A Philosophical Reconstruction of the Theology of Charles Chauncy

A Sensible Faith A Philosophical Reconstruction of the Theology of Charles Chauncy Carlos Humberto Acosta Gastélum PhD University of York Philosophy September 2019 1 Abstract The following dissertation intends the exposition, through the tools of analytic philosophy, of the theology of the New England divine Charles Chauncy (1705-1787), minister for over sixty years of Boston’s prominent First Church. Particularly, our aim has been to explicate our subject’s theology on the doctrines of original sin, the atonement, and his thoughts concerning the afterlife. It has been also our attempt to lay out the manner in which these strands of his theological reflection can be made rigorous, and the contribution his ideas could make to contemporary philosophical theology. As the pages of this work will reveal, he had an original doctrinal proposal for the dogma of original sin, an exemplarist understanding of the doctrine of atonement, and a novel, and in various respects forward-looking proposal for the process by which indeterministically free and rational creatures attain salvation, and hence union with their maker. Our theologian was probably the most eminent representative of a religious movement that in a relatively short period of time would break away from traditional Puritan orthodoxy and would come to embrace more rational, and thus liberal, forms of religious expression. We believe that a closer look at his theology, something which has been rather neglected by academic research, could shed new light on a period of history that proved crucial in the evolution of American religion. 2 Table of Contents Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………………….….2 Table of Contents………………………………………………………………………………………...3 Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………………………...4 Author’s Declaration……………………………………………………………………………………...5 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………...………6 Chapter 1. Theological and Intellectual Environment in XVIII C. British North America………………12 Chapter 2. Chauncy’s theology of Sin and Original Sin……………………………………………….…23 Chapter 3. A Philosophical Reconstruction of Chauncy’s Theology of Original Sin…………………….51 Chapter 4. Chauncy’s Theology of Redemption………………………………………………………....75 Chapter 5. Philosophical Problems and Solutions to Chauncy’s Account of Redemption…………….…99 Chapter 6. Chauncy’s Theology of the Afterlife…………………………………………………….….129 Chapter 7. Philosophical Problems and Solutions to Chauncy’s Account of the Afterlife………………151 Conclusions……………………………………………………………………………………………175 Annex.…………………………………………………………………………………………………182 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………….…………...…184 3 Acknowledgments To David Efird 4 Author’s Declaration I declare that this thesis is a presentation of original work and I am the sole author. This work has not previously been presented for an award at this, or any other university. All sources are acknowledged as references. 5 Introduction This work has for its main purpose the inquiry and exposition —through the tools of analytic philosophy— of the theology of the reverend Charles Chauncy of Boston’s prominent First Church (Old Brick). And since introductions, so I am told, are supposed to both provide a synopsis for the text they are supposed to present and must also attempt to entice the reader, I will begin by mentioning the reasons that drew me to this subject in the hope that whoever reads these words will find them appealing and worthy of a study such as this one. As the first chapter will make clear, we are not dealing with an obscure theologian or monastic hermit, but with a relatively well-known preacher and public figure of his time. He was an embattled figure who took a leading role in some of the most significant controversies during the period prior and after the North American colonies’ war of independence―whether in ecclesiastical matters as the preeminent spokesman in the colonies’ rejection of an Anglican Bishopric in British North America; or in more elevated theological disputes as exemplified by his exchanges with Jonathan Edwards and their divergences concerning the awakenings that characterized the middle and second half of the eighteenth century; and even in more secular terrain as one of the leading ministers in the struggle for political independence from England (some writers attribute him the title of the ‘theologian of the American Revolution’ [Gibbs & Gibbs 1990: 259]); among others. Now it should be obvious that an individual with so many noticeable facets for his time could not have gone entirely unnoticed by historical and academic research, and in this respect a couple of works could prove of some interest for those in search of knowledge of his life and thought: Charles H. Lippy’s Seasonable Revolutionary: The Mind of Charles Chauncy (1981); Edward M. Griffin’s Old Brick: Charles Chauncy of Boston, 1705-1787 (1980), and Norman B. Gibbs’ The Life and Thought of Charles Chauncy (2011). All these books provide some valuable historical and biographical information, but particularly Lippy’s ideas concerning Chauncy’s theology have come under some criticism by Norman Gibbs. Furthermore, in the generation that succeeded Chauncy in New England, particularly among his Congregationalist brethren in Boston, one can discern a progressive distancing from orthodox Puritan and Calvinistic dogma; a steady liberal tendency in theological (if not social) reflection that will eventuate in the early 1800s in schisms like that of the Unitarians and Universalists.1 The exact relation of Chauncy’s reinterpretation of Puritan and Calvinistic theology to these developments in New England has been a 1 Norman B. Gibbs and Arthur B. Ellis talk of a Unitarian takeover, shortly after Chauncy’s death, of the First Church of Boston by no later than 1808 (Gibbs & Gibbs 1992: 218; Ellis 1881: 228; cited in Gibbs & Gibbs 1992). 6 topic of contention since the nineteenth century, for though it is clear that some of the earliest leaders of Unitarianism like William Ellery Channing claimed Chauncy as a sort of ‘forerunner of their own movement’, they tended to so do rather uncritically and with little documented support from Chauncy’s own work (Gibbs & Gibbs 1992: 218). We are afraid that issues of Christology and the Incarnation lie outside the scope of the present work, but they surely represent a possible focus of future research on our author. It is also important to bring to the reader’s attention a theological kinship Chauncy has with some ancient Greek non-apostolic fathers of the church such as Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus of Lyon, and specially Origen. And we mention this since it is believed that the origenistic influence in theology reappeared only with the work of the German theologian F. D. E. Schleiermacher in the nineteenth century. We trust this dissertation will prove that some years prior to Schleiermacher’s publications Chauncy was already reconnecting with this ancient and more rational and ethical manner of theological reflection. But before providing a summary and layout of this dissertation, we think a few words concerning the questions that guided this work are warranted. After learning more about the life of our subject and of the theological environment in which he moved —particularly as pertains a theological debate concerning the doctrine of Original Sin to which we will briefly allude to in the first chapter of this work— it became clear that Chauncy was in a sense bound to tackle this issue. He had been dragged into the debate, and as it was not altogether uncommon in him, he had managed to disappoint those he was supposed to support (Peter Clark and his defence of orthodoxy) without necessarily ingratiating himself with the other side of the argument (Samuel Webster and his pro-John Taylor tract) (Griffin 1980: 121-122). In doing so Chauncy had shown that he had by then abandoned the traditional position in this matter, but he had likewise manifested serious misgivings about John Taylor’s reinterpretation of the doctrine (ibid., p.122). So upon stumbling with Chauncy’s major theological work on this topic, our first research question became apparent: what was Chauncy’s reinterpretation of the doctrine of Original Sin, and in what sense did it differ from both traditional North American Calvinism and from the optimistic views on human nature that were beginning to influence New England clergy? As for our other major research question, this was the outcome of our early engagement with our theologian’s new body of divinity. We were aware that he was a soteriological Universalist, but in the title page of one of these major works, he makes it clear that he advocates a rather strong (indeterministic) conception of free will. As our reader will no doubt understand, we wondered how he had managed to piece together these apparently incongruous components of his thought. To state it more precisely, our second major research question became: how did Chauncy manage to reconcile the idea of universal 7 salvation with an indeterministic understanding of free will? Now linking these two major dimensions of his theology—human nature (or his take on the doctrine of Original Sin) and our ultimate destiny (Universalism)— is the work of Christ on the cross. So we were, in a sense, pushed to unearth his ideas on the doctrine of atonement, which is a rather tricky endeavour because it is a doctrine he is less explicit about; but it is clear that, to the best of our knowledge, the motif of Christ’s life and death as an example to believers is at the centre of his ideas

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