A History of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

A HISTORY OF SOUTHERN BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY A HISTORY OF SOUTHERN BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY William A. Mueller ,,\ 11,-:. ~ "/" \\,':: BRO A D MAN PRESS B P Nashville, Tennessee © 1959 • BROADMAN P RESS Nashville, Tennessee All rights reserved International copyright secured 423-08039 Library of Congress catalog card number 59-9687 Printed in the United States of America 5.N58KSP To All the Alumni Preface HE DREAMS, devotion, and insight of James Petigru Boyce brought into focus the desires of Southern Baptists for a Tcentral theological institution and thus determined that a cen tennial history of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary would have to be written at this time. It is appropriate, therefore, to let Dr. Boyce set the tone of this preface. The Civil War had driven the Seminary from its original home in Greenville, South Carolina, to Louisville, Kentucky. On the occasion of the opening session in this new home, September 1, 1877, Dr. Boyce looked back over the first eighteen years of sig nificant struggle and said: I do not propose to recount the history of this enterprise. That history, so far as it ever can be written, must await the full fruition of all our hopes, and should come from one less intimately asso ciated with it than I have been. It never can be written in full; it never ought to be thus written. It is only God's inspiration which dares speak of evils and faults and injuries and calumnies proceeding from men whom we know to be good. That inspired Word alone can make these simply the shadows which bring out more gloriously the brightness of the character of the good. Human prejudice and passion would make hideous deformity of all by the excesses which its pencillings would exhibit. Let all such evil be buried in the silence of forgetfulness. Let the history, when written, tell only of the toils and trials and sacrifices, and wisdom and prudence and foresight, and prayers and tears and faith, of the people of God to whom the institution will have owed its existence and its possibilities of bless ing. And God grant that it may go down to succeeding ages to bless his cause and glorify his name when all of us here have been for gotten in this world forever! In the establishment and endowment Vll PREFACE of this Seminary we think we have solved a problem of interest, not to Baptists of the South alone, but to all who are interested in the ministry of Christ as an instrumentality for the salvation of souls and the edification of his saints. The early days of the history of the Seminary, which were so close to Dr. Boyce, are now softened by the haze of distance. The people have become mere names. The agonizing struggles to plant a new venture in the life of Southern Baptists have be come only memories. So, it is easy to tell the story of those early days but more difficult to appraise events which are still near. Thus, as it is difficult to write the biography of a man while he lives, so it is always difficult to write the history of an in stitution which continues to make history even while the record is being written. Some future historian must provide the objec tive appraisal of the transitional times in which we now live. It is significant that this history is written, as Dr. Boyce pro posed, by one who is capable of objective evaluation of the past. Professor William Mueller has become a part of the life of the Seminary and of the Southern Baptist Convention only since World vy ar II. He thus brings the perspective of a European scholar not only to the life of the institution but to the whole American scene. Yet he writes not as an outsider but as one who has chosen to belong to the heritage which he now records. While an institution may want to highlight certain persons and events in its history, Professor Mueller has sought to maintain the true historian's balance to the end that th~ romantic story of the first hundred years of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary may be understood, with its trials and its triumphs used as guideposts for all who live during this second century and beyond. Thus the good that men have done will not be interred, but we of this and future generations shall rise up to call them blessed who have invested their lives in this enterprise of theo logical education which is dedicated to the lordship of Christ. DUKE K. MCCALL, President Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Vlll Contents 1. Early Struggles for an Educated Ministry . 1 2. James P. Boyce, Founder. 16 3. James P. Boyce, Administrator and Treasurer. 33 4. The Faithful Four: the Original Faculty . 52 5. Thoroughly Furnished unto All Good Works. 112 6. Crawford Howell Toy . 135 7. William Heth Whitsitt, Church Historian . 143 8. E. Y. Mullins, President . 179 9. Sampey, Fuller, and McCall . 211 Chronology 232 Abstract of Principles 238 Faculty 242 Bibliography 245 Index 251 IX Illustrations facing page The Original Faculty . 100 Seminary Presidents . 10 1 Prominent Members of the Faculty . 116 Faculty, 1944-45 . 117 Faculty, 1949-50 . 148 Old Norton Hall. 149 Buildings of the School of Church Music . 164 Air View of the Seminary Campus in Louisville. 165 Xl 1 Early Struggles for an Educated Ministry OUTHERN BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY was founded in 1859, nine years after the mid-century milestone had been passedS and two years before the War Between the States erupted with all its fury and devastation. The age into which the Semi nary was born was characterized by numerous and often danger ous or contradictory currents of thought. It was the age of such Christian leaders as Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Dwight L. Moody, David Livingstone, Robert Moffat, R. H. Graves, and T. J. Bowen. But it was also the age of Karl Marx, Charles Dar win, and Herbert Spencer. The Seminary was born in an awareness of the intellectual fer ment of the age. Although never a Darwinian, James P. Boyce had a copy of The Origin of Species in his library within a year of its publication. He also had copies of such significant new works for biblical scholarship as Winer's New Testament Grammar and Tischendorf's Novum Testamentum Graece. Developments of the era would shape the history of the Seminary in var ious ways. On the one hand, the skepticism arising from evolu tion and biblical criticism would cause the loss of the brilliant Crawford H. Toy, the Seminary's "jewel of learning." On the other, fresh knowledge of New Testament Greek would enable A. T. Robertson to produce his monumental work, A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Re- search. The immediate culture out of which Southern Seminary grew was that of the Old South. Culturally and economically, the peo- 1 A HISTORY OF SOUTHERN BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY pIe of that era reveal interesting facets. On the one hand, there was an upper stratum of well-to-do planters with their large slave holdings, and on the other, hosts of middle-class artisans and struggling farmers. The majority of Baptists in the South around 1850 were rural people. They were simple, frugal, and hard working folk, rugged of speech and manner and given to Jack sonian democracy. Slavery was taken for granted as an estab lished fact in the cultural and economic life of the South. The Seminary, as Dr. Duke K. McCall has well pointed out, "grew up alongside the Convention rather than inside it. Its roots are in Baptist individualism rather than Baptist organization. It rose not on the shoulders of the denomination but on the personal sacrifices of many individual donors." In retrospect, the four noble men-Boyce, Broadus, Manly, and Williams- who constituted the first faculty of Southern Seminary were men of large vision and noble courage. Humanly speaking, they might well have staggered at the task of establish ing a central theological seminary in a denomination so young and a world so torn by strife and perilous spiritual cross currents. But in spite of all odds, these men, aided by some far-sighted brethren in the Southern Baptist Convention, ventured forth and established their school of the prophets. To tell the story of this venture is the purpose of this book. Southern Baptists were a rather small and divided group when serious interest in theological education first emerged among some of their leaders. It was Basil Manly, Sr., who in 1835 first entertained the idea of establishing a central theologica:l seminary. When ten years later the Southern Baptist Convention was or ganized at Augusta, Georgia, the new denomination numbered hardly more than three hundred thousand members. Of these, one hundred thousand were slaves.1 The financial strength of the newly established body was also 1 W. H. W hitsitt, "Historical Discourse at the 50th Anniversary of the South ern Baptist Convention," Proceedings of the Southern Baptist Convention, 1895, pp.77- 90. 2 EARLY STRUGGLES FOR AN EDUCATED MINISTRY comparatively weak. The Foreign Mission Board reported in 1846 receipts of $11,735.22. A year later, the Domestic Board of Missions for the Southern Baptist Convention had received only $9,594.60 for all its work.2 In view of these conditions W. O. Carver has rightly said that "missions and theological education had to do their work of building a denomination in the face of retarding and opposing forces." S The general simplicity of Baptist life and thought was one of the factors that tended to work against theological education.

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