The GOSPEL TRUTH

A GENETIC HISTORY OF THE

NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY

By

FRANK HUGH FOSTER

1907

 CHAPTER XV:

The New School In Presbyterianism

It was inevitable that the theological movement which has been traced should have a great influence upon the Presbyterian church. It had become dominant in Congregationalism, and whatever was dominant there must command the attention of the leaders of a church which from the beginning had been inextricably involved with Congregationalism. Some of the early Congregational churches had been Presbyterian in their internal government rather than democratic. The great churches of Long Island, and particularly New Jersey (Newark, Elizabeth, etc.), which had become the main support of early Presbyterianism, were of New England origin, and originally Congregational. The most numerous and strongest religious element in the emigration which began to build up the West, even before the Revolution, came from New England, and carried an attachment to Congregationalism into the new home. In 1801 an agreement, called the "Plan of Union," was entered into between the General Association of Connecticut and the General Assembly of the Presbyterian church, whereby Congregational churches might form relations with presbyteries, and Congregational ministers might serve Presbyterian churches and have a connection with presbytery. When Lane Seminary was founded, Lyman Beecher, one of the most prominent Congregational ministers of Boston and a strong representative of the new school, was called to the professorship of theology (1832). Union Theological Seminary in New York was a union of Prestbyterians and Congregationalists (1836), and was supplied with professors principally from New England. The number of members and ministers who have passed from Congregationalism to Presbyterianism in the settlement of the western states from the beginning till now has been very large.

From an early point this intermingling of Congregationalists with Presbyterians, and the consequent influence of the new school upon the theology of the Presbyterian church, was looked upon with suspicion. Edwards was called to be president of Princeton College, and his son of Union College. But as the theology of Hopkins and particularly Taylor, began to be understood (or, rather, misunderstood), antagonism to Congregationalism began to develop, till in 1837 it culminated in the abrogation of the "Plan of Union," to be followed in 1838 by the separation of the new-school element, and the formation of the New School Presbyterian Church. This result was brought about by the old-school and high-ecclesiastical element in the church, aided by the southern element and their northern, pro-slavery friends. Congregationalism was distrusted and disliked for its theology, for its democratic influence in church polity, and for its anti-slavery attitude. It might be supposed that the old-school element would now regard itself as done with Congregationalism, and let it alone. But this was impossible, for Congregationalism still continued to exert a most powerful influence throughout the entire West in every Presbyterian church and ecclesiastical gathering. Princeton specially recognized in everything New England a permanent enemy, and Professor Charles Hodge set himself so determinedly to oppose all its emanations, whether in the theological or in the ecclesiastical sphere, that he occupied a large portion of his time in this work, and had, in particular, an epoch-making controversy with Professor Park. His standard charge against Taylorism was Pelagianism. "There is no ghost which so greatly disturbs Dr. Hodge," said Professor Park on one occasion, "as that of Pelagius, unless it be that of Semi Pelagius!" In fact, Dr. Hodge showed no ability, and but little desire, to understand the New England men. He so constantly misinterpreted them that he soon lost all influence in opposing their speculations among thinking men, and may be entirely neglected in a history of the school. He may be safety left by the historian of a progressive school of theology to the natural consequence of his own remark that during the many years of his predominance at Princeton that institution had never brought forward a single original thought.

In the New School Church the new-school theology was of course, dominant. Yet, as that church continued to pledge her ministers to the Westminster Confession, it was not to be expected that she would develop enough of the spirit of freedom to prove theologically productive. She was, in fact, remarkably sterile. She received her ideas from the New England thinkers, and spent her own theological strength in the effort to adjust them to the Confession. She did not produce in all the thirty-one years of her separate existence one single great theologian. Hence her ecclesiastical individuality may be left out of the account in the following pages. Her writers will be treated simply as members of the New England school. Of these the greatest was Henry B. Smith.

We begin, however, with an earlier teacher, the famous Lyman Beecher. Born in Connecticut, and a pupil of Dwight at New Haven, he became famous in connection with the Unitarian controversy in Massachusetts, and became a Presbyterian upon going to Lane. He joined the New School church at the time of the division, and thus became one of its most important leaders. His Views in Theology, issued in connection with his trial before the Synod of Cincinnati for departure from the Westminster Confession, are the most valuable source of knowledge as to his special theology.

Were we engaged in the external history of the churches, or of our theology, we should therefore have much to say as to Lyman Beecher. His Bible a Code of Laws at Park Street Church, Boston (1818), his Worcester sermon at the ordination of Mr. Hoadley (1823), and his Rights of the Congregational Churches of Massachusetts (1826), were all powerful blows against the rising Unitarianism of the day, and clear theological defenses of the New England theology at the points in dispute. But in all these he was on the defense, and they contribute nothing to the further exemplification of the doctrines of the school or of his own thinking. The Views suffers under the same limitation, since it was his defense before the Synod of Cincinnati against charges of heresy. It is engaged in exhibiting his agreement in doctrine with the Westminster Confession, and carefully avoids theoretical statements which might bring him into conflict with either the philosophy underlying that Confession, or even its phraseology. Had he ever published his theological lectures, they would probably have been found to suffer under the same unfortunate necessity of considering a document beyond which he had actually passed in his theologizing. We know from his biography that he was a warm friend and ardent admirer of Taylor, and agreed substantially with him in his theology. At one point this fact appears even under the restrictions of a defense, for he adopts Taylor's phrase "power to the contrary." "Choice," he says, "without the possibility of other or contrary choice, is the immemorial doctrine of fatalism." Again: "Their [the early Fathers'] doctrine of free will is . . . the antifatalism doctrine of mind free as uncoerced in choice, and with the power always of contrary choice." And still again: "The Confession of Faith teaches plainly and unanswerably the free agency and natural ability of man, as capable of choice, with the power of contrary election." But in general we only see what he might have done, had he only been himself as free as the will was whose freedom he was advocating. He is strong in the advocacy of a real power of choice, a real natural ability to choose. To the proof of the proposition that ability and obligation are commensurate he devotes many pages. The following passage deserves quotation as being one of the best interpretations of Augustine which have ever been given:

Down to his time, the free will and natural ability of man were held by the whole church, against the heretical notions of a blind fate, of material depravity, and of depravity created in the substratum of the soul. The great effort, hitherto, had been to maintain the liberty or uncoerced action of the mind in choice, with the power of contrary choice. But now Pelagius arose and denied the doctrine of the fall; and from this spot it became necessary, not so much to prove natural ability which Pelagius admitted, as to prove moral inability, which was as much opposed to the Pelagian heresy as natural ability was to that of the Pagan philosophers, the Gnostics and the Manichaeans. The church had now to enter upon a new controversy, and to fix her eye upon the question, `what were the consequences of the fall?' The question of free agency was no longer to be argued, for that was not now controverted. Both Augustine and Pelagius admitted it . . . The question indeed turned upon the same words, viz., free will; but it did not mean the same thing. The question between them was, is the will unbiased? Is it in equilibrio? It was not whether it was free from the necessity of fate, or the coercion of matter, or of created depravity; but the question was, has the fall given it a bias? has it struck it out of equilibrio? and struck the balance wrong? Pelagius said, no. Augustine said, yes; and while in opposition to Pelagius he denied free will, meaning unbiased will; he was as strong in favor of free will in the other sense as any of the fathers before him; as strong as I am: so that if I am a Pelagian, Augustine was a Pelagian; although his whole strength was exerted against Pelagius. If what I teach is Pelagianism, then Augustine, and Calvin, and Luther, and all the best writers of the church in this age have been Pelagians, except the few who deny natural ability.

In the last sentences Beecher voices the answer of the whole New England school to the standing charge made against it by Princeton.

But, strange to say, though familiar with Taylorism, Beecher fell into confusion as to the nature of the moral government of God, and repeatedly refers regeneration to the "almighty power" of God, "as really so as the creation of worlds or the resurrection of the dead!" It would seem as if Taylor had forever established the doctrine that the moral government of God was not conducted by force. But, alas, no!

Henry B. Smith received his theological instruction from Leonard Woods, of Andover, and at greater length from Enoch Pond, of Bangor. Woods, we have seen, was a moderate follower of Hopkins, and as an adherent of the "taste scheme" would be called a member of the "old school" in New England theology. He exercised a large influence over Smith, short as was the period of their connection. Pond was a pupil of Emmons, and the marks of Emmons' influence are very clearly traceable in the Lectures which he published at the close of his theological career; but what had survived at that distant date were chiefly the analytical method of discourse, the simplicity and clearness of thought, the emphasis upon plain common-sense, and the general agreement with the New England thinkers upon the great doctrines of the evangelical system. The tone of the whole is far more biblical than that of Emmons' Sermons had been.

To note a few features of Pond's system:

His treatment of the divine authority of the Bible closes with the argument from the witness of the Spirit, to which he gives one of the best statements ever made. He says:

I have but another argument to urge in favor of the divine authority of the Bible--the same which was urged in support of its truth: it is that which the Christian finds in his own soul. "If any man," saith Christ, "will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God." True Christians have fulfilled the condition here proposed, and they realize the truth of the promise. They do know of the doctrine that it is of God. They find such a blessed agreement between the representations of Scripture and the feelings of their own hearts that they cannot doubt as to the divine origin of the Bible. It must have proceeded from the same Being who knows the hearts of his children perfectly . . . This argument has more weight, probably, than every other, with Christians in common life, to remove their doubts and give them a settled, unwavering faith in the truth and divine authority of the sacred word.

That is, as we trace certain of our own experiences to the agency of God, so we trace the book which records the same experiences to the same hand. Like effects, the same cause.

As to the Trinity, Pond shows the effects of Stuart's work in modifying the sharp and gross distinction of persons between the members of the Trinity which Emmons had made.

The distinctions in the Godhead are commonly called persons; and if this word is understood with some necessary qualifications, there is no objection to it. When used in relation to this subject, it cannot mean (what it commonly does) that those to whom it is applied are entirely separate beings, like three human persons; for this would he inconsistent with their essential unity. But in some sense, and to, some extent, the divine persons are distinct. They are so far distinct that they may properly speak, or be spoken of, in the plural number. They may use the personal pronouns, I, thou, and he, in reference to each other. They are represented as entering into a covenant, and as holding an infinitely blessed intercourse and communion, one with another. They are said also to discharge different offices and works . . .

Neither is the doctrine thus stated self-contradictory. To say that God is one and three in the same sense, would be a contradiction. But to say that God is in some sense one, and in some other sense three, is no contradiction."

As to the will, his doctrine is entirely the Edwardean determinism. His formulation of its law is in simpler language, but less felicitous than Edwards' own: "The will is always as the strongest motive." The "power of contrary choice" he regards as an Arminian position. His definition of freedom may be added to the museum of psychological curiosities which the readers of this history cannot have failed of accumulating. It is this: "It consists in voluntarily yielding to the strongest motives.

On the foundation of obligation and the nature of virtue Pond is entirely Edwardean. He did not follow Taylor in his endeavors to improve theodicy, maintaining stoutly that God could prevent all sin without impairing free will. He regards it as a strong argument for this position that God can convert sinners, not perceiving that restoring from some sin is quite a different thing from preventing all sin. In regeneration, he follows Emmons in identifying regeneration, conversion, and sanctification, as in nature the same, and in making the Spirit of God "the efficient cause of all holy affections," though he makes man himself the "agent" or "active cause."

It is evident from Smith's later work that he carefully studied Emmons, and that he fundamentally rejected his peculiarities, as both Woods and Pond led him to do. But when he had arrived at the point of constructing a theological system for the instruction of his pupils, he had received, first of all the theologians whose work has passed under our eye, the full influence of a wide acquaintance with the theologians of Germany, and through them with those of all Christian history. Owing to the character of his published works upon theology, which are mere fragments, and those fragments of lectures designed to introduce the student to theology rather than to set forth a complete system, it will ever remain doubtful to the historian whether he had a truly originative and creative capacity. He was certainly a great historian. The tradition handed down by his friends is that he was a great theologian. But that tradition remains unverified by his actual productions. Whether it be true or not, he was certainly a very receptive mind. His works are full of citations from a wide range of reading, and are equally full of criticism of the most trenchant and suggestive sort. He brought into our theology for the first time the influence of the entire Christian world of thought. In this historical review we have had occasion to observe the effect upon our theology of the importation of influences from abroad of an essentially hostile character. That effect may be concisely stated as the creation of the Universalist-Unitarian theology, on the one hand, and of the formation of the theology represented best by Professor Park, on the other. We have now to see what will be the effect upon it of the reflections of a mind so widely informed and variously disciplined as was Henry B. Smith.

First, was his theology New England theology? Was the effect of his wider introduction to the field of Christian thought obtained at the best universities of Europe to exhibit the thought of his native New England in so unfavorable a light as to lead him to turn aside from it as inadequate and to build upon other foundations and after a different plan? Or could he retain the chief results of the dogmatical development here and build on after the same general plan, and in the same spirit, as his predecessors? The return to America and the call to theological thinking of so great a mind as Smith's was a critical moment for our theology. What would a gifted son who had gone out into the wider world think of his home?

It is distinctly and decidedly to be answered that Smith remained a member of the New England school. He found as others have after him, that Germany had much to teach him, especially in enlarging his conceptions of what theology was, in opening new problems, in giving depth and breadth to his thinking. It was here that he got a profounder view of the relation of "faith and philosophy." Here he came to see the lack in many of the forms of New England theology of a "principle," as the Germans call it, a starting-point, a norm by which all the thinking of the theologian is to be guided, and a germ which shall contain the secret of the whole system. But he found that no thinking has been more thorough than that of the New Englanders upon many of the themes of the discipline, and that at many a point New England had advanced far beyond Germany. Not to discard, nor to uproot and destroy, did he return and take his place among teachers and laborers in his native province, but to honor the past, to conserve the valuable, to advance as he should be able, and everywhere to deepen and enlarge. To note certain particulars:

He taught that benevolence is the one comprehensive moral attribute of God. In accordance with this, justice is finally public justice, and "punishment is needful to express the displeasure of a holy God against sin as ill-deserving, and also to preserve the love of holiness and hatred of sin in others." Human virtue is determined by this idea. It is "love to God as being in effect all being;" or, otherwise stated, it is the "love of all intelligent and sentient beings, according to their respective capacities for good, with chief and ultimate respect to the highest good, or holiness." This is strictly Edwardean. Edwardean also was the theory of the will. To be sure, Smith did not follow Edwards in all the minor points of his theory. Thus he adopted the threefold division of the faculties of the soul in place of the twofold, and was much clearer as to causation. "Man," he says, "acting as will, choosing, is an efficient cause; among second causes in this world, the chief; a dependent, but real cause. There is proper causal efficiency in every act of choice. Power is an attribute of cause: it is the distinctive attribute of an efficient cause: it is that in the cause which gives it its efficiency in respect to any particular end or object." He expands the terminology of the subject to follow Dr. Richards in distinguishing between the executive and immanent volitions, defining the latter as Taylor had defined "primary, predominant choice." Germany is drawn upon for the distinction between formal and real freedom, as had been done by Park. He does much to relieve the Edwardean theory of misunderstandings, and of unnecessary complications. But he finally comes fully to the Edwardean position that "the will always acts according to the strongest motive," or, as he elsewhere phrases it, more in accordance with Edwards, "always choosing that which in the view of the mind is most desirable." And in the theory of the atonement he is one with the New England school in rejecting the theory of a satisfaction to distributive justice, and in making the service of the sacrifice of Christ to consist in "satisfying the demands of Public justice, meaning . . . what the divine holiness sets before itself as the chief end of the universe, or that which is the end of the requirement of the law."

These positions, which are the cardinal positions of the New England school, fully identify Smith with that school.

At the same time, he did not go to the lengths of single teachers in respect to extreme positions. The phrase, "All sin consists in sinning," which was characteristic of the Emmonian strain, and which Professor Park fully accepted as a most valuable and illuminating suggestion, Smith contrasted with the other phrase, "All men sinned and fell in Adam," and said: "Each of these plants itself on one side of the dilemma, as containing the whole truth; and each of these taken strictly by itself, is about as true, for the solution of the problem, as the other; for each neglects the other, and leaves unaccounted for about half of the difficulty." Hence, while rejecting "immediate imputation," he finally adopts a position of "mediate" imputation. One cannot but feel that here is a trace of the undue influence of the Westminster Confession upon a New Englander who had consented to accept this yoke; for, after all, Smith found "neither immediate nor mediate imputation fully satisfactory." He refers the corrupt nature of men to heredity.

On account of this innate depravity, all men, mankind as such, are exposed to evils . . . For this native corruption before act, we need not say that the person who is the subject of it will receive, or deserves everlasting death. It is a liability, exposure--justly such; but not personal desert. The desert of eternal death is a judgment in respect to individuals for their personal acts and preferences. Until such choice there cannot be, metaphysically or ethically, such a judgment.

He goes back with some satisfaction to Edwards' treatment of imputation. But, in fact, with his view of moral action, he is only entangling himself in phraseology which was formed under the influence of another philosophy, and which only impedes him in the expression of his thought.

An interesting incidental topic is his treatment of the governmental theory of the atonement which he, in general, espoused. He divides this theory into two forms, of which the first is the form which views the atonement as "having reference to happiness or expediency, in maintaining the divine government." The two representatives chosen for this form are Grotius and N. W. Taylor. It is quite evident that Smith had no adequate idea of Grotius. He refers to Baur and is open at least to the suspicion of not having read Grotius himself. Baur did not understand Grotius. Smith accordingly fails to note the great point of the Grotian theory, that it changes the idea of God from that of offended party to that of ruler; to give a true estimate of its office of law and punishment; or to show that Grotius thought the atonement to maintain the authority of the law by effecting the same thing that the punishment of men under the law would have done, viz., the prevention of sin among the subjects of the law. Law certainly was no more "individual, personal . . . exclusively" to Grotius than it was to Smith when he wrote, upon the following pages: "Moral law has two main ends, to secure the supremacy of holiness in the universe, to furnish the rule for individuals." Grotius' "consulting for the order of things and for the authority of [God's] own law" does not differ essentially from Smith's "maintenance of the supremacy of holiness." Nor is Smith's treatment of Taylor much more successful. He understands Taylor, when including holiness in happiness, to mean the same thing as he does himself, when distinguishing between holiness and happiness. Unsatisfactory in some respects as the statements of the New Haven theologians had been from Dwight down, they did not mean substantially anything different from Smith whose statement was so much better.

The second form of the theory is that which makes the atonement to have reference to holiness as the end of all moral government. He identifies government and law, since government is by law; and the atonement is that sacrifice of Christ which answers the end of public justice--that is, substantially effects, by the substitution of Christ for the sinner, just what would have been effected under the law by the punishment of the sinner. "It secures the highest good of the universe, viewed as true happiness as well as holiness." This is the form which Smith adopts.

Returning for a moment to the name of Nathaniel W. Taylor, one of the interesting inquiries as to Smith's theology is upon its relation to Taylorism. It might be anticipated that he would find little in the special work of Taylor to commend, rejecting as he did the fundamental proposition which Taylor made as to the will. Taylor taught "power to the contrary," or a real prime causality in man; while Smith remained upon the platform of the Edwardean determinism. He therefore rejects Taylor's positions in respect to the prevention of sin. With Park, he maintains that God can prevent sin in a moral system, thus rejecting the positive form of Taylor's favorite hypothesis. Its hypothetical form does not diminish its offense in his eyes very much. "On this basis, sin could never be certain in the system." He thus held up before Taylor his great failure in this topic, either to combine freedom and certainty by a rational explanation, or to drop the idea of certainty in its strict Calvinistic, mathematical application. He himself refers God's ability to prevent sin to his omnipotence, as he may upon the Edwardean basis, thus exhibiting how completely he failed to accept the new proposals as to moral government, and furnishing a new proof, if one was needed, that the Edwardean "moral" government did not differ essentially from the government of external nature, both being by force. He finally says:

The only question which can be proposed in respect to vindicating the divine government, and the point to which any theory that attempts to solve the question must come, is this: To show why a holy and benevolent God chose a system in which sin was to be a matter of fact, and why the existence of sin in that system was a condition of its being the best system. Understanding that to be the question, it may be said that the theory that sin is the necessary means of the greatest good fairly undertakes to meet the question, though it does not answer it. But the other theory does not meet the question. It merely says that in the best system free agency involves the possibility of sin, and that there cannot be a moral system without free agents. The theory thus leaves the question and problem wholly undecided. No relief can be found in a scheme which limits divine omnipotence.

Smith has here entirely forgotten the place of Taylor's argument in his system, which was to remove an objection to the benevolence of God by introducing a hypothesis which should evacuate the objection; not to solve the question of the permission of sin.

The same attitude is held in reference to other points in the system. The efforts of Taylor to establish the existence of a neutral point in the soul to which preaching could appeal, receive no proper attention, but the unfortunate phraseology which he adopted as to "self-love" is made the ground of a definition of his position which admits of an easy refutation, viz.: "My happiness in the general happiness is the spring and sum of virtue." The position that "all that is moral is in voluntary action" is said to resolve all original sin into physical depravity. Taylor's neutral state, which was introduced according to him by the Holy Spirit, "suspending the selfish principle," is characterized as "neutral, yet always producing sin" --a characterization of which Taylor would have said that it had no correspondence to his meaning. And so forth.

Smith thus joined Park in rejecting the advanced positions of Taylorism. In one theological center alone did they receive full recognition--in Oberlin. The foremost representatives of the school thus united in saying, at the end of the development, that Calvinism could not be maintained upon a theory of freedom.

What, now, did Smith do in the way of advancing the New England problems? The answer cannot be a very satisfactory one. He had early seen the necessity of a better "principle" in our theology, and a great vision of what it ought to be had risen before him. He formulated it as "Incarnation in order to Redemption," which ought to be the principle "which gives the true center of unity to the whole theological system, that in which the whole system hangs together and moves together, the principle in the sense that all the parts can be best arranged in relation to it." If his thought can be reconstructed from his various expressions of it in abstract form, it would seem to have involved a new point of approach to the system; for example, man as a sinner and needing something, which something should be defined from his needs as redemption, which redemption should be developed as involving incarnation, and this the Trinity, etc. This would have involved a new use of Christian experience, such as that made by Stearns and Foster in connection with the German, Frank, and it would have effectually disposed of the Calvinism of the system, when due attention had been given to all its implications. But no such new approach was adopted by Smith. His system moves along the old paths, and his division into "antecedents of redemption," "the redemption itself," and "the kingdom of redemption" is scarcely more than a verbal suggestion of his principle. He himself recognized this failure to realize his early visions and aspirations. Whatever the explanation of it may be, the fact remains that he did not introduce his principle into the development of the system.

Nor did he contribute much to carry the system farther on at points where it sadly needed it. The Unitarian challenge to exhibit the possibility of the old Chalcedon formula, one person in two natures, had never been met. Germany was doing something really to meet it. Smith knew this. He presented clearly the central importance of the unity of the person to Christology, and he put the personal center, the Ego, unmistakably in the divine element. But, though he knew Dorner's suggestions as to the gradual development of the incarnation, and the kenotic suggestion as to the divine self-limitation in the incarnation, he adopted neither for himself, nor brought them forward in such a way as to furnish any appreciable help.

As an apologist, Smith appears at greater advantage. His Introduction to theology is full of valuable generalizations, gives evidence of the widest reading and fullest knowledge, and is illuminating and stimulating in a high degree. The Apologetics proper give a great outline of a learned and cogent argument, and cause the greater regret for their incompleteness by the greater evidence which they give of the entire competence of their author. And yet, nothing can be more plain to the reader of today than that both of these works belong to a bygone age. How completely this is so one may judge from the simple fact that the plan for the "Ely Lectures" upon evolution which Smith had been appointed to give in the year 1877, regards the evolution which began with the work of Darwin as a member of the long series of speculations which have gathered about this word. "The history of evolution," he says, "is as old as human thought. Its materialistic forms were advanced and rejected in the dawn of philosophy. It is now newly formulated (by Spencer more ably than any other)." Thus the vital consideration that an age of exact observation of facts, such as had never been known, had been ushered in, and that all reasoning was to take on new forms in consequence, had entirely escaped him. As a representative of the old apology, Smith had had no predecessor in America; as an apologist for the new age, he was incapacitated by the fact that he did not live in it. Evolution can never be rightly appraised nor its relation to Christian theology set forth by one who begins with the idea that ancient philosophy stands upon a level with the inductive science of the present day. The historic spirit, so strong in Smith, blinded him to the fact that a right method of investigation had made the nineteenth century absolutely revolutionary in human thinking.

Smith's immediate successor at Union Seminary was William G. T. Shedd. He was a son of New England, and graduated in theology at Andover while Woods was in the chair of theology and Park in that of homiletics. But while a student in Vermont University he came in contact with Coleridge's philosophy, under the influence of President Marsh, and thus received a philosophic tendency which led him far away from the positions of the New England divines. Of Edwards' doctrines as to the will he retained only the idea of determinism, which was, however, more of a Burtonian position with Shedd than an Edwardean. The Nature of Virtue he entirely abandoned, denying that benevolence was the single moral attribute of God, and refusing to accept "public justice" as being justice at all. The proposition that obligation is commensurate with ability he acknowledged, but he put the ability in Adam, not in us. He taught that all sin is voluntary, but made original sin the voluntary sin of every individual man in Adam. He totally rejected the New England doctrine of ability to repent, and declared its preaching injurious to sinners, thus reacting to the paralyzing position of the Puritan epoch. He rejected the governmental theory of the atonement. And he was so far opposed to Taylorism that he did not think it worthy of mention, and the name of N. W. Taylor does not even get into the index of the work. In his own words, the "general type of doctrine is the Augustino-Calvinistic: upon a few points, the elder Calvinism has been followed in preference to the later." He well says:

It will be objected by some to this dogmatic system that it has been too much influenced by the patristic, mediaeval, and reformation periods, and too little by the so-called "progress" of modern theology. The charge of scholasticism, and perhaps of speculativeness, will be made. The author has no disposition to repel the charge. While acknowledging the excellences of the present period in respect to the practical application and spread of religion, he cannot regard it as pre-eminent above all others in scientific theology.

Hence he shows himself even more impervious to the fact of the revolution in methods of thought wrought by scientific evolution than Smith, and continues to quote Aristotle and the Fathers, with a very large addition of material from a quarter where Smith had not anticipated him--from the scholastics of the Middle Ages. This he does, as if their utterly a priori and altogether ungrounded and groundless speculations were quite on a level, if not above, the best results of modern inductive thinking. With great, though somewhat inaccurate, learning he has, therefore, presented a system of theology which might equally well have been written before Edwards wrote his first work, and which represents the extreme of recoil from everything that New England had done.

Shedd was the last of the incumbents of the Roosevelt chair in Union Seminary who could be reckoned to the New England school. This position of his is, therefore, of the nature of a judgment of New England theology, and a condemnation of it. Smith had declared, in harmony with Edwards, that Calvinism could not be maintained except upon the basis of determinism, and had thus rejected the crowning work of Taylor, while otherwise acknowledging his connection with the school. But Shedd said in substance that the whole effort of the school, from the beginning in Edwards to the summit reached in Taylor, was a mistaken one and had ended in failure. To him the alternative was between Calvinism of the unmodified type and not-Calvinism; and he was a Calvinist.

Of other thinkers in the New School Presbyterian church it is not necessary to speak at length. Albert Barnes was a singularly beautiful and religious nature who early in his ministry adopted the chief distinguishing doctrines of New England. His sermon on The Way of Salvation, delivered to his own people in the midst of a revival of religion "to bring together in a single discourse the leading doctrines of the Bible respecting God's way of saving men," was in effect a kind of creed, and was made the basis of his trial before the Second Presbytery of Philadelphia for heresy. The following extracts will show his agreement with New England:

God's plan of saving men is based on the fact that the race is destitute of holiness . . . Christianity does not charge on men crimes of which they are not guilty. It does not say, as I suppose, that the sinner is held to be personally answerable for the transgressions of Adam, or of any other man; or that God has given a law which man has no power to obey . . . The violation of this pure law is held to be the first act of the child when he becomes a moral agent; and continued act of his life unless he is renewed; and the last act on his dying pillow . . . The Son of God died in the place of sinners. He did not, indeed, endure the penalty of the law--for his sufferings were not eternal, nor did he endure remorse of conscience; but he endured so much suffering, bore so much agony, that the Father was pleased to accept of it in the place of the eternal torments of all that should by him be saved. "The atonement of itself, secured the salvation of no one." It made it consistent for God to offer pardon to rebels. It so evinced the hatred of God against sin--so vindicated his justice--so asserted the honor of his law, that all his perfections would shine forth illustriously, if sinners through this work should be saved . . . This atonement was for all men ... I assume the free and full offer of the gospel to all men to be one of those cardinal points of the system by which I gauge all my other views of truth. It is, in my view, a corner-stone of the whole edifice; that which makes it so glorious to God, and so full of good will to men . . . While God thus sincerely offers the gospel to men, all mankind, while left to themselves, as sincerely and cordially reject it . . . Those who are saved will be saved because God does it by the renewing of the Holy Ghost . . . There is here supposed to be no violation of freedom. In all this the sinner chooses freely. The Spirit compels no one: he shuts out no one . . . It is no part of this scheme, as you will see, that God made men on purpose to damn them . . . This is done by a change in the affections and life of man . . . It is not merely a love of happiness in a new form, it is a love of God and divine things because they are good and amiable in themselves.

These are the leading positions of the New England theology, and Barnes continued to teach them to the end. But his theological activity was largely consumed and his creative faculties permanently lamed by the necessity under which he lay of reconciling all this with the Westminster Confession.

We therefore close this chapter of our history with the remark that the verdict of the history justifies the contention of Princeton in its chief objection to the New England theology, however little justification there may be for the details of the Princeton warfare against everything which New England proposed. The new theology, if consistently carried out, must in the end disrupt the system of Calvinism, and in this sense it was irreconcilable with the Confession. The influence of the Confession, whenever it began really to be felt by a New England thinker, was always for reaction and ultimately for stagnation. Princeton might well say to New Haven what Luther said to Zwingli: Ihr habt einen anderen Geist denn wir.

 

 

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