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The New England Theologians THE NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGIANS JOHN WRIGHT BUCKHAM Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley, California It may be doubted whether any corner of earth, unless it be Scotland, has ever had so metaphysically minded a clergy as New England. The eighteenth-century New England divines, com- mencing with Edwards,were ardent, and some of them very acute, metaphysicians. I The New England theology was chiefly concerned with three great issues-all fundamentally metaphysical and to some extent ethical-arising out of the effort to square the Calvinistic system with the demands of rational and moral thinking. The first of these was the issue between sovereignty and benevolence; the second, that between determinism and freedom; the third, that between total depravity and true virtue. These issues appeared and reappearedin their sermons and writings with what seems to us wearisome persistence-a form, doubtless, of the perseverance of the saints. All of these problems, although not raised de novo by Jonathan Edwards, profoundest of American thinkers, were thrust upon the Americanpeople by his eagerand speculativemind., Edwards left a yawning chasm between his extreme Calvinistic interpretation of the doctrine of sovereignty (including divine decrees) and his representation of God as benevolence-a gulf of which he himself seemed strangely oblivious. It was the task of his pupils and friends, Joseph Bellamy and Samuel Hopkins and their successors, to relate and if possible reconcile these contra- dictory doctrines which Edwards himself treated as if they were I Jonathan Edwards was born at East Windsor, Conn., in 1703; was graduated from Yale College in 1720; pastor at Northampton, Mass., 1727-50; missionary to the Indians at Stockbridge, 1750-58; president of Princeton College from 1758 till his death in the same year. See the biography by A. V. G. Allen, also the invaluable article, "Jonathan Edwards' Idealism," by Professor E. C. Smyth in the American Journal of Theology, Vol. I, No. 4. 19 This content downloaded from 131.172.036.029 on July 28, 2016 21:55:22 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). 20 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY entirely harmonious. "Why not harmonious?" Edwards would doubtless have asked. "May there not be a benevolent sov- ereign? " Possibly, it might be replied, but not if that sovereign elects the greater part of his subjects to eternal damnation for no other reason than his own inscrutable pleasure. Nor can a sov- ereign be readily regardedas benevolent who has decreed a world- order of which sin and suffering and death are predetermined constituents. Joseph Bellamy' endeavored to meet such objections as these in his daring treatise, The Wisdomof Godin the Permission of Sin (1758), in which he advanced the New England counterpart of Leibnitzian optimism, i.e., that this is the best possible of worlds and that God decreed sin for the reason that in the end it will bring "the greatest good to the greatest number." Samuel Hopkins"took much the same position in his tract, Sin through the Divine Interposition an Advantageto the Universe (I759), in which he declared that "God's greatest and most glorious work is to bring good out of evil . ... to make sin in general, which is the greatest evil, the means of the greatest good. "3 Nothing could excel the boldness with which these two New England optimists advanced and upheld these daring propositions. But it was an impossible position and graduallyunderwent a large degree of modification, especially at the hands of N. W. Taylor, who held that "such is the nature of free agencythat God could not wholly prevent its perversion."4 In fact, "He has been crossed and thwarted" by sin.5 God may be supposed to purpose an event-i.e., to purpose that it shall be and to prefer that it shouldbe--which is not the necessary means of the greatest conceivable good, but which is wholly evil in its nature, tendencies, and relations 'Joseph Bellamy, born in Cheshire, Conn., February 20, 1719; was graduated at Yale College, 1735; studied with Edwardsat Northampton,1736; pastor at Beth- lehem, Conn., 1740 till his death in 1790; D.D., Aberdeen University, 1768. 2 Samuel Hopkins, born in Waterbury, Conn., September 17, 1721; was graduated at Yale College, 1741; studied with Edwards;pastor at Great Barrington,Mass., 1743-69; Newport, R.I., 1770 till his death, December 20, 1803. 3 F. H. Foster, History of New England Theology,p. 131. Professor Foster's history is the one thoroughand adequatehistory of this notable school of theology. 4 Foster, op. cit., p. 372. s Moral Government,II, 14. This content downloaded from 131.172.036.029 on July 28, 2016 21:55:22 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). THE NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGIANS 21 becausethe evil is unavoidablyincidental (so far as His poweris concerned) to that system which is the necessarymeans of the highest conceivableand highestactual good, it being true at the same time that He can bringso much good out of the evil that the actual result will be the greatest good which He can secure.' This is manifestly a circuitous defense, but the best, perhaps, that could be reached under the Edwardean system. II The second issue with which the New England theology had to wrestle was that of determinism versus freedom. This was the battlefield royal. Edwards' determinism, so strongly set forth in his Treatise on the Will, left a heavy load for a freedom-loving people to carry. The only relief to Edwards'absolute determinism was his doctrine that while a man is morally unable to choose for himself he has a kind of defunct residual "natural ability," or at least he might have it if he had not sinned in Adam. For a time this doctrineof "natural ability "-although it was an ability which was hardly more than a fiction-served to offset the dead weight of "moral inability." Bellamy, Hopkins, Smalley, and others de- fended and extended this distinction. Bellamy declared that "the more unable to love God we are the more we are to blame."" The Treatise on the Will was recognized as a masterly work. But the New England mind would not endure its determinism -high treason as it was to the consciousness of freedom. Protest after protest was raised against it, some mild and suggestive, others indignant and denunciatory. Among the earlier were James Dana's Examination (i770) and Samuel West's Essays on Liberty and Necessity (1793). Not only the Arminians, against whom Edwardshad directed his Treatise,but many of the adherents of orthodoxy joined in this revolt against him. The most notable protest was that of Nathaniel W. Taylor, professor of systematic theology in Yale College.3 Taylor was no seceder from the New 1 Ibid., p. 330. 2 Foster, op. cit., p. III. 3 Nathaniel W. Taylor, born in New Milford, Conn., 1786; was graduated at Yale College, 1807; studied theology with President Dwight; pastor of the First Church, New Haven, I812-22; professor of systematic theology, Yale, 1822-58; died March io, 1858. This content downloaded from 131.172.036.029 on July 28, 2016 21:55:22 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). 22 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY England system, although violent antagonists attempted to brand him as such. He held fast to the cardinal doctrines of Calvinism. Yet "The New Haven theology," which he fathered, proved to be a powerful factor in undermining the New England theology. Taylor rejected emphatically and explicitly the Edwardean doctrine of natural ability, asserting that "the natural ability oJ man to obey God, as definedby Edwardsand others, has no existence and can have none. It is an essential nothing." In place of this fiction Taylor declared that the soul possesses "power to the contrary."' Inasmuch as the Unitarians had thrown their full weight against Calvinistic determinism and in behalf of an extreme indi- vidualistic freedom,this attack of Taylor upon determinismseemed to ally him with them, in spite of the fact that one of the main objects of his system was to refute Unitarianism. This unholy alliance, as it seemed to the orthodox, greatly prejudiced many against Taylor. Nevertheless "Taylorism" spread near and far. It became a dominating factor in that new center of New England life, Oberlin College, under its first three presidents, Finney, Mahan, and Fairchild. President Finney insisted with charac- teristic positiveness that under a moral government "sin and holiness must be free and voluntary acts and states of mind.'"2 President Mahan is his vigorous little volume, Doctrineof the Will (1844), specifically refuted Edwards and strongly upheld liberty. President Fairchildin his Moral Philosophy (1869) followed Mahan in appealing to consciousnessas a sufficient guaranty of freedom. Meanwhilethe protest was still going on in New England. Roland G. Hazard's Freedom of Mind in Willing appeared in 1864. In fact, before the last quarter of the nineteenth century American Congregationalism,orthodox as well as Unitarian, had quite fully repudiated Edwards' determinism, although there was here and there a theologian who still endeavoredto sustain it. This inner repudiationof determinismon the part of Congrega- tionalism was aided by the bombardment from without. From xMoral Government,II, 134. Professor B. B. Warfield calls Taylor "the Pelagian- izer" (see article, "Edwards and the New England Theology," Hastings' Dictionary of Religion and Ethics). 2 Lectures on Systematic Theology (1851), Preface, p. viii. This content downloaded from 131.172.036.029 on July 28, 2016 21:55:22 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
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