments upon this, you have all along explained the word person, just as though it were an established point, that Trinitarians use this word in such a connection, in its ordinary acceptation as applied to men. But can you satisfy yourself that this is doing us justice? What fact is plainer from church history, than that the word person was introduced into the creeds of ancient times, merely as a term which would somewhat strongly express the disagreement of Christians in general with the reputed errors of the Sabellians, and others of similar sentiments, who denied the existence of any real distinction in the Godhead, and asserted that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, were merely attributes of God, or the names of different ways in which he revealed himself to mankind, or of different relations which he bore to them, and in which he acted? The Nicene fathers meant to deny the correctness of such views, when they used the word person. They designed to imply by it, that there was some real, not merely nominal, distinction in the Godhead; and that something more than a mere diversity of relation or action of the Godhead in respect to us, was intended. They used the word person, because they supposed it approximated nearer to expressing the existence of a real distinction, than any other which they could choose. Most certainly, neither they, nor any intelligent Trinitarian, could use this term in such a latitude as you represent us as employing it, and as you attach to it. We profess to use it merely because of the poverty of language; merely to designate our belief of a real distinction in the Godhead; but not to describe independent, conscious beings, possessing separate and equal essences and perfections. Why should we be obliged so often to explain ourselves on this point? Is there any more difficulty here, or anything more obnoxious, than when you say: "God is angry with the wicked every day"? You defend yourself in the use of such an expression, by saying, that it is only the language of rhetoric and figure; that it is merely intended to describe that in the mind of the Deity, or in his actions, which corresponds in some measure, or in some respect, to anger and its consequences in men; not that God is really affected with the passion of anger. Why will you not permit me, then, to say that we speak of persons in the Godhead, in order to express that which in some respect or other corresponds to persons as applied to men, i. e., some distinction: not that we attach to it the meaning of three beings, with a separate consciousness, will, omnipotence, omniscience, etc.? Where, then, considering the poverty of language in respect to expressing what belongs to the Deity, is our inconsistency in this, or how is there any absurdity in our language, providing there is a real foundation in the Scriptures on which we may rest the fact of a distinction, which we believe to exist?
He says further:
I receive the fact that it exists, simply because I believe that the Scriptures reveal the fact. And if the Scriptures do reveal the fact that there are three persons in the Godhead (in the sense explained); that there is a distinction, which affords grounds for the respective appellations of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; which lays the foundation for the application of the personal pronouns, I, Thou, He; which renders it proper to speak of sending and being sent; to speak of Christ as being with God, being in his bosom, and of other things of the like nature in the like way, and yet to hold that the divine nature belongs equally to each; then it is, like every other fact revealed, to be received simply on the credit of divine revelation.
This was, in a sense, the reduction of the Trinity to its lowest terms--to a form of statement in which there could be nothing to quarrel about because it was so low and indistinct. Yet some elements of definiteness were left. He continues:
In regard to this distinction, we say: It is not a mere distinction of attribute, of relation to us, of modes of action, or of relation between attributes and substance or essence, so far as they are known to us. We believe the Scriptures justify us in these negations. But here we leave the subject. We undertake (at least the Trinitarians of our country with whom I am acquainted undertake) not at all to describe affirmatively the distinction in the Godhead. When you will give me an affirmative description of underived existence, I may safely engage to furnish you with one of person in the trinity. You do not reject the belief of the divine self-existence, merely because you cannot affirmatively define it; neither do we of a distinction in the Godhead, because we cannot affirmatively define it.
And he warns Channing against confounding "terms which are unintelligible, and things which are undefinable."
Stuart then brings forward a number of examples from church history to show that early writers, particularly Tertullian, had not succeeded very well in presenting clear affirmative definitions of the distinction between the different "persons" of the Trinity. He does not find the Nicene Fathers themselves to have been more successful. The doctrine of "eternal generation" which they presented Stuart did not find to possess any "definite meaning" to his mind. Any intimation of the derivation of the divine nature of the Son he regards as trenching upon his supreme divinity, which, if it is divinity at all, must be underived. "The Nicene creed then is not, I must confess, sufficiently orthodox for me," he says. He thus briefly indicated as a part of his reply to Channing the elimination from the theology of the Trinity of the doctrine of eternal generation. He later expanded these ideas in letters to Dr. Miller on his Eternal Generation. His position, as more clearly expressed there, was as follows:
The subject necessitated "two inquiries, viz., Is the generation of the Son eternal? and, Is that generation voluntary or necessary? . . . In other words, Did the early Fathers believe that the Logos was not only eternal, but that he was Son eternally?" 42 Stuart believed that the Logos was "truly eternal," but he questioned whether he was "eternally the Son of God." He was thus led into an elaborate examination of the Fathers and of the various definitions of eternal generation which have been given, with the general result that they are full of contradictions both of expression and of thought. The "generic idea of eternal generation" he finds to lie in the "general idea of derivation and dependence, in some respect or other, of the Logos upon the Father." This idea he conceives to be inconsistent with self-existence, and so to be impossible of application to the Logos, who is God, and therefore self-existent.
The following passage expresses his fundamental objection to the doctrine:
Any theory, then, respecting the person of the Son of God which makes the Logos a derived being, destroys the radical principle--an elementary ingredient, of his true and proper divinity. I believe that the Logos is really and verily divine--self-existent, uncaused, independent, immutable in himself. Derivation in any shape or in any measure; as to all or part of his essential predicates as God--whether you apply to it the name generation, emanation, creation, procession, or any other term which has been used--derivation, I say, appears essentially incompatible with proper divinity. And so plain does this appear to my mind that, if I once admit the proper derivation of the Logos (be the derivation eternal or in time), the idea of the supreme divinity vanishes in a moment; and the Logos ranks with those who are called God only from some resemblance, either of station or of office, or of moral or intellectual qualities, to the self-existent deity.
His own doctrine of the sonship is as follows: (1) "Christ is called the Son of God because, in respect to his human nature, he is derived from God." He refers at this point to Luke 1:35. "John says not a word concerning the Son until he has mentioned the incarnation of the Logos." (2) As Messiah.
This thoroughgoing rejection of the "eternal sonship," which is an essential part of the New England answer to Unitarianism, as formulated by Stuart, though not technically belonging to the reply to Channing, relieved somewhat the difficulties raised by him. But Stuart had more fundamental answers to make. He declared that Unitarians were as incompetent to define the unity of God as the orthodox were his trinity. He thus anticipated in everything but sharpness of form N. W. Taylor's exposure of the fundamental fallacy of Unitarianism, which consisted, as he said, in the assumption, totally unwarranted, that the unity of God is like our unity, and, because this is a perfect simplicity, that of God's must also be.
Familiar as the assertion is, in your conversation and in your sermons, that God is one, can you give me any other definition of this oneness, except a negative one? You deny plurality of it; you say God is but one, and not two, nor more. All this is mere negation. In what, I ask, does the divine unity actually and positively consist? God surely has different and various faculties and powers. Is he not almighty, omniscient, omnipresent, holy, just, good? Does he not act differently, i. e. variously, both in the natural and in the moral world? Unity, therefore, is not an universal sameness of attribute or of action. Does it consist, then, appropriately in his essence? . . . Is it possible to show what it is, which constitutes the internal nature of the divine nature or attributes? To show how these are related to each other, or what internal distinctions exist? . . . The assertion that God is one means, when fairly and intelligently understood, nothing more positively than that he is numerically one, i.e., it simply denies polytheism . . . That God is one, does not mean that there is but one simple element in his nature (for this we do not and cannot know), but that there is in him only one intelligent agent . . . In respect to principle, then, what more difficulty lies in the way of believing in the threefold distinction of the Godhead, than in believing in the divine unity?
He closes this portion of the discussion by an ingenious answer to the brief and common argument of Unitarians: "How can three be one, and one three?"
In no way, I readily answer, provided the one and the three both relate to the same specific thing, and in the same respect. "How then is the doctrine of the Trinity in Unity to be vindicated?" In a way, I would reply, which is not at all embarrassed by these, or by any of the like, questions . . . Suppose I should affirm that two subjects A and B are numerically identical in regard to what may be called X, but diverse or distinct in regard to something else called Y; is there any absurdity or contradiction in this affirmation? . . . We do not maintain that the Godhead is three in the same respects that it is one, but the reverse. In regard to X, we maintain a numerical unity; in regard to Y we maintain a threefold distinction.
Stuart now advanced to Channing's second and more vital point--his objection to the orthodox doctrine as destructive of the unity of Christ. The reply is all summed up in the one sentence that the doctrine of the two natures in Christ is "a fact with which natural religion has no concern; at least, of which it has no knowledge." The determination of the dispute must therefore lie exclusively in the sphere of exegesis. But rational elements could not, of course, be wholly excluded, and Stuart recognizes the difficulty which Channing had formulated afresh, which was the old difficulty handed down from Chalcedon unsolved: how to conceive of Christ, while both divine and human, as truly one person, possessed of a single consciousness. Chalcedon itself had so balanced the two natures over against one another as almost to render a true unity impossible Calvinistic theology since had emphasized the twofoldness at the expense of the unity. Stuart did the same. He intended to maintain the unity, for he says that we "recognize and distinguish, in this complex being, but one person, and therefore speak of but one." He even went so far as to make some suggestions as to how this union was effected.
God cannot divest himself of his essential perfections . . . In whatever way, then, the union of the two natures was effected, it was so brought about that it neither destroyed nor essentially changed, either the divine or human nature . . . One person in the sense in which each of us is one, Christ could not be.
The last sentence might seem to deny the unity of the person of Christ; but the context shows that Stuart meant one person, made up in the same manner as we, Christ could not be. He continues:
One person in the sense in which each of us is one, Christ could not be. If we, with some of the fathers, make God the soul and Jesus of Nazareth the body of Christ, then we take away his human nature, and deny the imperfection of his knowledge. But may not God have been, in a manner altogether peculiar and mysterious, united to Jesus, without displaying at once his whole power in him, or necessarily rendering him, as a man, supremely perfect? In the act of creation, God does not put forth all his power; nor in the preservation of created things; nor in sanctification; nor does be bring all his knowledge into action, when he inspires prophets and apostles. Was it necessary that he should exert all his attributes to the full, when he was in conjunction with the human nature of Christ? In governing the world from day to day, God does not surely exhaust his omnipotence, or his wisdom. He employs only so much as is necessary to accomplish the design which he has in view. In his union with Jesus of Nazareth, the divine Logos could not, of course, be necessitated at once to put forth all his energy, or exhibit all his knowledge and wisdom. Just so much of it, and no more, was manifested, as was requisite to constitute the character of an all-sufficient and incarnate Mediator and Redeemer. When necessary, power and authority infinitely above human were displayed; when otherwise, the human nature sympathized and suffered like that of other men.
This passage contains suggestions which Stuart never expands and which received scanty attention from his contemporaries. It is a little uncertain what he meant. He may have foreshadowed the same ideas which were later embraced in the theory of the "kenosis;" or, more probably, he was echoing the Lutheran theory that Christ "surrendered, during the period of his humiliation, the use of the divine attributes." But though he intended to maintain the unity of Christ's person, he repeatedly surrendered it in this brief passage. "God . . . united to Jesus:" consistent maintenance of Christ's unity would put it, "God united with humanity," for there was no Jesus till that union was complete, and Jesus was that one person who was both God and man. "Rendering him as a man supremely perfect:" here you have the division of the one personality so that some things are to be true of his consciousness as man which are not true of that same and undivided consciousness as God; which is rending the unity. And then that word "conjunction," what does that mean? The divine and human were not in conjunction, but in union. Neither was the divine Logos in "union with Jesus of Nazareth." And his later and more formal definition is equally defective: "When we say that the two natures of Christ are united in one person, we mean to say that divinity and humanity are brought into such a connection in this case, that we cannot separate them, so as to make two entirely distinct and separate agents." How far short that falls of maintaining two natures in the unity of a single consciousness.
Inasmuch as this is all of the rationale of the matter which Stuart presents, confining himself hereafter to proving from the Bible the reality of each of the two natures in Christ, he must be judged to have failed in answering the sharp demand of Unitarianism since the days of Emlyn for an intellectual justification of the doctrine of the person of Christ. To this extent the orthodox reply upon the whole was a failure, for others did no better than Stuart did. No one in this period, except the Unitarians, made a reality of the unity of the Redeemer's person. Hence there was no advance in the doctrine of Christology. The Unitarians surrendered the divinity to maintain the unity, and their opponents surrendered the unity, in all but words, for the sake of maintaining the two natures. The controversy at this point only serves to illustrate the nature and urgency of the problem. It is at least doubtful whether the orthodox even saw what the problem was.
The real strength of Stuart's reply, and the element which enabled the evangelical churches to maintain themselves and cast off the Unitarian attack, lay therefore elsewhere. In the battles of thought, as of those of arms, the precise gage thrown down is seldom taken up. Stuart had the larger justification of his method in the fact that he was an exegete and not a dogmatician. In him, for the first time in the history of New England theology, a thoroughly scholarly critic of the New Testament appears upon the stage. The meaning and importance of a genuine theological seminary were beginning to be seen. Emmons had taken for his text, when about to preach his initial sermon upon the Trinity, the spurious text of the three heavenly witnesses (1 John 5:7). Stuart fell into no like mistake, but with scholarly, accuracy, and with an amplitude of learning which had had no precursor and had no rival, he set forth the biblical argument for the divinity of Christ in the forms which it has since maintained in New England. Christ is called God; there are ascribed to him divine attributes and works--omniscience, omnipotence, eternity; and divine honors are paid to him. The true humanity is also treated at considerable length. Channing, as Stuart remarks with surprise, had never maintained clearly that Christ was truly and properly a man. But Stuart left no doubt upon this subject. In all this we may the more confidently judge that Stuart was, in general, right, that the standard exegesis seems now to have accepted the biblical argument as conclusive, if the investigator accepts biblical authority at all. The position of modern opposers of the Trinity is curiously different from that of the early Massachusetts Unitarians. Instead of denying that John, for example, taught the divinity of Christ, in order to obtain support for their own rejection of it, they at once and most cordially admit that he did and then proceed to get rid of this fact by taking it as a proof that "John" was not written by John, but is the product of a much later period. As that eminent Unitarian scholar, Dr. George E. Ellis, once said, upon the basis of the view of the inspiration and authority of the Scriptures which was common to orthodox and Unitarian at this time, the orthodox certainly had the best of the argument.
The total effect, however, of Stuart's method of reply was in one respect damaging to evangelical theology. Orthodoxy came out of the battle victorious, but maimed. The doctrine of the divinity of Christ was rescued so as to become a practical portion of the faith of our churches, and the real basis of its worship and spiritual life. But the doctrine of the Trinity, viewed as a mere fact, totally inexplicable, and reduced to the simple matter of "distinctions" within the Godhead, lost its place as the great fundamental doctrine of the system. Men did not know what to do with it. It has almost been regarded as a burden upon the system of Christianity. Its apologetic value, especially in the defense of the eternity of God and the doctrine of the creation of matter; its relation to Christian consciousness, as a consciousness of sin and redemption; and its constructive part in the erection of Christian theology, incarnation, atonement and the rest--have all been largely forgotten. The fear of tritheism has led many a thinker to occupy at times a position scarcely distinguishable from unitarianism. Rationalism can be defeated only by rationalism; and when the false rationalism of the Unitarians was met only by a biblical argument, and not by a true rationalism, the poison of that false rationalism entered to a considerable degree into the theological man and made him too often, in the later days of the school, himself a rationalist.
Stuart's vigorous book brought out soon a sharp answer from a writer who was afterward to be famous as a professor of theology at Cambridge--Andrews Norton, in his Statement of Reasons for Not Believing the Doctrines of Trinitarians respecting the Nature of God and the Person of Christ (1819). It seems to have been regarded as conclusive by the Unitarians, for they left it to stand as their only serious attempt at an answer. It was, however, comparatively weak upon the exegetical side, where Stuart was strong, and only strong upon the dogmatical side, where he had been weak.
Norton's fundamental objection to the Trinity is that it is incredible. Thus he says: "Three persons . . . are three Gods. A person is a being . . . The doctrine of the trinity, then, affirms that there are three Gods." And this is a contradiction to the doctrine of one God also affirmed by Trinitarians. After some just criticism upon the phrase "fountain of divinity" used in the ancient church of the Father, who, if the Trinity is eternal and necessary, can be no more underived than the Son or the Spirit, Norton declares that Stuart's doctrine of three "distinctions" is "a mere evasion introduced . . . for the purpose of rescuing it from the charge of absurdity," and then charges him, with less justice, with immediately relapsing into the common belief. If he were consistent, Stuart would teach a merely nominal Trinity. He affirms, says Norton,
that there is a threefold distinction in the divine nature, that is in the nature of this one person. But of the nature of any being we can know nothing but by the attributes or properties of that being. We conceive that this is at the present day a fundamental and undisputed principle in metaphysics. Abstract all the attributes or properties of any being, and nothing remains of which you can form even an imagination. These are all which is cognizable by the human mind. When you say therefore that there is a threefold distinction in the nature of any being, the only meaning which the words will admit (in relation to the present subject) is that the attributes or properties of this being may be divided into three distinct classes, which may be considered separately from each other . . . But this is nothing more than a modal or nominal trinity.
Norton then passes to Christology, where he adds nothing to Channing but certain forcible statements of the argument. He shows, however, distinctly that Christ was a true man; and then puts his argument briefly: Because he was a man, he was not God. One new argument as to the Trinity which lay outside of the province of a sermon like Channing's, he introduced, viz., a review of the history of the doctrine, in which he traced it to Greek philosophy, and presented "its gradual introduction, its slow growth to its present form, the strong opposition which it encountered, and its tardy reception among the great body of common Christians" as conclusive proofs of its falsity. He had, naturally, no conception of a development of doctrine, and demanded of the primitive church a nineteenth-century philosophic statement of every doctrine which she might legitimately hold, as he did of the Scriptures a perfect dogmatic statement of every position which they should be permitted to teach. His exegesis was by no means competent to meet such a scholar as Stuart. Unitarianism was too clearly the truth, in his mind, to admit of the plodding and exact studies of words and constructions which was characteristic of the new learning as Stuart managed it. His easy treatment of Phil. 2:5 is an illustration of his exegetical defects. "It is now conceded that the passage is incorrectly rendered. But Professor Stuart, though he allows this, still thinks the text of too much value to be given up; and by retaining a part of the old mistranslation (supposing ___ to denote equality instead of likeness) and substituting a new one instead of that which is lost (understanding _____ to mean being or nature) he has contrived to press it again into service." Norton himself says: "____ is used sometimes to denote equality, and sometimes likeness. The reasons which determine us to adopt the latter signification in the present passage are sufficiently obvious." They are!
We conclude our review of Norton with his brief statement of the Unitarian position at this time:
Christianity, we believe, has taught the Unity of God, and revealed him as the Father of his creatures. It has made known his infinite perfections, his providence, and his moral government. It has directed us to look up to him as the Being on whom we and all things are entirely dependent, and to look up to him with perfect confidence and love. It has made known to us that we are to live forever; it has brought life and immortality to light. Man was a creature of this earth, and it has raised him to a far nobler rank, and taught him to regard himself as an immortal being, and the child of God. It has opened to the sinner the path of penitence and hope. It has afforded to virtue the highest possible sanctions. It gives to sorrow its best and often its only consolation. It has presented us, in the life of our great Master with an example of that moral perfection which is to be the constant object of our exertions. It has established the truths which it teaches upon evidence the most satisfactory. It is a most glorious display of the benevolence of God and of his care for his creatures of this earth.
Stuart had replied only to those portions of Channing's sermon which dealt with the Trinity and Christology. Unable to continue the work, he requested his colleague, Leonard Woods, to review the remaining topics of the sermon. This he did in his Letters to Unitarians (1820). We shall be the briefer in our review of this tract because it does not further the development of New England theology particularly, since it is a defense rather than a piece of constructive work. To a considerable extent it is engaged with showing that many of the positions which Channing had implied belonged to the Unitarians, were equally maintained by the orthodox.
After some preliminary remarks, Woods therefore begins his reply with the topic of the moral perfection of God. He accepts, as Channing had done, the Hopkinsian theory that love expresses the whole moral character of God, but passes immediately to the moral government of God as growing out of his love. God promotes the happiness of his kingdom by laws, accompanied with promises and threats. These are good, and so is their execution. The fatherhood of God is next touched upon, and necessary qualifications in the analogy between divine and human paternity drawn. And then Woods passes over to the consideration of total depravity, against which Channing had objected, and which was to become the principal subject of discussion, as it, indeed, lay at the foundation of the whole controversy. The reply consisted in defining the doctrine in the following terms: "That men are by nature destitute of holiness; or that they are subjects of an innate moral depravity; or, in other words, that they are from the first inclined to evil, and that, while unrenewed, their moral affections and actions are wholly wrong." This proposition he established by a long Scripture argument, in which his endeavor is simply to show that the depravity mentioned is a fact. Incidentally he takes occasion to express his rejection of the doctrine of imputation.
It should be remarked that Woods's ideas upon the inductive nature of theology are strongly and excellently expressed. He did not prevent the discussion, however, from passing into the sphere of the rational.
Woods then takes up the subject of election. He admits in the beginning that there is some justification from Channing's objections in the form of expression often employed by the orthodox. In reply to his opponent, he first considers the Scripture argument for election, and then criticizes certain incorrect views and representations of the doctrine, such as that election is "arbitrary," "unconditional," when it is meant that there is no condition of atonement and repentance. The charge of injustice in election is then strongly refuted by pointing out that "salvation is in all instances of grace." He suggests that the reasons for election are "reasons of state." He also endeavors to justify the consistency of election with free agency in the following manner, in which no theoretical explanation is attempted:
As I am a creature of God, I exist as I am, namely, a moral agent, according to his purpose. And if God's purpose, determining my existence as a moral agent, is consistent with my actually existing as such; why may not his purpose, determining the exercises of my moral agency, be consistent with the existence of such moral exercises. The following positions, which I think conformable to sound reason and philosophy, express my views in brief. God first determines that man shall be a moral agent, and that in all the circumstances of his existence he shall possess and exercise all his moral powers. And then God determines that, in the perfect exercise of all his moral powers, he shall act in a certain manner, and form a certain character. The determination of God, thus understood, instead of being inconsistent with moral agency, does in fact secure moral agency. In regard to this subject, it aims at nothing and tends to produce nothing but the uninterrupted exercise of all our moral powers.
The reply to the following points was less important. Woods. insisted upon the origin of the atonement in the love of God, and hints, while explaining away certain objectionable expressions, at his own theory of the atonement, the governmental. Still, the immediate connection of the love of God with every feature of the atonement is not brought out. The failure to state the theory upon its ideal side was the relative justification of Channing's objections; but Woods could not supply this defect in his predecessors. Divine influence is then taken up. The leading objection of Channing, that it was irresistible, was answered by saying "that the Holy Spirit operates in such a manner as to offer no violence to any of the principles of an intelligent and moral nature; that it always produces its effects in the understanding according to the essential properties, and laws which belong to the understanding, and in the will and affections without interfering with any of the properties and laws which belong to them." The influence is efficacious, but not overpowering.
After some other topics had been discussed, the tract was brought to an end with an estimate of the practical influence of the two systems--an argument essentially invidious and therefore improper in such a discussion.
Professor Henry Ware, who since his appointment as Hollis professor had not engaged in public controversy, now addressed Letters to Trinitarians and Calvinists (Cambridge, 1820). Upon the unity of God, he said that, although the orthodox professed a belief in the Divine Unity, Unitarians held that orthodox theories rendered it an impossibility. Stuart's mode of stating the doctrine reduced "the trinity to a mere unmeaning name, and were it not an abuse of language of mischievous tendency, would leave nothing on the subject that need be thought worth contending about." Woods, he says, makes no attempt to show the consistency of the doctrine of depravity with the moral perfection of God, but simply tries to show that it is a fact, whereas its consistency with God's character is a part of the evidence, whether it is a fact or not. He therefore charges Woods with failure. He then passes to the natural character of man, which, he declares, is the main question at issue between the orthodox and the Unitarians. His own view he thus expresses:
Man is by nature, by which is to be understood as he is born into the world, as he comes from the hands of the Creator, innocent and pure; free from all moral corruption, as well as destitute of all positive holiness; and until he has, by the exercise of his faculties, actually formed a character either good or bad, an object of the divine complacency and favor. The complacency and favor of the Creator are expressed in all the kind provisions that are made by the constitution of things for his improvement and happiness. He is by nature no more inclined or disposed to vice than to virtue, and is equally capable in the ordinary use of his faculties and with the common assistance afforded him, of either. He derives from his ancestors a frail and mortal nature; is made with appetites which fit him for the condition of being in which God has placed him; but in order for them to answer all the purposes intended, they are so strong as to be very liable to abuse by excess. He has passions implanted in him which are of great importance in the conduct of life, but which are equally capable of impelling him into a wrong or a right course. He has natural affections, all of them originally good, but liable by a wrong direction to be the occasion of error and sin. He has reason and conscience to direct the conduct of life, and enable him to choose aright, which reason may yet be neglected or perverted, and conscience misguided. The whole of these together make up what constitutes his trial and probation. They make him an accountable being, a proper subject to be treated according as he shall make a right or wrong choice, being equally capable of either, and as free to the one as to the other.
It subsequently appears that he believes in the universality of sin, in the sense that all men sin, and he even says that the "all have sinned" of Rom. 5:12 means "all who are capable of sinning, all as soon as they are capable of it, all as soon as they are moral agents" --which is just what Woods had said. But he rejects total depravity, maintaining that "there is much of good as well as of evil in the human character and in the conduct of man;" that "as much as there is of wickedness and vice, there is far more of virtue and goodness . . . and that even in the worst of men good feelings and principles are predominant, and they probably perform in the course of their lives many more good than bad actions." The proof of these statements is chiefly from the results of "observation." With a short proof of the inconsistency of depravity with the character of God, Ware closes this part of his letters.
Ware, though thus presenting the barest Pelagianism himself, had somewhat the better of Woods because he had identified Wood's doctrine with that of the Westminster Confession. This he had a perfect right to do, for Woods had signed the Confession upon entering upon his professorship; and more, his view of the facts of human nature was precisely that of Westminster, though he had already begun to modify the underlying philosophy in connection with the other New England divines. Individual expressions, such as "penal evils" applied to the consequences among his descendants of Adam's sin, were a sufficient warrant for Ware's method of conducting the discussion. Woods was indeed in an unfortunate position, and the root of his difficulty was that he still retained the old twofold division of the mind--the causative nature of motives, and the Edwardean idea of freedom. He was not, therefore, in fact entirely free from the supralapsarianism which tinges the Confession, and had survived even in Hopkins. Hence Ware opened the subject of election by identifying the doctrine of Woods with that of Westminster. He states it:
That, without any foreseen difference of character and desert in men, before he had brought them into being, he should regard some with complacency and love, and the rest with disapprobation, and hatred, and wrath; and, without any reference to the future use or abuse of their nature, should appoint some to everlasting happiness, and the rest to everlasting misery; and that this appointment, entirely arbitrary, for which no reason is to be assigned, but his sovereign will, should be the cause and not the consequence of the holiness of the one and of the defect of holiness of the other.
He then brings in objections which were as keenly felt by the orthodox as by himself, and so has an easy victory over his supposed antagonist. But in all this he had not sharply stated and thoroughly argued the true question. Woods had clearly declared that he believed in reasons for the electing purpose of God. Other New England divines had also made them to reside in the wisdom and goodness of God. There was no objection in any New Englander's mind to making them to consist partly in the foreknowledge of what the man would be; only it must be the foreknowledge of his natural aptitudes, his probable usefulness, the certainty that he would yield to such influences as God could consistently bring to bear upon him, etc. Did God elect upon foreknowledge of faith? Or is the holy influence of God the occasioning cause of faith? That was the real question; but Ware gives it little attention. In fact, he confounded throughout the love of complacency and that of benevolence as he does in the passage just quoted. No Calvinist ever held that God "without any foreseen difference in character" regarded some "with complacency." Benevolence comes first; upon it election is founded; out of election comes the foreknowledge of holy character; and then first, in view of this holy character, comes complacency.
It will not be necessary to delay over the remaining portion of Ware's Letters. His method is the same in treating of the atonement and of divine influence. Upon the atonement he sharply demanded a new rationale of the doctrine.
According to orthodoxy "it was the same God, the same being, who sent and was sent, who made the atonement and whose anger was appeased by the atonement, who made satisfaction to offended justice and whose justice was satisfied. It is not enough to assert that the Father and Son are two as really as Moses and Aaron, though not in the same sense, nor in any sense inconsistent with their being one! It belongs to him who asserts this to state intelligibly what is the nature and import of the distinction here intended; to explain in what sense two, and in what sense one. No man knows better than Dr. Woods that until he has done this, he has done nothing to the purpose. He uses words without meaning, and merely casts a mist where he is bound to shed light."
His own view may be condensed in that statement that the efficacy of the sufferings and death of Christ consist "not in their appeasing the anger of God and disposing him to be merciful, but in their moral influence on men, in bringing them to repentance, holiness, and an obedient life, and thus rendering them fit subjects of forgiveness and the divine favor." "The salvation of the best men is of Grace, not of debt, what they cannot demand as a right, yet may claim on the ground of the divine promise." In this connection he once more makes the yet unanswered Unitarian demand for a rationale.
It is admitted that if the premises are true, the conclusion does follow [that the sufferings of Christ derived their worth from the dignity of his divine nature]; if Jesus Christ is both perfect God and perfect man in one individual person, the defence is complete. But, in the first place, I remark that the possibility of two distinct intelligent natures making but one person, has never been shown to the smallest degree of satisfaction; especially of two natures so distinct and distant as the divine and human, a finite and an infinite mind . . . But this is not all. The identity of person is not only shown to be impossible upon the trinitarian hypothesis. The only ground upon which some of the strongest objections to the trinitarian doctrine, that part of it which consists in the supreme deity of Jesus Christ, can be evaded is by the assumption of two distinct persons in Jesus Christ . . . of this indeed he was ignorant as a man, but he knew it as God, and this he might truly say he was unable to do as man, though as God he could do all things . . . With these brief hints I am willing to leave the reader to make up his judgment "how far the views of the orthodox in this case are capable of being defended in a satisfactory manner."
Ware rejected not only the doctrine of irresistible grace, which he must do and did upon the same principles as he urged against election, but also all special grace tending to conversion.
The influence and agency of the Spirit of God is to be acknowledged in the whole of that discipline which is intended to improve, exalt, and perfect our nature, or to correct any wrong tendencies it may have acquired, and restore it to a right direction and its previous purity . . . Not a direct and immediate agency, but such as we see exercised in everything else through the universe; God bringing about his ends by a variety of means and employing in them the subordinate agency and instrumentality of his creatures.
The Letters close with a defense of the practical influence of Unitarianism.
Woods replied to Ware in the following year in a pamphlet entitled A Reply, and incidentally did something to help on the discussion. He brought out the fact that Ware judged the character of men by a wrong standard, viewing them too much in the aspect of their individual deeds, as if these were to be considered each by itself, whereas men are subjects of the moral government of God, and the question as to their character is the question of their fundamental relation to God's law and will. He distinguishes clearly between the natural affections and true moral purpose, between kindliness and holiness. But nothing substantial was added to the argument, nor by the Answer, Remarks, and Postscript, which were still to come.
With these works the controversy, as a formal interchange of arguments, came to an end. There was a long series of more or less popular discussions, in which many preachers, not inconsiderable theologians, engaged. The full answer of New England theology was not rendered, however, till one more writer, N. W. Taylor, of New Haven, had presented his reply.
Taylor did not deem Stuart's answer to Channing very effective, thinking it quite as possible for a theologian to say too little as to say too much. He vindicated the right of Trinitarians to declare that they meant no contradiction by affirming a Trinity. He then defined the Trinity thus: "God is one Being in such a sense as to involve three Persons in such a sense that by his tri-personality he is qualified for three distinct, personal, divine forms of phenomenal action." He thus gave a personality to each of Stuart's "distinctions," yet not an independent personality. That there may be a being having such a tri-personality Taylor endeavors to show by considering the possibility of Spinoza's conception of the universe as one being, with the result that this conception cannot be declared a priori an impossibility. The fundamental error of the Unitarians consists, he declares, in their pretending to be able to decide positively that such conceptions are impossible a priori. They take the common phenomenal conception of being, derived from our own consciousness, as the only and universal conception; and then affirm that it excludes tri-personality. When they reflect upon the unity of God, they declare that the utter want of all evidence from the unity of God for his tri-personality is decisive proof that he is not tri-personal. He then discusses the presumption in favor of the Trinity from the work of Christ, and thus incidentally touches upon Christology, without, however, contributing anything to meet the repeated demand of the Unitarians for a rationale. He finally discusses the interpretation of the Scriptures upon these doctrines, and maintains, on the one hand, that the Unitarians acknowledge that there is something peculiar in the language of the Bible requiring special interpretation, and, on the other hand, that the older Trinitarians, in their doctrines of generation and procession, have not shown that the modified use of language which they demand for the expression of their position is de usu loquendi.
The position in which New England theology was left by this controversy may be summarily expressed by the following heads:
1. The doctrine of the Trinity itself was more firmly than ever believed to be grounded in the teachings of the Scriptures, though it had taken a depotentiated form from which it did not recover during the career of the school.
2. The divinity of Christ was established afresh as a biblical doctrine, and its practical effects upon life and worship were well secured; but the doctrine of his person was thrown into even greater confusion than it had previously been in, the unity of his person, still nominally maintained, being almost lost in consequence of the style of argument adopted to maintain his divinity.
3. In the anthropological portion of the debate the New Englanders had found themselves greatly hampered by the unsatisfactory condition of their theory of the will. But they took practically the position that man is truly free and an uncaused agent in his own volitions. Thus maintaining the corruption of human nature and the universality of sin, they affirmed, though without successful adjustment, both the freedom of man and his voluntariness in all sin, and the certainty of his future sinful actions. The priority of grace, and the foundation of gifts of grace in the divine purpose, they maintained with as great constancy.
4. The benevolence of God in respect to both of these elements--both the entrance of sin into the world with its resulting corruption of our nature, and the election of men with its consequent "praeterition" of some--was defended with a success only modified by the weak spot in the theory of freedom, and became tenfold stronger as an inalienable component of the system.
5. Something was done, though not much as yet, to exhibit the connection of the atonement with the love of God, as its consummate and necessary expression.
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