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THE THEOLOGICAL CONTRIBUTION

OF JAMES ORR

a thesis submitted to the Faculty of the University of St. Andrews

for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Glen G. Scorgie, B. Th., M. A., M. C. S.

March 1986 ABSTRACT

James Orr (1844-1913) was a Scottish theologian, apologist and polemicist. He was the leading United Presbyterian theologian at the time of the United Free Church of Scotland union of 1900, and beyond his own church and nation he came to exercise a significant influence in North America. This study is an examination of Orris theological contribution, what he believed and how he expressed it,

in its historical setting Particular attention is paid to the

convictions which undergirded and gave impetus to his activities.

The study reveals that while Orr was far from unaffected by

the intellectual movements of the late-Victorian period, his contribution may best be described as a call for continuity with the central tenets of evangelical orthodoxy. He was one of the earliest and principal

British critics of the Ritschlian theology, and a strong opponent of rationalistic biblical criticism. He emphatically rejected all evolutionary interpretations of man's moral history, and held firmly

to orthodox Christological formulations in the face of alternative assessments of the historical Jesus.

While factors of temperament affected the tenor of his work, his contribution was most decisively shaped by the convictions that evangelical orthodoxy is ultimately self-authenticating, that truth comprises a unity or interconnected whole, that genuine Christian belief implies a two-story supernaturalist cosmology, and that the rationalism of the times was a temporary malaise.

A general lack of support for his views within the scholarly 2

community, combined with his own deep-seated populist instincts and common sense convictions, led Orr in later years to direct his appeals primarily toward the Christian public. The conclusion reached is that Orr deserves to be recognized, not so much as a brilliant or particularly original thinker, but as an able and exceptionally vigorous participant in a period of dramatic theological challenge and change. BLANK IN ORIGINAL TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... v

INTRODUCTION 1 ......

CHAPTERS

I. NINETEENTH CENTURY PROTESTANT THEOLOGY IN BRITAIN AND NORTH AMERICA : 8 Refining Fires ...... II. THE FORMATIVE YEARS: 31 Glaswegian, United Presbyterian, Student ...... III. FROM WESTMINSTER CONFESSION TO "THE CHRISTIAN VIEW": A Theological Position Established 56 ...... IV. ENCOUNTER WITH RITSCHLIANISM: Continuity in Theological Method 83 ...... V. THE CHALLENGE OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM: Continuity in the Interpretation and Doctrine of Scripture 124 ...... VI. THE EXPANSION OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY: Continuity in Doctrines Man Sin 158 the of and ..... VII. THE QUEST OF THE HISTORICAL JESUS: Continuity in Christology 184 ...... VIII. POPULARIZING EVANGELICAL ORTHODOXY: An Appeal Public 208 to the ......

CONCLUSION 233 ......

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 251 ...... DECLARATION

I was admitted as a research student under Ordinance 350 (General No. 12) on October 1,1981 and as a candidate for the degree

of Ph. D. under Resolution of the University Court, 1967, No. 1 (as amended) on February 16,1983, with retrospective effect to October 1,1981.

The following thesis is based on the results of research carried out by myself, is my own composition, and has not previously been presented for a higher degree. The research was carried out in

the University of St. Andrews under the supervision of Professor James K. Cameron.

V 1`. LL V" VVVi Gi`' Candidate 0

CERTIFICATE

I certify that Glen G. Scorgie has fulfilled the conditions of the Resolution of the University Court, 1967, No. 1 (as amended), and is qualified to submit this thesis in application for the Degree of Doctor of. Philosophy.

Professor James K. Cameron, Supervisor

111 THESIS COPYRIGHT DECLARATION FORM

UNRESTRICTED

In submitting this thesis to the University of St. Andrews

I understand that I am giving permission for it to be made available for use in accordance with the regulations of the University Library for the time being in force, subject to any copyright vested in the work not being affected thereby. I also understand that the title and abstract will be published, and that a copy of the work may be made and supplied to any bona fide library or research worker.

Glen G. Scorgie

IV ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Even the writing of intellectual history involves certain economic realities, and I gratefully acknowledge that this research was made possible through generous financial assistance from the

Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals of the Universities of the United Kingdom Cthrough its Overseas Research Students Fee

Support Scheme), the University of St. Andrews, the Conoco Oil Company, the Canadian Bible College and the Alta Vista Baptist Church in

Burnaby, British Columbia.

Research is a fascinating priyilege, but it can also be difficult, and is usually a solitary, and sometimes even a lonely enterprise. For these latter reasons one deeply appreciates those who share one's interest, and come alongside to help and to encourage.

In this vein I thank from the bottom of my heart Ian Rennie, James

Packer, Robbie Orr and J. D. Douglas, as well as my colleagues at

St. Mary's College and at St. John's House. More than to any other individual, I am indebted to my insightful and patient supervisor,

James K. Cameron. I hasten to add the usual disclaimer, though: responsibility for this work and the conclusions to which it has led is entirely my own.

I would also like to express thanks to the Master of St. John's

House for providing me with study space there; to Carlos Wilton for his inquiries behalf on my at Princeton; to Jack Weir for repeated trips to the British Library in the same interest; to Lindsay Thomson,

V vi

Hawick, for the loan the minister of Trinity Church, of a valuable

Orr, the James Orr, for primary source, and to J. M. grandson of " some intriguing "oral tradition. Librarians and archivists have been invariably cheerful and competent, but I owe a special debt to the staffs of the University of St. Andrews Library, the New College

Library and the Glasgow University Archives. Sandy Ayer graciously proof-read the manuscript of this thesis, and Diane Ayer typed this final version. I am grateful to them all.

Finally, I thank my wife Kate, who has always shared my

enthusiasm for this study, kept the vision alight during the darker moments and willingly shared the sacrifices necessary to bring it to

this stage. For these reasons, and countless others, I gladly and

affectionately dedicate this thesis to her. vii

When I am asked, as I sometimes am, which of these articles of the Evan- gelical faith I am prepared to part with at the instance of modern thought, and in the interests of a re-constructed theology, I answer, with fullest confidence: None of them.

James Orr INTRODUCTION

James Orr was a Scottish theologian, apologist and polemicist.

He was born in Glasgow, educated for the most part in that city's university and was nurtured in the Christian faith in the United

Presbyterian Church. For seventeen years he was a minister in the

Border town of Hawick. A series of lectures he delivered in 1891 at the United Presbyterian College proved a turning-point in his career.

Later published as The Christian View of God and the WorZd, these lectures were widely acclaimed as a valuable contribution to theological and apologetical literature. Orr was immediately appointed to a vacant chair in the United Presbyterian College on the strength of this work.

His subsequent academic career was remarkably productive. In the remaining twenty-two years of his life, nine as a United Pres- byterian professor and thirteen at the United Free Church College in Glasgow, Orr wrote sixteen books, edited a denominational magazine for some years, contributed hundreds of articles and reviews to religious periodicals, frequently lectured abroad, and finally, edited a major reference work, The International Standard Bib Ze

Encyclopaedia. Orr was the leading United Presbyterian theologian at the time of the United Free Church union, and had an important role in advocating and negotiating that ecclesiastical merger. Beyond his own church and nation, he came to exercise a significant influence in North America.

1 2 dynamic Orr's adult life corresponded to a particularly period

in Protestant theology and church life, and within this context he

sought to defend and preserve a degree of continuity with the older

theology in the face of various challenges, usually of German origin.

Orr was one of the earliest and principal British critics of

Ritschlian theology, and a vigorous opponent of rationalistic biblical criticism. He was a leading conservative theological

force in Scotland in his time, and one of the last major Scottish

theologians to defend the traditional theological framework.

Orr has received a modest amount of scholarly attention to

date, and it has tended to focus on three aspects of his work: his

response to Ritschlianism, his general approach to apologetics, and

his doctrines of Scripture and revelation. In 1929, Samuel L. Akers

included Orr among four British theologians (the others were James

Denney, A. E. Garvie and H. R. Mackintosh) whose reactions to Ritsch-

lianism he compared and contrasted., More recently, James Richmond

has given careful consideration to Orr's criticisms of Ritschl in

his Ritschl: A Reappraisal, a work based on Richmond's 1975 Kerr 2 Lectures at Glasgow University.

In two theses completed at American Baptist seminaries,

Francis R. Otto and Alan P. Neely offer quite different analyses

and opposing estimates of Orr's approach to apologetics. Otto, who

is opposed in principle to all rational apologies for the Christian

faith, makes Orr bear the brunt of his attack upon such apologetic

approaches generally. His triumphant conclusion is that perhaps "the

best defence of the Christian faith is to declare the story and to 3 relate a section of one's confessional autobiography. ., 3

In contrast, Neely evaluates Orr's theology and apologetical method most sympathetically, and expresses the hope that others will emulate Orr's example and come to a better comprehension of the

"truths inherent in the conservative Christian world view. " In a section of his thesis entitled "The Basis for Orr's Apology, "

Neely attempts to outline Orr's theology systematically. In a subsequent section he offers an analysis of Orr's defensive apologetic method or approach, and then seeks to show, by way of illustration and proof, how Orr practiced this method in dealing with certain representative challenges.

Neely regards Orr's The Christian View approvingly as an apologetic statement for Christianity which is built on faith-based

presuppositions and consists of interconnected postulates or hypotheses. Such an apologetic statement seeks to be vindicated by the extent to which it is both self-consistent and offers a

coherent explanation for the facts of existence. Robert D.

Knudsen of Westminster Theological Seminary has commented on Orr's

apologetic approach from a similar perspectives Both Neely and

Knudsen seem to belabour the rather obvious point that Christian

witness 4-s a proclamation of revealed truth, and that Christian

theology is itself the most comprehensive apologetic.

In yet a third American Baptist seminary thesis, Thomas S. 6 Coke has considered Orr's doctrine of revelation. Recently Orr's view of Scripture has been fairly widely publicized in North America by its favourable, though brief presentation by Jack Rogers and

Donald McKim as a conservative alternative to the inerrar_tist view 7 of the Bible. Under Rogers's supervision, Robert j. Hoefel has 4

Scripture written a thesis comparing Orr's approach to with that of 8 B. B. Warfield.

Finally, Peter Toon has briefly assessed Orr's views on the 9 historical development of Christian doctrine. Aside from these aforementioned studies, and of course numerous passing references 10 in various historical and theological works, very little has been written about Orr.

A further comment on Neely's thesis is in order, since he devotes one chapter to a general description of the times in which

Orr lived, and a second to a biographical sketch of Orr himself.

It is readily acknowledged that this sketch, along with Neely's extensive bibliography, has been a useful departure point for our own study. However, it must be added that Neely's biographical sketch is neither integrated with, nor even related to, the profile of the nineteenth century which precedes it or the theological and methodological analysis which follows. Contrary to its ostensible

character, Neely's thesis is in fact a collection of independent

essays. And thus it is correct to say that no successful attempt

has yet been made to examine Orr's theological contribution in its

historical context.

The objectives of this present study are to analyze Orr's

theological contribution, and to understand the convictions which undergirded and gave impetus to his activities, Placing Orr in his historical setting will help to distinguish between the original and the merely derivative, between the exceptional and the commonplace, in his thought and activities. Attention will be given to those influences which helped to shape Orr's thought. Contemporary 5 reactions to his work will also be examined, especially when such responses rebounded to affect Orr himself.

Theologically Orr operated in an international forum: the

Continent, Britain and North America. Influences from each of these areas, where significant, will be noted. At the same time it was in the Scottish milieu that Orr's thought was shaped and his life lived.

Scotland therefore forms the main locus for this historical study.

Orr lived in a period of tremendous theological productivity, and it would be impossible for one researcher to become conversant with all the literature. An effort of more modest proportions has been made to become acquainted with selections immediately relevant to this thesis, and to combine this effort with soundings over a larger compass.

Regrettably, Orr was not inclined to make autobiographical 11 remarks. No less regrettable is the fact that he chose to have his 12 private papers destroyed. Any attempts to write a thorough biography of him will be seriously handicapped as a result. It should be made clear that this study is not an attempt at a biography.

Rather it is an examination of Orr's theological contribution, what he believed and how he expressed it, in its historical setting.

For such a study adequate and ample sources exist. ENDNOTES

1Samuel Luttrell Akers, "Some British Reactions to Ritsch- lianism" (Ph. D. thesis, Yale University, 1929). Compare Aker's briefer monograph Some Bri-t7ish Reactions to RitschZianism (New haven, 1934 ). 2James Richmond, RitschZ: A Reappraisal (Glasgow, 1978). 3Francis Robert Otto, "A Critical Examination of the Apol- ogetic Theology of James Orr" (Th. D. thesis, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, -1959), p. 225. 4Alan Preston Neely, "James Orr: A Study in Christian Conservative Apologetics" (Ph. D. thesis, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1960).

5Robert D. Knudsen, "Progressive and Regressive Tendencies in Christian Apologetics, " in Jerusalem and Athens, ed. E. R. Geehan (Nutley, NJ, 1971), pp. 275-298; compare Knudsen, "Apologetics and History, " in Life is Religion, ed. H. Vander Goot (St. Catherines, ON, 1981), pp. 119-133. Knudsen stands in the "presuppositionalist" camp of conservative evangelical apologists, a camp significantly influenced by the thought of Cornelius Van Til. 6Thomas S. Coke, "Revelation in James Orr's Thought" (M. A. thesis, Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1979). 7Jack B. Rogers and Donald K. McKim, The Authority and Interpretation of the BibZe (San Francisco, 1979), pp. 385-388. 8David F, Wright, "Soundings in the Doctrine of Scripture in British Evangelicalism in the First }. lf of the Twentieth Century, " Tyndale BuZZetin 31 (1980 ): 87-106. 9Peter Toon, The Development of Doctrine in the Church (Grand Rapids, 1979), pp. 53-73. 10For example, Tom S. Coke, "Reconsidering James Orr, " The Reformed Journal 12 (Dec, 1980)-, 20-22; John Dickie, Fifty Years of British Theology (Edinburgh, 1937), pp. 103-104; Andrew Drummond and James Bulloch, The Church in Late Victorian Scotland (Edinburgh, 1978), pp. 291-293; John K. Mozley, Some Tendencies in British Theology (London, 1951), pp. 126-130; Klaas Runia, Karl Barth's Doctrine of Holy Scripture (Grand Rapids, 1962), pp. 75 et passim; Peter Toon, "James Orr: Defender of the Faith, " The Gospel Magazine, August 1972, pp. 355-361. The articles by Coke and Toon contain no information not already available in Neely's thesis.

6 -7 I

11"1 am not in the habit of giving autobiographical sketches in my addresses. " James Orr, From Unbelief to Faith (Stirling, L1906j). 12"I direct my Trustees to hand over to my son William Gladstone Orr whom failing to my said son James Orr all manuscripts, letters or other personal documents belonging to me or in my possession to be used or destroyed as the said William Gladstone Orr whom failing the said James Orr shall determine but I specially desire that no letters or other documents of a private or personal nature or manuscripts of mine shall be circulated, published or printed after my death. " James Orr, Trust Disposition and Settlement of James Orr, Settlements (22 Sept. 1913--31 Dec. 1913), Scottish Record Office. Orr's intentions, as expressed above, were carried out by his son W. G. Orr. Interview with James McMichael Orr, son of W. G. Orr, Aberfoyle, May 1982.

d CHAPTER I

NINETEENTH CENTURY PROTESTANT THEOLOGY

IN BRITAIN AND NORTH AMERICA:

Refining Fires

In his inaugural address as Rector of Edinburgh University in 1866, Thomas Carlyle observed:

Look where one will, revolution has come upon us. We have got into an age of revolutions. All kinds of things are coming to be subjected to fire, as it were: hotter and hotter blows It is the element round everything .... evident that whatever is not inconsumable, made of asbestos, will have to be burnt, in this world. Nothing other will stand the heat it is to. getting exposed I

It did seem, as Carlyle maintained, to be a time of revolutionary change, and also one of intellectual vigour and creativity, of rigorous testing of assumptions and rejection of old ways. indeed 2 the times were changing.

It is true that neither Britain nor America, at least after the American Civil War of 1861-1864, were excessively disrupted by the political revolutions and armed conflicts that kept other parts of the world in turmoil.. For Britain and America, rather, it was an age of expansion, development, optimism and progress. Britain ordered the affairs of a world-wide empire of unprecedented dimensions. The United States and Canada rolled across North

America, claiming and settling a vast continent.

8 9

But though the Victorian and Edwardian years were ones of relative peace (or at least triumph) for these English-speaking nations, they were nevertheless years of revolutionary change in 3 other ways. indeed, this atmosphere of relative external calm and advance was partly responsible for these revolutionary changes.

There are two reasons for saying so. First of all, the climate of peace and progress permitted and fostered the sorts of activity and reflection that produced significant technological, social and political changes. During the nineteenth century tremendous gains were made in man's understanding of, and ability to manipulate nature. Modern science, with its disciplined application of empirical methodology, originated much earlier, but the nineteenth. century saw a tremendous expansion of its range of inquiry, and an increased sophistication. Everything from plants, animals and anatomy to steam, ancient ruins and contemporary society came under careful scrutiny. New disciplines flourished. Vague approaches crystallized into rigorous methodologies.

Nineteenth century science was also unprecedented in its results. It produced major discoveries, and went on to make ingenious practical applications, It created an age of machines, and machine-producing and machine-using industries. The new machines produced an array of goods more quickly, more cheaply and in greater quantities than ever before; the average. standard of living rose. Machines, the offspring of science, generated countless "improvements"' and changed the way people lived.

This also affected where people lived. They flocked from rural areas into towns and cities in search. of better-paying jobs in mines, 10 forges, mills, factories and offices. New forms of employment proliferated. In turn, the breakdown of agrarian patterns of society had political implications. The growing middle class, no longer dominated by landlords, intensified its demands for participation in the shaping of national destinies. It was an age of increased liberalism and democratization.

In addition to encouraging these developments, the prevailing climate of pacific progress fostered in the second place a revolutionary new outlook; namely, an evolutionary outlook.

Evolution denotes a process of natural or immanent development.

As such, it embodies two concepts: the first, that of progress or advance, and the second, that factors intrinsic to the process itself are the means to its realization. However innocuous the new outlook appeared, it constituted nothing less than an entirely new cosmology, an entirely altered conception of the structure of the universe. On the one hand, there was a shift from being to becoming. There was a new appreciation for time, and for history

as process. Nature too was seen no longer in purely static or mechanistic terms, but as progressing and changing. On the other hand, the felt-need to appeal to supernatural intervention to account for the origin and on-going course of nature decreased.

Nature's activities were thought to be more satisfactorily explained through reference to forces already operating within nature itself.

This cultural ethos was further reinforced by certain intellectual formulations. Philosophies which stressed development and evolution gained a ready hearing. Hegelian idealism, as well as the synthetic philosophy of Herbert Spencer, attracted their share 11 of enthusiasts. Victorians also responded to world views which made claim to being scientific, practical and down-to-earth.

Hence the popularity in some circles of John Stuart Mill's utilitarianism, and the materialistic agnosticism of thinkers like Thomas Huxley.

Scientific advance and the new evolutionary outlook tended to augment one another. The majority of Victorians were mesmerized by the steady stream of technological innovations, or more precisely, by the material prosperity and physical comfort created 14 by them. Despite the strong counterpoise movement of romanticism, the advances of science generally were welcomed, and (this is the point) were deemed strong verification of the evolutionary world view. Conversely, the concept of development diminished resistance to revision; it predisposed Victorians to expect change, and to welcome it as both inevitable and beneficial. The concept of development also relativized established truths. It fostered an intellectual climate pervaded by a spirit of inquiry and criticism.

The range and intensity of research was unprecedented. Simple appeals to time-honoured authorities no longer convinced. Old assumptions were challenged. Nothing was taken for granted.

Christianity certainly did not escape the force of this 5 complex, interdependent pattern of change, It was not exempt from the searchlight of rigorous criticism that was directed against all established norms and widely-held assumptions. The criticism and reappraisal were all the more challenging because 12 they were undertaken with a new predisposition against fixed and final formulations. Beyond this, the newer evolutionary cosmology stood in quite pointed opposition to traditional Christian

cosmology. It challenged a fundamental orientation of Christian thought; namely, the view that reality consists of two stories or levels--a natural and a supernatural--and that God, normally resident in the "upper story, " personally directs and controls the natural world from beyond, and periodically invades the natural realm in events that involve a suspension of natural law.

At the same time Christianity could hardly escape the general demand placed upon inventions, projects, institutions and

ideologies alike to justify themselve. s by proving their usefulness.

And usefulness in such a utilitarian age was conceived in very down-

to-earth terms. It was not enough that Christianity offered a heavenly future and metaphysical consolations; it was also expected

to alter and improvethe everyday circumstances of human existence.

To make the Church's response more difficult, at this very time

the social problems brought on by poverty and industrialization 6 were proving resistant to conventional Christian solutions. Was

the Church's past and present performance sufficient to exonerate

it? Or was an adjustment in its priorities necessary? And if so,

should its theology be modified to reflect and direct such an

adjustment?

In these ways the nineteenth century constituted a general

challenge to Christianity, and to evangelical orthodoxy, its 7 predominant form in the English-speaking world. Within this

context, however, certain scientific and philosophical developments 13 stood out because of the direct and acute manner in which they touched the way people understood their Christian faith. These developments, distinct from one another yet sharing certain common features, acted upon traditional Protestant thought, to borrow

Carlyle's phrase, as refining fires.

One such refining fire was the tendency to universalize scientific method. As society increasingly benefited from scientific discovery and application, estimates of its importance, and confidence in its possibilities, understandably rose. The practical expression of this evaluation was the universalization of scientific methodology. Here lay the rub for traditional Christian belief, for science's methodological assumption was the absolute uniformity of natural law. Science was an exercise in ascertaining natural laws; technology was tangible evidence that the laws held firm.

Christianity, however, proclaimed a host of miracles, numerous allegedly-historical events in which the normal 'Laws of nature were suspended or violated. Some such. miraculous events (axe- heads swimming and the like) were relatively peripheral, but others, like the resurrection, were close to the heart of the faith.

Scientific advance simply reinforced Enlightenment skepticism about miracles. In the eighteenth century, Hume argued that miracles could not be proven. The nineteenth century's Matthew

Arnold bluntly stated: "Miracles do not happen. "8 And there was at least one other major problem. To universalize scientific method is to claim that all reality should fall under its purview.

But Christianity affirmed a supernatural order of beings, places and powers whose existence and operations were entirely beyond the 14 pale of normal means of scientific investigation and confirmation.

Geology, biology, history and the comparative examination of world religions were among the scientific disciplines that posed particular challenges to traditional Christian assumptions. Ini- tially geologists assumed the framework afforded by a literal interpretation of the Genesis accounts of a supernatural, seven- day creation followed some time later by a divinely-induced universal flood. Sir Charles Lyell, a Scot, pioneered the alternative thesis that geological phenomena could be explained by factors still in operation at the present time; that is, by natural as opposed to supernatural or universally catastrophic causes. Lyell's thesis, which assumed a vast time frame, eventually prevailed. It demanded a painful reinterpretation of the biblical accounts, and a reassess- 9 ment of the reliability of the Bible's face value meaning.

Biology posed another challenge. It was almost inevitable that the concept of evolution would be applied to the life sciences.

Despite the existence and influence of some anticipatory theorists,

Charles Darwin established a landmark in scientific and intellectual history with his Origin of Species (1859). In it he argued that organisms evolve; that is, they change and grow more complex, through a natural process. Organisms, he explained, are constantly producing new features (mutations) in an entirely random fashion, and are at the same time engaged in a struggle for survival. Those organisms whose new features enhance their capacities for survival and their adaptability to their environment are the most likely to survive. Darwin described this process as "natural selection. "10

Darwin's claim that organic evolution is not restricted by 15

A the boundaries between species was of great significance.

in mutation sustained by natural selection could result the emergence of a new species, and indeed, argued Darwin, all existing species ought to be accounted for in this way. The idea of man's evolution from some lower form of life was implicit in Darwin's theory. Twelve years later, in 1871, he stated the matter plainly in his The Descent of Man. There he argued that evolution could account not only for man's physical origins and history, but also 11 for his mental and moral attributes.

By. 1871, however, both Darwin's supporters and opponents had anticipated his anthropological thesis, and the "Darwinian Revolution" 12 was already moving beyond its founder. A number of brilliant secular thinkers grasped Darwin's thesis, assented to its validity, and expanded it into various naturalistic cosmologies. Darwin personally attracted a circle of influential thinkers, predominantly 13 of a secularist tendency, including Thomas Huxley.

Religious opinion was often reactionary and less than objective. The naturalistic cosmologies which used Darwin as their departure point were obvious affronts to faith, and helped to heighten religious prejudice against scientific evolutionary theory. But the main reason for alarmist reaction from religious quarters was that 14 so much appeared to be at stake. For one thing, Darwin's theory challenged the traditional understanding of creation, and indirectly the authority of Scripture on which the traditional doctrine was assumed to rest. In addition, Darwin's depiction of the evolutionary process as essentially fortuitous and merciless appeared to undermine the evidence for design in nature, and thus to undermine an important 16 component of natural theology. It appeared to leave just two choices: either to deny God's providential government of Creation or to cast in question His benevolence.

Darwin's view of man was perceived to be even more serious.

To assert that man descended from the apes, and that his mental and moral endowments differ from those of animals only in degree, appeared hopelessly incompatible with the religious view that man has a distinct place in nature, that he was endowed with dignity and immortality, and made in the very image and likeness of God. More- over, the idea that man's moral history was a slow, uninterrupted ascent not only denied that man's original state was one of moral integrity, but seemed to hold out the prospect of sui generis moral improvement.

Historical science also posed some acute challenges for traditional Christianity. Like other scientific disciplines, historical investigation was invigorated by the pervasive concept of development, which implied in this case that a knowledge of the past can help to anticipate the future. Historical science shared with other sciences the assumption of natural law's uniformity, except that in its case the assumption was applied to past events instead of present phenomena. The examination of Christianity's own history brought to light the fact that natural processes could satisfactorily account for much of the religion's growth and advance. Such investigation also cast in question certain of the Church's existing structures and beliefs by demonstrating that the processes that 17 had shaped them were not always commendable or meritorious.

The challenge of historical science was especially acute as

its methods were brought to bear on the Scriptures-15 The critical

movement assumed the propriety of subjecting Scripture to the same

methods of analysis which were being applied to other literary and

historical documents. Its methodological assumption was, in other

words, that Scripture ought to be treated like any other book.

Its aim was to make the Bible "more real, " and it was greatly

assisted in this direction by expanding knowledge (provided by

archaeology and other disciplines) of the Bible's historical context.

During the nineteenth century biblical criticism emerged in

force from Germany. British and North American scholars were

relatively slow to engage in the front-line activities of the

critical movement, but by 1860 the basic principles of modern

biblical criticism were being advocated publicly in Britain, In

the controversial Essays and Reviews, Benjamin Jowett, later Master

of Balliol College, Oxford, advised Englishmen to interpret the

Scripture like any other book, and see if it demonstrates its lb uniqueness under that sort of scrutiny. The critical movement

focused initially on the Pentateuch, partly because it was a his-

torical science and the Pentateuch was the key to an extensive

segment of biblical history. But of course it did not stop there,

and criticism of the New Testament documents inevitably followed.

Much of the information brought to light through this

rigorous process of investigation cast in doubt conventional under-

standings of the nature of Scripture and the Judeo-Christian history

behind it. Critical allegations of factual and historical errors in 18 the Old Testament narratives, the exposure of moral enormities

(along with the biblical suggestion that some of these were explicitly sanctioned by Jehovah), radical reconstructions of the history of Israel's religion, and later, the highlighting of Synoptic inconsistencies and questions concerning apostolic authorship, worked together to put in doubt the Scripture's right to remain authoritative.

It is a commonplace that Scripture is the central authority of the Protestant Churches, that in the Churches sharing the

Reformation heritage it is given an exclusive primacy unmatched elsewhere. Therein lay the special significance of biblical criticism to Protestantism. Was it possible, even under the critical searchlight, to continue to regard Scripture as revelation, as inspired, as an infallible rule, as the very Word of God? And, if

so, in what senses did these descriptions still apply? The challenge

felt by all churchmen, and especially by Protestants, then, was to

preserve and if possible increase the sense of Scripture's authority

while honestly accepting advances in critical science.

The spirit of nineteenth-century inquiry could not be confined

to Christianity alone: investigation extended to other religions as well. The character of ancient religions came to light through archaeological research and the translation of sacred texts at the same time that Europeans, penetrating various foreign lands and cultures, began to acquire a store of information on other contem- '7 porary religions. The conventional Christian reaction to other religions had been to dismiss them as futile human enterprises at best, or at worst as sinister counterfeits of the genuine way. They 19 were from below; Christianity was from above and the only true

religion.

The later nineteenth-century approach sought to refrain from

evaluating the merits of the different religious systems it examined,

and in this atmosphere of greater detachment many startling parallels

and similarities, even historical links, between Judeo-Christian

faith and other faith traditions came to light. It appeared that

some religious themes were universal, and that there were patterns

to the way all religions, including Christianity, developed.

The exposure of these manifold similarities challenged the

assumption that Christianity was the product of a unique revelation.

Many considered the theory that the world religions were different

expressions of a common, evolving human religious experience to be

a more satisfactory explanation for the similarities between religions.

Furthermore, the comparative examination of world religions seemed to

require a choice between two conclusions: either all the religions,

including Christianity, were false and useless, or all of them,

Christianity included, contained certain elements of truth and

insight. The first choice amounted to an abandonment of Christian

faith.; the second required a new definition of Christianity's status

in relation to other faiths.

A number of developments in philosophy also acted as refining

fires on Christianity. Christian thought can hardly ignore philosophy,

even when it deliberately attempts to do so. It is crucial for

theology to adapt itself to, and to speak in terms of, the 20 philosophically-shaped assumptions of society if it hopes to maintain a foothold there. Unless points of contact are established and maintained, theology is in danger of reduction to some sort of sectarian or antiquarian activity. Yet invariably philosophy charges a price for its services. Christians must always be on guard lest the essential character of the faith become compromised through foreign alliances.

Since the eighteenth century, theologians in Scotland and

America found welcome relief from the skepticism of David Hume in the Scottish common sense philosophy of Thomas Reid and his succes-

sors. It seemed to support many of the basic assumptions of

orthodoxy, and orthodox theologians were inclined to adopt it as an 18 ally.

Meanwhile, in Germany, Immanuel Kant responded to Hume's

challenge along entirely different lines, and concluded that knowledge

is entirely the product of the subjective activities of the mind as

it operates on data received from without. Kant posed a serious

challenge to both metaphysics and theology by insisting that real

knowledge requires some preliminary input from nature. If Kant was

right, the transcendent is closed to rational inquiry. However, he did not stop on that critical note. With the sense of duty as his point of departure, he worked to reinstate and more securely

establish belief in God, freedom and immortality, Yet his recon-

struction efforts, for all their merits, fell a good deal short of '9 restoring the full corpus of orthodox belief.

For a long while British philosophy neglected Kant and the continental developments that followed him, This finally changed in 21 the 1840s and 1850s when Sir William Hamilton of Edinburgh University began to mediate Kant's thought to the English-speaking world.

Hamilton stood in the tradition of Scottish realism, but sought to wed Kant's appreciation of the subjective elements in perception 20 with the objectivity of the inherited common sense philosophy.

The result was a rather complicated system, and many argued that the integrity of the common sense position had been fatally compromised. Most serious for theology was Hamilton's "philosophy of the conditioned" which, with obvious affinity to Kantian thought, argued for the unknowableness of unconditioned, absolute reality.

Orthodox suspicions seemed vindicated when Henry Longueville Mansel, an influential Anglican, developed Hamilton's position into a sort 21 of theological agnosticism,

Religion was also feeling pressure from another quarter. A new genre of philosophical speculation emerged in Britain, led by

John Stuart Mill and his circle, which offered a rationale for 22 thorough-going secularism. The challenge to religion was deeply

felt. But Scottish realism was no longer a credible basis for

theological response. Theology desperately needed a new handmaid, but where could one be found? One answer was near at hand.

Agonizing with the perceived bankruptcy of its traditional options,

British-philosophy turned towards Hegelian idealism, By the 1870s 23 a strong Hegelian movement was sweeping the British universities.

Following James Hutchinson Stirling's enthusiastic endorsement, The

Secret of HegeZ X1865), many theologians were attracted by idealism's affirmations of reason and spirit, and saw it as the means of protecting religion from materialism and skepticism. 22

But the halcyon days of Hegelianism in Britain and America were relatively short-lived, and with its general decline idealism lost is apologetical usefulness to theology. And by this time many theologians had come to regard their alliances with it as unfortunate.

It had been discovered that absolute idealism exacted a heavy toll.

Most idealist versions of Christian belief were now thought to be too

removed from real life, and to bear too little relation to religion

and piety. At the hands of idealism the basic tenets of orthodoxy had undergone a metamorphosis which left them, in the end, barely

recognizable.

After severing its relations with absolute idealism,

Christian theology appeared weak and vulnerable. It was now without

any obvious philosophical allies. Kant's problematic legacy had not

gone away. Materialism continued to gain ground. Perhaps, some

began to think, the way out of the dilemma might lie in the direction

Kant himself had pointed; that is, in the direction of some immediate

and interior basis for religious knowledge. Definitions of this

non-rational, subjective standard varied, but attempts to explore

and define it were among the most important theological activities 24 of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

This inviting direction for English-speaking theology

happened to strike an indigenous chord of response. There had already

been stirrings along these lines in British and American religious 25 thought from the early part of the nineteenth century. In his Aids

to Reflection (1825) and elsewhere, Samuel Taylor Coleridge presented

moral consciousness as the basis for an intelligible Christianity while Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, a lay theologian, had exercised a 23

26 similar influence in Scotland.

The popularity of this new theological orientation was due to other factors too. First of all it coincided with the ethos of the

Romantic movement within general culture. That ethos, itself a reaction (sometimes almost schizophrenic) to the logical and scientific, tended to distinguish between the head and the heart, and to 27 evaluate the latter at the expense of the former. Secondly, the new direction dovetailed with a sui generis tendency in English- speaking Protestantism. This tendency was remedial in design, aspiring to infuse Christian faith with a greater depth, sincerity, 28 spirituality and simplicity. It reflected a heightened moral consciousness, and sought to recover the fact that Christianity was, supremely, a religion. For the sake of underscoring this point, it stressed the distinction between religion and theology. Orthodox theology was sometimes regarded as a not altogether helpful conveyance for and preservative of genuine religious experience.

Working together, these tendencies operated as a strong solvent on traditional orthodoxy. They challenged it in both its contents and proportions. Moral consciousness proved to be a standard of judgment as well as a basis for knowledge. As moral judgments took precedence over logical inference as the supreme criterion employed in evaluating theological propositions, demand for change arose. The size of the orthodox corpus of belief was challenged at the same time. The painful adjustments demanded by scientific advance already inclined theologians to be cautious lest they overstate their case. The new religious tendency added to this existing caution the attitude that inasmuch as religion is a direct 24 and simple affair, its theological expression ought to be proportioned accordingly.

All these refining fires burned fiercely in an atmosphere of growing secularization, an atmosphere in which an increasingly confident naturalistic viewpoint was crowding religion to the periphery 29 of life and culture. This secularization process was institutional, intellectual and demographic. The era saw the removal from church control of a number of strategic sectors of culture, most notably

education and the social services. Simultaneously and by degrees state responsibility for the maintenance of religion diminished.

Liberal optimism combined with a naturalistic view of the universe

to produce the keynote of the age: immanent progress. World views became increasingly autonomous, less and less shaped by Christian premises or unified by a divine reference point. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the rate of church growth began to lag behind that of population increase, and church membership statistics, worrisome as they were to churchmen, actually disguised the full

extent of apathetic church adherence.

These new challenges and altered ethos demanded at the very

least a searching reappraisal of traditional Christianity during

James Orr's lifetime. The Church of his day, led in its reflection by its theologians, was faced (to oversimplify the matter greatly) with three options: to abandon the Christian faith altogether, to hold firmly to the received faith in its traditional forms, or to modify the traditional understanding of it in accordance with 25

30 convincing evidence emerging from various disciplines.

In fact, however, the options were not so clear-cut. The

Victorian era witnessed many spiritual casualties, many for whom

Christianity lost credibility and meaning altogether. Yet there were some within this very grouping who retained a nostalgic deference for

Christianity. The other two options were equally complex. Few who held to the old ways wished to do so in flagrant contradiction of new truth, proven facts and settled results, while on the other hand, those who wished to mediate between the old and the new sought to preserve and even to purify the essential character of the faith.

It is tempting to depict religious response in the nineteenth century as scattered along a continuum ranging from complete rejection through adaptation to intransigence. But the issues faced were so numerous, and responses to them so varied, that such a two-dimensional model is really inadequate. Every conceivable position had its advocates, while the apparent peril of religion itself infused the debates with urgency and even desperation. Needless to say, it was a very dynamic, perplexing and often acrimonious time for the Church.

The refining fires produced a great deal of heat and smoke, but still it remained far from clear what was made o asbestos and what was not. ENDNOTES

1Thomas Carlyle, "Inaugural Address at Edinburgh, " Critical and MisceZZaneous Essays, 5 vols. (London, 1899), 4: 477. 2The Edinburgh students' enthusiastic welcome for the unorthodox Sage of Chelsea underscored Carlyle's point. The attitudes of the emerging generation of Scottish leaders were not those of their fathers. There might have been more apprehension among Scottish churchmen if they had known that the bizarre lyrics sung by the welcoming students were penned by a candidate for the ministry of the United Presbyterian Church. James Brown, The Life of a Scottish Probationer, 4th ed. (Glasgow., 1908), pp. 148-150. 3In his The Church in an Age of Revolution: 1789 to the Present Day, 2nd ed. (Harmondsworth, 1971), p. [9 ], Alec R. Vidler describes the period as "an age of revolution in the broad sense that every area of human existence and every aspect of civilization has been subject to an unremitting dynamism. " Kenneth Scott Latourette suggests that the revolution was more explosively political in Roman Catholic nations of Europe, and more intellectual in the Protestant nations (including Britain). Christianity in a RevoZu- tionary Age, 5 vols. (New York, 1958), 2: 4-7. The distinguishing feature of the Victorian age was transition. Many. Victorian leaders, including Prince Albert, Matthew Arnold, Benjamin Disraeli, John Mill, Herbert Spencer and Tennyson, used the specific words "transition" or "transitional" to describe their times. Walter E. Houghton, The Victorian Frame of Mind (New Haven, 1957), p. 1. "'The disintegration of opinion is so rapid, ' one writer put it in the 1880s, 'that wise men and foolish are equally ignorant where the close of this waning century will find us. "' Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th ed., s. v. "Britain and Ireland, History of, " Macro 3: 273. 4The romantic movement, in its precise sense, flourished in the early nineteenth century; its residual effects, however, were felt throughout the Victorian period. Romanticism stressed the neglected elements of intuition, aesthetics, feeling, duty and history. In doing so it constituted a powerful reaction to the coldly logical, inductive and rational features first of the Enlight- enment, and then of the dominant scientific and industrial ethos that followed. It was not uncommon for Victorians to live in two worlds--the scientific and the romantic, thus lending a certain schizophrenic character to Victorian psychology. 5The challenges to Christianity are ably summarized in Bernard M. G. Reardon, Religious Thought in the Victorian Age (London, 1980), pp. 1-16; and in George Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture (New York and Oxford, 1980), pp. 11-21. More detailed

26 27

be treatment of the challenges, and British response to them, may English Thought found in Reardon's work; in L. E. Elliott-Binns, 1860-1900: The Theological Aspect (London, 1956); and in Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church, pt. 2,2nd ed. (London, 1972). On the American response, see Francis P. Weisenburger, Ordeal of Faith (New York, 1959); on the Canadian response, A. B. McKillop, A Disciplined Intelligence (Montreal, 1979). 6The Communist indictment of religion as the opiate of the people was, of course, of nineteenth-century origin. Dissatisfaction with conventional evangelical approaches to social challenges moved some Christians into the Christian Socialist movement (see Reardon, Religious Thought, pp. 203-213); the later Social Gospel movement in America exercised a significant influence there. On American Protestantism's struggle to deal with social challenges, see Henry F. May, Protestant Churches and Industrial America (New York, 1963). Pragmatic considerations determine the merits of religious experience in William James, Varieties of Religious Experience (London, 1906), where, on p. 21, James proposes: "You must all be ready now to judge the religious life by its results exclusively, and I shall assume that the bugaboo of moribund origin will scandalize your piety no more. " 7British and North American Protestantism in the mid- nineteenth century was characterized by a broad evangelical consensus. Its roots lay in the large-scale Evangelical Awakenings which began, on both sides of the Atlantic, late in the eighteenth century and continued on into the early nineteenth century. It found powerful agencies in the Free Church of Scotland, and in the Evangelical party within the Church of England. Canada largely followed the British. pattern, with the added feature that it was the colonial recipient of some of the most zealous Evangelical churchmen that the Motherland could raise and send out. In the United States, revivalism was so pervasive in its influence, and coincided so with the expansion of the western frontier of the nation, that it left an especially enduring impress on American religion. Evangelicalism was sustained by the revivals of 1859-1860 and the subsequent activities of evangelists like Dwight L. Moody. Williston Walker, A History of the Christian Church, 3rd ed. (New York, 1970), pp. 495,499,507-510. See Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, s. v. "Evangelicalism. "

8David Hume, "On Miracles, " An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, (1758), chap. 10; Matthew Arnold, Literature and Dogma (London, 1873; popular ed. 18841, p. 12, quoted in Reardon, Religious Thought, p. 391. For a thorough discussion of the problem of miracles in the nineteenth century, see Colin Brown, Miracles and the Critical Mind (Grand Rapids, 1984), chaps. 5 and 6. 9Lyell's thesis was embodied in his Principles of Geology, 3 vols. (London, 1830-1833). 10Darwin's thesis is set out in the first five chapters of Origin of Species. 28

11I immutable am fully convinced that species are not ... ." Charles Darwin, Origin of Species, 5th ed. (London, 1869), p. 6; compare p. 556. Man's mental qualities, he said, did not differ in kind but only in degree from those of animals. As for man's moral features, they were rooted in certain social instincts that enhanced the species' prospects of survival. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 2nd ed. (London, 1890), chap. 5 and pp. 609-612. 12Note, for example, Darwin's reference to Ernst Haeckel's Natürliche Schöp fungsgeshichte 2nd (1870) "If had , ed. : this work appeared before [The Descent of Man] had been written, I probably should never have completed it. Almost all the conclusions at which I have arrived I find confirmed by this naturalist, whose knowledge on many points is much fuller than mine. " Ibid., p. 3. 13Darwin's personal followers also included John Tyndall, W. K. Clifford and G. J. Romanes. For a concise summary of the growth of scientific evolutionary theories, and of religious response to them, see Reardon, Religious Thought, pp. 285-303. 14Darwin's theory was widely, but more sanguinely, contested in scientific circles. Peter J. Vorzimmer, Charles Darwin (London, 1972). For a summary of the religious issues perceived to be at stake, see James Moore, The Post-Darwinian Controversies (Cambridge, 1979), p. 14; compare John Kent, From Darwin to BZatehford (London, 1966), pp. 8-11. 15Biblical criticism, as a historical discipline, was interested in the biblical text but especially in the Judeo-Christian history to which the text witnessed. Ronald E. Clements, A Century of Old Testament Study (Guildford and London, 1976), p. 4. 16F. F. Bruce, "History of New Testament Study, " in New Testament Interpretation, ed. I. Howard Marshall (Exeter, 1977), p. 44. 17 William Robertson Smith's The ReZigzon of the Semites (1889), was a pioneer analysis of the data then available on Near Eastern religions that coexisted with biblical Judaism. James Frazer's The Golden Bough (1890) expanded the range of enquiry to encompass world-wide religious phenomena. 18On the early common sense philosophy, see S. A. Grave, The Scottish Philosophy of Common Sense (Oxford, 1960). It has been argued that the anthropocentrism of common sense philosophy was fundamentally incompatible with the theocentrism of traditional orthodoxy, and that for this reason the alliance made was an unholy one. Sydney Ahlstrom, "The Scottish Philosophy and American Theology, " Church History 24 (1955): 267-264. Compare Mark Noll, "Common Sense Traditions and American Evangelical Thought, " American Quarterly 37 (1985): 216-238. 19Kant's analysis of reason was set out most fully in his Critique of Pure Reason (1781), and again in an abbreviated and 29 more popular form in Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysic (1783). His reconstruction of religion was expressed in his Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793). Compare R. M. Wenley, Kant and His Philosophical Revolution (Edinburgh, 1910). For a brief statement on Kant's significance to theology, see Justo L. Gonzales, A History of Christian Thought, 3 vols. (Nashville and New York, 1970-1975), 3: 309-315. 20 John Veitch, Memoir of Sir WZZZZam Hamilton (Edinburgh, 1869) and John Veitch, Hamilton (Edinburgh, 1879). See also James McCosh, The Scottish Philosophy (London, 1875), chap. 57. 21 Henry L. Mansel, The Limits of Religious Knowledge, 1858 Bampton Lectures (London, 1858). For significant exerpts, see A. 0. J. Cockshut, ed., Religious Controversies of the Nineteenth Century (Lincoln, NE, 1966), pp. 120-135. 22Mill's deterministic and utilitarian philosophy was before the public by the end of the 1860s, and Mill's circle helped to introduce Britain to the scientific positivism of their French contemporary Auguste Comte. 23T. H. Green and Benjamin Jowett were leaders of the English movement, centred at Balliol College, Oxford. See J. H. Muirhead, The Platonic Tradition in Anglo-Saxon Philosophy (London, 1931), pp. 147-173. 24For example, James Martineau, The Seat of Authority (London, 1890) and P. T. Forsyth, The Principle of Authority (London, 1913). 25 The best account of these early (1820-1860) movements is John Tulloch, Movements of Religious Thought in Britain During the Nineteenth Century (London, 1885; repr. Leicester, 1971); compare Basil Willey, Nineteenth Century Studies (New York, 1949) on Coleridge and others. In America, compare the work of Horace Bushnell as described by B. M. Cross, Horace Bushnell: Minister to a Changing America (Chicago, 1958). 26Coleridge held that religious truths are directly perceived by an "inward beholding, " and from this premise attempted to legitimize many fundamental Christian doctrines. Likewise his Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit (1840) represents an early British rejection of the inerrancy position on Scripture in favour of one in which the divine element in it is attested by its authentication in one's spirit. In his Internal Evidence for the Truth of Revealed Religion (1820), Erskine stressed that the proof of Christianity lay in its capacity to address man's spiritual and ethical needs. Tulloch, Movements of Religious Thought, pp. 4-30,129-145. 27Victorian sermons were full of florid prose. Preachers like F. W. Robertson of Brighton, who stressed the affective dimension of religion, were exceptionally popular. Laymen and ministers alike were intensely interested in novels and poetry. This 30

"Dogma outlook is epitomized in Robert Louis Stevenson's remark: learned is only a new error--the old one was perhaps as good; but " Essays in a spirit communicated is a perpetual possession. the Art of Writing (London, 1910), p. 88. 28Thomas Carlyle contributed much to this tendency. Though personally distant from the Christian faith in which he had been raised, he conveyed through his writings a penetrating moral idealism and a seriousness about eternal verities which laid the charge of superficiality against materialism and orthodoxy alike. 29See Owen Chadwick, The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1975), which focuses on the 1860-1914 period and defines secularization as the growth of conviction of the irrelevance of religion. 30Compare Matthew Arnold's remark in 1875: "At the present time two things about the Christian religion must surely be clear to anyone with eyes in his head. One is, that men cannot do without it; the other, that they cannot do with it as it is. " God and the Bible, popular ed. (1906), p. viii; quoted by Willey, Nineteenth Century Studies, p. 263. CHAPTER II

THE FORMATIVE YEARS :

Glaswegian, United Presbyterian, Student

James Orr was born in Glasgow on 11 April 1844. Victorian

Scotland was far from a cultural backwater, and Glasgow, the pulsating "Second City of the Empire, " was no insignificant centre.

In many ways the nation and city formed a microcosm of the forces operating in the English-speaking world. All the developments that characterized the Victorian and Edwardian years generally, and that together posed such challenges for religion and religious thought, were felt in Scotland.

The democratic spirit flourished: Victorian Scotland often expressed its political aspirations through the Liberal party, and claimed in William Gladstone one of Britain's greatest Prime I Ministers. Scots like Lord Kelvin and Clerk Maxwell made significant scientific contributions; Sir William Hamilton, John Stuart Mill and

Edward Caird ably advocated the major philosophical options of the times; and through the enduring influence of Robert Burns, Sir Walter

Scott, Thomas Carlyle, Robert Louis Stevenson and others, Scots were directed along alternative paths in pursuit of truth, meaning and 2 reality.

At the same time the Strathclyde region of western Scotland was a world leader in technological innovation, industrialization

31 32 and urbanization. Glasgow thrived on the related heavy industries of coal, iron, steel, ship-building and engineering, and eagerly capitalized on its access by sea to a world of materials and markets.

Since the eighteenth century, Glasgow's vigour steadily skewed

Scottish demography as the city drew population through its prospects of employment and higher living standards. This in turn had a corrosive effect on traditional Scottish culture, as many were uprooted from farms, crofts and parishes. The economically powerful chafed under protectionist government policies, and impatiently supported the cause of liberal reform. Their advocacy of laissez- faire capitalism was sometimes attended by flagrant abdication of moral and social responsibility, and many labouring families were trapped in the deprivation of urban slums. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that Glasgow also became a centre for more radical politics 3 and socialism.

Orr's father was an engineer, a common enough vocation in industrial Glasgow, and one which placed the Orr family in the 5 advancing lower middle class of Scottish society. But Orr's youth was not as fortunate as it might have been. He was orphaned at an early age and his subsequent apprenticeship (of economic necessity) to a bookbinder, and postponement of his university entrance until his twenty-first year, give some suggestion of a spartan adolescence.

Unlike many other Scottish theologians, he was not a son of the manse, and he had more first-hand acquaintence than most with the difficul- 6 ties of the poor.

As a young man he came in touch with evangelicalism through the Glasgow Y. M. C. A. and the large, vigorous United Presbyterian 33 7 congregation of Sydney Place Church. The Y. M. C. A. was aggres- sively evangelistic at the time, stressing conversion and subsequent

"religious improvement" as the bases for a young man's future 8 happiness and success. Lecture programs and study opportunities at the Y. M. C. A. were probably important sources of intellectual stimulation for Orr prior to his enrollment at university. But the

Y. M. C. A. encouraged "benevolent exertion" as well as self- improvement and, reflecting this added emphasis, Orr laboured for a number of years as a volunteer with the Glasgow City Mission in 9 the depressed Calton district of the inner citv. The Mission, like the Y. M. C. A., was an interdenominational evangelistic work that stressed personal conversion to Christ as the best solution to the ' social and material plight of the poor. Both institutions preached a Gospel for self-starters; they were hardly seed-beds for socialism, and it is doubtful that the likes of Keir Hardie, the Glaswegian father of the British Labour Party, would have found much comfort in them.

Sydney Place Church, 'which could accommodate twelve hundred persons, was located astride two economically disparate neighbourhoods Il in downtown Glasgow. Under the Leadership of John Ker12 one of the ablest United Presbyterian preachers, the Church extended its out- reach with missions to the poor and to students of the nearby

Glasgow University. Over the years a number or young men were guided into the United Presbyterian ministry as a result of Ker's example and encouragement. The atmosphere which nurtured Orr at

Sydney Place was one of satisfaction with an evangelical orthodoxy authenticated by personal experience. Sydney Place carried its 34

Calvinism lightly, but the theology to which it adhered was not novel. It appears that the church, borne along by its numerical strength, multitudinous programs and Ker's own confidence, was relatively untroubled by doubt with respect to its theology and 13 strategy for social betterment. Under these influences yet, by his own admission, not without some struggle and wavering in the 14 face of agnostic arguments, Orr made the evangelical faith his own.

Sydney Place Church also introduced Orr to the distinctive

United Presbyterian tradition. The United Presbyterians (or U. P. 's), so called after the 1847 union of the United Secession and Relief

Churches, traced their roots to two eighteenth-century secessions from the Church of Scotland--successions prompted by democratic sentiment and evangelical commitment. Both secessions were largely in protest over the prevailing methods of ministerial appointment by patrons and church courts, methods which the Seceders thought 15 infringed on the right of congregations to call their own ministers.

The background to this debate over procedure was that the Seceders were already quite hostile to the religious and theological Mod- eratism of their ecclesiastical opponents. The Seceders' brand of religion, quite unlike Moderatism, was heartfelt, fervent and individualistic. And from the Marrow Controversy of the early eighteenth century onward, they adhered tenaciously to those traditional doctrines which they believed undergirded evangelical 16 experience of sin, guilt, repentance and salvation. 35

The Seceders grew slowly at first, and the new members who were attracted tended to be from the lower classes. The Secession and Relief Churches were churches of the common people, instinctively wary of privilege in whatever political or ecclesiastical form it might take. At their best, they manifested an appealing humility 17 18 and simplicity; at their worst, a narrow and suspicious temper.

Relegated to a peripheral role in Scottish church life, and having lost the privileges of establishment, the early Seceders were forced to develop a sturdy self-sufficiency. They maintained no comprehensive national vision, but contended themselves with planting congregations when and where they were able to support themselves.

The Secession tradition acquired new life from the evangelical revivals of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and began to expand noticeably. During Victoria's reign, the U. P.

Church took its place beside the Auld Kirk and the Free Church as a 19 significant third force in Scottish Presbyterianism. At the same time it was upwardly mobile, economically and socially, and gradually 20 acquired a lower-middle to middle-class character. There was an obvious kinship between its self-reliant character, its Voluntary

Principle, as it came to be called, and the spirit of laissez- faire capitalism. The Seceding Churches were strongest in the West of Scotland, particularly in Glasgow, and developed the image of being a businessman"s church, or as some put it, a denomination of shop-keepers. Politically, United Presbyterians were prominent in campaigns for reform, including those for the repeal of the Corn Laws, and for the extension of the voting franchise. The U. P. Church was sometimes described as the Liberal party at prayer. 36

With social evolution came a greater degree of respectability.

But although it was no longer a home merely for the socially dis- enfranchised, the U. P. Church of the 1860s. and 1870s retained something of its populist instincts. Its administration was the least centralized of the Scottish Presbyterian Churches, and its strong democratic spirit was reflected in a number of unique 21 congregational and court procedures. Likewise the ministerial training program of the U. P. Church was far less institutionalized than its Free and Established Church counterparts. Prior to 1847, ministerial education had had an itinerant history, and consisted mainly of personal tutoring by prominent ministers. With the U. P.

Union, the United Presbyterian Divinity Hall was established in

Edinburgh. It offered an annual summer session of six to eight weeks duration, at which instruction was provided by U. P. ministers on temporary leave from their pastorates. For the balance of the academic year, the education of ministerial candidates was supervised

(with 22 varying degrees of conscientiousness) by presbyteries. Such an arrangement had obvious deficiencies, but it certainly kept students and professors rooted in church life.

Without doubt the U. P. Church ranked behind the Free and

Established Churches in literary and scholarly attainments. It was, however, a church of able pastors and preachers, devoting a large portion of its considerable energies to pioneer, colonial and missionary work, and taking a certain pride in this division of

This strengths. was the tradition which Orr chose to make his own,

for he and which appears to have nurtured a genuine affection. Years later, U. P. Church's amid the jubilee celebrations, Orr addressed 37 the Synod with an emotional expression of his love for the tradition.

He spoke of the nobility of its early fathers, the soundness of its voluntarist principles, and its contributions to hymnody, literature

and national life. Above all, he commended its historic religious 23 ethos.

With Ker's encouragement, Orr enrolled as an arts student in 24 Glasgow University in the autumn of 1865 with a view to preparing

himself for the Christian ministry. The university was small by

modern standards and housed in a particularly filthy and noxious part 25 of the city. In such an environment, set within a large indus-

trialized'centre, there was something anachronistic and almost

inappropriate about its classical curriculum. Each student in the

ordinary four-year Master of Arts program (the M. A. was a first

degree) was required to take, and allowed only to take, courses in

Humanity, Mathematics, Natural Philosophy (Science), Mental Philosophy,

and a fifth department recently and somewhat grudgingly added, English 26 Literature. The prevailing assumption was that the ideals of

democracy and responsible citizenship were best served through the 27 provision of a broad, as opposed to specialized, education.

An important distinctive of the Scottish universities'

curricula (for in this they were all like Glasgow) was the emphasis

given to mental philosophy. The great expansion of natural philosophy

was still ahead; for the time being mental philosophy dominated.

The Glasgow department of mental philosophy provided compulsory

courses in logic and rhetoric, and in moral philosophy. These course 38 titles are somewhat misleading, for the full range of metaphysical inquiry was deliberately covered in each course. In this way students received a "double dose" of philosophy. And Glasgow was a particularly stimulating place to study the subject after John

Veitch, appointed Professor of Logic and Rhetoric in 1864, was joined by Edward Caird as Professor of Moral Philosophy in 1866.

Like all arts students, Orr attended the compulsory courses, but it is apparent that both his aptitude and real interest lay in philosophy. After taking a string of prizes, he graduated in 1870 28 with first class honours in mental philosophy. But his crowning achievement as an undergraduate was obtaining a Ferguson Scholarship, one of the few "blue-ribbon" scholarships available in Scotland, for 29 his achievements in philosophy. Awarded on the basis of a Scotland- wide competition, the Ferguson Scholarships were designed to enable recent university graduates to spend two years in advanced study.

Most Ferguson Scholars chose to study at Oxford or Cambridge.

Orr, however, chose to remain in Glasgow and study theology there from 1870 to 1872. The choice to study theology at Glasgow was actually quite a popular one for U. P. s. Glasgow was home to a number of them, and often the University was, as in Orr's case, their alma mater. Moreover, Duncan Weir, Professor of Oriental

Languages, and John Caird, the Professor of Divinity (Edward Caird's older brother), enjoyed large reputations. A good number of candidates for the U. P. ministry sought in Weir's classes "a more accurate and thorough knowledge of the Old Testament language than the denominational Hall in Edinburgh was understood to bestow. 'r3l

John Caird, later Principal of the University, was not only an 39 outstanding theologian, but a powerful preacher and lecturer as well. Moreover, he had earned the special affection of Nonconformist

students by his efforts to secure their right to a Bachelor of 32 Divinity degree on an equitable basis, and further enhanced his

popularity by showing a consistently tolerant and transdenominational

example. Although he belonged to the Church of Scotland, and that,

he claimed, on the basis of principle, Caird once told a U. P.

congregation that "he would not take the trouble to cross the street 33 in order to convert a man from their denomination to his own. ,

Orr excelled in both his Hebrew studies with Weir, and in his

divinity studies with Caird. It has been suggested that John Caird 34 regarded him as one of his most eminent pupils.

Candidates for the ministry of the U. P. Church were normally

expected, regardless of education obtained elsewhere, to attend the

denomination's Divinity Hall for five summer sessions. To avoid

the undesirable postponement of a man's entrance into the ministry

until five years after his Arts degree, students were permitted to

matriculate at the Divinity Hall after their third year of arts, on

the understanding that they would graduate from the university

before the end of their divinity studies. Orr took advantage of

this early enrollment option and matriculated at the Divinity Hall

in 1868.35

The 130 to 150 students who gathered each August in Edinburgh

were almost all United Presbyterians, and naturally enjoyed a

familiar comraderie. The brief session was lecture-intensive, and

insufficient time remained for the more rigorous tasks of student

research and writing. A certain holiday atmosphere prevailed. One 40 of Orr's fellow students recalled that students "spent much of their time on the roof of the old Queen Street Hall, enjoying the sunshine 36 of a warm August day and sharpening their wits upon one another. ,

A couple of the Divinity Hall professors were remembered by 37 the students mainly for their eccentricities and even incompetence.

John Eadie was one exception, doing solid work in his field of biblical literature, and being remembered for gratifying "the rather timid wish of the Synod that his speculations should never 38 from beaten " Cairns, strike out the path. ,,T ohn the youngest and most recently appointed (his chair of Apologetic Theology was established in 1867) stood head and shoulders above the rest and already gave ample notice of the character and ability that would 39 make him one of late Victorian Scotland's most prominent churchmen.

Scottish philosophy was in the throes'of transition when

Orr began his university studies. John Stuart Mill's shattering critique of Sir William Hamilton's philosophy was published that year, as was James Hutcheson Stirling's epoch-making commendation 40 of Hegel. In a real sense Glasgow was the eye of the storm, for Veitch was the last common sense philosopher to occupy a chair in a Scottish university, and Edward Caird was soon to establish himself as a champion of Hegelian idealism. The Mental Philosophy department did not expound a conveniently uniform doctrine. Quite the contrary, it was an intellectual crucible into which students were thrown to find their own way.

Veitch stood in a long tradition of British empirical 41 philosophy that focused on the thinking self and its pursuit of knowledge. More precisely, he endorsed the common sense philosophy's affirmation of the veracity of human intuition in both the intellectual and moral spheres, as well as its stress on the reliability of those perceptions (common sense) that every man possesses. More precisely still, Veitch was a Hamiltonian. He had been Sir William's teaching assistant in Edinburgh, and was later his biographer and 41 expounder. Like Hamilton, he sought to wed Kantian insights concerning human understanding with the older Scottish emphases.

At the same time he took an independent line by refusing to affirm 42 the agnosticism implicit in Hamilton's theory of the unconditioned.

Across the quadrangle quite a different philosophical viewpoint was expounded by Edward Caird. Absolute idealism was a fresh, heady wind that already claimed for itself an impressive (albeit oblique) corpus of scholarly support. It promised a resolution of all the awkward old dichotomies, and purposed to preserve all that was best in religion, morals and civilization. To its adherents,

it seemed expansive enough to provide much more than mere provincial relevance--it offered the prospect of universal application and coherence. It shifted the emphasis away from the individualized, introspective concerns of the common sense philosophy and offered in their place a vision of comprehensive wholeness. It proclaimed a magnificent Geist, inexorably moving in 43 history to clarify, develop and unify.

It was a philosophy well suited to the times. The majority of Glasgow students inclined toward Caird, but in truth Veitch did little to help his cause. He tried to fight a rearguard action, 42 44 and his attitude in doing so tended to alienate many. In the view of one partisan student, Veitch remained unsympathetic to the new mood, and adopted "an extreme, and often contemptuous 45 attitude of criticism" towards opponents and opposing systems.

He continued to attack Hume, the bete noire of Scottish philosophy, and its more recent foe, John Stuart Mill. Against Hegel he remained an insistent dualist. He pleaded for a relational dis-

tinction between the perceiver and the object of perception, and decried absolute idealism as a monism that synthesized both into 46 a depersonalized and meaningless whole.

The same polarization of viewpoint shadowed Orr as he

proceeded to theological studies under John Cairns and John Caird.

The positions of these two outstanding theologians were as

different as the philosophies of Veitch and Edward Caird. The

Cairds stood together as Hegelians; Cairns and Veitch, not brothers

but friends, represented the more traditional intellectual outlook.

Cairns had been greatly stimulated and influenced by Sir

William Hamilton, yet he was, as Veitch put it, "no ape of Hamilton, "

for among other things, he too dissented from Hamilton's theory of 47 the unconditioned. He did not consider the speculative intellect

adequate to answer ultimate metaphysical questions, but he did

believe that "the spiritual could hold its own in every court of

reason. "48 In his epistemology, Cairns attached great weight to

the believer's personal experience of a relationship with Christ 49 and regarded it as a most incontrovertible assurance of reality.

His thought was progressive but not radical, and the humility,

piety and evangelistic ardor which he blended with his scholarship 'ý3 won him the confidence of his Church.

On the other hand, John Caird found in Hegelian idealism the means for prosecuting the theological task as he understood it.

He found no meaning in the well-known maxim that a thing might be above reason without being contrary to it. He held that all truth claims, even those of revelation, had to be subject to rational evaluation, for he was convinced that human consciousness can give its assent only on the basis of rational concurrence. He did not 50 believe that there was a supra-rational sense of knowing in man.

In his The Fundamental Ideas of Christianity (the word

"Ideas" is decisive), Caird insisted that all fundamental Christian doctrines were capable of being rationally vindicated. He treated the Incarnation as the cardinal doctrine of Christianity, and interpreted it as the unification of God and man, of the infinite 51 and the finite. He also stressed that theology is constantly progressing, never intact or complacent. The faith must be recast

for each new age, and the purest expression of Christianity is not 52 its most primitive, but its most recent form.

Caird was not the only Hegelian theologian to teach such things, and in the course of his lecturing he also introduced his students to a range of sympathetic continental literature, including the works of such mediating Hegelians as the Danish Lutheran Hans 53 Lassen Martensen and the German Lutheran Isaac August Dorner.

Caird's orthodoxy was certainly questioned by many within the Church of Scotland, and more than one U. P. student was warned by his 54 seniors to beware of the Hegelian divinity professor at Glasgow. 44

It should be clear from the foregoing account that Orr was exposed to some very stimulating influences, and that in the course of acquiring a first-rate education he demonstrated some superior intellectual ability. But the question properly arises: how did

Orr respond to the options that confronted him? A full discussion of his resultant theological position must be reserved for subsequent chapters, but this is a suitable place to discuss Orr's personal response to the philosophical options represented by Veitch and

Edward Caird.

As it turns out, Orr appears to have gone against the general student trend by attaching himself more to Veitch than to Caird. He encountered Veitch first and made a special effort to grasp his system. In preparation for Veitch's first class, Orr spent the summer studying Dugald Stewart's multi-volume work of common sense . 55 philosophy, Elements of the Hwnan Mind. He then took Veitch's course, and the next summer, again under Veitch's supervision, studied William Thomson's Outlines of the Laws of Thought, a textbook 56 specifically endorsed by Hamilton. And Veitch's influence did not end there. As a candidate for the Honours M. A. degree, Orr chose to spend his fifth year of specialization in Veitch's Advanced Logic 57 class.

These associations with Veitch suggest that Orr tended towards the traditional philosophy, and this conclusion is- supported further by the fact that he was awarded a Ferguson Scholarship. The

Ferguson Scholarships countered the Snell Exhibitions, which were scholarships to Balliol College, the centre of British Hegeiianism.

The trustees of the Ferguson Bequest Fund encouraged the Scottish 45 school of philosophy, and deliberately appointed examiners who were 58 sympathetic to it. It is unlikely that Orr would have been awarded a Ferguson Scholarship if he had failed to show a sympathy for the common sense philosophy.

Orr's position was sufficiently mediating, however, that

Edward Caird felt able to commend publically an essay by Orr on

David Hume, an essay which, as it turned out, earned Orr a share in the Glasgow University Lord Rector's Prize in 1872.59 This essay became the basis for one of Orr's books, entitled David Hume and 60 His Influence on Philosophy and Theology (1903). If it may be assumed that the book retained much of the character of 0rr's original essay, it may then be thought to reflect his philosophical outlook as early as 1872.

The title of the book is quite m4sleading, for it is sub- 61 stantially a criticism of Hume's scepticism. Orr's central thesis is that any adequate theory of knowledge must assume the existence of

"a rational thinking principle in man. "62 According to Orr, no empirical theory of knowledge--that is, no theory which excludes the rational functions of the self in its encounter with the data of experience--can provide a coherent explanation for the phenomena 63 of thinking or knowing.

In his criticism Orr followed Hamilton and Veitch rather than the earlier Scottish school. The older common sense approach was to attack Hume's assumption that the human mind deals only with impressions or ideas, arguing that from this premise inevitably followed all Hume's scepticism about the correspondence of ideas to reality, and the substantiality of external existence itself. Orr 46 agreed that this assumption of Humes was a misunderstanding of far-reaching ramifications, but he did not believe that all Hume's 64 conclusions flowed from this single and erroneous premise.

Instead, Orr affirmed the Kantian line that the categories necessarily employed by human intelligence "are not, as Hume had feared, deduced 65 from experience, but have their origin in pure understanding. ,

The manner in which Orr attempted to harmonize this position with that of realism is especially interesting. Here Orr left behind Kant, who had been so useful to this point, but who had

declined to vindicate the independent existence of the world. Orr

claimed to be a realist in the sense of affirming that

the universe, whatever it may be, is something actual and independent of man's individual consciousness. It is as much another's as mine, and as real for him as for me. It appears in our consciousness, but it is more than our 'consciousness. Its reality is not our knowledge of it, whatever may be its relations to knowledge absolutely. 66

Recognizing that Kant offered-no adequate grounds of support for such

a statement, Orr went elsewhere. With respect to this affirmation of

a universe actual and independent of man's consciousness, Orr

suggested in the first place that "this is the point in which the

school of Reid is impregnable, and in maintaining which it did its

particular selvice. '67 Orr correctly described Reid's position as

one based on common sense or "natural, irresistable conviction. "68

He was very much drawn to the common sense approach, which made such

conviction the ultimate epistemological authority. "That is

ultimate in knowledge, " he said, "for which no reason can be given 69 which does not presuppose the thing to be explained., Elsewhere,

in a statement reminiscent of Hamilton, Orr said: "We can get no 70 deeper ground of certainty than ultimate facts of consciousness. , 47

In response to the appeal that Reid's position, while undeniably necessary from a practical perspective, was still inconsistent with reason, Orr added this in defence of the common sense philosopher:

Reid met Hume on his own ground, and sought with more or less success to prove that this natural belief is not merely instinctive--a product of the sensitive, and not of the cognitive part of our nature--but is based on knowledge, i. e., a priori intellectual principles are involved in it-71

Orr admitted that this natural belief was distinct from any product of "conscious ratiocination" or of "conscious or voluntary reflection, " but he persisted with his point by claiming (in the language of

Hegelianism) that "there is an unconscious operation of reason before

there is a conscious one. 72

Orr rejected the thoroughgoing realist position as untenable.

He said that one simply has to admit that certain feelings or sen-

sations belong to the subjective side of experience--they cannot be 73 viewed as objective, material realities. He described this as the

"truth of relativity; " but while affirming it he insisted that

perception is not entirely relativized. " Orr attached some value to

Hamilton's arguments on this score, and concluded that it was possible,

in spite of the relativity of perception, to have a certain

"immediate awareness" of objects. But the ultimate proof was still

an appeal to consciousness.

Orr conceded that "an ultimate inexplicability attaches to

this act in which, under sense conditions, a world which is not 74 outselves enters as a real factor into our knowledge., Inexpli- cability was an uncomfortable resting place for Orr, and he persistently sought rational explanation. He recognized the 48 desirability of some hypothesis which would unite the self, reason and objective reality, a hypothesis which. would affirm that:

the distinction between ourselves who know and the world we know is not after all final--that there is a deeper ground and ultimate unity, that the universe, including ourselves, is a single system the parts of which stand in reciprocal relationship through the spiritual principle on which in the last resort the whole depends-75

It was Hegelian idealism's offer of just such a unifying hypothesis that constituted its appeal to Orr, The truth of idealism, he suggested,

is that the universe, however construed, can never be divorced from inteZZigence or thought. It is an intelligent system; it is constituted through intelligence; exists for intelligence. Its ultimate principle can only be understanding akin in nature to our own-76

Orr's personal and somewhat eclectic synthesis of the common sense and Hegelian philosophies to which he was exposed still followed the older Scottish tradition insofar as it continued to

centre on the thinking self. However strong or weak Orr's philo-

sophical position may actually have been (and Orr's work on Hume is

more a declaration of position than a cogent defence of it), the

important things to note are the substantial claims Orr believed

his philosophy entitled him to make. He felt able to affirm the

actual substance of both the self and the external world, and the

capacity of the mind to acquire a true knowledge of that external reality. Moreover, it allowed him to view the universe as coherent, of one piece, and offering to reward rational investigation with true- knowledge. To be assured of such things was certainly no small matter. Among other things, it was sure to have large implications for Orr's theological method and apologetic approach. ENDNOTES

1William Ferguson describes 1832-1886 as "The Liberal Tri- umph" in his Scotland, 1689 to the Present (Edinburgh, 1968), pp. 291-329. 2These themes are treated in Sydney and Olive Checkland, Industry and Ethos (London, 1984). 3Ibid., pp. 38-42. 4"The Late Professor Orr, " The Scotsman, 8 Sept. 1913, p. 7; also "Death of Dr. James Orr, " Glasgow Herald, 8 Sept. 1913, p. 11. 5This class obtained the right to vote in 1884. 6"The Late Professor Orr, " The Scotsman, p. 7; "Death of Dr. James Orr, " Glasgow Herald, p. 11.

The Late Professor Orr, " The Scovsman, p. 7. 8 Y. M. C. A. lectures also introduced youths like Orr to subjects such as the recently-published theories of Charles Darwin and their apparent implications for Christianity. Olive Checkland, Philanthropy in Victorian Scotland (Edinburgh, 1980), pp. 50-53. 9"News of the Churches, " British Weekly, 8 Sept. 1913, p. 611. 10Checkland, Philanthropy, pp. 66-71. Orr sustained a supportive interest in both the Y. M. C. A. work and the City Mission in future years. "News of the Churches, " British Weekly, p. 611. Note Orr's enthusiasm for Y. M. C. A. work in James Orr, "Work Among Young Men in Germany: Herr von Schlumbach, " United Presbyterian Magazine 5 (May 1888) : 201-204. 11Robert Small, History of she Congregations of the United Presbyterian Church, 1733-1900,2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1904), 2: 40-41. Compare J. Logan Aikman, ed., Historical Notices of the United Presbyterian Congregations in Glasgow (Glasgow, 1875), pp. 35-41, and references to Sydney Place Church in "The Call to the Rev. James McEwen, " Hawick Express, 13 July 1872, p. 3. 12Ker (1819-1886) is profiled in J. H. Leckie, Secession Memories (Edinburgh, 1926), pp. 187-216. His devotional spirit and pastoral gifts are evident in his Letters of the Rev. John Ker,

49 50

2nd ed. (1890). In 1876 Ker was appointed to the Chair of Pastoral Training at the reorganized United Presbyterian College. P. Landreth, United Presbyterian Divinity Hall (Edinburgh, 1876), pp. 290-291. 13Ker's confidence may be seen in his remark: "When human knowledge and life are spreading out into ever wider circuits, the Christian ministry ... must endeavour to prove that there is no department of thought or action which cannot be touched by that Gospel which is the manifold wisdom of God. The more we study the way of God's commandments the more we shall find it as broad as his other works, and increasingly rich to meet all the developments of human nature. John Ker, Sermons, (Edinburgh, 1869), pp. v-vi. 14In a rare autobiographical remark, Orr once acknowledged that as a young man he had been "a good deal upset" by the unbelieving arguments of Joseph Barker of Newcastle. Barker was a public lecturer and debater, and Orr was quite impressed by the transcripts of his speeches. "In my state of mind then, " he said, "it seemed to me that Joseph Barker on the whole had the best of it. " James Orr, From Unbelief to Faith (Stirling, [1906)), pp. 12-13. 15J. H. S. Burleigh, A Church History of Scotland (London, 1960), pp. 278-285. 16John Cunningham, Church History of Scotland, 2nd. ed., 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1882), 2: 285 17It was this side of the early Seceders that Thomas Carlyle eulogized in words often quoted in U. P. circles: "Very venerable Seceder Clergy I look back are those old to me, now as on them .... Men so like what one might call antique 'Evangelists in modern vesture, and Poor Scholars and Gentlemen of Christ, ' I have nowhere met with. in Monasteries or Churches, among Protestant or Papal Clergy, in any country of the world. " Thomas Carlyle, Reminiscences, ed. C. E. Norton (London, 1972), pp. 176-177. Few if any U. P. s cared to quote Carlyle's next sentence, which read: "All. this is altered utterly at present, I grieve to say; and gone to as good as nothing or worse. " Ibid., p. 177. 18Ebenezer Erskine, the Secession leader, could not agree with the English evangelist George Whitefield's ecumenical approach in " Scotland; in the early nineteenth century, Voluntarists made a great outcry against Thomas Chalmers's proposed scheme for endowed church extension. Burleigh, A Church History of Scotland, pp. 293,327-328. 19In 1875 the U. P. Church had 188,000 members, or about 21 percent of the combined memberships of the Church of Scotland, Free Church and U. P. Church. J. R. Fleming, A History of the Church of Scotland, 1843-1929,2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1927-1933), 2: 4. 20J. H. Leckie, Secession Memories (Edinburgh, 1926), pp. 217-218. 51 21It gave, for example, considerable place to its ruling elders, and its highest court was always a synod rather than a general assembly; in other words, the court consisted of all members of, not just delegates from, local presbyteries. David Woodside, The Soul of a Scottish Church (Edinburgh, n. d. ), pp. 229-250. 22Landreth, U. P. Divinity HaZZ, p. 281. 23James Orr, "The Contribution of the U. P. Church to Religious Thought and Life, " in Memorial of the Jubilee Synod (Edinburgh, 1897), pp. 88-89.1 24 Glasgow University Matriculation Album, 1865-1871, p. 3. 25J. D. Mackie, The University of Glasgow (Glasgow, 1954), p. 280. 26See the Glasgow University Calendar, 1866-1867. For a contemporary student's perspective, see J. H. Muirhead, Reflections of a Journeyman in Phi Zosophy (London, 1942), pp. 26-37. It was felt that any further expansion of course offerings would have "undoubtedly an injurious effect in dissipating the attention of students. " Genera Z Report of the Commissioners under the Unive r- sities (Scotland) Act, 1858 (1863), p. xxix. 27Michael Sanderson, The Universities and British Industry, 1850-1970 (London, 1972), p. 146. On the Scottish universities, 1850-1914, see ibid., pp. 146-183. The argument of George Elder Davie, The Democratic InteZZect: Scotland and Her Universities in the Nineteenth Century (Edinburgh, 1961) is that subsequent curriculum modifications constituted an assault on Scottish culture and identity. 28W. Innis Addison, comp., A RoZZ of the Graduates of the University of GZasgaw (Glasgow, 1898), s. v. "Orr, James. " Compare Glasgow University Calendar, 1870-1871, p. 143. All told, at Glasgow Orr earned three Coulter Prizes for exegetical essays, two Henderson Prizes for defences of Sabbatarianism, and a share in a Lord Rector's' Prize. The first five are in the Glasgow University Archives.

`9William Douglas, comp., The Ferguson Scholars, 1861-1955 (Glasgow, 1956), pp. 39-40,51. 30One can only speculate on the long-term consequences of this decision. A. R. MacEwen (1851-1916), a contemporary U. P. at Glasgow, did study at Oxford. His subsequent retreat from strict voluntarism and personal friendship with Charles Gore suggest quite a different outlook than Orr's. David S. Cairns, Life and Times of Alexander Robertson MacEwen (London, 1925), pp. 18 fr., 187-188,268. 9

52 31J. H. Leckie, Fergus Ferguson, D. D. (Edinburgh, 1923), p. 52. 32Since the 1850s the Glasgow Divinity faculty had pleaded that students who had successfully completed courses of study at their own theological halls ought to be able to obtain the Glasgow B. D. degree by examination (and without necessarily attending any classes there). Any less generous terms, it was argued, would discriminate against non-Established Church students. Due largely to John Caird's exertions, this argument finally prevailed in 1865. Edward Caird, "Memoir, " in The Fundamental Ideas of Christianity, by John Caird, 2 vols. (Glasgow, 1899), l: xcii. Compare Glasgow University Court Minutes, 5 June 1865.

33Edward Caird, "Memoir, " p. xcviii. Compare Caird's interest in the U. P. s as reported by J. H. Leckie, Secession Memories, p. 235. 34GZasgow University Ca Zendar, 1871-1872, p. 146. John Caird's esteem for Orr is suggested in Leckie, Ferguson, p. 52. 35 William Mackelvie, Annals and statistics of the United Presbyterian Church (Edinburgh and Glasgow, 1873), p. 704. 36 Woodside, Soul of a Scottish Church, p. 135. These enrollment figures are based on Landreth, United Presbyterian Divinity HaZZ, p. 282, and Mackelvie, Annals, pp. 703-705. 37Neil M'Michael of Dunfermline seems to have been remembered mainly for his very eccentric manner of speech. Landreth, United Presbyterian Divinity HaZZ, pp. 267-269; Charles Jerdan, Scottish Clerical Stories and Reminiscences (Edinburgh and London, 1920), pp. 17-35; John Macleod, Scottish Theology (Edinburgh, 1974), pp. 253-254. James Harper of nearby Leith was so dryly argumentative that a student is reported to have said, on leaving one of his classes: "I wonder for what sin, in what past state of existence, we have been compelled to endure this. " Jerdan, Scottish Clerical Stories, pp. 40-41. For a more objective description of these professors' work, see "Report of the Committee on Theological Education, " United Presbyterian Synod Papers (May 1870), pp. 137-138. 38Landreth, United Presbyterian Divinity HaZZ, pp. 293-294. 39See Dictionary of National Biography, s. v. "Cairns, John, " and A. R. MacEwen, Life and Letters of John Cairns, 2nd ed. (London, 1895). 40Rudolf Metz, A Hundred Years British Phi Zosophy trans. of , J. W. Harvey and others (London and New York, 1938), p. 45. 41Veitch wrote two biographies: Memoir of Ham2Ztc-: (Edinburgh and London, 1869) and Hamilton (Edinburgh and London, 1879). He also co-edited Hamilton's lectures, published as Sir 53

William Hamilton, Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic, 4 vols. (Edinburgh and London, 1859). 42Veitch's philosophy is described by R. M. Wenley in two places: in the Dictionary of National Biography, s. v. "Veitch, John, " and in an introduction to John Veitch, Dualism and Monism (Edin- burgh and London, 1895). Compare Metz, British Philosophy, pp. 43- 44. Veitch's philosophy is treated somewhat vaguely in his biography by Mary Bryce, Memoir of John Veitch (Edinburgh and London, 1896). 43For a student's euphoric perception of Caird's teaching, see Muirhead, Reflections, p. 32. For further detail on Caird, see Dictionary of National Biography, s. v. "Caird, Edward. " Also John Macquarrie, Twentieth Century Religious Thought, rev. ed. (London, 1971), pp. 25-27; Sir Henry Jones and J. H. Muirhead, The Life and Phi Zosophy of Edward Caird (London, 1921) ; Metz, British Philosophy, pp. 286-293. 44Muirhead, Reflections, p. 30. 45Dictionary of National Biography, s. v. "Veitch, John. " 46This is the persistent theme of both of Veitch's books, Dualism and Monism and Knowing and Being (Edinburgh and London, 1889). 47Cairns once wrote to Hamilton: "I am more indebted to you for the formation of my intellectual habits and tastes than to any other person. " MacEwen, Cairns, p. 65. On his intellectual independence, see ibid., pp. 68-71 and Bryce, Veitch, p. 80. 48 MacEwen, Cairns, p. 559. 49Ibid., pp. 74-75. 50 John Caird, An Introduction to the Philosophy of ReZigwon, new ed. (Glasgow, 1891), pp. 70-71; John Caird, Fundamental Ideas, 1: 16,31. 51Ibid., 1: 22. 52Edward Caird, "Memoir, " pp. lxxx-lxxxv. 53For a list of texts for John Caird's course, see Glasgow University Calendar, 1872-1873, pp. 99. 54Edward Caird, "Memoir, " p. lxix. And at least one student, "floundering at the university in the marshes that encircle Hegelianism, " was referred to John Cairns for assistance. MacEwen, Cairns, p. 557. 55GZasgow University Calendar, 1867-1868, pp. 126-127. 56CZasgow University Calendar, 1868-1869, p. 129. Hamilton's endorsement is noted in _ýctionary of National Biography, s. v. "Thomson, William. " 54 570rr received special recognition for his class essay, which reflected the epistemological focus of the class in its title "What is Knowledge? " Glasgow University Calendar, 1870-1271, p. 146. 58Douglas, Ferguson Scholars, pp. 39-40.; Orr's examiner was G. C. M. Douglas of the Glasgow Free Church College, ibid., p. 354. 59 "The Kerr Lectures, " Missionary Record of the United Presbyterian Church 9 (2 January 1888) : 2; repeated in "Professor James Orr, " The [London] Times, 8 September 1913, p. 9. 60For the suggestion that the work was based on Orr's 1872 essay, see "Professor James Orr, " p. 9. 61This was the complaint of the Philosophical Review 12 (September 1903): 582-583. But this criticism does not lessen the usefulness of the book for our purpose, which is precisely to understand Orr's outlook. 62 James Orr, David Hume and His Influence on Phi Zosophy and Theo Zogy (Edinburgh, 1903), p. vii. 63Ibid., pp. vii, 11-13. 64Ibid., pp. 87-88. 65Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics, trans. by P. Gray Lucas (Manchester, 1953), pp. 9-10. 66 Orr, Hume, p. 164. 67Ibid.

68Ibid., p. 156. 69Ib id., p. 113. 70James Orr, "A Thoroughgoing Realist, " Expository Times 15 (June 1904): 409. Compare Hamilton: "The truth of consciousness is the condition of the possibility of all knowledge. " Discussions on Philosophy and Literature (London, 1852), pp. 62-63; quoted in J. David Hoeveler, Jr., James McCosh and the Scottish Intellectual Tradition (Princeton, 1981), p. 122. For more on Hamilton's point, British see Metz, Philosophy, pp. 35-36. 71 0rr, Hume, p. 156. 72Ibid., pp. 158-159. 73He explained: "The universe we know is yet known to us under the conditions and Zimitat-ons that belong to human 55

consciousness, and arrayed in the sense clothing that such consciousness gives it. Here comes the mind's own contribution to the world as it knows it the Ibid., ... the robing of sensation generally ... ." pp. 164-165. Compare Orr, "A Thoroughgoing Realist, " p. 409. 74 Ort, Hume, p. 163, 75Ibid., pp. 163-164. 76Ibid., p. 164. CHAPTER III

FROM WESTMINSTER CONFESSION TO "THE CHRISTIAN VIEW":

A Theological Position Established

During the course of a spartan upbringing in the city of

Glasgow, Orr came in touch with evangelical Protestantism and settled on the Christian ministry as his vocation. He acquired a church home among the United Presbyterians, and identified with their egalitarian ecclesiastical tradition. He emerged from his studies in philosophy with an affirmative and confident perspective on metaphysics and epistemology, and implied in that a respect for reason's role in f the realm of theology. The tutelage of John Cairns and John Caird helped to shape his theological position, and it is toward an exposition of that position, which Orr worked out in the context of a pastoral ministry, that the present chapter moves.

Orr received the Bachelor of Divinity degree from Glasgow

University in 1.872, and completed his studies at the United Pres- I byterian Divinity Hall shortly thereafter. His subsequent "probation" L was relatively brief; towards the end of 1873 he received and accepted a call from the congregation of the East Bank United 3 Presbyterian Church in the Borders town of Hawick. It was a substantial charge; East Bank was the largest of seven Presbyterian churches in Hawick, with an average Sunday morning attendance of 4 six hundred persons.

56 57

Orr was solemnly ordained at Hawick on 3 February 1874 (the service being followed by a less solemn "fruit soiree" in the town hall) and he thereupon began a ministry that lasted seventeen 5 years. Everything suggests that it was peaceful and constructive.

Church membership rose steadily, the church sanctuary was eventually enlarged to accommodate close to one thousand persons, and a preaching station sponsored by the church grew into a full-fledged church of 6 its own. The period of Orr's ministry was the high point of East 7 Bank's history.

Hawick was a manufacturing town of approximately twelve thousand persons, and the East Bank congregation believed that it had acquired in Orr a man who could minister both to those "utterly sunk in vice and wretchedness, " and to the large number of skilled workmen "amongst whom there seems a'strong tendency towards the rationalism of the present day. "8 Orr's sermons were doctrinal rather than prophetic. He was more an instructor than an orator

and sought to supply his people with "a reasoned faith. "9

In addition to performing his pastoral duties, Orr took an active role in community affairs. He was a member, and for awhile chairman, of the local school board, and threw himself into political debates (that he named one of his sons William Gladstone Orr gives rather plain indication of his political sympathies). He was outspoken on social issues, especially temperance, and made the reduction of local liquor licenses a special crusade. He seemed to relish debate. The East Bank Church historian described him as a born fighter "who rode into battle with a fierce joy and who [was] never afraid to deal a lusty blow, " and attributed this pugilist 58 10 temper to Orr's upbringing "in the hard school of life" in Glasgow.

At the same time he devoted a substantial portion of his time to theological study. By means of book reviews he managed to build up a large personal library. At some point he learned to read German, and in 1885 he earned the Doctor of Divinity degree from the University of Glasgow by successfully passing examinations " in Apologetics, New Testament Exegesis and Divinity. The Hawick years constituted an important period of theological reflection for

Orr, and one upon which he drew in later years.

In Scotland, theological reappraisal prompted by the refining fires of the nineteenth century inevitably abutted on the Westminster

Confession and the scholastic brand of Calvinism contained therein.

The Confession and its supplementary Catechisms, drafted in London by Puritan divines, were adopted as "true and faithful" expressions of biblical truth by the Church of Scotland in 1647, and were retained thereafter as official expressions of belief by all three main wings of Scottish Presbyterianism. Westminster theology was enforced with a heavy hand, Scotland's theological tradition was relatively continuous, and theological speculation was restrained 12 for centuries. With the nineteenth century, however, the venerable

Confession came under serious and decisive attack--partly from scientific advance, partly from the heightened moral sensitivities of evangelicalism, and certainly not least of all, from a groundswell of support for the idea of more intellectual elbow room to wrestle 13 with the various challenges to faith. 59

The status of the Westminster Confession became an urgent issue in Orr's denomination in the 1870s. The Seceders' acceptance of the Confession had always been qualified. Concerned lest the

Confession's affirmation of the civil magistrate's right to use the sword to preserve the unity of the Church be interpreted in a manner that would prove injurious to those, like themselves, who stood outside the Establish Church, the Seceders disavowed all

"compulsory and persecuting principles. " When the Seceding churches later came to advocate Disestablishment and the Voluntary Principle, it was clear that the confessional position, with respect to the civil magistrate, had been abandoned.

Meanwhile deviations from the more strictly theological tenets of the Confession continued to be dealt with severely. In

1841, James Morison, a promising young minister, was deposed from the United Secession ministry for his insistence on the universal 14 applicability of Christ's work of atonement. The matter did not rest following this exercise of ecclesiastical power. Sympathy for Morison and his views smouldered in Secession ranks, and those dissatisfied with the Confession on this and other grounds, grew increasingly outspoken and impatient. From the sidelines John

Caird fanned the flame by saying such things as "that he would rather perish with the heathen than worship a God who would cause 15 the heathen to perish. ,

Related to this there was an increasing tendency within the

United Presbyterian Church to view freedom of belief as a corollary to the civil toleration the U. P. s had traditionally insisted upon.

This development, suggested J. H. Leckie, "was very marked among the 60 educated laity, especially of the younger generation, among divinity students and the junior clergy, and it was this which chiefly 16 menaced the reign of Calvinism. , If the agitation was concentrated in the younger generation, it found at least a sympathetic ear among the older leaders. John Cairns had personally agonized over the

Confession, and had seriously considered abstaining from the United 17 Secession ministry on those grounds in the 1840s. Even John Ker expressed his preference for a simple affirmation of essential evangelical beliefs in place of the existing Confession.

The issue came to a head in 1877 when petitions for confessional revision were tabled by two young ministers. The petitions focused attention on an issue that could no longer be avoided, and a special committee was appointed to consider the matter. At the same time, the two petitioners--Fergus Ferguson and David Macrae-- expressed themselves in such ways as to precipitate formal inves- tigations of their doctrinal positions.

Orr was appointed to the aforementioned committee, even though he had been ordained for just over three years. According to Orr's analysis, the special committee contained three distinct groups: "a staunchly conservative phalanx of seniors" who desired no change whatsoever; "a smaller, and more or less radical section" generally in favour of a shortened, simplified, or at least modified creed; and the main body which was of a mediating tendency. Orr numbered himself with the radical minority, which was also the 18 most active and aggressive party.

Committee members were invited to state freely in writing their objections to the Confession, and the modifications they 61 proposed. They were then required to stand and defend their proposals. There is an autobiographical ring to Orr's recollection that "the unmoved faces of the sterner fathers" generally afforded such speakers little encouragement. Nevertheless, through the mature leadership of Ker and especially Cairns the process came to a 19 peaceful resolution.

Rather than construct a new creed, the committee drew up a statement qualifying the terms of subscription to the existing one.

This Declaratory Statement was, after some minor modifications, adopted by the Church in its Declaratory Act of 1879. Ostensibly the Statement did not contradict the Confession; according to

Cairns, it simply checked or counter-balanced doctrines which

"otherwise might be looked upon as too strong and extreme. " The

Statement was a fair indicator of the chief pressure-points for high

Calvinism in the late nineteenth century. Among other things, it affirmed that God's love, the sufficiency of Christ's propitiation and the offer of salvation are all universal in scope; and that God is not willing that any should perish.. It sought to temper an extreme interpretation of man's total depravity, and allowed freedom of opinion on the destiny of those dying in infancy or outside "the 20 pale of ordinary means" of hearing the Gospel.

While it may be argued whether or not the Declaratory

Statement compromises the essential integrity of Westminster Calvinism, the Statement's final article ensured that the United Presbyterian

Church would not be bound thereafter by that system of doctrine.

The critical section of the text reads: "Liberty of opinion is allowed on such points in the Standards, not entering into the 62

'six substance of the faith, as the interpretation of the days' in the

Mosaic account of the creation: the Church guarding against the abuse of this liberty to the injury of its unity and peace. " The use of interpretations of the six days of creation as an example of issues not entering into the substance of the faith is an almost amusing disguise of the real significance of this allowance. Because the

substance of the faith remained undefined, the Act allowed for what proved to be a wide range of theological opinion.

The phalanx of seniors had allowed much more, probably, than

they intended or realized at the time. Joseph L. Leckie, a member of

the committee's radical wing, predicted that the Act "would be found in

practice to secure far more freedom than its somewhat cautious phrases 21 appear to give. , There was a striking indication of the new atmos-

phere of liberty some fourteen years later, when almost two thousand

U. P. ministers and laymen presented the once-condemned James Morison

with an address in which the fault of the United Secession Synod was 22 candidly admitted. Presumably Orr was in favour of this initiative

too; not long afterwards he described Morison as one whom "without

reflecting on our fathers, I venture to think that the Church today

have known better how 1123 would to utilize ....

The U. P. Declaratory Act was an important Scottish precedent, 24 having been "'accorded the flattery of being imitated. "', The Free

Church adopted a similarly-worded Act in 1892, and the Church of Scot-

land followed suit in 1910 with an altered subscription formula of its

own. Dissatisfaction with the Confession was not confined to the

Secession tradition, but the U. P. Church retains the honour (.or dis-

honour) of having been the first to deal with those pressures through 63 a declaratory act. And this honour (or dishonour) is heightened when it is kept in mind, as John Caird might have put it, that there is an infinite distance between the capacity to create great things and the ability to recognize them as such.

Orr took an active role not only in moulding this milestone in the history of Scottish Calvinism, but in the defence of Fergus

Ferguson and David Macrae in their related trials. In the first case, it became clear that Ferguson's views were outside the bounds of Calvinism on a number of accounts. He frequently used inflam- matory language too, which of course hurt his cause, and he

Confession "unworthy God, condemned the as of unsuited to man ... and an engine of spiritual oppression. " At a critical juncture in the trial, after Ferguson in fact appeared to have been judged guilty of the libel, Orr rose and put to Ferguson certain questions carefully designed to ensure responses bearing the appearance of

orthodox persuasion. Conservatives in the Synod were soothed by

the responses, and the tactic proved an important factor in 25 Ferguson's eventual acquittal.

David Macrae, the other original petitioner, was not so fortunate. The Synod decided to remove him from the ministry of the

Church for his insistence that the soul is not necessarily immortal, and that the Confession, by affirming that it is, is immoral. Macrae was not dismissed, however, before Orr defended (unsuccessfully as it turned out) first his right to a trial by libel (that is, by the most thorough and therefore fairest method of treating cases of 26 alleged heterodoxy), and then Macrae's right to continue in the

U. P. ministry without suspension until his case had been properly 64

27 sett led.

Neither Orr's efforts to assist Ferguson and Macrae, nor his role on the special committee provide an adequate basis for estimating his personal outlook on Calvinism. We may assume that he was in sympathy with the counterbalancing affirmations of the Declaratory

Statement, but we are still left to ask whether, or to what extent, he found it necessary to take refuge in the allowance for liberty in matters not entering into the substance of the faith. Likewise it is unclear to what extent his actions on the committee and in the trials were prompted by personal antipathy to confessional doctrine.

Some answers to these questions may be found in remarks Orr made some years later. Speaking to the Presbyterian Alliance, Orr indicated the high value he attached to theological freedom, which he regarded as a Christian privilege, and described the Declaratory

Act of 1879 as an exemplary means of securing a measure of such freedom. He added that subscription to the letter of a confession was never any guarantee of allegiance to Christian truth anyway; rather, doctrinal faithfulness was dependent upon "Christ's own presence and the Spirit of God in His Church. "28 This was, if the expression be pardoned, Orr's laissez-faire theory of confessional subscription.

Orr's estimate of Calvinism is expressed more explicitly in an essay on John Calvin, which he contributed to a collection of essays on The Reformers (1885), written by a group of United Pres- byterian ministers who had all graduated from the University of

Glasgow. Orr's essay on Calvin was quite positive. He was not as

by Calvin's offended as many were doctrine of predestination since, 65 he reasoned, the apparent contradiction between predestination and free will was a problem for philosophy no less than for theology, and no philosopher had resolved the problem more satisfactorily than had Calvin. He defended Calvin at some length and went so far as to suggest that Calvin was perhaps the greatest example since the Apostle Paul of a union of "logical, argumentative powers of 29 mind with intense fervour of practical piety.,

Yet Orr did not believe that Calvin had said the last word in theology, nor that Calvin was without faults. Calvin's character was not cold, but it "reflected more the holiness than the love of

God. " And similarly, he said, while Calvin's system contained great

"it be Calvin has truths may questioned ... whether not placed these truths in a light which seriously imperils the plain Scripture 30 doctrine of the love of God to humanity at large. ,

There is nothing to suggest that Orr's view of Calvin and

Calvinism changed in later years. On the one hand, he stuck to his earlier criticisms. He reaffirmed that Calvin's disposition "tended to severity" and that his theological system, like himself, was 31 severe as well as grand and logical. At another time he explained in further detail what he considered Calvinism's "especial defect": the idea of God that lay behind its doctrine of predestination.

Calvin erred in regarding sovereignty instead of love as the root idea of God. As a result, in Calvin's system "love is subordinated to sovereignty, instead of sovereignty to love. " Orr did not believe that Calvin's conception of God was one in which the Christian mind 32 could permanently rest:est : No distrust we may feel of our own reason, or even the reflection that Calvin is only viewing sub 66

specie aeternitatis what actually happens in time, will reconcile

us to it. "33 Instead, Orr preferred the view of Hans Martensen, whom he quoted:

All the divine attributes are combined in love as in their centre and vital principle. Wisdom is their intelligence; might its productivity; the entire natural creation, and the entire revelation of righteousness in history, are means by which it attains its teleological aims. 34

Orr was especially critical of the Westminster Confession

because he felt that it intensified this fault in Calvin's system.

He believed that the Confession granted to the divine decrees an

unfortunate primacy of placement which, along with the Confession's

"exceptionally strong and imperfectly qualified statement, " gave it

a disagreeable aspect of sternness. This, it may be recalled, was

John Cairns' message to the U. P. Synod in 1878, and Orr, again

like Cairns, commended the Declaratory Act as an effort to soften

the Confession's "offensive harshness. "35 For his own part, Orr

had no deep interest in the questions of election, reprobation, the

order of the divine decrees, the extent of the atonement, and the

like, which. had occupied Calvinism for so many years. He viewed

such questions as largely superfluous and unprofitable. He felt

that once agreement was reached that Christ's sacrifice had infinite

sufficiency, and is the ground for a universal proclamation of 36 salvation, these questions were reduced to matters of mere words.

Despite his various criticisms, Orr was never party to the

sweeping denunciations of Calvin's theological method, or of the

Confession's contents, which were common in his day. In time he

actually became an authority on Calvin, and even something of a

him. By defender of the early twentieth century, Orr felt called 67 upon to remind the United Free Church of Scotland that Calvinism was "not that monstrosity of cold-blooded logic, destroying freedom, and consigning myriads, without fault of their own, by based decree of reprobation, to the pit, which some have imagined. "37 His qualified appreciation for Calvinism was to a large extent a consequence of the distinction he drew between the component doctrines of Calvinism and the means by which they were organized. He explained :

While Calvinism has, to a greater extent than any other system, a unity of view arising from the presence of a great, controlling idea, there is little in its particular doctrines, taken by themselves, peculiar to Calvin. Its doctrine is least predestination ... at as old as Augustine it by Luther Zwingli ... was maintained and as stoutly as by Calvin himself. For the rest, its doctrines of the Trinity and. the Person of Christ are those of the Ecumenical Councils, and its Evangelical doctrines in heritage Protestantism-38 ... are the main the common of

It was these components, Orr insisted, which were far older than

Calvin's organization of them, which had special value and were destined to endure.

The United Presbyterian Church continued to evolve, theo-

logically and sociologically, through the 1870s and 1880s. The

Declaratory Act, of course, ushered in a new era of theological

freedom, but there were other changes as well. In 1876 the old

Divinity Hall had been reorganized into a full session college,

thus bringing it more in line with the colleges of the Free and 39 Established Churches. In 1886 the United Presbyterian Synod took

a further step in the direction of academic respectability by 68

for "the establishing an endowed lectureship promotion of the study of Scientific theology. "40 It was hoped that this Kerr Lectureship, for so it was called, would by reason of the attainments of its lecturers soon rival in prestige the more established lectureships of the other Churches. "We trust, " a contributor to the United

Presbyterian Magazine remarked, "that the Kerr Lectureship will effectually dispose of the reproach sometimes cast at our Church 41 of indifference to pure theological research and speculation.,

Each lecturer was to be appointed for three years, and to receive financial assistance for the delivery and subsequent publication of his lectures. In the selection of lecturers preference was to be 42 shown to younger U. P. ministers.

Orr was accorded the honour of being chosen as the first

Kerr Lecturer late in 1887. He spent the next three years preparing his lectures, and then delivered them at the U. P. College in the spring of 1891. Two years later the lectures were published as

The Christian View of God and the World.

At the outset of The Christian View, Orr defined the term

"world view, " argued for its intellectual necessity and asserted the ability of the Christian religion to project a satisfying one.

In later chapters he briefly articulated and then ponderously vindicated, in the face of contemporary opposition, the particular beliefs which he considered essential components of the Christian world view. The book is, therefore, a work of both systematic

theology and apologetics. It is an exposition of Christian doctrines

in the usual order and a defence of the system presented.

View The Christian is not easy reading. The style is 69 plodding, and the unity and flow of presentation are somewhat impaired by the repeated interruption of polemical remarks and 43 digressions. The pages of the book are sometimes cluttered with documentation, and supplementary material (in notes and appendices) abounds so as to distract. Yet these very features point to one of the work's greatest strengths. They reveal Orr's quite remarkable familiarity with., and grasp of, the widest range of contemporary philosophical and theological literature. Primary sources in

German, Dutch and French are handled with apparent ease. The perspective is anything but parochial.

Orr showed a thorough acquaintence with the main works of more recent English and Scottish theology, yet most of the standard

Scottish works of systematic theology are passed over, and there is barely a reference even to Calvin. It is one reflection of the enlarged locus of Scottish theological discussion in the late nineteenth century that the majority of ideas and works that Orr specifically opposed were of German origin. Interestingly, so too were many of the ones to which he was indebted for the defence of his own position.

Orr quoted no works more frequently than those of the late

Isaak August Dorner, once Professor of Theology at Berlin. Dorner, to whose writings Orr had been introduced while a student under

John Caird, sought consciously to synthesize the insights of his two most distinguished predecessors at Berlin, Georg W. F. Hegel and Friedrich Schleiermacher. Like Schleiermacher, Dorner stressed that Christian faith was sui generis, and he reflected this conviction by placing the doctrine of faith at the beginning of his 70

A System of Christian Doctrine (.ET, 1880-1882). But unlike Schleier-

discontent macher, and more like Hegel, Dorner was until he could see faith through to its realization in intellectual comprehension. For

Dorner the task of systematic theology was to exhibit Christian belief as truth. In other words, its object was "to bring the immediate and matter-of-fact certainty which faith possesses of its contents to scientific cognition, or to the consciousness of the internal coherence and the objective verification of those 44 contents. ,

The central thesis of Orr's The Christian View is that there is, inherent in the Christian faith, an adequate and coherent interpretation of human existence. There is an explanation of man's nature, his purpose and destiny. There is, in other words, a world view which may be drawn out through reflection on the Christian 45 faith. Charles Gore once claimed to be a philosopher in the sense that he felt compelled to try to make sense of existence, and to 46 discern his place within a framework of meaning. By such a definition, Orr also would have claimed to he a philosopher. And insofar as philosophy is understood to be the quest for a unified account of reality, it is accurate to describe The Christian View as a work of philosophical apologetics.

Yet Orr would have hastened to deny that he was appealing only to a select group of philosophers and those with a special philosophical inclination. To the contrary, he insisted that a satisfying world view is the instinctive quest of all men, professional philosophers and common men alike. He claimed that the formulation of a world view is an intellectual necessity "as old as 71

the dawn of reflection" and one which is, as Kant pointed out,

'"47 rooted "deep in the constitution of human nature.

Orr recognized that Christianity is fundamentally a religion and not a philosophy, but he insisted that it is a religion which offers, among its benefits, a supremely satisfying world view. And the common man's irrepressible need for a world view lent urgency to the Church's task of proclaiming its own. The Christian world view had to be presented with force and appeal, or men would look 48 elsewhere for intellectual satisfaction.

Ultimately for Orr it was the coherency of the Christian world view, its harmony with reason and moral experience, or to use a word he favoured, its verisimilitude which commended its acceptance.

In this way the theological and apologetical aspects of The Christian

View converge. The systematic presentation of Christian doctrine

(which is none other than the setting forth of this world view) becomes the most comprehensive apologetic for the Christian faith.

In the Westminster Confession Scripture is presented first, and the subsequent body of divinity is alleged to be deduced from its authority. The arrangement is the same in the Princeton Theology 49 of the Hodges and B. B. Warfield. It is quite different in The

Christian View. The doctrine of Scripture is not treated at all.

Here the Christian system of belief is commended on the basis of its own intrinsic merits, and the correspondence which exists between its features and men's capacity to perceive truth intuitively and rationally. 72

David S. Cairns, who was a U. P. College student when Orr delivered his Kerr Lectures, looked back on his student days as 50 ones of rampant doubt and theological ferment. Likewise Edward

Caird, in his 1890-1891 Gifford Lectures, noted than in increasing number of persons had become at least partially alienated from "the ordinary dogmatic system of belief, " and were struggling to distinguish between the permanent and the transient elements in 51 Christianity. Having retreated from a strict adherence to confessional Calvinism, Orr gave notice in these lectures of what he considered the substance of the Christian faith.

The full title of this work is The Christian View of God and the World, as Centring in the Incarnation. The sub-title indicates a striking feature of the work; namely, Orr's effort to make the Incarnation the unifying principle of his system. This departure from the usual focus on the atonement was not an unprecedented innovation, but it did indicate that Orr tapped into some of the more contemporary theological tendencies. In England just two years before, a group of Anglo-Catholic scholars, led by Charles

Gore and indebted to the Oxford idealist T. H. Green, published

Lux Munde, a volume of lectures in which they gave special attention to the incarnation in their controversial attempts to reappraise and update Christian belief. And Gore personally followed up this joint effort in 1891 with a Bampton Lectures series on The Incar- 52 nation of the Son of God.

John Caird, of course, like most theologians influenced by

Hegel, also attached great significance to the Incarnation, but the most immediate influence upon Orr's thought appears, once again, to 73 have come from Dorner. The latter's massive History of the L7,evelop- ment of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ (ET 1861-1863), which Orr frequently cited, stated that "a Christian system which is unable to make Christology an integral part of itself has pronounced its own judgment; it has really given up the claim to the title of

Christian. "53 His own systematic theology fairly reflected this conviction; fully one fourth of his A System of Christian Doctrine concerned Christology, with special emphasis on the Incarnation.

Likewise, Orr began The Christian View with the thesis that "the 54 central principle of Christianity is the Person of its Founder, ' and followed this up with a chapter-length historical argument, bearing a striking resemblance to Dorner's own, to the effect that the preservation of Christianity itself hinges on abiding allegiance 55 to the orthodox doctrine of the divinity of Christ.

Yet in terms of its promise of innovative organization and emphasis along these lines, The Christian View is somewhat dis- appointing. On the one hand, Orr did not think that his affirmation of the Incarnation's centrality obliged him to make it anything like his first head of doctrine. He stuck to the traditional order, so that the Incarnation does not appear until half way through the volume. With respect to innovation in emphasis, Orr was equally cautious. While stressing that the supreme purpose of the Incarnation was to redeem man from sin, Orr ventured, however, to suggest that the

Incarnation was more than a mere declaration of God's purpose to save the world.

It is itself a certain stage in that reconciliation, and the point of departure for every other. In the Incarnation, God and man are already in a sense one. In Christ a pure point of union is established with our fallen and sin-laden 74

humanity, and this carries with it the assurance that everything else that is necessary for the complete recovery of the world to God will not be lacking-56

He also ventured to stress the high view of man implied by the fact

of the Incarnation. Among other things, the Incarnation demonstrated

the "natural kinship between the human spirit and the Divine, " and

showed that "the bond between God and man is inner and essential. "

This capacity for the Divine was inherent in man: "If there were not

already a God-related element in the human spirit, no subsequent act 57 of grace could confer on man this spiritual dignity. x,

Such suggestive remarks as these are rare in The Christian

View, and seldom followed up. In the main the work still followed

along traditional lines. Christianity, Orr insisted, is more than a

instruction 0 source of ethical and social reform principles, more than

a philanthropic impulse; it is

a great Divine economy for the recovery of men from the guilt and power of sin--from a state of estrangement and hostility to God--to a state of holiness and blessed- ness in the favour of God, and of fitness for the attainment of their true destination. 58

This conception of Christianity as a religion of personal redemption,

Orr believed, found its essential undergirding in what he-called a 59 constellation of shining truths. The shining truths amounted to

the central tenets of evangelical orthodoxy. It was the doctrines

of God as personal, ethical and self-revealing; of man as in His

image yet horribly defiled by an inherited moral evil; of Incar-

nation and redemption; of forgiveness and regeneration and immor-

tality--it was upon these that everything hung, and it was exactly

these (and not any doctrinal minutiae of some historic creed) that 60 had to be vigorously defended.

4 75

With respect to the atonement, for example, Orr considered it significant enough and important enough, given the theological climate, simply to affirm that Christ's death was atoning, and that it had a sacrificial and expiatory value. As for the various interpretative theories of the atonement (including Macleod Campbell's),

Orr was content to explore them all with a view to synthesizing, 61 with Hegelian-style magnanimity, their profoundest insights.

In matters of eschatology, and especially the destiny of the heathen, Orr's reticence is conspicuous. Perhaps reflecting back to the Macrae affair, he acknowledged that "a strong feeling of dissatisfaction exists"62 concerning the theory of unbelievers' eternal punishment. Yet he could not personally accept the alternative theories of universalism or annihilation. On the pressing residual question of the duration of unbelievers' punishment, he recommended a "wise Agnosticism, " but added that as far as he 63 could see the Scriptures proclaimed no end to such suffering.

A sense of the inestimable magnitude of the issues involved, combined with. the lack of conclusive scriptural statement concerning them, made Orr abstain from speculation. He sought to preserve the urgency of evangelism, however, by describing Christian faith as 64 the only known means for the provision of salvation.

This, then, is where Orr stood in the last decade of the nineteenth century. He still belonged to evangelical orthodoxy, and commended that orthodoxy on the grounds that it was able to offer a satisfactory and coherent interpretation of reality. Unless 76

(and is we suspect Orr's sincerity there no apparent reason to suspect it), we may assume that this argument for orthodoxy was one that was quite persuasive and decisive for him personally. In other words, we may assume that Orr remained orthodox in large part because his strong "philosophical" orientation--his quest for coherency--found satisfaction in that camp.

Before moving on, we must note very briefly some opinions and attitudes expressed in The Christian View that anticipate some significant features of Orr's subsequent theological mindset. In the first place, he felt it necessary to stress his conviction

that Christianity is undeniably and irreducibly supernatural. And by supernatural he meant two things: that there is a transcendent--

supernatural dimension to reality, and that this supernatural

dimension can, and does, intersect the natural one. He insisted

that this assumption of the supernatural (which Rudolf Bultmann

later rejected as unscientific biblical cosmology) was inextricably

woven into the fabric of Christianity--from the existence of God to

the prospect of eternal life, and everything in between--and

constituted, in fact, its very essence. Orr made it plain that 65 for him this point was absolutely non-negotiable.

The second noteworthy feature of Orr's thought was his

tendency to see the intellectual world in terms of stark, almost

Manichean polarities. Though he had arrived at his own position

through_a somewhat fluid process, his conclusions now took on a

very settled and even exclusive character in his mind. There were,

in his view, really only two intellectual options. The Christian

View" stood in the most radical opposition to the plethora of views 77

"The that could be lumped together as Modern View" of the world.

"The Christian View" was fundamentally supernatural; all the others were overtly or covertly naturalistic. The two were in cosmic struggle, and it followed that every individual idea or theory 66 could first be tested and then consigned to one camp or the other.

A third feature is related to the second. "The Christian

`view of things, " said Orr, "forms a logical whole which cannot be infringed upon, or accepted or rejected piecemeal, but stands or falls in its integrity "67 The Christian is ... . view tightly interconnected, and the smallest concession in any area would

threaten the entire edifice. The whole thing is vulnerable unless

alertly defended at every point. Orr frequently spoke of the

organic character of Christian truth as he conceived it; in light

of this, though, he might also have conceded that it possessed a

rather brittle quality too. Either way he remained confident. it,

do not believe, " he said, "that in order to preserve [the Christian view] one single truth we have been accustomed to see shining in

that be "68 constellation will require to withdrawn ... . ENDNOTES

1 Addison, A Roll the Graduates the W. Innis comp ., of of University of Glasgow (Glasgow, 1898), s. v. "Orr, James"; Minutes of Glasgow Presbytery of the U. P. Church, 8 October 1872. 2Orr was examined and licensed by the Glasgow U. P. Presbytery. Minutes of Glasgow Presbytery of the U. P. Church, 8 October 1872 and 11 February 1873 respectively. He then spent the better part of 1873 as a probationer and temporary pulpit supply for the ailing "poet-preacher" William Robertson of Trinity Church, Irvine, who was living in Italy for health reasons. James Brown, Life of William B. Robertson (Glasgow, 1388), pp. 280-281. 3Orr was called on 20 October 1873, the call being sustained by the Melrose Presbytery. Minutes of Melrose U. P. Presbytery, 4 November 1873. Orr's acceptance was acknowledged shortly afterwards. Ibid., 2 December 1873. 4"The Call to the Rev. J. Christie to East Bank U. P. Church, " Hawick Express, 29 March 1873, p. 3. The church was the second largest of the fifteen in its presbytery. Minutes of Melrose U. P. Presbytery, 6 June 1876.

5 Minutes of CEast Bank Church Hawick Managers, 29 January 1874; 3 February 1874.

6The expansion project occupied the East Bank Board of Managers from 1874 to 1877. See their Minutes, 6 July 1874 ff. On the extension work, see Minutes of Melrose U. P. Presbytery, 7 February 1888 ff.; and Robert Small, History of the Congregations of the United Presbyterian Church, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1904), 1: 462-463. 7Stewart R. Scott, East Bank Church, Hawiek (Hawick, 1923), pp. 42-47. 8"The Call Rev. " to the J. Christie, H ,'ick Express, p. 3. 9Scott, East Bank Church, pp. 43-44. '0Ibid., p. 42, 11Minutes of Glasgow University Senate, 16 April 1885. John Caird had introduced a scheme whereby the D. D. degree, normally awarded honoris causa, could also be earned by thesis or examination. "Memoir, " The E. Caird, in Fundamental Ideas o f Christianity, 2 vols., by John Caird (Glasgow, 1899), 1: xcii4.

78 79

12W. P. Paterson, GutZine of the History of Dogmatic Theology (Edinburgh, 1916), p. 15. The history of the Westminster Confession in Scotland is treated in C. G. McCrie, The Confessions of the Church of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1907); A. C. Cheyne, The Transforming of the Kirk (Edinburgh, 1983), pp. 60-87; A. C. Cheyne, "The Place of the Confession through Three Centuries, " in The Westminster Confession in the Church Today (Edinburgh, 1982), ed. A. I. C. Heron, pp. 17-27; Andrew L. Drummond and James Bulloch, The Church in Late Victorian Scotland (Edinburgh, 1978), pp. 29-39. 13The factors that prompted reappraisal of the Westminster Confession are discussed in Cheyne, Transforming of the Kirk, pp. 73-83. 14 J. H. Leckie, Fergus Ferguson (Edinburgh, 1923), pp. 36-41. For more details on Morison, who went on to found the Evangelical Union, see W. Adamson, Life of Rev. James Morison (London, 1898). 15 Leckie, Fergus Ferguson, p. 33. 16Ibid., p. 96. 17 A. R. MacEwen, Life and Letters of John Cairns, 2nd ed. (London, 1895), pp. 211-213. 18MacEwen, John Cairns, pp. 671-672. 19Ibid.

20For the original Statement submitted to the U. P. Synod, see Ibid., pp. 682-683; the Declaratory Statement in its final form (1879) is reprinted in Heron, ed., The Westminster Confession, pp. 141-142. 21J. H. Leckie, Secession Memories (Edinburgh, 1926), p. 233. 22 Adamson, James Morison, pp. 415-416. 23James Orr, "The Contribution of the United Presbyterian Church to Religious Thought and Life, " in Memorial of the Jubilee Synod of the United Presbyterian Church (Edinburgh, 1897), p. 94. 24Leckie, Secession Memories, p. 233. 25Leckie, Fergus Ferguson, pp. 238-240. 26David Woodside, The Soul of a Scottish Church (Edinburgh, n. d. ), p. 271. 27"U. P. Presbytery of Melrose and the Law of Libel, " Hc& ick Advertiser, 6 April 1878, p. 2. 80 28James Orr, discussion on Westminster Confession, Proceedings of the Eighth General Council of the AZZiance of Reformed Churches holding the Presbyterian System (1904), p. 114. 29James Orr, "Calvin, " in The Reformers, ed. James Brown (Glasgow, 1885), p. 287. 30Ibid., pp. 288,293. 31 James Orr, "Calvinism, " in Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Re Zigion and Ethics, 3: 148. 32 James Orr, The Progress of Dogma (London, 1901), pp. 292- 294. 33Ibid., p. 294. 34Ibid.

35Orr, "Calvinism, " in Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, 3: 154; compare Orr, Memorial of the Jubilee Synod, pp. 90-91. 360rr, "Calvinism, " in Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, pp. 152-155. Compare Orris other Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics articles on "Sublapsarianism" and "Supra- lapsarianism. " 37James Orr, "Calvinism and Protestantism, " Missionary Record of the United Free Church 9 (1909): 197-198. 38Orr, "Calvinism, " in Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Re Zigion and Ethics, 3: 148. W. P. Paterson therefore seems to have misjudged his man by describing Orr as of the Confessionalist School in his Outline of the History of Dogmatic Theology, p. 18. 39There was some resistance to the move within the U. P. Church. One member of the old guard viewed the new scheme as "uncalled for in the interests Church imitation of the ... a mere of the children of Israel who asked for a King that they might be like the them Minutes Melrose U. P. Presbytery, nations around ... ." of 4 April 1876. 40Proceedings of the Synod of the United Presbyterian Church (1887), pp. 489-490. 41Robert Whyte, "The Kerr Lectureship, " The United Pres- byterian Magazine 5 C1888): 36-37. 42Proceedings of the Synod (1887), p. 490. 43Timothy Darling, later of Princeton Seminary, commended the "charm freshmess work for its and in method and style. " Review of 81

The Christian View, by James Orr, in The Presbyterian and Reformed Review 6 (1895): 359. We can only comment that charm and freshness are relative attributes. 44 1. A. Dorner, A System of Christian Doctrine, 4 vols., trans. Alfred Cave and J. S. Banks (Edinburgh, 1880-1882), 1: 17; compare ibid., "Translator's Preface, " 1: 2-13. See also Karl Barth, "Dorner, " Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1972), chap. 21; Claude Welch, ed., God and Incarnation in Mid- Nineteenth Century German Theology (New York, 1965), pp. 105-114; Claude Welch, Protestant Theo logy in the Nineteenth Century, vol. 1 (New Haven and London, 1972), pp. 273-282; Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 2nd ed., s. v. "Dorner, Isaak August"; New Inter- nationaZ Dictionary of the Christian Church, rev. ed., s. v. "Dorner, Isaac August"; Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, s. v. "Dorner, Isaac August. " 450rr defined a world view as any attempt towards "the systematic connection of all our experiences into a unity of a world-whole, " and as any general theory of the universe "explanatory of what it is, how it has come to be what it is, and whither it " The Christian View God the World, 3rd tends .... of and ed. (Edinburgh, 1897), pp. 5-6. The concept of a world view (German, Weltanschauung) was not original with Orr.. It was in common usage in nineteenth century philosophical discussion, and received attention from a number of German theologians too, as Orr well knew. One such theologian was A. Baur with his Die Weltanschauung des Christenthwns (1881). Orr, The Christian View, p. 365. 46 Charles Gore, The Philosophy of the Good Life, Everyman (London, 1935) 5. ed. , p. 47Orr, The Christian View, 5-7. Compare Kant "It is pp . : as little to be expected that the spirit of man will one day wholly give up metaphysical enquiries, as that in order not to be always breathing impure air we shall one day prefer to give up breathing altogether. There will always be metaphysics in the world, and is in in what more everyone, especially every thinking man ... ." Prolegomena, ed. P. Gray-Lucas (Manchester, 1953), p. 136. 48 0rr, The Christian View, pp. 3,8-9,21. 49Compare Mark Noll, ed., The Princeton Theology, 2812- 1912 (Grand Rapids, 1983). 50David S. Cairns, An Autobiography (London, 1950), p. 125. 51Edward Caird, The Evolution of Religion, 3rd ed., 2 vols. (Glasgow, 1899), 1: viii-ix. 52 Bernard M. G. Reardon, Religious Thought in the Victors Age (London and New York, 1980), pp. 430-451. 82

53Quoted by Orr, The Christian View, p. 41. 54Ib id., p. 40. 55Ibid., pp. 44-65. Dorner's philosophy of dogmatic history is described in Welch, ed., God and Incarnation, pp. 105-114. 560rr, The Christian View, pp. 296-297. 57Ibid. 119-121. , pp. 58Ibid., p. 287. 59Ibid. 347. , p. 60 Ibid., p. 4. 61While affirming that "the fact of the Atonement is greater than all our apprehensions of it, " Orr held that there is an objective element in the atonement, and that judicial concepts are essential to an adequate understanding of it. " Ibid., pp. 295,317. 62Ibid. 337. , p. 63Ibid., p. 338. 64 Ibid., pp. 345-346. On this point, Orr's position is essentially the same as that of a much earlier St. Andrews Divinity Professor, George Hill. See Hill's Lectures in Divinity, 3 vols. (Edinburgh, 1821), 3: 385. 65 Orr, The Christian View, pp. 10-11. 66Ibid., pp. 9-10, Orr was encouraged to adopt this outlook by the German scholar F. J. Delitzsch (1813-1890), who expressed similar convictions in his The Deep Gulf between the OZd and Modern Theology: A Confession (1890). Quoted by Orr, The Christian View, pp. 371-372. 671bid., p. 16. 68Ibid. 16,347. , pp. CHAPTER IV

ENCOUNTER WITH RITSCHLTANISM:

Continuity in Theological Method

The Christian View established Orr's reputation as a theologian. In Scotland it was uniformly praised by James Iverach,

John Laidlaw, S. D. F. Salmond and James Denney of the Free Church; by Robert Flint of the Auld Kirk; and by D. W. Simon of the Con- gregational Union. John Caird, Orr's former professor, generously I referred to it in his subsequent Baird Lectures. In England it was praised by such diverse scholars as Charles Gore; A. M. Fairbairn, the Scottish-born Principal of Mansfield College, Oxford; and by

Arthur S. Peake, a young biblical scholar from Primitive Methodist 2 ranks. It was largely ignored by Continental scholars, but in

America B. B. Warfield described it as "noble, " and the influential

Congregationalist review BibZiotheca Sacra hailed it as "one of the books that can be unhesitatingly recommended for a place in the personal library of those who are subject to the infection of modern doubt. "3 Orr lived to see The Chr7, stian View reach its tenth edition.

Naturally Orr's own church also took note of his achievement.

Just a few months after the completion of Orr's lecture series the

Chair of Church History at the United Presbyterian College fell vacant, and with Orr's recent success still freshly in mind the Synod offered the post to him. It was obviously not the most appropriate

83 84

chair for someone of Orr's manifest theological and apologetical bent, but it was the only chair vacant, and thus the sole available means of elevating him to a professorship in the United Presbyterian

Church. Orr immediately accepted the Synod's offer, and moved up to 4 Edinburgh to prepare for the imminent 1391-1892 academic session.

Although the Church History professorship was something of an unnatural yoke for Orr, he was certainly capable enough of ful-

filling the duties associated with it, and his enforced devotion to 5 the historian's task bore fruit in a number of publications. Yet historical research for Orr was never an end in itself, but the means by which an apologetical or theological point might be firmly 6 established.

Early in 1892, John Cairns, the U. P. leader, died. His death signalled the end of an era for the United Presbyterian Church.

Cairns was Principal and Professor of Systematic Theology and

Apologetics at the U. P. College at the time of his death, and a

search for successors necessarily began. His responsibilities were divided: the principalship went to George C. Hutton, an

ex-moderator and Voluntarist champion with forty years of ministry

experience, and the Systematic Theology and Apologetics chair went 7 to James Wardrop. A case could be made that Orr should have moved

laterally into Cairns's chair. He was actually nominated for it, but the feeling was expressed that he should not be uprooted from 8 a sphere in which he was functioning so splendidly. Still, Wardrop was a man without much theological distinction, and Hutton taught no courses while principal. Effectively, Cairn's mantle of theological leadership had fallen on Orr's shoulders. 85

When Orr accepted his Church History chair, a Scots woman noted that the "big and burly" professor coming up from the Borders was not the kind to be intimidated physically, nor, she suggested shrewdly, was it likely that one of his temper would be pushed 9 around theologically either, This image of theological sturdiness was immediately put to its greatest test, and Cairns's mantle necessarily shouldered, as Scottish religious thought began to feel the impact of Albrecht Ritschl, who, as Dorner admitted near the end of his life, had taken over the helm of German Protestant 10 theology.

Albrecht Ritschl was indeed the dominant figure in German theology in the latter part of the nineteenth century. His brilliant reconstruction of Christian theology centred on the historical revelation of God in Jesus Christ, and took the shape of an ellipse with twin foci: the religious experience of justification and the practical mandate of the Kingdom of God. It stressed Christ's role as the supreme revealer of God's fatherly love, and shifted the balance of concern from theoretical to ethical matters. And at the same time it sought to fortify religious confidence against any possible assaults from historical criticism or scientific advance.

Following Ritschl's death his followers popularized, defended and developed his seminal ideas in their application to biblical criticism, church history, and historical and systematic theology.

Their combined efforts, known as Ritschlianism, led German theology 11 into the twentieth century. 86

From the 1840s onward it was common for Scottish divinity students, including those of the United Presbyterian Church, to 12 study for a time on the Continent. It was inevitable that such

Scottish students should encounter the Ritschlian theology, especially after the completion of Ritschl's great work, Rechtfertigung and

Versöhnung, in 1874. And given the ferment in Scottish theology, and the prevailing religious temper, it was no less inevitable that many were attracted to it. Few Scottish students returned home as 13 ardent, zealous champions of the Ritschlian cause. For the most part the returning Scottish students assumed parish ministries and quietly blended certain Ritschlian perspectives into their preaching and teaching. Nevertheless, by the 1890s the view had come to prevail among Scottish students that German theologians like Ritschl, and his brilliant disciples Wilhelm Herrmann and Adolf Harnack, were the real authorities and were tackling the pressing problems with greater courage and more decisive effect than were their Scottish 14 counterparts.

Predictably, Orr's interest was aroused by the Ritschlian theology's widespread and growing influence, and it was hot long before he focused his considerable energies upon an analysis of it.

The Criristian Tl etv gave initial notice of Orr's interest in Ritschl's theology, and he followed this up with a number of periodical 15 articles on the same subject. In 1895 Orr journeyed to North

America. At Chicago Theological Seminary and then at the fledgling

Manitoba Presbyterian College, where Orr's old U. P. friend John

Mark King was principal, Orr lectured on nineteenth century German theological trends, and gave substantial attention to the Ritschlian 87

16 movement. Upon returning to Scotland, he incorporated this material into his Church history lectures, and not long afterwards presented the same to a group of ministers at the interdenominational 17 Christian Institute of Glasgow. Then in 1897 Orr published The

Ritschlian Theology and the Evangelical Faith, the first book-length 18 assessment of the Ritschlian theology by a British writer.

Thereafter he commented from time to time on developments within the 19 Ritschlian school. His analysis was exceedingly thorough, and his factual scholarship has been described by a recent authority as 20 impeccable.

Orr's efforts were predated by two books that tried to turn

English-speaking opinion against Ritschlianism. The first of these was Leonhard Staehlin's Kant, Lotze und RitschZ, which David W.

Simon translated into English in 1889. This early herald of

Ritschlian theology was indeed an unfriendly one. Staehlin contended that Ritschl's essentially Kantian theory of knowledge determined that his theology should be irreconcilably opposed to Scripture and the Church's faith. He urged that "theology must break with

Kantian If hold the epistemology .... metaphysics are again to the place of honour in theology which is their due, the errors of the Kantian theory of cognition must be consciously and openly renounced. "21

The second book was Otto Pf leiderer's The Development of

Theology in Germany Since Kant and its Progress in Breat Britain Since 22 1825 (1840), a work that enjoyed a large influence in Britain. It

included a succinct and critical summary of Ritschlian doctrines 23 heads. under the traditional Pfleiderer, too, was especially 88

described it "eclectically critical of Ritschl's epistemology, and as derived from Kant and Lotze" and "a dilettante confusion" capable 24 of convincing only amateurs. Most of Pfleiderer's criticisms stemmed directly from his philosophical objections.

Since Staehlin and Pfleiderer were foreigners, their books might be considered purely external influences on the formation of the Scottish attitude towards Ritschlianism. On the other hand, the books may be judged as expressions of early Scottish reaction, since their publication in English was the result of Scottish initiative,

When Simon translated Staehlin's work into English, he explained that he was bringing it before the British public because it impressed him as necessary and true. As for Pf leiderer's work,

John H. Muirhead (who had also studied under Edward Caird at Glasgow) had commissioned Pf leiderer to write it for inclusion in the Library 25 of Philosophy Series which Muirhead edited. It is interesting to 26 note that Simon's philosophy was akin-to Scottish common sense, and that Muirhead's was unabashedly Hegelian. We thus have a case of thinkers from two disparate philosophical positions concurrently issuing alerts to the English-speaking public concerning Ritschlianism.

Yet another negative Scottish. assessment was George Galloway's article on Ritschl's theology, published in The Presbyterian Review.

Galloway, later Principal of St. Mary's College of the University of

St. Andrews, had just returned from studies under Ritschl and Harnack.

He maintained that Ritschl's principal error lay in having banished philosophy from theology, and argued that reason is as necessary a presupposition of religious knowledge as it is of scientific knowledge.

The theoretical agnosticism which Ritschl promoted posed untenable 89 tensions for the human mind. On the theological side, Galloway

from added, Ritschlianism was too discrepant Scripture to be 27 seriously regarded as biblical.

These initial responses form the immediate background to

Orr's evaluation of Ritschlianism, and his evaluation was entirely in keeping with them. Not only was his verdict on Ritschlianism equally negative, but his approach was similar as well. Like

Staehlin, Simon, Pf leiderer and Galloway before him, Orr focused on Ritschl's philosophical presuppositions and the distinctive theological method that stemmed from them, and then sought to trace the effects of these on Ritschl's theology as a whole.

Orr's examination of Ritschl's premises involved a close look at two distinctive Ritschlian themes: "theology without metaphysics" and "judgments of value. " In' the first place, Orr struggled to reconcile the Ritschlian watchword "theology without metaphysics" with the character of the Ritschlian theology itself.

At root the problem was one of definition of terms. The meaning commonly attached to the word "metaphysics, " at least in the Scottish tradition up to that time, was that discipline that takes as its subject matter the fundamental questions of knowledge and reality. 28 And this was certainly the meaning that Orr attached to the term.

Thus he found it perplexing thatRitschl simultaneously decried meta- 29 physics and affirmed a theory of knowledge, for the latter struck the Scottish mind as a vital aspect of metaphysics. No less perplexing was Ritschl's claim that the theologian's task is to develop a comprehensive and coherent Christian world view. To the Scottish

defined mind, metaphysics was not only by the questions it addressed 90

(fundamental ones of knowledge and reality), but also by its methods and aims. Its method was rational reflection and its aim, implicit 30 in rationality itself, was to render experience unified and coherent.

How then should the Ritschlian motto be interpreted? While suggesting that Ritschl was at times inconsistent, if not confused, 31 about his own position on the issue, Orr believed that Ritschl's theology without metaphysics amounted to a phenomenalism that limited the exercise of theoretic reason to empirical data. Ritschl dismissed as metaphysical any affirmation which pertained to the 32 "transcendental, " or which took one beyond the bounds of experience.

Ritschl claimed to derive his theory of knowledge from the philosopher Hermann Lotze, his colleague at Gottingen. Orr denied the claim, and argued that Ritschl only thought he got it from Lotze.

In fact, he insisted, Ritschl's theory was essentially Kantian. To explain this connection, Orr painted Ritschl as a child of his day.

With the breakdown of the Hegelian movement in Germany, "the reaction in favour of a strict demarcation of the limits of reason found its expression in the cry 'Back to Kant. "' And Ritschl, claimed Orr, was caught up in this reaction, with the result that Kant's philosophy 33 furnished the framework for his theo-'Logy.

This brings us to the matter of judgments of value. For

Ritschl, religious knowledge could be obtained despite the restric- tions imposed on theoretical reason. It could be obtained through value judgments, which expressed the value of a thing to the observer.

In Ritschl's most consistent moments, Orr suggested, he accepted

theological statements regarding the transcendent or supernatural sphere as valid only when it was specifically understood that they 91 34 judgment were postulates of the religious of value.

The "red flag" issue for Orr was the Ritschlian claim that

in religious and theoretical knowledge operate mutually exclusive 35 spheres, and consequently cannot contradict one another. Orr regarded Wilhelm Herrmann as representative of the Ritschlians at this point in his claim that the certitude of faith springs from an immediate impression of Christ upon the soul--a vivid perception, an irresistible compulsion prior to theology and reflection. Herrmann treated this faith as itself the guarantee that attacks upon the truth of Christianity (at least in its general character, though not necessarily in its incidental details) would prove false. Orr agreed with Herrmann's Christocentrism, and even with his stress on the immediate certitude of faith, but he insisted that thus far 36 Herrmann offered nothing new. He merely expressed the old truth of "the self-evidencing character of the Gospel revelation. "37

Where Herrmann and the other Ritschlians went wrong, Orr complained, was in pushing faith's independence of critical results too far. And thus, he said, "instead of using their principle of faith as a check against the inroads of destructive criticism--as, if it had any worth, they ought to do--they make concessions to opponents which practically mean the cutting away of the bough they themselves are sitting on. "38 This last remark is quite significant, for it shows just how close to, and yet how far from, the Ritschlian position Orr stood. On the one hand, for Orr no less than for

Herrmann and Ritschl (and indeed for Dorner), faith was a means of knowing. He readily agreed that "reason is not the only power in 39 my being,, and that the roots of faith are nourished by "many 92

"40 Thus, "It is other elements besides the intellectual. when a word,

laws message, revelation, comes to us which accords with these of the spiritual being--which strikes and awakens the verifying chord 41 is within--that faith generated ......

These remarks flowed quite consistently from the epistemology

Orr learned from Veitch. Orr simply extended the bounds of intuition to incorporate a capacity for spiritual perception. The intuitional framework of rational human beings includes a capacity for judgments on religious matters. It is a capacity that exists alongside the soul's other powers of reason, moral judgment and aesthetics. 1142

This epistemological model contained the seed of Orr's sharp difference with the Ritschlians. For Orr, unlike the Ritschlians, the confidence granted to faith could not be sustained if it was subsequently contradicted by other faculties of the intuitive soul.

Thus Orr considered it hopelessly false to ignore the points of contact between faith and reason. The two could be legitimately distinguished, he admitted, but the distinction was one of form and expression only. In the end the two had to harmonize. The mind simply could not be divided into two parts. Contradictory propositions could not be maintained simultaneously. The instinct to unify know- 43 ledge could not be constrained.

In short, Orr believed that the Ritschlian theology demanded a violation of rationality itself. If the judgment of value was defined in autonomous terms, as the Ritschlians defined it, it was

being, not a judgment of and therefore could not be construed as a

Knowledge source of knowledge. pertains only to being, to reality, to what is. And besides, reason cannot function unless it attributes 93

reality to that which it believes.

Having laid this groundwork, Orr then turned to the

substance of Ritschl's theology. Everywhere his purpose was to show

the deleterious effects of Ritschl's philosophical assumptions on

the fabric of his theological system. Topic by topic he went through

Ritschl's system, relentlessly levelling criticisms that soon amounted

to variations on a theme. In the first place he suggested that

Ritschl saw religion as a means to the end of man rightly relating himself to the world. The divine-human relationship, Orr argued, was thereby reduced to little more than a utilitarian function, 44 subordinated to the greater end of man's dominion over the world.

But such a theory of religion, he explained, was an entirely predictable consequence of Ritschl's epistemology. Having denied

the possibility of either a theoretical knowledge of God Himself

(that would be to venture into the forbidden realm of metaphysics),

or of a direct relationship with Him, Ritschl had little choice but 45 to turn in the direction of worldly concern.

Orr commended Ritschl's doctrine of revelation insofar as it insisted on Christ as "the positive principle of Christian revelation, 'ý46 but he judged it defective in its denial that nature might be a legitimate, though secondary, avenue to truth. Only Ritschl's

Kantian prejudices, he concluded, could account for such a limited

concept of revelation.

If God, as Ritschl admits, is the Creator, Upholder and Moral Ruler of the universe, --He whose will, purpose, attributes are expressed in it, --it is rationally incredible that it 94

should not exhibit in its constitution and course some traceable indications of the Being and perfections of its Author. The absence of all such indications--if this were conceivable--would be a cogent argument for atheism. 47

Orr also complained that Ritschl stopped short of affirming, plainly and explicitly, the supernatural character of divine revelation. He personally doubted that Ritschl did view it as supernatural, since for one thing, Ritschl's apologetic for

Christianity did not take the traditional tack (that is, to seek to demonstrate its supernatural origin), but sought rather to demonstrate Christianity's historic fulfillment of the religious 48 needs of mankind. And for another, Ritschl's insistence on the theologian's necessary place within the experience of the Church gave (to Orr's mind) a subjective cast to all truth-statements of

Christianity. Orr detected a similar anti-supernatural subjectivity in Ritschl's description of Scripture as"a historic witness to the

Church's faith. He was sure that such interpretations would effectively prevent Scripture from standing as a divinely author- 49 itative rule of faith..

For similar reasons, Orr judged Ritschl's doctrine of God as "vitally defective" also. Ritschl's sanctions against all mystical and theoretical access to God really left Him inaccessible. As a result, religion itself, conceived as spiritual communion with God based on certain knowledge of God's being, was placed in jeopardy.

Even Ritschl's concept of the love of God was consequently "little more than an abstraction for the purpose of the universe. " It was far too static, and entirely lacking in the personal warmth of the 50 biblical alternative.

For another thing, Orr objected to Ritschl's way of reducing 95 all God's attributes to derivative aspects or expressions of God as love, and was especially concerned about Ritschl's definition of

God's righteousness as His consistency in seeing His loving objectives through to completion. Such a reductionist doctrine of God,

Orr believed, undermined the ethical foundations of the moral universe:

The moral law, with its categorical "Thou shalt, " is neither a deduction from love, nor is annulled by love, though under the impulse of love, obedience becomes a delight, and the is longer felt Govern- constrainst of obligation no .... ment by love no more annuls law in the ethical sphere than it does in the natural sphere. Love carries through its ends in a law-governed universe-51

Likewise, he continued, Ritschl's doctrine of God undermined the biblical and evangelical scheme of redeeming grace in Christ. A proper understanding of the nature of sin, the necessity of a sub- stitutionarv atonement and a divine Christ all hinge on sustained belief that moral law and retributive justice derive from the 52 absolute nature of God.

Orr claimed to welcome the Ritschlian emphasis on the King- dom of God as a needed corrective to previous Protestant neglect, and agreed that the Church should reject any other-worldly outlook and 53 demonstrate the power it possessed to transform society. However, his actions spoke louder than these words. By the early 1890s he concluded that it was impossible properly to subsume every biblical doctrine beneath that of the Kingdom, For that reason, the Kingdom should not be made "the all-embracing, all-dominating conception of 54 Christian theology. , In his The Christian View, and despite earlier intentions otherwise, Orr did not treat the Kingdom except 55 in an appendix, and seemed hesitant thereafter to give it more 96 attention lest it encroach on other older themes. In a day of unprecedented interest in the Kingdom, Orr actually steered away from it, and took comfort in the older view that the transforming power of Christianity tended to work itself out in an automatic 56 and unsolicited manner.

It soon became clear that Orr's primary concern was to preserve the soteriological emphasis of traditional evangelical theology within any new theological climate stressing the Kingdom.

He stressed personal regeneration as a precondition to, and mystical communion as an ongoing requirement of, the fulfillment of the social agenda of the Kingdom. He argued that the Kingdom (a new principle; not, as with Ritschl', a community) is essentially spiritual and ethical and finds its roots in the inward disposition. It is not only patterned on Christ's teaching, but obtains its vital impulse from His resurrected life. Knowledge of Christ Himself, acquired through study and prayerful communion with Him, is the key to the 57 Kingdom's realization.

With respect to the Incarnation, Orr claimed that Ritschl's agnostic stand regarding the "metaphysical" doctrine of the person of

Christ was a departure from apostolic belief. It was incorrect, he argued, to say that apostolic Christianity had to do only with

Christ's historical manifestation. For the first disciples, the conviction of Christ's ontological divinity grew in a natural and legitimate way out of the immediate impression of His person and work upon them. The later Athanasian confession that Christ is of the same substance of God the Father was not an unfortunate and specula-

faith, tive accretion to the but a legitimate formulation which the 97 preservation of apostolic conviction necessitated. Orr dismissed as "no real Deity at all" the Godhead of religious value that

Ritschl ascribed to Christ. Ritschl, he added, "asks us to value as God one who is not God in fact. " "Value predicates in this case, " he said, "are but stilts to raise a little higher one who is after all but Man. "58

Orr believed that it followed from Ritschl's conception of

God, and his disregard for God's awful holiness and punitive justice, that sin should be regarded as less serious and catastrophic, and that the fearful sense of liability for punishment should be explained away. Thus, according to Ritschl, sin was a product of ignorance, an unavoidable occurrence, and therefore something to be 59 overlooked. Likewise guilt, in the sense of obligation to punishment, was replaced by guilt-consciousness, "a sense of dissatisfaction and self-blame which accompanies non-fulfillment or

duty; from God, violation of and second ... real separation and hindrance to fellowship with Him--the result of distrust or indif- 60 ference which a bad conscience occasions. ,

The facts of the matter, Orr continued, were quite otherwise.

Apostolic doctrine did not permit one to expel law "from the bosom of God, any more than from the conscience of man. " There were feelings of guilt that truthfully reflected a real and objective condition of being guilty and liable for divine punishment. Feelings of guilt and fears of punishment were not, as Ritschl would have it, to be dispelled through a more accurate conception of God's character. Rather, the objective condition to which they witnessed 61 had to be altered. 98

But the cardinal point at which the Ritschlian theology differed from the primitive Gospel, Orr argued, was the stress the latter placed on the death and resurrection as real events that fundamentally altered the relationship of humanity to God. And the apostolic community not only emphasized Christ's death and resurrection, but attached a specific interpretation to those events as well. The apostolic teaching presented Christ's death and resurrection as an actual and effectual atonement for sin. However much the atonement remained a mystery, Orr believed that Christ had so identified with man that He was able to bear man's condemnation in 62 a representative way.

Orr found Ritschl's ideas of justification and reconciliation sufficiently different from the view just sketched to be judged as substantially in error. Ritschl's ideas, he explained, did not move in the "circle of forensic notions" which had characterized

Protestant theology. Instead, for Ritschl justification was an

inexplicable acceptance by God of sinners, despite and with their

transgressions of His will. There was no need for, or possibility of, a metaphysical scheme to explain the wonderful fact. Christ's death was simply the ultimate illustration of His fidelity to His vocation, and as such it fostered to an unparalleled extent, trust in God as Father. But Orr insisted that the sacrificial imagery within Scripture itself ruled against Ritschl's interpretation. He also insisted on distinguishing the regenerative experience from the reality upon which it was logically based and dependent, and judged that Ritschl's failure to make the same distinction was simply further evidence of his chronic habit of confusing objective reality 99 63 with subjective experience.

Finally, Orr discerned in Ritschl's exposition of the

Christian life which follows justification the same recurring

tendency to isolate God from man. Similarly, the this-worldliness

of Ritschl's theology was only reinforced still more by Ritschl's

neglect of eschatology. One of the most serious consequences of

this, in Orr's mind, was that the apostolic concept of eternal life

was devalued into a mere synonym for spiritual freedom and earthly 64 sovereignty.

Orr's judgment on the Ritschlian theology was profoundly

negative. He conceded that it possessed some "incidental merits, "

but invariably his expressions of appreciation for those merits

sounded curt and grudging. His deeper. conviction was that the

Ritschlian theology was flawed at its core, and not simply in its

surface aspects. And thus he was unable to welcome it even as a

contemporary apologetic for the faith. He realized that it struck

chords that were "already vibrating in the intellectual and spiritual

atmosphere, " but he dismissed it as a product of, rather than a 65 faithful witness to, the times. He certainly did not regard it

as a noble effort to make the faith relevant to modern man. "It

would not be an unfair description of the Ritschlian theology, " he

concluded, "to say that it is an attempt to show how much of positive

Christianity can be retained, compatibly with the acceptance of the 66 modern non-miraculous theory of the world Recalling Orr's

insistence that Christianity was fundamentally supernatural, we can

better understand his verdict that Ritschlianism was "an imperfect

and mutilated, and in many ways wholly inadmissable version of 100

Christianity. ýý67

for Orr's intolerance. In There were a number of reasons the first place, he had absolutely no sympathy with Ritschl's metaphysical premises. Orr himself had taken refuge from Kant's skepticism in a personal mix of Hegelian confidence in reason and the older

Scottish reliance on irrepressible common sense. He saw no reason to give an inch to the Neo-Kantian movement, particularly in light of what it was doing to the old theological landmarks.

The second reason for Orr's intolerance was simply that

Ritschl's theology was not evangelical orthodoxy. For Orr at least, evangelical orthodoxy bore a self-authenticating stamp of its truth and revelatory origin. It was truth in an a priori sense, and as such stood in judgment over deviations from it. In Orr's view the

Ritschlian theology had signally failed to conserve "the round of truths" which made up the apostolic Gospel (he always equated the apostolic Gospel with evangelical orthodoxy). The very title of

Orr's main rebuttal of Ritschlianism, The Ritschlian Theology and the

Evangelical Faith, was intended to denote a gulf and antithesis between the two.

The third reason for Orr's intolerance was that he viewed

Ritschlianism almost exclusively as a systematic theology, and analyzed it, in his own words, "as a whole" and from "a sympathetic 68 point of view., David S. Cairns, who was a student at the United

Presbyterian College when Orr delivered his Kerr Lectures there, later recalled Ritschlianism as a flawed and extemporized affair.

Yet he had been to Marburg, and had personally seen Herrmann

in his lecturing with tears eyes on the ravages of science, 101

bottom Consequently Cairns also viewed Ritschlianism as at a positive 64 " religious movement honestly struggling with materialistic science.

It is doubtful that Orr ever saw Ritschlianism in quite the same way.

beyond For the most part he was unwilling or unable to see anything its philosophical and doctrinal deficiencies.

Orr's contribution to the English-speaking response to

Ritschlianism lay not so much in the originality of his criticisms as in the amplification and popularization of them. He adopted the provocative criticisms of his predecessors as his own, and then proceeded through painstaking scholarship to flesh out and support the arguments he had inherited in skeletal form. He also did much to popularize the shared viewpoint to which he adhered. Unlike

Staehlin's work, which was perceived as a technical and primarily philosophical treatise, and unlike Galloway's article, which was brief and had limited circulation, Orr's work attracted a wide readership. The RitschZian Theology was fairly readable and went through several printings; its publication in William Robertson

Nicoll's Theological Educator series also helped to ensure that large readership that was attracted to so many of Nicoll's enterprises. In

1901 Ritschlian enthusiast lamented that "Professor Orr has a ... done more than any other critic to discredit Ritschl in the estimation of the English public, "70

Orr's vigorous polemic against Ritschlianism placed him at the

like-minded centre of a circle of English-speaking opinion. James

in his Studies in Theology (1894), Denney, passionately restated 102

dualistic Orr's negative judgment on theologies based on theories of knowledge. Contrary to Ritschlianism, Denney emphasized the objectivity of both guilt and atonement. This stress was characteristic 71 of his subsequent theological work.

The year following Orr's visit to Chicago Theological

Seminary, Hugh M. Scott, Professor of Church History there, presented the Stone Lectures at Princeton Seminary on The Origin and Development of the Nicene Theology. The lectures, which affirmed the doctrinal developments which culminated in Nicean Christology, made extensive critical reference to Ritschlianism. In them, Scott reiterated the familiar judgment that Ritschlianism tore "the psychological unity of man's mind and moral nature apart. "72

Likewise R. M. Wenley, who served as John Veitch's assistant until the latter's death, discussed the Ritschlian theology with much sarcasm in his Contemporary Theo1cay and Theism (1897). Wenley castigated Ritschl for bifurcating experience into "hermetically 73 sealed compartments, " and caricatured him as a complete imbecile.

H. R. Mackintosh, later Professor of Theology at New College,

Edinburgh, published an article on Ritschlianism in the American

Journal of Theology. In it Mackintosh, who had just returned from

Marburg, recapitulated all the Scottish criticisms of Ritschl as a 74 philosopher.

B. B. Warfield interpreted Ritschl's call to eliminate metaphysics from theology as an assault on systematic theology itself,

defended "The and in 1896 Right of Systematic Theology" in a lengthy

in The Presbyterian article and Reformed Review. Orr was so impressed have that he arranged to the article republished in book form in 103

Scotland. He attached a commendatory preface, and secured official endorsements of the article from leading theologians of all three 75 branches of Scottish Presbyterianism.

Clearly Orr's viewpoint was a popular one, but it was not the only one, and it was not very long before a more conciliatory response to Ritschlianism emerged. A. B. Bruce, Professor of Apologetics and

New Testament at the Glasgow Free Church College, was the forerunner

of this development with his qualified identification with Ritsch-

lianism. Bruce still held to the traditional Scottish objections to 76 Ritschl's philosophical premises, but this did not prevent him, as

it seems to have prevented others, from genuinely identifying with

the religious attitude of Ritschlianism, and with certain of its

theological formulations.

In his Apologetics C1892), for example, Bruce presented the

historic person of Christ as the pivotal apologetic for the Christian

faith. It was of paramount importance, he said, that men of every

age should become acquainted with the historic Christ. The

preservation of dogma must take a second place to this objective,

and dogma which interfered with or obstructed such encounter ought

to be jettisoned. The greatest danger was to lose the historic

Christ, "for if the Man disappear, the divinity ceases to have any value. "77 For the early Church, he continued, the conviction of

Christ's divinity "sprang out of the impression made on their minds 78 by the facts of Christ's earthly history., It was essential that

all persons undergo the same experience for themselves; as they did,

Bruce was confident that their conclusions would be in harmony with 79 historic Christology. 104

The conciliatory response to Ritschlianism reached a new

level, one of appreciation and respect, with the contribution of

Alfred E. Garvie. Coincidentally, Garvie, like Orr, had studied

philosophy at Glasgow University, been active in Y. M. C. A. and 80 city mission work, and even attended Sydney Place Church. But there the similarity ended, for as a young man at Sydney Place

Garvie once approached the associate minister James MacEwen (Orr's predecessor at Hawick and the officiating clergyman at Orr's wedding) for help with certain personal religious doubts. He found MacEwen rigidly conservative, without empathy and of little assistance. Eventually Garvie left the United Presbyterians in search of greater theological freedom, and-after being suspiciously rejected by D. W. Simon, eventually found it among the Congrega- 81 tionalists at Mansfield College.

Years later, at A. M. Fairbairn's suggestion, Garvie published The RitschZian Theology (1899). Therein he suggested that "the Ritschlian school has as yet not received a cordial welcome in Britain, " and indicated his intention to correct the 82 deficiency in a. "generous and sympathetic" spirit. Garvie's attitude stemmed from his conviction that Christian theology was duty-bound to address the contemporary intellectual situation, and

inasmuch as Ritschl and his school had attempted, unlike most of their opponents, to meet this challenge, they ought to be commended for it. Garvie had struggled to sustain faith, and by his own admission continued to do so, and this prompted him to respect any 83 honest attempt at Christian apologetics.

The sympathetic approach for which Garvie appealed did not 105 preclude criticism. In fact Garvie echoed the bulk of previous

"exaggerated Scottish criticism, and concluded that Ritschl's suspicion of metaphysics" had prompted him to give exclusive attention to the phenomenal aspects of reality, with the result that "God is, so to speak, lost in His Kingdom, Christ in His vocation, the soul in its activities. "84

There was, however, an entirely new side to Garvie's analysis. He commended many features of Ritschlian theology which he felt merited for it a generous reception. These features included its Bible-, Christ- and faith-centred method; its opposition to speculative rationalism and an unhealthy pietism; and its character as a theology resting on personal conviction. He assented to the importance and value of many of the Christological modifications that Ritschl proposed, and gave Ritschl full credit for highlighting 8 C essential truths in his doctrine of Christian forgiveness. J Garvie also expressed sympathy with Ritschl's aims, even where he differed from his conclusions. He treated Ritschl's rejection of speculative theism as a product of an intense desire to affirm revelation, and his condemnation of ecclesiastical dogma as a worthy corrective to 86 an exaggerated appreciation of it.

Garvie also sought to correct what he considered exaggerated and unjustified criticisms of Ritschl. For example, he argued that for all Ritschl's antagonism to religious mysticism, he had never denied the possibility of personal communion with God. He admitted that much of Ritschl's language appeared to do so, but that in fact it simply stemmed from Ritschl's desire to give due regard to historical revelation. Similarly, Garvie tried. to defend Ritschl's 106

knowledge concept of the judgment of value. Garvie argued that

Ritschlianism gained through value-judgments had objective character; did not perpetrate "double truth. " In the final analysis, he suggested, "this theory of value-judgments is but a new way of putting the truth, that if a man does the will of God he will know whether the doctrine be of God or not, that the pure in heart shall see God, that what is spiritual is spiritually discerned. " And Orr was wrong, said

Garvie, to have perpetrated misunderstanding of Ritschl's position 87 on both these counts.

Garvie valued the Ritschlian theology, not because he thought

it was flawless, but because he thought that it incorporated certain

features and perspectives that were essential to any theological

reconstruction suitable to the modern age. Ritschlianism was, at the very least, a provisional or temporary stopping-place for theology; 88 it signalled the direction theology had to take.

The conciliatory response to Ritschlian theology attained

its highest level in 1901 with the publication of The Theology of

Albrecht RitschZ by A. T. Swing of Oberlin College, Ohio. In this

brief and breezy volume, Swing extolled Ritschl's theology to a degree

quite unequalled by anything produced in Scotland up to that time.

Swing's exposition lacked the faintest hint of-criticism. None of

Ritschl's propositions received less than full endorsement. Swing 89 seemed more Ritschlian than the Ritschlians.

In his effort to vindicate Ritschl, Swing singled out Orr

for a number of criticisms, in each case to counter Orr's contention

that the Ritschlian theology was hopelessly flawed by subjectivity.

Swing's own estimate was that Ritschl followed Lotze completely and 107

fatal consistently. "Nothing, " he insisted, "would be more to a

he does right understanding of Ritschl than to suppose that not

" hold to the reality of things themselves. Swing praised Ritschl for employing nothing other than the common sense view of reality. 90 Ritschl simply practiced the scientific method consistent y.

The opinions expressed by Bruce, Garvie and Swing did not escape Orr's notice. To Bruce he responded with cordiality and for the most part approval, and he described Bruce's Apologetics, with its Christocentric theme, as a "peculiarly timely and valuable" 91 contribution to apologetical literature. He was less generous with Swing. He replied to his criticisms seriat, U_M', but reserved his most extensive rebuttal for Swing's charge that Orr had mis- 92 interpreted Ritschl's theory of knowledge and judgment of worth.

Swing was really no match for Orr once the discussion moved into philosophical territory. Orr simply devastated his opponent with his philosophical acumen.

On the other hand, Orr found Garvie much more difficult to deal with. At least implicitly throughout, and at numerous points quite explicitly, Garvie's book was a rebuttal to Orr's evaluation of Ritschl. Naturally Orr took offence at Garvie's suggestion that the Ritschlian theology had not, prior to 1899, received a cordial welcome in Britain. Basically Orr's reply was that he had been as cordial as Ritschlianism deserved. He acknowledged that he found it difficult to understand, let alone identify with, Garvie's sympathetic tenor, especially in light of what he considered Garvie's severe 93 handling of the Ritschlian theology at many points.

Orr defended his own more hostile attitude by arguing, in 108 the first place, that the Ritschlian theology held no exlusive claim to any of the features for which Garvie commended it. It was certainly not the only theology to affirm that spiritual insight is spiritually conditioned, or that Christianity is dependent upon the historical revelation in Christ. Nor was it the only circle of opinion that objected to the excesses of speculative rationalism.

Orr insisted that the traditional evangelical theology had held these convictions all along, and had in fact stressed them with 94 even greater force and clarity. As for Garvie's suggestion that faith outside Ritschlianism was usually viewed as an intellectual process, he responded: "The truth is that faith, in the sense of the ordinary evangelical doctrine, has depths of 'value-judging' in 95 it that the plumb of Ritschlianism is totally incapable of sounding. ,

Orr considered especially inadmissabie Garvie's tolerance I concerning Ritschl's metaphysical position:

It is hardly a strong defence, e. g., after knocking the bottom out of Ritschl's metaphysics, to plead that he was really 'incapable of philosophical thinking, ' that his 'intention' was good, that what he was opposing was not 'philosophy as it might be, but philosophy as it was. '96

Too much was at stake, said Orr, to permit such a patronizing attitude.

Garvie's remark that the elimination of metaphysics from theology was in the positive interest of religion was only a half-truth. Along with metaphysics, Ritschl had eliminated essential Christian doctrines.

Concerning Christology Orr said: "No argument can get over the fact that in this theology--certainly in Ritschl's own--this predicate

[Godhead] is an expression of the value placed on Christ by religious emotion rather than a declaration of His inherent and essential dignity. " And again, "It is wholly a straining to try to make out that 109

Christ. "97 Ritschl believed in any sense in a real pre-existence of "long Furthermore, Orr claimed that Garvie's and recondite"

exposition of Ritschl's view of the mystical relation of the soul to

God failed to disprove the fact that Ritschl did deny the unto mystica. That denial, he said, was neither ambivalent nor arbitrary,

but solidly and logically grounded on Ritschl's anti-metaphysical

doctrine of the soul. With such a system, he remarked caustically,

it required a genuine effort to maintain one's "sympathy" at the 98 necessary pitch.

In a second edition of The RitschZian Theology, published

in 1902, Garvie replied to Orr's criticism of his work. He did so

with all the poise of one who knows he has the upper hand. Even if

many of the truths found in Ritschl's theology were, as Orr suggested,

also proclaimed elsewhere, it was still proper that the Ritschlian

presentation of them should be appreciatively recognized. Then,

without granting Orr a singled concession, Garvie reiterated his

evaluations of Ritschlian theology. He also reaffirmed his desire

"to see the problems as Ritschl saw them, to feel the difficulties

as he felt them; and, therefore, where any interpretation is doubtful,

to take the most, and not the least favourable view, which the data

will allow. 1199 The Orr-Garvie debate had reached an impasse, but

Garvie had the satisfaction of knowing that Fairbairn was behind him.

The first edition of The RitschZian Theology had been very well '00 received, and much British opinion was on his side. 110

The Ritschlian movement was greatly strengthened and the

range of its influence extended through a group of scholars who

applied Ritschlian premises in their work in theology and related

disciplines. One such discipline was history, and one very prominent

Ritschlian in that discipline was Adolf Harnack. Harnack accepted

Ritschl's thesis that metaphysics should be eliminated from theology,

and reasoned that since the history of Christian dogma was riddled with the very tendency that Ritschl denounced, it followed that the history of dogma was pathological from the beginning, and bot. h it and

its intellectual products stood condemned. Harnack, who expounded

this argument in his History of Dogma (ET, 1894-1899), became the

scholarly champion of those who'found the Church's dogmatic heritage

tedious and stultifying.

As Orr saw Ritschlianism extending its influence through the work of Harnack, he tried to counter it on its historical flank as

well. He had a much deeper respect and appreciation for "that great

heritage of truth" that had been hammered out on the anvil of

opposition and controversy. He did not view dogmas as expressions of

rash judgments, but of thoughtful deliberation over extended periods

of time; not as individual opinions, but as the products of catholic 101 consensus. At the same time, while affirming the Protestant

principle of sofa Scriptura, he sought to preserve the dogmatic

tradition of the Church as a useful secondary criterion by which 102 Scripture could be protected from capricious interpretation. But

even so, Orr's main concern was that Harnack's historical argument might undermine the central tenets of evangelical orthodoxy, inasmuch

as they had been shaped by the very historical process that Harnack 111 criticized.

Orr challenged Harnack most pointedly in a series of lectures he delivered in 1897 at Western Theological Seminary, a Presbyterian institution near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Four years later, he published them as The Progress of Dogma (1901). By that point he was ready to acknowledge that his views did not match prevailing tendencies, and that he was prepared for "wide dissent" from his 103 conclusions.

The Progress of Dogma was a survey of the history of dogma that limited itself, after the fifth century, to developments within the Western Church, and after the sixteenth, even more narrowly to those within Protestantism. But the book was more than a survey; it was an argument. And the argument was that "an increasing purpose" ran through the ages, and that there was a grand and discernable design to the history of dogma. It bore the mark of the guidance of 104 a controlling reason. The historical and the logical corresponded.

Orr's thesis, he explained, implied that the fate of theological propositions--whether they were ultimately rejected, or adopted and permitted to stand in peace--was history's own "practically unerring verdict" on their truthfulness. He was convinced that reason would not let a matter rest until it had been satisfied, and until the outcome of a controversy was in harmony with its promptings and character. Reason, he insisted, always triumphed in dogmatic 105 settlements.

It followed that dogmatic achievements were pretty much fixed and final. While they might not be exhaustive statements of truth

(land in that limited sense were still open to future refinement), they 112 could never properly be overthrown or discarded. No quantity of new information or degree of enlightenment in the future could abrogate the reason-sanctioned settlements of the Church's dogmatic heritage.

Conversely, that which had been definitively rejected in the past ought not to be reconsidered later on, regardless of the new garb it might wear. The history of dogma, Orr said, "never returns upon itself to take up as part of its creed what it has formerly, and with 106 full consciousness, rejected at some bygone stage. ,

Orr also stressed that the history of dogma was teleological and progressive. It was moving inexorably toward a designed end, and as it did, its gains were cumulative. This brought Orr to declare concerning progress that, while. it implies continued growth and advance, it just as surely implies the preservation of former gains.

Otherwise it is not real progress, but an entirely new initiative and de nova start. Progress, he said, is by definition cumulative, 107 and thus the title of his book, The Progress of Dogma.

Consequently, Orr explained, one should not approach theology as though "the chief part" of'the task of theology still remained to be performed. A vast amount of work was yet ahead, assuredly, but one had to recognize in theology, as in other fields of endeavour, the law of diminishing returns. "The great decisive landmarks in theology are already fixed, " he said, and contemporary scholars "are 108 not called upon, nor will be able, to remove them. "

Orr did not try, as John Henry Newman had, to vindicate the history of dogma by an appeal to the authority of the Spirit-led

Church. Rather, he appealed to forces which he alleged were operating within the larger sphere of history. This theory of dogmatic 13.3 development, stressing as it did a correspondence between the logical and the historical, manifested some rather obvious affinities to

Hegel's philosophy of history. Once again Orr borrowed from idealism,

this time in an effort to vindicate the history of dogma and to

challenge the iconoclasm of Harnack.

Yet Orr still needed to marshall evidence that would commend his thesis. A philosophical defence of the idealist philosophy of history was out of the question. Orr's tack was much simpler. "Has

it ever struck you, " he asked,

what a singular parallel there is between the historical course of dogma, on the one hand, and the scientific order of the text-books on systematic theology on the other? The history of dogma, as you speedily discover, is simply the system of theology spread out through the centuries-- Plato "writ large" theology, as would say, .. "" 109

The order of any accredited text-book, he continued, is one

in which prolegomena is followed by theology proper, anthropology,

Christology, objective and applied soteriology, and finally escha-

tology. "If now, planting yourself at the close of the Apostolic

Age, you cast your eye down the course of the succeeding centuries,

you find, taking as an easy guide the great historical controversies

of the Church, that what you have is simply the projection of this

logical system on a vast temporal screen. "110 The remainder of The

Progress of Dogma was a presentation of the history of dogma designed

to support this claim.

The Progress of Dogma was politely acknowledged as a well- written survey of the history of dogma, and so it was. But Orr's

thesis generally failed to convince. For one thing, Hegel's mark

was upon the work, and Hegel's popularity had faded. More signifi-

cantly, though, the thesis was just too simplistic. It rested on an 114 extremely selective and debatable reading of the history of theology, and its claim that the vital theological issue of the day was eschatology did not make a whole lot of sense. Most damaging of all, it would seem, was Orr's failure to account for the fact that the nineteenth century and early twentieth were experiencing the very thing he implied was impossible: a radical reappraisal of III the Church's entire dogmatic heritage. This skeptical response to The Progress of Dogma reinforced Garvie's ascendency and effectively dislodged Orr from his position as the most credible authority on Ritschlianisn in the English-speaking world. ENDNOTE S

1See reviews of The Christian View by James Iverach, The Thinker 3 (1893): 567-569; John Laidlaw, Critical Review 3 (1893): 297-299; S. D. F. Salmond, Critical Review 8 (1898): 101. James Denney, a Free Church minister in Broughty Ferry, expressed his great obligation to the work in a series of lectures he delivered in Chicago in 1894, and published as Studies in Theology (London, 1894). See ibid., p. 258. Note Flint's and Simon's remarks in advertisements bound in The Christian View, 3rd ed. John Caird's acknowledgments are in his The Fundamental Ideas of Christianity, 2 vols. (Glasgow, 1899), 2: 218-220. 2Fairbairn's remarks are noted in advertisements bound in The Christian View, 3rd ed.; A. I.S. Peake's are in British Weekly, 8 June 1893, p. 102; Gore's remarks are noted in Expository Times 5 (. 1893): 518; compare unsigned review (by Gore? ) in The Guardian 48 (1893 ): 960. 3Bib Ziotheca Sacra 55 (1898): 577; Warf ield's remark is in his The Right of Systematic Theology (Edinburgh, 1897), p. 34. Warfield's Princeton colleague John DeWitt described it as "exceptionally able, suggestive and useful, " Presbyterian and Reformed Review 9 (1898): 510. 4The post fell vacant through the death of incumbent professor Archibald Duff. "Report of the Church Committee, " Synod Papers of the United Presbyterian Church (1891), pp. 139-140. On Orr's appointment, see Proceedings of the Synod of the United Presbyterian Church (1891), p. 48. 5The Early Church: Its History and Literature (London, 1901) was a succinct primer based on Orr's classroom lectures. It was later revised and retitled The History and Literature of the EarZy Church (London, 1913). Other lecture series from this period of Orr's career were published as Neglected Factors in the Study of the Early Progress of Christianity (London, 1899) and The Progress of Dogma (London, 1901). 6Ibid. 4,21,89. , pp. 7Proceedings of the Synod (1892), pp. 47-48. 8"United Presbyterian College, " British Weekly, 31 March 1892, p. 374. 9Elizabeth S. Watson [Dens Cromarty], Scottish Ministerial Miniatures (London, 189? ), pp. 50-53.

115 116

10Claude Welch, Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century, vol. 1 (New Haven and London, 1972), p. 273. 11The key writings of Ritschl in English translation are The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation: The Positive Development of the Doctrine, trans. by H. R. Mackintosh and A. B. Macaulay (Edinburgh, 1900); and Albrecht Ritschl: Three Essays, trans. by Philip Hefner (Philadelphia, 1972). Among the most influential Ritschlian works in English are Wilhelm Herrmann, The Communion of the Christian With God (London, 1895) ; and Adolf Harnack, What is Christianity? (London, 1901). Studies of Ritsch- lian theology abound: among them, J. K. Mozley, Ritschlianism (London, 1909); R. Mackintosh, Albrecht RitschZ and his School (London, 1915); and James Richmond, Ritschl (London and Glasgow, 1978). 12 "Most of the foremost Secession students of the ý1840- 1850]period spent part of their ten months' vacation at Halle, Berlin or Bonn. " A. R. MacEwen, Life and Letters of John Cairns, 2nd ed. (London, 1895), p. 150. Biographies of Scottish theologians abound with references to Continental study. John Cairns, for example, studied in Berlin (ibid., 151); S. D. F. Salmond with J. C. K. Hofman at Erlangen (John Dickie, Fifty Years of British TheoZogy,. Edinburgh, 1937, pp. 87-88); A. M. Fairbairn under I. A. Dorner, F. A. G. Tholuck and E. W. Hengstenberg (Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 2nd ed., s. v. "Fairbairn, A. M. "); George Adam Smith at Leipzig and Tübingen (Lilian Smith, George Adam Smith, London, 1943, p. 16); David S. Cairns with Wilhelm Herrmann at Marburg (David S. Cairns, An Autobiography, London, 1950, pp. 131-135). 13Sutherland Black was a notable exception. In 1872, with the aid of William Robertson Smith, he translated the first volume of Ritschl's magnum opus as A Critical History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation. The volume wallowed in prolegomena, and never really got to the heart of Ritschl's system. It sold poorly, and the publisher's plan to produce all three volumes in translation was abandoned. Dickie, Fifty Years of British Theology, p. 94. 14Ibid., pp. 5-6. 15James Orr, The Christian View of God and the World, 3rd ed. (-Edinburgh, 1897), pp. 26-31. The concluding part of Orr's claim that "it is legitimate to speak of a Christian 'Weltan- ' debarred from investigating its schauung, and ... we are not relations to theoretic knowledge" was directed against Ritschlian- ism. Ibid., p, 31. The subsequent articles were "The Ritschlian Theology, " The Thinker 2 (1892): 140-153; "Albrecht Ritschl, " The Expository Times 5 (1894): 534-539; "The School of Ritschl, " The Expository Times- 6 (189-5): 252-258. 16"Professor Orr's Lectures, " British Weekly, 2 May 1895, p. 19; "Professor Orr's American Tour, " Missionary Record of the 117

United Presbyterian Church, New Series 16 (1895): 268. 17"College Committee Report, " Synod Papers (1896), p. 258; "Lectures in Glasgow by Professor Orr, " Missionary Record, 17 (.1896) : 313. 180rr may have obtained the idea for this title from Wilhelm Herrmann' s Der evangelische Glaube und die Theo Zogie A Zbrecht RitschZs (1890). Orr was certainly aware of Herrmann's book. 19See James Orr, RitschZianism: Expository and Critical Essays (London, 1903). Most of these essays were reprints, but some were new. See also Orr's reviews of certain important Ritschlian works, especially in the Critical Review. For example, see his review of Der Verkehr des Christen mit Gott im Anschuss an Luther dargestellt, by Wilhelm Herrmann, Critical Review 3 (1893): 401-410; also his review of The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconci Ziation : The Positive Development of the Doctrine, by Albrecht Ritschl, in Critical Review 11 (1901): 3-11. I 20Richmond, Ritschl, p. 23. 21 Leonhard Staehlin, Kant, Lotze and RitschZ, trans. by D. W. Simon (Edinburgh, 1889), p. 284. The English-speaking response to Ritschl is surveyed by James Richmond, Ritschl, pp. 28-32. 22It made a significant contribution to the formation of anti-Ri. tschlian opinion in Britain in the 1890s. Richmond, Ritschl, p. 30. 23Otto Pfleiderer, The Development of Theology in Germany Since Kant and its Progress in Great Britain Since 1825 (London, 1890), pp. 183-195. Pfleiderer's views on Ritschlianism were set out in greater detail in his Die RitschZ'sche Theologie Kritisch beleuchtet, published in 1891 and never translated into English.

`Ibid., p. 183. 25 Simon, Introduction to Kant, Lotze and Ritschl, pp. vii- xiii; Pf leiderer, The Deve7oprnent of Theology, pp. ix, xi. 26Simon, Introduction to Kant, Lotze and RitschZ, pp. xvi- xxiii.

27George Galloway, "The Theology of Ritschl, " Presbyterian Review 10 (: 1889): 203-209. 28Compare Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, s. v. "Metaphysics"; and John Veitch and H. L. Mansel, Preface to Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic, 4 vols., by Sir William Hamilton (Edinburgh, 1859), 1: vii-viii; for Orr's own understanding, see James Orr, The Ritsch Zian Theology and the Evangelical Fat-Uh (London, 1897), p. 240. 118

29 "Each Orr found it marvellous that Ritschl could say: theologian is under necessity or obligation as a scientific man to he proceed according to a definite theory of knowledge, of which " must be conscious and the legitimacy of which he must prove. Albrecht Ritschl, Theologie und Metaphysik, 2nd ed. (1887), p. 60, quoted in Orr, The Ritsch Zian Theology, p. 48. 30 Ibid., pp. 8-9. As Orr put it, the aim of metaphysics was speculative unity. Ibid., p. 239 fn. 310rr noted that in his Theologie und Metaphy. sik, a hasty and not altogether successful attempt to clarify his position on this subject, Ritschl made the unguarded remark that the question is not as to whether, but as to what metaphysics is to be employed in theology. Ritschl, Theologie und Metav2iysik, pp. 32,41, quoted in Orr, The Ritschlian Theology, p. 237. 32 Orr, The RitschZicm Theology, p. 239. 33Ibid., pp. 6,23-24,39. 34Ibid., pp. 66-70. 35Ibid., p. 235. Orr suggested that Ritschlian theology sought safety by keeping its expressions in purely religious form, and while "co-ordinating and relating them to each other as a whole" (the theological task), deliberately refused to relate them to theoretical propositions. Orr, RitschZianism, p. 17. 36Ibid., pp. 7-16. 37Ibid., p, 14, 38Ibid., p. 16. 39Ibid., p. 256. 40Ibid., p. 26G. 41Ibid. 249. , p. 421bid., pp. 248-249. Note that for Orr faith existed alongside reason; it was not merely a lower stage of reason (as with the Hegelians). Ibid., p. 242. 431bid., pp. 16-20. 44Ritschl replied to a similar accusation from Christoph Ernst Luthardt to the effect that he had been diligent all along to highlight "the specifically religious element of Christianity (justification by faith). " Ritschl, Three Essays, p. 151. 45See Orr, The Ritschlian Theology, pp. 7Q-79,250-251. 119

Pf leiderer compared Ritschl's with Feuerbach's theory of religion. While Feuerbach concluded that religion was thus pathological, (in Pfleiderer's Ritschl came to the opposite view; namely, that God for words) "the emotional value of the conception of the preservation of man's sense of personal dignity is also the warrant of its truth. " Pf leiderer, The Development of Theology, p. 185. 46 Orr, The Ri tsch Zian Theology, p. 82. 47Ibid., pp. 253-254. 48Ibid., pp. 93-95,106,116,251-252. 49Ibid., pp. 49-53,89-93,98-101. 50Ibid., pp. 117-118,255-256. 51Ibid. 257. , p. 52Ibid., pp. 256-258. 53 Ibid., p. 258. Compare Orr, ßitschlianism, p. 30; Orr, "The Coming of the Kingdom in the Church, " United Presbyterian Magazine 12 (1895): 485-486; Orr, "Kingdom of God, of Heaven, " Hastings' Dictionary of the BibZe, 2: 856; Orr, The Christian View, pp. 329-330. 54Ibid., p. 352. 550rr originally intended to have a chapter entitled "The Incarnation and the New Life of Humanity: the Kingdom of God" in The Christian View, but this plan, he said, "had reluctantly to be abandoned! Ibid., p. 351. Orr gave virtually no place to the Kingdom in his other summaries of Christian doctrine: Side Zights on Christian Doctrine L1909] and Faith of a Modern Christian (1910). 56This conviction comes through in Orr's Neglected Factors in the Study of the Early Progress of Christianity (London, 1899) ; and in his "The Factors in the Expansion of the Christian Church, " in Christ and Civilization, ed. by J. B. Paton and others (London, 1910), pp. 189-233. S70rr, The RitschZian Theology, p. 258. See also his The Christian View, pp. 329-330,354-355,359-360; "The Coming of the Kingdom, " pp. 485-488; "Kingdom of God, of Heaven, " p. 856. 58 0rr, The RitschZian Theology, pp. 262,263,265; compare p. 131. 591bid., pp. 143-144,266. 60Ibid. 146-147. , pp. 120

61Ibid., pp. 136-137,266-267. 62Ibid., pp. 261-262,265. 63Ibid., pp. 126-127,150-152,156,164-165,265. 64Ibid., pp. 175-177,180-181,269. 65Ibid., pp. 6,10,12,29-46,236-237. 66Ibid. 236. , p. 67 Ibid., p. 234. Elsewhere Orr described it as "a singularly meagre and inadequate type of Christianity. " Orr, RitschZianism, p. 29. 68 Ibid., pp. 80,86. 69Cairns, Autobiography,, pp. 131-137- 70 A. T. Swing, The Theology of Albrecht Ritschi (New York, 1901), p. 4. 71 James Denney, Studies in Theology, pp. 1-18,258,267, 269,271. "Dr. Denney in his general attitude toward Ritschl may be thought of as a very literal follower of Professor Orr. " Swing, Albrecht RitschZ, p. 4. On Denney's treatment of Ritschl, see Samuel L. Akers, Some British Reactions to RitschZianism (New Haven, 1934). On Denney's theology generally, see John R. Taylor, God Loves Like That! The Theology of James Denney (London, 1962). 72 Hugh M. Scott, The Origin and Development of the Nicene Theo Zogy, with some Reference to the Ritsch Zian View of Theo logy and History of Doctrine (Chicago, 1896), p. 368. There are references to Orr's The Christian View on pp. 24,39,40. On Scott, see New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, s. v. "Scott, Hugh McDonald. " 73R. M. Wenley, Contemporary Theology and Theism (Edinburgh, 1897), pp. 82-124. Wenley later contributed to Orr's International Standard Bib Ze Encyclopaedia. 74 H. R. Mackintosh, "The Ritschlian Doctrine of Theoretical and Religious Knowledge, " American Journal of Theology 3 (1899): 22-44. 75The original article, B. B. Warfield, "The Right of Systematic Theology, " Presbyterian and Reformed Review 7 (1896): 417-458, was reprinted as B. B. Warfield, The Right of Systematic Theology (Edinburgh, 1897). Orr's introduction is on pp. 7-11. Those endorsing the volume included Orr's U. P. colleague James Wardrop; Free Churchmen Robert Rainy, G. C. M. Douglas, John Laidlaw, William Blaikie, James Stalker and Norman Walker; and from the Established Church, Robert Flint, Archibald Charteris and Alexander Stewart. Ibid.,, p. E5]. 121

76He "Theological made this plain in his article Agnos- ticism, " American Journal of Theology 1 (1897): 1-15. 77 A. B. Bruce, Apologetics (Edinburgh, 1892), pp. 355,404- 405. Compare Bruce, "Theological Agnosticism, " p. 14. 78 Bruce, ApoZogetzcs, p. 399. 79Bruce, "Theological Agnosticism, " pp. 8-9,13. 80 A. E. Garvie, Memories and Meanings of My Life (London, 1938), pp. 68 ff. Compare the Dictionary of ZVationaZ Biography, s. v. "Garvie, Alfred Ernest, " by Sydney Cave. Garvie abandoned Neo- Hegelianism prior to 1899, but dedicated a later work, A Handbook of Christian Apologetics (London, 1913) to Edward Caird. 81Garvie, Memories and Meanings, pp. 68-74,85-86. 82A. E. Garvie, The RitschZian Theology (Edinburgh, 1899), p. vii. Compare pp. 20,395. 83 Ibid., pp. 5-20,395. 84Ibid., p. 62. 85Ibid., pp. 373-374,379-385. 86 Ibid., pp. 70-72,98-100,108-114. 87Ibid., pp. 132-153,188-189. 88 Ibid., pp. 391-393. 89Even Garvie, while commending Swing's work for its sympathetic tone, judged it to be "lacking in adequate exposition and discriminative criticism. " Garvie, The RitschZian Theology, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh, 1902), p. 398. 90Swing, Albrecht RitschZ, pp. 79,154. Swing alleged that "Professor Orr's persistent attempts to explain away everything objectively real from the theology of Ritschl vitiate his whole work, and render him, in spite of his scholarly accomplishments, a misleading Ibid., 127-128. guide ... ." pp. 91James Orr, review of Apologetics, by A. B. Bruce, in The Thinker 3 (1893): 272-277. Orr cautioned, however, that in studying anew the Gospel records of Christ's life we cannot ignore, or go back on, the apostolic doctrine of Christ's person derived from reflection on that historic life. Ibid., p. 276. 92James Orr, "Professor Swing on Ritschl and his Critics, " in Princeton Theological Review 1 (1903): 38-50; reprinted in James Orr, RitschZianism, pp. 89-111. Orr made the telling point that even 122

Ritschl's son and biographer admitted that Ritschl had been in error in supposing that his epistemology was essentially different from Kant's. Ibid., p. 106. 93James Orr, review of The RitschZian Theology by A. E. Garvie, in British Weekly, 23 Nov. 1899. Reprinted in Orr, Ritsch- Zianism, pp. 77-86; see esp. p. 79. 94Ibid., pp. 82-84. 951bid., p. 83. 96Ibid., p. 81. 97 Ibid., pp. 85-86. 98Ibid., pp. 82-84. 99Garvie The Ritsch Zian Theo Zogt' 2nd 397. In , , ed., p. response to Orr's attack on Ritschl's Christology, the best Garvie could do was to suggest that Ritschl "has made a strenuous effort to give as adequate a doctrine of Christ's divinity as his epistemological principals allow. " Ibid., p. 408. Undoubtedly Orr would have agreed. 100Ibid., pp. ii, 397. P. T. Forsyth's remark that "Dr. Orr's small book is perfectly fair, but it is little in tune, " which Garvie also quotes on p. 397, is too oblique to be interpreted as strong disapproval of Orr's work, though it appears to legitimize Garvie's reappraisal of Ritschl. Sometime later H. R. Mackintosh, who helped to translate the third volume of Ritschl's magnum opus into English in 1900, moved over to Garvie's position. See his Some Aspects of Christian Belief (London, 1923); and his Types of Modern Theology (London, 1937), chap. 5. Mackintosh's later views on Ritschl are summarized in Akers, Some British Reactions to RitschZianism. 101James Orr, The Progress of Dogma, pp. 4,17-19. Orr's attitude is appreciated by J. K. Mozley, Some Tendencies in British Theology (London, 1951), p. 128. 1020rr, The Progress of Dogma, pp. 14-16. 103Ibid., pp. v-vi. 104Ibid., pp. v, 21. 105Ibid. 17. , p. 106Ibid.

107"One of the tests of a genuine doctrinal development is its continuity with the past, its organic connection with what has gone before. " Ibid., pp. 245-256. 108Ibid., pp. 31-32. 123

109Ibid., "Every has its hour Ibid., p. 21. doctrine ... ." p. 243. In other words, the logic of dogmatic history is demonstrated in the sequence in which doctrinal issues attained centre stage in the church's intellectual life. 1101bid., pp. 21-22. 111See reviews of The Progress of Dogma by David Purves, Critical Review 12 (1902): 223-231; John Dickie, Review of Theology and Philosophy 4 (1908-1909): 65-69; B. B. Warfield, The Presbyterian and Reformed Review 13 (1902) : 486-491; The Expository Times 13 (1902) : 210-211. Compare later remarks by Mozley, Some Tendencies in British Theology, pp. 127-128; and by Peter Toon, The Development of Doctrine in the Church (Grand Rapids, 1979), pp. 69-70.

d CHAPTER V

THE CHALLENGE OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM:

Continuity in Revelation and Inspiration

Orr displayed great vigour in the 1390s, and was, after the

death of John Cairns in 1892, the principal theologian of the United

Presbyterian Church until its union with the Free Church of Scotland 1 at the turn of the century. The prospects for such a union

increased greatly when the Free Church came out in favour of Dis-

establishment. Serious negotiations began in 1896, and Orr put the 0 full weight of his influence behind the Union cause. He promoted it

in the pages of the United Presbyterian Magazine, which he edited

from 1896 onwards. He also served as a joint-convener, alongside

Thomas Kennedy, of the U. P. Union Committee set up to confer with 2 the Free Church. The negotiations were detailed, and the Committee's

work, reflected in its massive final report, was staggering.

Fittingly, in the last gathering of the autonomous United Pres-

byterian Synod of October 1900, Orr proposed the adoption of the

Union Committee's report, and with that the decisive motion to 3 unite with the Free Church as the United Free Church of Scotland.

The Union brought significant personal changes for Orr. It was agreed beforehand that with the Union the faculty members of the

U. P. College should be reassigned to posts in the three Free Church

colleges. Along with two other colleagues, Orr went to Glasgow. The

124 125

U. P. College as such ceased to exist. But Orr was back in his native Glasgow, and he finally acquired the chair in which he truly 4 belonged: Apologetics and Dogmatics.

Orr also acquired some exceptionally capable colleagues in

George Adam Smith, T. M. Lindsay and James Denney. The foursome constituted one of the strongest theological faculties in the English- speaking world. All were in continual demand for summer lecturing in

America. William Robertson Nicoll, the editor of the British Weekly, for one, could not say enough good about them. During the years they worked together the College produced more candidates for the

United Free Church ministry than any other college. As well, students attended from a number of countries, especially the United States. It 5 was the zenith of the Glasgow College'. s history.

Soon after the Union the principalship of the College fell vacant, and Orr and Lindsay were treated as the two main candidates for the post. The two had different strengths and quite dissimilar personalities, but as the 1902 General Assembly sought to reach a decision concerning the principalship, it became clear that the choice would not be made solely on the basis of the candidates' personal merits. By and large the voting was decided along party lines. There was some cross-voting, but not enough to justify the view that everyone had abandoned old loyalties. Orr's supporters pleaded for the "time-about" principle; that is, for alternation between former Free Churchmen and U. P. s when it came to appointments.

They also alluded to an unwritten agreement at Union that Orr would be given the Glasgow principalship in due course. These arguments were to no avail. Former Free Churchmen tended to vote for Lindsay 126

for Since as the man they knew, and U. P. s for Orr, the same reason.

P. the Free Church party greatly outnumbered the U. side, the outcome 6 was inevitable. It was the second time that Orr had lost a principalship, but from all appearances he bore the loss without resent- ment, and the incident did not disrupt the civility of faculty relations. The outcome left Orr unencumbered by administrative duties and free to pursue a good many other matters. It readily became apparent that Ritschlianism was not the only issue Orr intended to tackle. Before long he had also set himself to establish a proper response to the emerging challenge of biblical criticism. The ecclesiastical controversy surrounding the opinions of George Adam Smith appears to have been the catalyst for his resolve. 0

The issues raised by the critical movement and brought to

the fore once again in the George Adam Smith affair, were in the air

in Scotland from about 1860 onwards. However, they did little more

than ferment on the periphery of the Scottish. Church's vision until

the later 1870s, when they were finally brought to centre-stage by the brilliant Old Testament scholar William Robertson Smith. After

studies under Julius Wellhausen in Germany, Robertson Smith accepted

a post at the Free Church College in Aberdeen, and from there penned

a series of articles for a new edition of the Encyclopaedia Britan- pica, in which he expounded quite freely the Wellhausen interpreta-

Lion of the Pentateuch and of Israel's religious history. In Smith

in Scotland the critical movement acquired an eloquent advocate and 127 a popular audience .7

Wellhausen, building on the insights of a number of scholarly predecessors, put forward the hypothesis that the Pentateuch, far from being of simple Mosaic authorship, was actually the synthetic product of a number of documents separate from one another in both time and authorship. Building on this hypothesis, he worked out a startling reconstruction of Old Testament history, characterized throughout by natural, developmental explanations for ostensibly supernatural events, and most notably by the view that the details of the Old Testament cultus were shaped near the end, rather than 8 at the Sinai beginnings of Israel's nationhood.

Despite Robertson Smith's insistence that these critical insights were actually in the interests of evangelical Christianity, his opinions raised a storm of protest. After years of acrimonious controversy in the Free Church, Smith was finally and rather arbitrarily removed from his chair in 1881. But though the offender had been removed, the offending views not only persisted but increased.

The extended controversy, which held public interest for years, also to some extent educated it. And one can hardly overestimate the impact of Smith's remarkable public lectures, subsequent to his 9 deposition, to vast audiences in Glasgow and Edinburgh..

The future of biblical criticism in Scotland remained far from settled. Robertson Smith's views were never officially declared heretical, and various churchmen, including Smith's principal antag- onist Robert Rainy, continued to affirm the principle of critical freedom in the Free Church. The truly decisive case came in 1902, and it concerned the views expressed by Orr's, Glasgow colleague George 128

involved. Adam Smith. And at this point Orr became

in 1901, This furor was sparked by the publication, early of

George Adam Smith's Yale lecture series on Modern Criticism and the

Preaching of the OZd Testcvnent. George Adam Smith boldly took his stand with the earlier Smith. In his opinion, the critical movement had already conquered, and it only remained to establish the amount of the indemnity. He went on, however, to affirm on critical premises, belief in the Old Testament as embodying divine revelation, and belief in its abiding usefulness and authority in preach- '0 ing. A good number of United Free Churchmen found Smith's concessions to higher criticism alarming, and the confident manner in which he did so aggravating. They judged that his critical premises were wrong, and that his best efforts, based upon these premises, were insufficient to preserve Scripture's authority.

Strongly-worded denunciations of Smith's book were circulated in pamphlet form, and a widely-supported memorial was forwarded to the Church's College Committee, requesting it to conduct an inquiry into Smith's views and the acceptability of those views. The

College Committee was compelled to act. In the end it supported

Smith's right to express his views from a United Free Church chair, and recommended to the Assembly that it not institute a process against him. This motion, when it came to the floor of the Assembly, precipated a debate which ran to seven hours and held the breathless " attention of four thousand people.

Principal Robert Rainy of New College, the acknowledged leader of the Free Church side, proposed the adoption of the Committee's

launch recommendation not to a process against Smith. He reasserted 129 the principle that the Church had a right to protect itself from

believe book dangerous views, but implied that he did not Smith's contained anything sufficiently dangerous to justify the exercise 12 of that right.

At that point Orr rose to second Rainy's motion, and to reflect the position of the College Committee. His action, in support of Rainy's motion, amounted to a rather obvious, if not official, statement to the United Free Church and to the public that the theological leadership of the United Presbyterian party was also firmly in favour of toleration for Smith.

Orr opposed the idea of a process against Smith partly for strategic reasons. A heresy trial would only prolong strife and lead to embitterment. Moreover, biblical criticism was a movement of sufficient magnitude that an arbitrary act against it would be useless anyway. Then there was the practical consideration that critical questions were far too complex to be properly resolved by any committee, however able it might be. Summing up the matter in a way that reflected his strong liberal spirit, he judged that a process against Smith would not be "in the interests of truth. x'13

Orr then spoke to ameliorate some of the negative estimates of Smith and his views. After explaining that he was personally far from agreeing with Smith's position, he stressed the fact that Smith still believed in a supernatural revelation in the Old Testament.

Orr explained that the distinction between naturalistic and believing criticism looked very large to him personally. He also noted that

Smith's view of inspiration, while certainly not the traditional one, was still one which enabled Smith to affirm Scripture's sufficiency 130

Assembly to achieve its spiritual ends. Finally, he reminded the

leader, that Smith was a proven, gifted and spiritual and pleaded that any aspects of Smith's position could properly be discussed 14 within the circumference of Church fellowship.

Various counter-motions were presented, but the Rainy-Orr position eventually prevailed. Loud cheers greeted the announcement in the Assembly, and the newspapers next day hailed it as a victory for freedom of thought. The Assembly's decision was an important, perhaps the most important Church decision respecting biblical criticism in Scottish church history, and Orr certainly played an important and conciliatory role in bringing it about.

The Memorialists were defeated, but neither they nor their sympathizers were silenced. Norman Walker, long-time editor of the

Free Church Record, complained bitterly to the Scottish press, and sent a lengthy account of the matter to B. B. Warfield, who published 15 it in the Presbyterian and Reformed Review. Warfield also published a dissenting cry from an anonymous Scottish presbyter, and gave his blessing to its republication and circulation in Scotland 16 under the title If the Trumpet Give an Uncertain Sound. Two United

Free Church ministers (both former U. P. 's) tried their hand at refuting the higher criticism. In 1902, John Smith of Broughton Place,

Edinburgh, published The Integrity of Scripture: Plain Reasons for

Rejecting the Critical Hypothesis. The next year Thomas Whitelaw of

Kilmarnock issued his OZd Testament Critics, in which he treated

"The Indemnity of the Critics, or The Cost of the Higher Criticism 131

Adam (to be paid by the Christian People)"17 while the George

freedom Smith case may have been decisive in ensuring critical in

Scotland, it by no means constituted a final victory for the Well- hausen theory.

Until this point, Orr rarely expressed his views on matters of

Old Testament criticism. This was hardly a glaring neglect of duty on his part, since his official responsibilities lay in other fields.

Yet this long silence masked years of intense interest and omnivorous reading in the field. Since his early student days in the 1860s,

Orr had followed critical developments with interest. Finally, in

1906, while controversy continued to boil, he burst into print with all the delicacy of an exploding volcano.

Orr's role as a champion of toleration in the George Adam

Smith case hardly prepares one for the contents of The Problem of the

Old Testament, for it was a startling and ringing rejection of the

Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis, and indeed of any theory that postulated a synthesis of documents to account for the literary phenomena of the Pentateuch.. Orr gave his estimate of Wellhausen's theory in a

Latin text on the title page of his work: NubecuZa est, quae cito evanescet. Far from being a settled result of historical science, it was only a little cloud, about to vanish.

Had Orr's research not been so exhaustive, Old Testament scholars might have treated his book as an impertinent intrusion into their field of expertise. But one of Orr's strengths was his encyclopaedic capacity for details, and while his opponents often questioned his judgment and sensitivities, few refused to concede 18 that he had mastered the literature of the field. The Problem of 132 the OZd Testament extends over 560 pages, includes treatments of critical minutiae and is full of detailed notes and references to sources in many languages. The work was without parallel in its time. One reviewer suggested that it was "likely to remain for long the weightiest indictment by a Scottish theologian of the critical views at present all but universally held by Old Testament 19 scholars. " Indeed, one looks in vain for a work of equal power by any English-speaking writer. Scholarly challenges to the documentary hypothesis were rare, and it was not until 1917, with A. H. Finn's

The Unity of the Pentateuch: An Examination of the Higher Critical

Theory, that anything close to Orr's work appeared. Consequently,

Orr was recognized after 1906 as the most formidable champion of the anti-Wellhausen forces.

Orr regarded critical activity as natural, inevitable and legitimate, and he liked to view himself as a critic. Consistent with his resistence to all attempts to settle the issues of Old

Testament criticism simply by deposing professors, Orr explained in the preface to The Problem of the OZd Testament that "the case which the critics present must be met in a calm, temperate, and scholarly way, if it is to be dealt with to the satisfaction of thoughtful

Christian people. " If the untenableness of the Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis was to be demonstrated, it had to be done "thoroughly, and with due regard for all really critically-ascertained facts. "2°

We may be sure at the outset that Orr did not devote himself to matters of Old Testament criticism out of an idle curiosity or merely as an enjoyable diversion. Quite the contrary, he believed that everything was at stake. in the discipline of Old Testament study. 133

its logical The Graf -Wellhausen hypothesis, if carried to conclusions, would prove "subversive of our Christian faith, and of such belief in, and use of, the Bible as alone can meet the needs of the living 21 Church., More specifically, he claimed that the higher criticism raised fundamental questions about the origin and nature of Israel's religion, and about the nature of the Scriptural monuments to that religion. In the first place, was Israel's religion natural or supernatural in origin and nature? In the second, was the scriptural record of that religion a trustworthy one? Orr's position was that the survival of Christianity rested on affirmative answers to both questions, and that the Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis implied negative 22 answers to both. If the Wellhausen hypothesis was true, then one could no longer be sure that God had spoken, and that the Old

Testament conveyed "His sure word for our salvation and guidance. "23

Orr regarded Old Testament criticism, just as he did the debate over Ritschlianism, as a forum for a contest between naturalism and supernaturalism. Israel's religion, he held, was categorically distinct from, and superior to, all other religions by reason of its unique origin in special, supernatural, continuous and authoritative revelation. Standing in irreconcilable opposition to this understanding was the one which viewed Israel's religion as the product of Israel's natural genius in the sphere of religion, and as something that evolved quite naturally through many stages to its pinnacle 24 in the ethical monotheism of the prophets.

Orr claimed that once the supernatural in Israel's religion was conceded in principle, a climate of plausibility existed for all

Scriptural references to the supernatural. Such accounts of the 134 G Rather, supernatural no longer discredited Spripture a priori.

they would be anticipated. Orr charged that the incubus of German

criticism was rationalistic; it approached the Old Testament with a naturalistic bias. It adhered to a non-supernatural model for the way

in which religions develop, and then forced the data of the Old

Testament to fit this model at the cost of great injustice to the data 25 itself.

Orr went even farther. He accused the "believing critics"--

that is, those who basically accepted the Wellhausen scheme, but

ascribed the highest insights of Israel's religion to supernatural

revelation, and made various other minor modifications to the theory

in the direction of traditional belief--of fundamental inconsistency.

They had endorsed a system of interpretation that was dependent for

its very existence on naturalistic presuppositions which they did not

share. They had been duped. They continued to be useful to the

Church only because they did not pursue their position to its logical 26 endpoint of rationalism.

These were strong words indeed, and it is interesting in light

of them how much Orr actually conceded to the higher criticism. For

his own part, Orr disliked the term "concession. " He preferred 27 "recognitions of proved results. " He recognized, for example, that

Moses did not write the Pentateuch in its present shape and full

extent. He allowed for editorial influence, redaction, and the

inevitable exigencies of any ancient document. He allowed for the

use of sources in the composition of the Pentateuch, and also for the

collaboration or cooperation of sympathetic individuals both in its

composition and subsequent modification. Consequently he preferred 135 to speak of the "essential Mosaicity" rather than the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. And at no time did Orr insist that inerrancy had been preserved throughout the composition process. In the patriarchal narratives, for example, he even recognized a measure of rounding-out and idealization in them, a consequence of their oral 28 transmission over long periods of time.

Beyond this point, however, Orr drew the line. And in the first place he defended the "substantial trustworthiness of the Old

Testament history. "29 The patriarchs were not mere personifications, but actual persons and progenitors of tribes. There was a real, divine call to Abraham, an actual revelation to Moses, and a supernatural exodus from Egypt. He attempted to show that Israel's 30 concept of God was monotheistic from the first, and that corrupt forms of worship were always "foreign to the true genius of the 4 religion. "31 He regarded Moses as the giver of Old Testament cultic law in substantially its final form, and argued that even the

Levitical priesthood was an institution of Mosaic origin.

Orr also attempted methodically to discredit the documentary hypothesis itself. He allowed that sections of Genesis could be distinguished according to the names used in them for Deity (Jehovah or Elohim), but he refused to concede that these sections could be distinguished conclusively in any other ways. He stressed how tightly interwoven the two types of material were, and insisted that the theory of an editorial synthesis of two independent documents could not account plausibly for the phenomenon. It would require of the theoretical editor a method entirely unknown to any known editor. .a Off offered no alternative explanation for the Jehovah-Elohim 136 phenomenon. He suggested that a great deal, though not all, of it was the result of deliberate and discriminative usage on the part of the writers, Beyond this, he declined to be dogmatic, but admitted that the theory of later recensions of a single, original text seemed more 32 plausible to him than Wellhausen's th. eory.

Orr also contested the view that Deuteronomy had a distinctiveness from the so-called "J" and "E" documents that precluded the possibility that both came from a single source. He also dissented from the assumption that Deuteronomy contained religious ideas that necessitated dating it later than its ostensible time of origin, He dismissed the linkage of Deuteronomy's origin to the discovery of the

Book of the Covenant during Josiah's reign as particularly contrived and untenable. At the same time he acknowledged that the evident discrepancy between the distributed worship practices of pre-Davidic

Israel and the centralized worship prescriptions of Deuteronomy was 33 one of the strongest arguments for the. Wellhausen position.

Next, Orr considered Wellhausen's theory that a separate

Levitical legislation (or Priestly Code)_ ran through several parts of the Pentateuch and originated during or after the Exile. In Orr's mind, such. a proposal was rendered incredible by its implication that the Pentateuchal authors deliberately deceived their readers by passing off their composition as Mosaic, and no less by the naive willingness of exilic Jews to treat the compositions as authentically

Mosaic. On the other hand, Orr argued that the lack of evidence of operational Levitical legislation prior to the exile was not conclusive; there were actually a number of indications of pre- exilic familiarity with the legislation in question. 137

Finally, Orr considered the question of the so-called Priestly

Document. "It be disputed, " he said, "that cannot ... reasonably the sections ordinarily attributed to P have a vocabulary, and a stylistic character, of their own, which render them in the main readily distinguishable. "35 Once again, however, he argued that the intricate synthesis of P and JE passages precluded the possibility that P was ever an independent document. In this case, however, Orr failed to suggest a more plausible explanation for the existence of 36 this identifiable type of text in the Pentateuch.

In defence of the traditional construction of Old Testament history and religion, Orr appealed to the impression created by an uncritical examination of the Old Testament. If any prejudices

towards the documentary hypothesis were even momentarily set aside,

the intrinsic qualities of the Old Testament history and religion (as

traditionally conceived) would shine forth in a self-authenticating way. The unbiased reader would be struck by the Old Testament's marvellous organic unity and by the teleological character of its history. Similarly, the central conceptions of the Old Testament

religion--its monotheism, its concept of redemption, its lofty

ethics--would so impress the reader as to commend a supernatural

explanation of their origin. In this light, the Old Testament's own

claims to be rooted in supernatural revelations would become eminently 37 plausible.

Interest in matters of Old Testament criticism was widespread, and The Problem of the OZd Testarnent was grasped with interest. 138

Awareness of the work was heightened when it was awarded the very lucrative Bross Prize. The Prize, which came from a large American foundation committed, among other things, to the vindication of 38 Scripture, amounted to six thousand dollars. The sheer size of the award (equal to two or three years' salary for Orr) turned heads in Britain. A writer in Life and Work remarked that the Prize "has probably excited a larger interest than the book itself will be able 39 to sustain. "

The Bross Prize was not the only expression of international support for the work. It was also commended in the leading conservative American theological journals. Bib Ziotheca Sacra, under the editorship of George Frederick Wright of Oberlin, was firmly behind

Orr, though this is hardly surprising in view of the fact that

Wright was one of the three Bross Prize judges. In the Princeton

Theological Review, Princeton Old Testament professor John D. Davis's only complaint was that Orr might have claimed even more than the

"essential Mosaicity" of the Pentateuch. The Problem of the OZd

Testament was translated into French and Dutch, and possibly into 40 German as well.

A party within the United Free Church had been looking for a scholarly champion to challenge the Wellhausen views espoused by

George Adam Smith, and welcomed Orr's work. To assist its circulation, it was presented, by means of private subscription, to each minister 41 in the Church free of charge. The Church's main organ, the

Missionary Record, edited by Orr's long-standing friend George Robson, was supportive as well. While doubtful that the book would "stem the tide of criticism" altogether, it predicted that it would have "a 139 sobering and steadying effect, " and commended it for wide circulation 42 within the United Free Church.

Two of the Church's three professors of Old Testament responded in print. George C. Cameron, William Robertson Smith's successor in

Aberdeen, and a man who shunned controversy as much as his predecessor 43 generated it, abstained. James A. Paterson, Orr's former colleague at the U. P. College, and now Old Testament professor at New College, subscribed to the documentary hypothesis and criticized Orr's book from that vantage point. He stressed mainly Orr's concessions to criticism, and suggested on the basis of them that not so much 44 separated Orr from his opponents as either supposed. Orr, who seldom turned down an opportunity to debate in print, immediately replied with an affirmation of the distinctiveness (as he saw it) of 45 his position vis-a-vis that of the critics.

Within Orr's own College at Glasgow, George Adam Smith was forthright, yet restrained in his response. No doubt mindful of Orr's recent support of him in the General Assembly, he respectfully referred to Orr as "the ablest and most learned of recent defenders of the traditions. " Nevertheless, he made it plain that Orr had not convinced him to reject the Wellhausen theory, because Orr had failed to answer a number of Wellhausen's "insuperable objections" to the 46 traditional view. Orr was anxious to vindicate himself in the face of what he described as the "friendly criticisms" of his colleague, 47 and replied in the pages of the conservative Anglican Churchman.

But evidently Smith had no desire to be drawn into an extended controversy in print with one of his own colleagues.

After Smith moved north to accept the principalship of Aberdeen 140

University in 1909, he was succeeded in the Glasgow Old Testament chair by John Edgar McFadyen. McFadyen was one of Smith's former students and a personal friend, and equally an advocate of the

Wellhausen theory. By the time of his Glasgow appointment, he had already published works in which he sought to foster a believing appreciation for the Old Testament as understood from the critical 48 viewpoint. Like Smith, he got along well enough with Orr, and regarded him as an exceptionally able champion of the conservative position, but one whose judgments were hampered by a tendency to endorse improbable explanations rather than modify traditional 49 views.

The sharpest reactions to The Problem of the OZd Testament came from "believing critics" who worked at an arms-length distance from Orr. W. E. Addis of Oxford, to whose The Documents of the

Hexateuch (1892-1898) Orr made extensive negative reference, used

Allan Menzies' Review of Philosophy and Theology as a platform for vindicating himself. "It is neither an easy task nor a pleasant task to review this book, " he began. The Problem of the OZd Test- conent showed that Orr's thirty years of Old Testament study had been

"labour in vain. " Orr was unable to appreciate the coherency that the Wellhausen theory created, and seemed unaware of the forced and unnatural character of his own time-worn arguments. All his work was marred by "a fatal lack of insight. " Addis listed a number of detailed objections to Orr's arguments, and then, in a pointed response to Orr's polemic, concluded:

The writer of this notice believes as earnestly as Dr. Orr himself that the revelation given to Israel was supernatural Just because and unique .... he believes this he regrets 141

an attempt to rivet Christian truth to theories demonstrably untenable. 50

Perhaps the most interesting, certainly the most extensive and bitterest criticism came from Arthur S. Peake, Dean of the Theo- logical Faculty of Victoria University, Manchester. Peake was an outstanding biblical scholar and a frank adherent of critical methods.

Peake's sterling evangelical piety engendered confidence in his critical judgments, both within his own denomination, Primitive

Methodism, and in conservative circles beyond. His many books were directed "to a wide, rather than a learned audience, " with the result that he was "perhaps the main British mediator of biblical scholarship in his day. "51 Peake was convinced that Scripture could be assured of an abiding place in the Church only if the Church accommodated itself to biblical criticism instead of resisting it, and he 52 campaigned ably and vigorously towards that end.

Peake was frustrated, impatient and angry with Orr; and understandably so, for Orr advocated a return to a position that

Peake was convinced was quite beyond saving. Peake regarded Orr as a dangerous saboteur of his own program in Britain. The two men argued in the Contemporary Review53 and then carried their debate to the pages of The Interpreter. Peake especially criticized Orr for underestimating the strength of the critical side, and suggested that one of the main problems with Orr's style of writing was "its eminently reassuring character. " Then, in a biting allusion to the false prophets of Israel, Peake suggested that Orr "prophesies smooth things 54 Peake also found distressing Orr's insistence that "the taint of rationalism inheres in the very essence of modern criticism. " He insisted to the contrary that a decision to accept 142

the documentary hypothesis might be made quite consistently with

a commitment to a supernatural understanding of Israel's religion 55 and the revelation embodied therein. It was quite possible, he

insisted, to isolate questions of literary criticism from judgments upon Israel's religion, and he summed up his position this way :

I believe that the Grafian criticism of the Old Testament is quite compatible with loyal Christian faith, that it has a distinct apologetic value, that it is the theory which best fits the phenomena as we know them at present, and that the one thing which is not likely to be rehabilitated is the traditional view, even in the rectified form given to it by Professor Orr-56

In light of his conviction, Peake expressed his hope "that Dr. Orr will use his influence with his friends, and urge them to avoid 57 making sport for the Philistines. "

"I am afraid I am becoming a sorrow to Professor Peake, " said

Orr as he began his final retort. He reiterated his reason for

regarding the Wellhausen hypothesis as part of the anti-Christian modern world view. According to Orr, the Wellhausen hypothesis

embodied the essential feature of the modern view: "the doctrine of

unbroken continuity in nature and history, and the rejection of any

supernatural interposition of God, or transcendence of the natural

order, for ends of revelation and redemption. " The hypothesis of

Wellhausen, he stated again, was the result of a determination to

resolve biblical data with rationalistic presuppositions. As soon

as one set aside such presuppositions, the facts suggested an 58 entirely different interpretation of the Old Testament. 143

if Orr's concerns may be understood more clearly we consider an incident which occurred over a decade before. In 1894, Otto

Pf leiderer, a Hegelian and Dorner's successor as Professor of Theology at Berlin, presented the Gifford Lectures in Edinburgh. In them,

Pfleiderer bluntly rejected the orthodox concepts of miracle and the supernatural, and suggested, among other things, that the older idea of supernaturally-revealed truth ought to give way to a specu- 59 lative system based on the lessons of history and science.

Pf leiderer's remarks created quite a stir in Edinburgh, and Orr was 60 among those who spoke out strongly in reply. He joined Archibald

Charteris of the Church of Scotland, and Robert Rainy and Marcus

Dods of the Free Church, in a series of retaliatory lectures in the

Free Church Assembly Hall. These lectures were well-attended and published as The Supernatural in Christianity (1894). The theme of

Orr's contribution was that the "quasi-Christianity" of Pfleiderer, purged as it was of all supernatural elements, was incapable of maintaining itself as a living religion. And Christian conviction, no longer grounded in authoritative, supernatural revelation, would soon disintegrate into a myriad of conflicting philosophical 61 opinions.

Evidently Pf leiderer set Orr to thinking about the shape of a doctrine of Scripture that would enable the Bible to function as an authoritative basis for the Christian faith. Immediately following the Edinburgh reply to Pfleiderer's Gifford lectures, Orr published an article on "Revelation and Inspiration, " in which he stressed that

Scripture must be understood as an inspired and reliable record of a series of supernatural historical revelations. Throughout the 144 article he stressed the need to hold that God had acted in word and 62 deed in very direct and supernatural ways.

These biographical facts afford some insight into the concerns that shaped Orr's response to the prevailing criticism of the Old

Testament. Sixteen years later, an opportunity to express his doctrine of Scripture more fully came when A. M. Fairbairn invited

Orr to contribute a monograph on the subject to Duckworth publishers'

Studies in Theology series. The result, Revelation and Inspiration

(1910), was essentially an expansion of Orr's earlier article bearing the same title. Some passages from the article were even copied word for word in the book.

There was, however, one particularly significant change. Orr now held that an adequate doctrine of Scripture must affirm three things (not two as before, and as the book title still suggested).

The three were supernatural revelation, the inspiration of its record, 63 and the historical "structure" of Scripture itself. This latter

conviction had crystallized in the course of his encounter with Old

Testament criticism, and stemmed from his conception of revelation as (preeminently) historical event.

In a significant departure from traditional theology, Orr drew a clear distinction between revelation and its record--between divine disclosures in history and the accounts of them preserved in

Scripture. The older theology tended, for all intents and purposes, to equate revelation and canonical Scripture in an ahistorical way.

Reflecting the more recent historical consciousness that accompanied higher criticism, however, Orr stressed the distinct and antecedent 64 character of historical revelation. Closely related to this, Orr 145

divine stressed that revelation occurred through specific acts. He

form certainly did not deny that revelation also took the of words and propositions, but he made clear his conviction that such communication was subsidiary to and interpretative of the primary 65 revelatory acts that culminated in the Incarnation.

Orr's main concern in all of this was to defend the actuality of what he called supernatural historical revelation, and following from that, a concept of Scripture as a record of such "special, continuous, supernatural revelation. "66 He sharply distinguished supernatural revelation from all forms of natural revelation. It was categorically distinct from all other means of divine disclosure.

This was really the focal point of his polemic against Wellhausen and the believing critics who followed him. Orr saw the history of

Israel's religion as a series of supernatural revelations, and therefore as something quite opposed to the model of religious 67 development that underlay Wellhausen's interpretation.

Against believing critics like William Robertson Smith and

George Adam Smith, Orr quite pointedly insisted that it was not enough simply to label as supernatural an instance of revelation that was thought to have worked itself out through natural processes. For

Orr, genuine supernatural revelation was something altogether dif-' 68 ferent. What Orr meant by supernatural revelation was something unabashedly miraculous: God Himself took personal revelatory initiative that cut through, and suspended the operations of, natural law.

It was a concept of revelation that easily accounted for direct divine communication with individuals like Adam and Isaiah; for solemn covenants between Jehovah and Abraham; for a divinely- 146

for orchestrated Exodus and a divinely-given Law on Sinai; supernatural guidance through lot-casting, dreams and visions; for theophanies and predictive prophecy; even for the entrance of a

God-Man on the stage of history; in short, for the very things that 69 the various writers of Scripture alleged to have occurred.

To hold that a series of supernatural revelations actually took place in history was a substantial claim. But even if it was true, it was insufficient of itself to create confidence in Scripture.

It was also necessary to demonstrate that the Bible was a trustworthy record of such revelations. And that is what Orr set out to do next.

If a supernatural revelation occurred in history, he reasoned, it was natural to expect that an attempt to record it would be made by those who appreciated its true character. Similarly, if the revelation was from God and for the benefit of all men, it was reasonable to expect some divine superintendence of its composition to ensure that the record was sufficiently accurate to accomplish its purposes, and, moreover, to expect some providential initiative to preserve the 70 record in a permanent and authoritative form thereafter.

As it turned out, there was a collection of historical writings that claimed to be the objective fulfillment of these very expecta- tions. But was it really what it claimed to be? It was indeed, Orr urged, and the proofs of its genuineness were, externally, its 71 enlightening and transforming effects, and internally, the factors

Dorner had pointed out to Orr years before--the powerful impression the Scriptures gave of an organic unity, of a consistent and progressive unfolding of one majestic redemptive vision, and of an unwavering sense of direction and design. Teleology, he urged, was the soul of 147

its the biblical account, and an irrefutable witness to authenticity.

Moreover, he noted significantly, this was a proof which the plain 72 man, no less than the scholar, was capable of appraising.

But then came a very sensitive issue. What degree of accuracy was implied by the Scripture's claim to being inspired? The older assumption, which continued to be defended at Princeton by B. B.

Warfield, was that God could never be the author of falsehood, and for that reason that the Scriptures (at least in their original autographs) were necessarily inerrant--absolutely devoid of mistake or 73 discrepancy on every topic"they touched. With the advance of a more historical understanding of the composition of Scripture, and 74 of the human stamp upon it, the inerrancy position lost ground.

Orr aligned himself with the newer position, as might be expected of one who conceded, among other things, that inevitable textual errors in the sources used by some biblical writers had been taken up into

Scripture itself. He noted that the Scriptures, specifically the classic theopneustia text of Second Timothy 3: 16, did not claim inerrancy in any precise scientific sense, but only that Scripture was free from any defects that might interfere with or nullify its 75 utility for its specified ends of Christian edification.

Back in 1894 Orr had already reached the conclusion that "a hard-and-fast inerrancy in minute matters of historical, geographical, chronological and scientific detail--for the most part indifferent to the substance of the revelation--it seems to me to be a mistake to bind up with the essence of the doctrine of inspiration. "76 Sixteen more years of biblical study did nothing to alter this conviction. In

Revelation and Inspiration, he urged that it was "suicidal" to rest 148'

biblical the case for biblical authority on the inerrancy of the 77 record in its minutest details:

One may plead, indeed, for 'a supernatural providential guidance' which has for its aim to exclude all, even the least error or discrepancy in statement, even such as may inhere in the sources from which the information is obtained, or may arise from corruption of anterior documents. But this is a violent assumption which there is nothing in the Bible really to support. It is perilous, therefore, to seek to pin down faith to it as a matter of vital moment. 78

This appeared to be a rather significant concession to higher criticism, and John Dickie for one thought it noteworthy that such an adamant opponent of the prevailing critical theories felt compelled 79 to retreat from inerrancy. Yet the extent of Orr's concession could easily be overestimated. His disavowal of inerrancy was more tactical than substantive. He did not wish to be trapped in an awkward corner, but he was really unwilliig to concede very much at all. He held that even the assurance of Scripture's profitability in Second Timothy 3: 16 presumed a very high degree of historical and factual accuracy. He held, in fact, that the Bible manifested such a high degree of accuracy that the phenomenon was itself an argument 80 for the supernatural origin of Scripture. Moreover, he sympathized with the general direction of the inerrantists' regard for Scripture, and believed that it was in line with apostolic conviction and 81 historic Christianity.

All things considered, Orr had taken a difficult mediating position. On the one side, he failed to please the inerrantists, and Princeton spokesman William Brenton Greene, Jr., was predictably 82 disappointed by a number of Orr's concessions. On the other, however, he frustrated those who followed William Robertson Smith in 149 dispensing with the older concept of direct and propositional revelation in favour of a more subjective apprehension of the voice of God mediated through the recorded religious experiences of others. 83 T. M. Lindsay, who advocated Smith's Position, felt so strongly about the matter that he could not restrain the temptation to criticize Orr's concept of truth at some length in the course of 84 delivering a memorial address on the occasion of Orr's death.

Why did Orr insist on retaining such concepts as he did of supernatural revelation and factual recording of it in Scripture?

Surely he was aware that such concepts were offensive and even incredible to the modern outlook. He tried, of course, to show that his doctrine of Scripture, and in particular his concept of supernatural revelation, were not as unreasonable and incredible as some alleged. But his bottom-line answer to this question was that any departure from his view would be extremely hazardous. He held that supernatural revelation was plainly claimed by the writers of Scrip- ture, and that it could not be excised from the pages of the Bible without destroying Scripture's credibility altogether. Alternative constructions of revelation history so violently contradicted the claims of the biblical writers themselves that the latter's authority 85 was damaged beyond repair.

Orr appears to have had other concerns as well. It was necessary, he implied, to continue to affirm supernatural revelation in order to keep faith both personal and assured. Against Pfleiderer,

Orr had commended supernatural revelation by holding that

the end of the natural order itself is something higher than a mere natural order, namely, a realm of free, personal spirits, in which the law is not that of imper- sonally mediated manifestations, but the direct personal 150

intercourse of love. 86

In Revelation and Inspiration he continued to hold that living faith could never be satisfied with general truths about God. It craved personal encounter with the Creator-Redeemer, and personal encounter with such a supernatural Being had to be, according to Orr's cosmology, supernatural we well. Then again, it was also true, he believed, that faith could never rest in the ambiguous affirmations of even the most insightful of men. It needed a clearer and surer foundation. It needed to know that "thus saith the Lord. " It had to 87 believe that it possessed an authoritative word from God.

Perhaps Orr's greatest concern was that an abandonment of supernatural revelation in principle would lead to an assault on the ultimate revelation, Jesus Christ. It was naive optimism, he suggested,

to think that the New Testament would be exempt from the methods and

assumptions that the higher critics accepted concerning the Old.

Once those methods and assumptions were applied, the divinity of Christ 88 would be called in question. And for Orr, this was the most

frightening spectre of all, for (as we noted in an earlier chapter) he saw Christianity as a religion centred in the Incarnation. ENDNOTES

1J. R. Fleming, History of the Church of Scotland 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1927-1933), 2: 232-233. 2"Selection Committee Report, " Synod Papers of the United Presbyterian Church (1896). 3Proceedings of the Synod of the United Presbyterian Church (.October 1900), pp. 41-43. 4"Report of the Committee on Union, " Proceedings of the Synod (May 1900), p. 96. 5W. M. MacGregor, A Souvenir of the Union (Glasgow, 1930), pp. 11-12; Stewart Mechie, Trinity CoZZege, Glasgow) (n. p., 1956), pp. 38-39. 6Proceedings and Debates of the General Assembly of the United Free Church (1902), pp. 222-228. The vote was hailed to signal the end of party loyalties in the new Church by George M. Reith, Remi- niscences of the United Free Church Genera Z Assembly (Edinburgh and London, 1933), pp. 26-27. Orr, however, reported that the vote went largely along party lines, in his "The General Assembly of the United Free Church of Scotland, " Presbyterian and Reformed Review 13 (1902): 619. An analysis of the voting lists in Proceedings and Debates (1902), pp. vi-xxxii, reveals that Orr was right. About ninety percent of Free Church ministers voted for Lindsay; about ninety percent of U. P. ministers voted for Orr. Key leaders judiciously abstained from voting. 7For a full account of the rise of biblical criticism in Scot- land and of the trial of William Robertson Smith, see Andrew L. Drummond and James Bulloch, The Church in Late Victorian Scotland (Edinburgh, 1978), pp. 40-78. Compare A. C. Cheyne, The Transforming of the Kirk (Edinburgh, 1983), pp. 37-59. See also Richard A. Reisen, "Higher Criticism in the Free Church Fathers, " Records of the Scottish Church History Society 20 (1979) : 119-142. 8See Julius Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Israel, trans. J. Sutherland Black and Allan Menzies, with intro. by W. R. Smith (Edinburgh, 1885). This volume also contains a reprint of Wellhausen's influential 1885 Encyclopaedia Britannica article on Israel. 9For two winters Smith lectured to large audiences in Glasgow and Edinburgh. The lectures were immediately published as the Od

151 152

Testament in the Jewish Church (Edinburgh, 1881); and The Prophets of Israel (Edinburgh, 1882). 10George Adam Smith's 1899 Lyman Beecher lectures at Yale were published as Modern Criticism and the Preaching of the OZd Testament.

11Such pamphlets included James Johnston, Destructive Results of the Higher Criticism (Edinburgh and London, 1901); and the anonymous The OZd Bible and the New (London, 1901). The College Committee's special report anent Smith, along with a copy of the memorial submitted to the Committee, may be found in Reports to the General Assembly of The United Free Church of Scotland (1902), No. 11-A. The scene during the General Assembly is described by Reith, Reminiscences, pp. 28-32. 12Proceedings and Debates (1902), pp. 90-96. 13Ibid., pp. 96-100. 141bid., p. 100. 15Norman L. Walker, "The Case of Prof. George Adam Smith, " Presbyterian and Reformed Review 13 (1902): 588-596. 161f the Trumpet Give an Uncertain Sound (Glasgow, [19031), repr. from Presbyterian and Reformed Review 13 (1902): 597-609. Compare James Kerr, The Higher Criticism: Disastrous Results (Glasgow, 1903). 17 These works are described by H. D. McDonald, Theories of Revelation (London, 1963), pp. 123-126. 18 See, for example, W. E. Addis, review of The Problem of the OZd Testament, by James Orr, in Review of Theology and Philosophy 2 (1902): 152.

19 J. A. Paterson, "Professor Orr's New Book, " Scottish Review 2 (1906) : 219. 20James Orr, The Problem of the OZd Testament (London, 1906), p. xv. 21Ibid., p. 6. 22Ibid., pp. 4-20; quotations from pp. xv, and 6. Orr insisted on a definition of revelation that was categorically distinct, both in the mode of its communication and the accuracy and authority of its content, from any natural development or providentially guided process. Ibid., pp. 19-22. 23Ibid., p. 6. 24Ibid., pp. 4-22. 153 25Ibid.

26Ibid., pp. 6 ff. 27 The phrase is from James Orr, "Professor Peake on Biblical Criticism, " The Interpreter 4 (1908): 365; the idea is found in Orr, The Problem of the 0Zd Testament, pp. 9-10. 28"We do not need to fall back on the redactor of the critics to recognize that the Pentateuch has a history--that, like other books of the Bible, it has undergone a good deal of revision, and that sometimes this revision has left pretty deep traces upon the text. " Ibid., p. 226. Orr conceded "editorial revision and annotation" in Deuteronomy. Ibid., p. 283. Note also concessions made on pp. 87-88, 93,223-224.

29Ibid. 61. , p. 30Ibid., pp. 53-192. 31Ibid. 147. , p. 32Ibid., pp. 195-239. 33Ibid., 247-284. 0 pp. 34Ibid., pp. 287-329. 35Ibid., pp. 335-336. 36Ibid., pp. 333-377. 37Ibid., pp. 29-51. 38 The foundation was established in 1890 by William Bross, a former Lieutenant-Governor of Illinois. The committee of judges for 1905 consisted of G. T. Ladd of Yale; A. T. Ormond of Princeton and G. F. Wright of Oberlin. Ibid., pp. ix-xii. 39Unsigned review of The Problem of the OZd Testament, in Lif e and Work 29 (1906): 89. 40Unsigned review, in BibZiotheca Sacra 63 (1906): 374-375; John D. Davis, in Princeton Theological Review 5 (1907): 303-309; compare John R. Sampey, in the Southern Baptist Review and Expositor 4 (1907): 105-116. The Glasgow Herald reported on 6 November 1909, p. 13 that there were French, Dutch and Danish translations of The Problem of the Old Testament, and a German translation in progress. Compare James Orr, Le Probleme de Z'Anc. Test.: Ze Pentateuque, trans. G. Thouvenet (.Geneva, 1908). 41"Professor Orr, " British Weekly, 9 January 1908, p. 390. 42Unsigned review, -Vissionary Record of the United Free Church, 154 no. 64 (April 1906): 18',3-181. Robson had given the address at Orr's ordination. Minute Book of the Managers of East Bank Church, Hawick, 3 February 1874. 43For a brief estimate of Cameron's pacific career, see [James Iverachj "The Late Professor Cameron, " Missionary Record the United , of Free Church, no. 150 (June 1913): 300-301. 44Paterson, "Professor Orr's New Book, " p. 219. On Paterson, see J. B. Hastings, "The Late Professor J. A. Paterson, " Missionary Record of the United Free Church, no. 181 (January 1916): 14-15. Among other things, Paterson edited the critical edition of the book of Numbers for the fabulous Po Zychrome Bib Ze in Hebrew series. 45James Orr, "The Issues in Criticism, " Scottish Review 2 (. 1906): 247.

46 [George Adam Smith], "Recent Developments in Old Testament Criticism, " Quarterly Review 206 (1907): 185-187.

470rr's contribution to the March 1907 edition of The Church- man is repr. in James Orr, The Bible Under Trial (London, L1907/1), pp. 311-315. 48See for example McFadyen's OZd Testament Criticism and the Christian Church (1903) ; and his Introduction to the 071d i estament (1905). Compare his subsequent popular works: The Use off-' the OZd Testament in the Light of Modern Knowledge (London, C19221); and The Approach to the OZd Testament (London, [19261). 49Some years after Orr's death, McFadyen ventured to describe him as one who was very well-informed on critical issues, but it tempermentally inclined in ... to acquiese traditional explanations of difficulties--to reconcile inconsistencies, e. g., by some harmonic device, however improbably, rather than frankly acknowledge them and them In allow to modify the traditional explanation ... ." short, he suggested, Orr was among those who did "not permit their minds to play as freely or naturally upon the facts as a more emancipated mind would do. " Ibid., pp. 102-103. 50W. E. Addis, review of The Problem of the OZd Testament, in Review of Theology and PhiZoscphy 2 (1906): 152-160. Orr replied by offering "a brief thrashing out of our very divergent conceptions" in his "Professor W. E. Addis on Hebrew Religion, " Expository Times 18 (1906) : 119-125. 51New International Dictionary of the Christian Church, rev. ed., s. v. "Peake, Arthur Samuel, " by Andrew F. Walls. 52See Leslie Peake, Arthur Samuel Peake: A Memoir (London, 1930), pp. 209-270. 53A. S. Peake, "The Problem of the Old Testament, " Contemporary 155

Review 91 (1907) : 493-509; Orr replied with "The Problem of the Old Testament Re-Stated, " Contemporary Review 92 (1907): 200-212. 54 A. S. Peake, ''Dr. Orr on Biblical Criticism, " The Inter- preter 4 (1908): 258. 551bid., pp. 262-263. 56Ibid., p. 268. 571bid., p. 257. 58James Orr, "Professor Peake on Biblical Criticism, " The Interpreter 4 (1908): 364-372. Orr's death in 1913 ensured that Peake had the last word. See A. S. Peake, The BibZe: Its Origin, Its Significance, and Its Abiding Worth (London, New York and Toronto, 1913), pp. 96 ff. 59 Pf leiderer published his lectures as The Phi Zosophy and Development of Re Zigion (1894). 60See James Orr, "Professor Pfleiderer's Gifford Lectures, " The Thinker 5 (1894): 333-335. 61James Orr, "Can Professor Pfleiderer's View Justify Itself?, " in The Supernatural in Christianity, by Robert Rainy, Marcus Dods and James Orr (Edinburgh, 1894), pp. 35-67. On Pfleiderer's lectures and Scottish response to them, see James Orr, "The Edinburgh Reply to Professor Pf leiderer's Gifford Lectures, " The Thinker 5 (1894): 427-429; Fergus Ferguson, "The Gifford Lectures and Professor Pf leiderer, " United Presbyterian Magazine 11 (1894) : 193-198; "Prin- cipal Rainy on the Supernatural in Christianity, " The Scotsman, 6 March 1894, p. 7; "The Supernatural in Christianity, " The Scotsman, 9 March 1894, p. 3; P. Carnegie Simpson, The Life of Principal Rainy, 2 vols. (London, 1909), 2: 131-137; Arthur Gordon, The Life of Archibald Hamilton Charteris (London, New York and Toronto, 1912), p. 192. 62James Orr, "Revelation and Inspiration, " The Thinker 6 (1894): 35-43.

63James Orr, Revelation and Inspiration (London, 1910), p. ix. The same three points are highlighted in James Orr, "Need and Basis of a Doctrine of Holy Scripture, " Review and Expositor 6 (1909): 379- 393; and James Orr, "Holy Scripture and Modern Negations, " The Fundamentals, ed. by R. A. Torrey and others, repr. ed., 4 vols. (Grand Rapids, 1970), 1: 94-110. 640rr, Revelation and Inspiration, p. 21. The older tendency to equate revelation and Scripture is noted by H. D. McDonald, Theories of Revelation (London, 1963), p. 161. 65 0rr, Revelation and Inspiration, pp. 21-22. Compare: "This 156

is a view of the matter which cuts deeper than at first sight appears, not only correcting, it seems to us, a doctrinaire one-sidedness on the orthodox side, which works into the hands of the enemy, but checking the far more dangerous tendency on the critical side to play fast and loose with the history of the Bible, and to lay the whole weight of revelation on the supposed intuitions of the prophets. " Orr, "Revelation and Inspiration, " p. 39. 66 0rr, Revelation and Inspiration, p. 21. Compare: "Reve- lation consists in acts and deeds of God, not simply in sporadic 'flashes' of man's genius, " James Orr, "The Scientific Meaning of Inspiration, " Homiletic Review 60 (1910): 262. It is indicative of Orr's priorities that fully three quarters of Revelation and Inspir- ation is devoted to the topic of revelation. 67Compare Orr, The Problem of the 0Zd Testcnnent, pp. 85-86. 68Compare William Robertson Smith, The Old Testament in the Jewish church, p. viii; George Adam Smith, "The Proof of a Divine Revelation in the Old Testament, " Modern Criticism, chap. 4; Orr, The Problem of the OZd Testament, pp. 19-22. 690rr, Revelation and Inspiration, pp. 67 ff. 70 Ibid., p. 155. 71Ibid., pp. 217-218. 72Ibid., pp. 18-20,72-73. 73See B. B. Warf ield The Inspiration Authority the , and of Bible, ed. Samuel G. Craig (Phillipsburg, 1948). 74Scottish theologians of the early and mid-nineteenth century were not altogether successful in harmonizing critical results with the orthodox doctrine of Scripture. See Riesen, "Higher Criticism in the Free Church Fathers. " By the late nineteenth century, A. B. Bruce and Marcus Dods were able to retain professorial chairs at Free Church colleges despite having publically abandoned inerrancy. Drummond and Bulloch, The Church in Late Victorian Scotland, pp. 64-66,264 ff. 75 0rr, Revelation and Inspiration, pp. 160-162. 760rr, "Revelation and Inspiration, " p. 43. 77 Orr, Revelation and Inspiration, pp. 197-198. 78Ibid., pp. 213-214. 79John Dickie, Fifty Years of British Theology (Edinburgh, 1937), p. 104. 80 0rr, Revelation and Inspiration, p. 216. Robert J. Hoefel 157 has explored the substantial affinities between Orr and Warfield in his "The Doctrine of Inspiration in the Writings of James Orr and B. B. Warfield: A Study in Contrasting Approaches to Scripture" (Ph. D. thesis, Fuller Theological Seminary, 1983). 81 0rr, Revelation and Inspiration, p. 217. 82William Brenton Greene, Jr., review of Revelation and Inspiration, by James Orr, in Princeton TheoZogicaZ Review 9 (1911): 118-123. 83Compare T. M. Lindsay, "Professor W. Robertson Smith's Doctrine of Scripture, " The Expositor, 4th series, 10 (1894): 241-264. Smith's concern was not to vindicate the Bible as a repository of supernaturally-communicated truths, but to portray it as the autobiography of the Church, through the reading of which the Word of God might be subjectively and personally heard. Smith, The Old Testament in the Jewish Church, pp. 16,19-20. 84T. M. Lindsay, "The Late Professor Orr, " British Weekly, 23 October 1913, pp. 93-94. 850rr, Revelation and inspiration, pp. 17-18. Elsewhere he claimed that at the hands of critics "The Book becomes a corpus vile, on the mangled form of which every new theorist delights to manifest his ingenuity. " Orr, "Need and Basis of a Doctrine of Holy Scripture, " p. 380. 86 Orr, "Can Professor Pfleiderer's View Justify Itself?, " p. 49. 87 Orr, Revelation and inspiration, pp. 48-50,55 ff. Compare Orr, The Problem of the OZd Testament, p. 20. 88James Orr, "Christ in the Thought of Today, " Baptist Review and Expositor 1 (1904): 284-285. CHAPTER VI

THE EXPANSION OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY:

Continuity in the Doctrines of Man and Sin

Developments in the second half of the nineteenth century,

and in the years leading up to World War I, hardly allowed a theolo-

gian to catch his breath. Ritschl and Wellhausen rattled the

composure and tested the mettle of evangelical orthodoxy, but the

quintessential thinker of the nineteenth century, and probably the

greatest intellectual force to be reckoned with, was an English

scientist without any particular commitment to the Christian faith:

Charles Darwin. Perhaps it is not too much to describe Darwin as

the catalyst for a paradigm shift in man's understanding of reality.

Darwin, of course, did not single-handedly mastermind the modern era;

theories of evolution circulated prior to 1859, and the Darwinian

revolution quickly took off in directions which Darwin neither

predicted nor advocated. His contribution, to state the matter more

precisely, was to provide credible scientific support for an

appealing but hitherto unsubstantiated conception of life and history.

Such a contribution was certainly significant enough, and consequently

the movement of thought in the later nineteenth century may be depicted as "an hour-glass, with Darwin comprising the narrow waist. "'

Only a theologian akin to the fabled ostrich could ignore

Darwinism and its possible implications for Christianity, and Orr had

158 159 already proved that he did not belong to that species. With characteristic alacrity he entered the fray occasioned by Darwin's theory, and set himself the task of making an informed response to it.

Orr was just a teenager when Darwin published his Origin of

Species, and therefore did not belong to the first generation of

Christian respondents to it. The fray which Origin of Species pre- cipitated was already several decades old by the time Orr became a public participant in it. From the first Darwin's book had run into spirited opposition from religious quarters. Some of this opposition was due to ignorance and prejudice, and often it was simply the

consequence of "a primitive and pervasive revulsion against the idea

that man was nothing more than the last stage in a natural order

embracing barely animate organisms and all-too-animate beasts. "2

Still, deal Darwin's a good of the religious opposition to theory was 0

the result of a clear-headed perception of the challenge Darwin posed

to the orthodox doctrines of Scripture, God, creation, benevolent

providence, man and sin. And such opponents of Darwin were not alone

in viewing Christianity and Darwinism as hostile and incompatible.

Their estimate of the situation found support in an unlikely quarter;

Thomas Huxley (Darwin's bulldog) and his circle of irreligious

Darwinians were equally convinced that the two views were irreconcilable, and felt only amazement and exasperation when a few theologians

like Charles Kingsley and Baden Powell welcomed Darwin's theory with a cavalier magnanimity. Popular opinion also tended to view Chris- tianity and Darwinism as incompatible, and Origin of Species thus amounted to a fatal blow to faith for many. George J. Romanes summed up the poignant feelings of many who were thus led to abandon 160

Christianity when he wrote:

When at times I think, as think at times I must, of the appalling contrast between the hallowed glory of that creed which once was mine, and the lonely mystery of existence as now I find it--at such times I shall ever feel it impossible to avoid the sharpest pang of which my nature is susceptible. 3

Immediately responsibility for defending the Christian cause fell on the shoulders of "Soapy Sam" Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford.

He described the main argument of Origin of Species as "our unsuspected cousinship with the mushrooms" and Darwin himself as a credulous man for whom "it is just as probable that Dr. Livingstone will find the next tribe of negroes with their heads growing under their arms as fixed on the summit of the cervical vertebrae.

Wilberforce's tactic of ridicule was popular enough in some circles, and indeed became a model for a certain brand of Christian polemic which prevails to this day. But the decade of the 1860s proved the

ineffectiveness of such a strategy. Darwin was not to be discredited

so easily. His views appeared to have come to stay.

Though a strong undercurrent of resistance to evolutionary

theory persisted in some circles, the main trend from 1859 to the end of the century was to come to terms with it, and to work out some sort of reconciliation of faith with evolution. Darwin's burial in

Westminster Abbey in 1882 was a significant indication of the Church of England's recognition of his contribution. The positive reception granted to Frederick Temple's 1884 Bampton Lectures, which treated evolution as axiomatic, was another. But the confirmation of the same

Temple as Archbishop of Canterbury twelve years later was the sine qua 5 non that such views were deemed permissable and respectable. This 161 tolerance of Darwinism, however, left one important question unanswered: was this tolerance based on a legitimate reconciliation, or on some combination of fuzzy thinking and theological sleight of hand, or even possibly on a grudging agreement to live with cognitive dissonance?

Upon closer examination it may be seen that this tendency to come to terms with Darwinism worked itself out in more than one way.

Some, like the Princeton giant Charles Hodge, still rejected it categorically. In his That is Darwinism?, (1874), Hodge answered that it was nothing more or less than atheism, and denied that it was anything more than an unsubstantiated theory. Other Christian thinkers, however, felt able to embrace the theory essentially without qualifica- tion, while still others felt compelled to alter substantially (some would say adulterate) Darwinian theory before they could make it compatible with their Christian beliefs. The later nineteenth century was not lacking in alternative and modified evolutionary theories to which the latter class of Christian thinkers could appeal in their 6 efforts to ameliorate the perceived offensiveness of Darwin.

This state of affairs held true for Scotland as well. By 1895

Robert Rainy, the unofficial leader of the Free Church of Scotland and a man not given to indiscreet comment, felt free enough to acknowledge of evolution that:

there was certainly something in it. How much there was in it, and what the limits of its application were, was a question on which a very great difference of opinion [Free would disclose itself if all Churchmen's] minds the were unveiled on subject .7

And great differences of opinion certainly did exist. Even before the origin of Species, Hugh Miller, the editor of the Free Church 162

in face newspaper, had vigorously defended the fixity of species the

Natural of the challenge posed by Robert Chambers's Vestiges of the 8 History of Creation (1844). Miller's mantle fell on John William

Dawson, the Principal of McGill University, who had been educated in

Edinburgh during the Disruption and Vestiges controversies. In his

Modern Ideas of Evolution (1890) and elsewhere, Dawson carried on with 9 some ability the argument for the inviolability of species.

At the other end of the range of Scottish Christian response were those who, without really modifying Darwin's theory, sought to

transpose it into another key more pleasing to the religious ear.

Among these was George Matheson, a Church of Scotland minister who had

studied under John Caird, and came to see Darwin's theory as one which 10 wonderfully united the divine with the natural. Henry Drummond, a

long-time associate of American evangelist Dwight L. Moody, and for

some years Professor of Natural Science at the Free Church College,

Glasgow, was a particularly influential member of this class. In his

Natura Z Law in the Spiritual WorZd (1883) and his Ascent of Man (1894),

Drummond ingeniously transformed evolutionary concepts into spiritual

principles suitable for devotional reflection. Perhaps James

Iverach., Professor of Apologetics and Systematic Theology at the Free

Church College in Aberdeen, spoke for this entire class of apologists when, in his Christianity and Evolution (1894) and elsewhere, he offered, in the words of James Moore, not "a religious alternative to a scientific conception of the world but an interpretation of scientific findings from a religious point of view. nil

There were still other Scots committed to Christian faith who concluded that the differences between Darwin and Christianity were 163

In too fundamental to be resolved through mere reinterpretation.

level their view, substantive modifications at the scientific were imperative. In Organic Evolution Cross-Examined (1898) and elsewhere,

George Douglas Campbell, the eighth Duke of Argyll, argued for an inner teleological principle in organisms and postulated a special 12 act of creation to account for the emergence of man. James McCosh, the Scottish-born President of Princeton University, was quite accom- modating to Darwin, but drew a line before assenting to Darwin's 13 non-interventionist theory of human origins.

It was in this milieu, and with an awareness of the existing range of response, that Orr worked out his own position vis-a-vis evolutionary theory. His abiding conviction that all truth was a unity suggested at the very least the possibility that evolutionary theory might threaten certain component beliefs of evangelical orthodoxy. His instinctive suspicion of any form of "double truth, " a suspicion now doubly sensitized by his encounter with Ritschlianism, made it unthinkable for him to evade this potential challenge through recourse to the idea that religious truth claims were somehow independent of scientific refutation. As it turned out, he came to the conclusion that evolutionary theory, or more precisely Darwin's theory of origins, did challenge certain orthodox doctrines, particularly those of creation, man and sin.

The intensity of his subsequent efforts to defend these doctrines can better be understood when we realize that Orr saw more than these individual doctrines to be at stake. The entire belief- 164

"I structure of Christianity was in jeopardy. do not think it can be

sufficiently emphasized, " he wrote, "that Christian truth forms an organism--has a unity and coherence which cannot be arbitrarily 14 disturbed in any of its parts without the whole undergoing injury. '

H. H. Scullard, Professor of Church History at the Congregationalists'

New College in London, was one who found Orr's approach quite mad-

dening. He complained:

Professor Orr is possessed, one might almost say obsessed, with the idea of Christianity as a system of doctrines, each capable of accurate definition, each exactly fitting in with the rest, and no one of which can be removed or altered without shaking, as it may be overthrowing, the whole edifice. 15

This was in fact the way Orr looked at things, but we may be certain

that he did not view it as a weakness or fault to do so.

The foundation of Orr''s response to Darwinian theory was his

allowance, based on extensive personal study of relevant scientific

literature, that organic evolution of some kind or other was quite

likely. In The Christian View he wrote: "On the general hypothesis of evolution, as applied to the organic world, I have nothing to say, except that, within certain limits, it seems to me extremely probable,

and supported by a large body of evidence. " Later in the same work he again urged that "we need not reject the hypothesis of evolution within 16 the limits in which science has really rendered it probable., Such concessions were far from unusual in Scotland at the time, but they do suggest the fairness of describing Orr as a theistic evolutionist. And it is noteworthy that he never backed away from this position, even in 17 his later contributions to The FundamentaZs.

The reason for his willingness to allow for organic evolution 165

"no interest was, as he explained elsewhere, that religious ... is imperilled by a theory of evolution, viewed simply as a method of creation, provided certain conditions are fulfilled, and certain limits 18 are observed., This was a significant acknowledgement, but of course everything really hinged on what lay behind Orr's qualifying remarks.

Exactly what special conditions had to be fulfilled, and exactly what limits had to be observed, before he would rest content? This brings us to the very heart of the issue.

In order to reconcile evolution with the orthodox doctrines of creation and man, Orr felt it necessary simply to advocate certain modifications of Darwin's understanding of evolution. It was quite a different matter, however, when Orr considered the doctrine of sin.

This doctrine, he believed, could be sustained only if the theory of moral evolution was categorically rejected. He flatly denied the

applicability of evolutionary theory to man's moral history, and

devoted a great deal of energy to vindication of the orthodox doctrine

of sin.

As with so many of his convictions, Orr first stated his position on Darwinian evolution in The Christian View. With respect

to the doctrine of creation, first of all, he was not concerned to exonerate a literal interpretation of the biblical creation account, and in fact expressed some reservations about such. a line of interpretation. He urged his opponents to quit "carping and pettifogging" about the details of the account, and agree with him that "the main point is the absolute derivation of all things from God, and on this truth the Scripture as a whole gives no uncertain sound. '49

For Orr, this affirmation of the divine creation of all things 166 was of great religious significance. The doctrine of creation was a necessary presupposition of the religiously vital belief that all things depend upon, and are controlled by God. "The vital think in religion, " he suggested, "is the relation of dependence. "20 And it was precisely this, Orr believed, which was threatened by the Dar- winian denial of any need or evidence of a creative cause. Belief in a creator and creation needed to be buttressed by an appreciation of the manifestly teleological character of nature. Orr allowed that the operations of natural selection were real enough, but insisted that

Darwin had overrated its significance. Orr tried to redress this imbalance, and highlight the teleology of organic life, by stressing the determinants of change which were internal to organisms. In the course of doing so he was able to marshall testimony from a number of scientific authorities. If only his contention were allowed, Orr was confident that Darwinian evolutionary theory was compatible with, and even strengthening of belief that all things were created by God and 21 therefore continue to be dependent upon Him.

In defending the doctrine of man, once again Orr was not concerned to defend a literal interpretation of the Genesis account of man's origin. His broader concern was to maintain a theory of human origin which would be compatible with_the traditional understanding of man as in the image of God, and endowed with qualities which set him apart from the rest of creation (.and most pointedly, from mere brutes).

He was inclined to accept, with certain significant modifications, an evolutionary theory of man's origin. He allowed for the possibility of a genetic link between man and lower species, the very sort of allowance that would have pained other conservative champions like 167

Bishop Wilberforce before, and William Jennings Bryan after him. At the same time, however, he insisted on modifications of the theory sufficient to support a categorical distinction between man and the earlier forms of life from which he may have descended.

Consequently Orr was very much drawn to the work of Alfred

Russel Wallace, an eminent British naturalist who came quite close 22 to upstaging Darwin as the pioneer advocate of natural selection.

Wallace, while an evolutionist, argued that the evolutionary process was punctuated by "breaks, " that is, by moments when the normal pattern of insensible gradations was interrupted in order to introduce a new level of existence. Wallace proposed such a break to account 23 for the emergence of man as man.

Tempting though it may have been, Orr did not throw in his lot with Wallace. "With the view I hold of development as a process, determined from within, " he explained, "I do not feel the same need 24 for emphasising these Cmoments of quantum advance] as 'breaks , It appears that Orr was more influenced by the spirit of the times, and perhaps by the Cairds, than he was usually willing to admit. And this is indeed quite a remarkable statement from Orr, especially in light of his extreme concern over the diminution of the supernatural in any sphere. In order to defend himself, he went so far as to quote

Charles Gore's quite revisionist definition of it:

The term supernatural is purely relative to what at any particular stage of thought we mean by nature. Nature is a progressive development of life, and each new stage of life appears supernatural from the point of view of what lies below it-25

Orr welcomed the support afforded by Wallace and others for a departure from strict Darwinian theory, and consequently contended 168

"leap" (not that the evolutionary history of man included a decisive

a break); that is, an abrupt and decisive advance prompted by forces

immanent to the evolutionary process itself.

This was as far, however, as Orr would go to reconcile tradi-

tional doctrine with evolutionary theory. He was adamant that evolu-

tion never could serve, as Darwin in The Descent of Man (1871) had

attempted to make it serve, as an explanatory hypothesis for man's moral history. The two views were irreconcilable. Ascent was the

absolute inversion of descent.

Orr was convinced that only inadequate concepts of sin and

guilt could follow from such an "inversion" of man's moral history.

Here, as in so many other places, he openly followed Dorner, who

suggested that:

If evil is supposed to consist only in development, which God has willed in His character as Creator, then its absolute wrongfulness must come to an end. The non- realization of the idea cannot be blame-worthy in itself, if the innate law of life itself prescribes progressiveness of development. 26

Theories of moral evolution made sin a natural necessity, not a fault

for which man was entirely and personally responsible. That respon-

sibility was effectively thrown back on the creator of the evolutionary

scenario. On such an evolutionary premise, guilt was undermined and

sin could not continue to be regarded as tragic, inexcusable and 27 punishable.

It was incumbent on Orr to attempt to refute Darwin's suggestion

that man's history dated back to vast antiquity, and substantially predated civilization. Such a suggestion indicated a lengthy epoch of morally backward human existence and tended to confirm the moral evolutionists' position, With. real candor, Orr admitted that: 169

did not religious interest enter ... we would probably have been found yielding a ready assent to the hypothesis of a great antiquity. The religious interests at stake lead be little in our exami- us ... to a more careful nation of the proofs-28

As it turned out, Orr's "more careful" examination of the evidence led him to reject it.

For Orr the strongest refutation of this theoretical sanction of moral failure was conscience itself. In a manner entirely compatible with the tradition of common sense moral philosophy, Orr stressed as a basis for his opposition to the idea of moral evolution man's innate awareness of the discrepancy between his actions and what "ought to be. " Conscience, he said, could never be reconciled 29 to the evolutionary rationalization of guilt.

But Orr ý. also recognized the value of an account of the origin ;.. 3j ý., `I 1 of sin which would reinforce the decisive testimony of conscience. ., And this he believed lay in the theories of man's primitive innocence and fall, and the subsequent operations of hereditary evil. These traditional assumptions implied that man's existing moral condition was not his original one, much less an improvement upon it. And they also implied that man's moral condition was something for which man, and not his creator, was responsible.

Along these lines Orr interpreted the biblical account of the fall very cautiously. Probably it was an "old tradition clothed in oriental allegorical dress, " he said. But the abiding truth of the account was that man fell from an original state of purity. Though inferior to modern man in some respects, Adam had "high and noble faculties, a pure and harmonious nature, rectitude of will, capability 30 of understanding his creator's instructions, and power to obey them. , 170

Orr took up the matter of the relationship between evolution and Christian belief once again in 1903, in a series of lectures which he delivered under the sponsorship of the L. P. Stone Foundation at

Princeton Seminary in New Jersey. By this time his concern was growing that evolutionary theories of man and sin were rapidly being domesticated within the Church. Popular evolutionists like John Fiske of

Harvard were evidently convincing many laymen that evolution was compatible with the deepest truths of Christianity. Someone had to take a stand and state the fact plainly: the Christian world view was absolutely irreconcilable with the "ably constructed and defended" naturalistic world view with which many naive Christians were seeking 31 an alliance.

These Princeton lectures were published two years later as

God's Image in Man and its Defacement in the Light of Modern Denials.

The title indicates their apologetic flavour, as well as Orr's relative neglect of the doctrine of creation, and concentration now on the doctrines of man and sin. While revealing no substantial change in

Orr's position, God's Image in Man was a fuller expression of his views on these latter two doctrines.

With respect to the doctrine of man, Orr was once again concerned to retain reasonable grounds for viewing man as a creature categorically distinct from animals and in possession of immortality.

He remained convinced that any theory of man's gradual evolution from animal forms was "fatal" to the assumption that man possessed a spiritual. nature and immortality, A series of insensible gradations simply allowed no opportunity for the introduction of these 171 32 "leap" categorically new qualities. A decisive must have occurred.

One interesting shift in Orr's thought was his tendency now to speak of such a leap as an opportunity for a supernatural initiative or cause to come into play. He actually went so far as to speak of "the 33 production of something perfectly new by the direct act of God. ,

This was plainly the language of direct intervention and "breaks, " yet

Orr continued to imply that such a creative event could occur through the operation of teleological forces immanent to the process itself.

Thus, he suggested, there was no real incompatibility between evolution 34 and creation.

B. B. Warfield, Professor of Didactic and Polemical Theology at

Princeton, immediately detected Orr's apparent ambivalence on this point and expressed his concern that supernaturalism be understood in 35 more explicitly interventionist terms. Evidently Orr was aware of this particular line of criticism. Shortly after the publication of

God's Image in Man Orr replied that the matter was a non-issue. It really did not make any difference whether man resulted "from immanent 36 action of the Creative Cause or otherwise. , The only real issue for

Orr was whether or not man had come into possession of unique and transcendental qualities of nature. If he had, Orr was sure that he had acquired them, and through them his identity as man, instantly and in a punctiliar moment.

There was another tempting solution to the conflict over the origin of man, and it came from a source quite close to Orr. In 1893

Henry Calderwood, probably the most respected United Presbyterian layman of the time, published his Evolution and Man's Place in Nature, in which he insisted that man's intelligence could not possibly be a 172 product of evolutionary process. At the same time, however, he essentially conceded that the physical aspects of man were of evolu- 37 tionary derivation.

Orr's strong sense of the unity of man led him to cross his former advisor. He was unable to go along with Calderwood and said:

I confess it has always seemed to me an illogical and untenable position to postulate a special origin for man's mind, and deny it for his body. I base here on the close relation which every one now admist to subsist between man's mental and physical organization. Mind and body constitute together a unity in man. Mind and brain, in particular, are so related that a sudden rise on the mental side cannot be conceived without a corresponding rise on the physical side-38

It was just because Orr rejected Calderwood's solution that it was so important for him to continue to refute claims that "missing links" between man and lower forms of life had been discovered. And so we find him, in correspondence with George Frederick Wright, a renowned theistic evolutionist at Oberlin College, Ohio, and elsewhere,

in torturous for the engaged 0 mathematical calculations purpose of demonstrating a great degree of difference between ape and human brain 39 capacities. The unity of truth had to be maintained at all points.

------

Orr also paid particular attention in God's Image in Man to criticism of theories of moral evolution, and to the defence of the traditional theory of the origin and propagation of sin. Orr was fighting at this point against more than straw men. Moral evolutionary theories were being theologically domesticated, and one of their most 40 effective advocates was Frederick Robert Tennant.

Tennant was still a young Cambridge fellow when he delivered 173 the 1901-1902 Hulsean Lectures at that university on the Origin and

Propagation of Sin. The following year he published the Sources of the Doctrines of the FaZZ and Original Sin, which set out the historical basis for the position he espoused in the earlier lectures. Taken together, these two books were a devastating attack on the traditional doctrine of original sin. Tennant argued that it was not a doctrine taught in the Old Testament, and the Apostle Paul's advocacy of it was discredited by his obvious debt to Jewish speculation. In short, the story of Adam's innocence and sin could claim no revelatory authority. And left to stand on its intrinsic merits alone, it was problematic and untenable. It therefore remained for empirical science, not biblical exegesis, to unlock the mystery of sin's 41 origin.

The alternative theory which Tennant offered was no less startling. It was an evolutionary theory of man's moral history. As man evolved from animal stock, so the theory went, he acquired various morally-neutral impulses and emotions. Latterly, his moral perception began to evolve as well, and as it did he began to experience conflict between his lower nature and his more recently acquired moral ideals.

Inasmuch as the lower nature remained strong, sin occurred. Such sinning, Tennant tried to explain, was "empirically inevitable, " but theoretically unnecessary. Obviously he had not resolved the paradox of sin, but he did believe that he had made a significant theological contribution by treating sin as something dependent upon the evolving moral consciousness of the moral agent, and not, as in traditional doctrine, as something defined solely in terms of a fixed and absolute 42 standard. 174

Tennant's work was part of the immediate background to, and evidently a significant stimulus for, Orr's Princeton lectures. In them Orr raised essentially three objections to Tennant's theory.

First, he repeated his conviction that on the assumption of moral evolution sin becomes inevitable, and ultimate responsibility for it falls upon the creator. Only when sin is seen to result from man's free volition, as opposed to his God-given constitution, can its inexcusability and man's liability for punishment reasonably be 43 maintained.

Second, Orr complained that moral evolution theories implied that man's moral condition would eventually correct itself. Strictly speaking, man was not absolutely helpless and hopeless. Given sufficient time, his condition would right itself. And if that was

Orr "How be possible, then asked: should a redeemer necessary ... to secure for [man] a gain which evolutionary processes infallibly secure for him without supernatural help? "44

Third, Orr noted that on evolutionary premises moral accountability was always judged relative to the moral agent's allegedly imperfect moral capacity. Thus, Orr insisted, guilt would always be deemed less than if it were measured against an absolute standard.

Again Orr acknowledged his debt to the ubiquitous Dorner for the insight that the moral ideal "is not a thing which belongs to man's perfected condition only, but has its claim upon him from the first, and demands balanced, harmonious, dutiful character at every stage of 45 development. '

By means of these three arguments, Orr endeavoured to show that the concept of sin which issued from moral evolution theories was 175 incompatible with, and inferior to, the traditional Christian doctrine of sin. But even if his point was allowed, it remained for him to demonstrate that the evolutionary theory was false and that the traditional one was right. These things he also endeavoured to do.

He persistently challenged the scientific evidence upon which the moral evolution theory appeared to rest, and he commended the traditional doctrines of the fall and hereditary evil as highly plausible explanations for the universality of sin.

Orr did not seem to have any qualms about the doctrine of original sin. He accepted it, as one of his critics suggested, "hook, 46 line and sinker. , Nor did he feel any need to retreat discreetly to a federal theory of original sin (according to which Adam's sin would be treated as metaphysically representative). He seemed quite prepared to hold, and in quite unguarded language at that, that the transmission 47 of moral tendencies was directly linked to physical propagation.

Strangely enough, he did not seem at all bothered by the logical dissonance between individual moral responsibility and the doctrine of original sin which he championed. In light of Orr's sensitivity to moral evolution's logical legitimization of sin, one would expect that he might have been concerned to address a similar inference from original sin (.one which had in fact followed that doctrine from at least the time of the early British theologian Pelagius).

Tennant was eager to read God's Image in Man, suspecting

(correctly as it turned out) that Orr had taken a critical view of his 48 position. He immediately replied in a second edition of his Hulsean

Lectures, and in a review of Orr's book. Tennant conceded no errors and made no adjustments. Instead, he turned the tables and argued 176

(with Pelagius) that it was in fact the doctrine of original sin which offered an excuse for sinful actions and an evasion of full personal responsibility. "The sinfulness of sin is more adequately maintained, " he replied, "by a theory which regards all sin as actual and involving personal accountability, however less guilty may be its initial than 49 its later stages. ,

Tennant also made some telling blows against Orr's speculations about the hereditary transmission of acquired moral characteristics, and argued that the weight of scientific opinion was against Orr's position. He suggested that the instances of inherited consequences of drunkenness cited by Orr were "precisely of the kind which many 50 specialists regard as highly doubtful. , He then suggested rather impertinently that Orr could best be understood as one of those persons who simply found it difficult to make the mental adjustments which new advances in knowledge plainly required. He also accused

Orr of a serious bias in his handling of scientific evidence, and suggested that Orr was unwise to try to dictate to science the limits 51 of its future progress.

Tennant recognized that the most pressing issue Orr raised was whether or not the evolutionary theory actually diminished the seriousness of sin and thereby undermined the structure of evangelical faith.

From the first Tennant denied that it did so. He personally believed that sin was inexcusable and that man needed help to overcome his 52 strong propensity to do evil. And as for undermining the Christian faith., he "I do believe replied: not ... that the change of view

involves which I have advocated ... any interference with really vital elements in Christian theology.. º53 177

Tennant The real issue, however, was not what personally

from believed, but what conclusions logically followed his theory.

And at this point Tennant appeared to evade the issue altogether. The doctrines of grace and atonement, he suggested, were not endangered at all, "because they have their sufficient basis in the fact of universal actual sinfulness, and are independent of theories as to how sin 54 takes its rise., In other words, Tennant seemed to be saying that theories of sin's origin ultimately did not matter anyway. Orr certainly believed they did (that was his whole point), and so also, it would appear, did multitudes who sought to ground their ethics on scientific, as opposed to metaphysical or intuitional foundations.

At any rate, Tennant pleaded that the only distinctive of his theory was a felicitous one; namely, it suggested that moral transgression ought to be understood, not simply as violation of law, but as violation of law by a moral agent. His theory, he claimed, offered a more just estimate of sin by taking into account the condition and capacity of the transgressor.

Orr considered the issue too important to let it drop. In

fact, it became the single most important issue for him in the conflict between evolutionary theory and orthodox doctrine. Defences of the doctrines of creation and man were reduced to relative side-issues in his mind. That same year he suggested in a journal article that "the point where the modern theory of evolution seems specially to strike into Christian theology is in the article of sin. "55 In 1910, Orr began a series of articles in The Expositor on the subject of sin. The articles were immediately republished in book form as Sin as a Problem of Today. Orr's outlook had not changed. In the preface, he quoted 178

Julius "Sünden" Müller to the effect that:

Christianity, the plan of Redemption, which is the essence of cannot be rightly understood until the doctrine of Sin be adequately recognized and established. Here, certainly, if anywhere, Christian theology must fight pro arts et focis. 56

And so Orr fought. He restated all his familiar criticisms of

evolutionary theories of sin. If anything, he argued even more per-

sistently for the possibility of transmission of acquired moral

features. Unfortunately for Orr's campaign, the work was cluttered

and feverish. Orr himself admitted that it was not a formal or

systematic treatment of the doctrine. But Denney, his friend and

colleague was more severe. Writing in confidence to William Robertson

Nicoll, he said of the book:

It has all the materials requisite for making a book a good one, and [Orr] has also all the requisite powers: but there is something that 'crowds and hurries and precipitates' his utterances without making it in the least like a nightingale's song. It is rather like the extempore speech of a well-equipped Parliamentary candidate who interrupts each sentence to give a slap--often an effective and resounding one--to some audacious person who has interrupted him. 57

Despite the rather harried tenor of Sin as a Problem of Today,

it contained something significant. And that significant content was

Orr's treatment of the nature of sin. He defined it in relation to

three standards: absolute moral law, divine holiness and the teleo- 58 logical end of the Kingdom of God. The last of these was an obvious

genuflection in the direction of Ritschl and Orr moved on very quickly

to the heart of his concern. His stress was clearly upon the first

two criteria: absolute moral law and the divine holiness. Sin was a violation of an absolute standard and an affront to the living God.

His opposition to Tennant's definition of sin as "transgression of moral law by a moral agent" could not have been more pointed. He made 179 no allowance whatsoever for the subjective determinants which Tennant highlighted. One can almost imagine Orr shouting back his own conception of sin: that which absolutely ought not to be-59 But his shout was rather like the voice of one crying in the wilderness.

Not many other voices joined in chorus with Orr's on that more innocent side of the Great World War. ENDNOTES

'Gertrude Himmelfarb, Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution (New York, 1962), p. 380. 2Ibid., p. 309. 3G. J. Romanes, A Candid Examination of Theism (1878), p. 114, quoted in Bernard Reardon, Religious Thought in the Victorian Age (London and New York, 1980), p. 298. 4Samuel Wilberforce, Essays Contributed to the Quarterly Review, 2 (London, 1874), 1: 599 103, in Himmelf vols. quoted arb , Darwin, pp. 273,274. 5Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church, pt. 2,2nd ed. (London, 1972), pp. 23,28. 6I am indebted to James Moore, The Post-Darwinian Controversies (Cambridge, 1979) for his analysis of the range of Protestant reaction to Darwin's theory. My categories, however, differ slightly from his. 7Quoted in Cuthbert Lennox, Henry Drunnond, 4th ed. (1902), p. 172,, and in John Kent, From Darwin to BZatchford (London, 1966), p. 26. Compare this assessment: "By the closing decades of the century there could be little doubt that the initial reactions Ito Darwin] of alarm and hostility had in the main given place to either cautious acceptance or whole-hearted enthusiasm. " A. C. Cheyne, The Transforming of the Kirk (Edinburgh), 1983), p. 77. 8Andrew L. Drummond and James Bulloch, The Church in Victorian Scotland (Edinburgh, 1975), pp. 229-231. 9Moore, Post-Darwinian Controversies, pp. 204-205. Compare A. B. McKillop, A Disciplined Intelligence: Critical Inquiry and Canadian Thought in the Victorian Era (Montreal, 1979), pp. 99 passim. 10Matheson's main contribution was Can the OZd Faith Live with the New? or, The Problem of Evolution and Revelation (Edinburgh, 1885). Moore, Post-Darwinian Controversies, pp. 228-229. 11 Ibid., p. 254. Compare James Iverach, Theism (New York and London, 1899), p. 41: "thus we do not interfere in any way, with the work or the method of mechanical science, when we take their results and show that they may be read in another fashion. " 12Moore, Post-Darwinian Controversies, pp. 221-222.

180 181

13 Jr., James Ibid., pp. 245-250. Compare J. David Hoeveler, McCosh and the Scottish Intellectual Tradition (Princeton, 1981), chap. 6. 14James Orr, God's Image in Man (London, 1905), p. 260, cf. pp. 7-11. See also his Christian View of God and the WorZd, 3rd ed. (Edinburgh, 1897), p. 16; Sin as a Problem of Today (London, 1910), Q1909J), [iv]. pp. 23-24; Side lights on Christian Doctrine (London, p. 15 H. H. Scullard, review of Sin as a Problem of Today, by James Orr, in The Hibbert Journal 9 (.1910-1911): 681. 16 Orr, The Christian View, pp. 99,182-183. 17"While it must be conceded that evolution is not yet proved, there seems a growing appreciation of the strength of the evidence for the fact of some form of evolutionary origin of species--that is, of some genetic connections of higher with lower forms. " James Orr, "Science and Christian Faith, " The Fundamentals, 4-vol. ed. (Los Angeles, 1917), 1: 345. Compare James Orr, "Evolution in its Bearings on Man, " Homiletic Review 52 (1906): 93. 18 Orr, God's Image in Man, pp. 87-88. 19 0rr, The Christian View, p. 122, cf. pp. 420-421. 20Ibid., p. 122. "If there is anything in the universe which exists out of and independently of God, --then what guarantee have we for the unfailing execution of His purposes, what ground have we for that assured trust in His Providence which Christ inculcates, what security have we that all things will work together for good? " Ibid. 21 Ibid., pp. 98-101. These assertions are expanded in Orr, God's Image in Man, pp. 89-96. 22 Orr, The Christian View, p. 128. 23Himmelfarb, Darwin, pp. 242 ff. 24 Orr. The Christian View, p. 128. 25Charles Gore, The Incarnation (London, 1891), p. 35, quoted in Orr The Christian View, 128. , p. 26I. A. Dorner, A System of Christian Doctrine, 4 vols., trans. Alfred Cave and J. S. Banks (Edinburgh, 1880-1882), 2: 364; quoted in Orr, The Christian View, p. 181 fn, but inaccurately footnoted. 27 0rr, The Christian View, pp. 174,177-178. 28Ib id., pp. 184-185. 29Ibid., pp. 179-181. Henry Calderwood was a vigorous champion of moral intuitionalism in Orr's day, assenting in his own common sense 182 way to Kant's dictum that "an erring conscience is a chimera. " A. Seth Pringle-Pattison, "The Philosophical Works, " in Life of Henry CaZderwood, by David Woodside and [W. L. Calderwood] (London, 1900), pp. 431-433. 300rr, The Christian View, pp. 185-186. 310rr, God's Image in Man, p. 6. 32Ibid., chap. 3. 33Ibid., p. 123. 34Ibid., p. 87. 35B. B. Warfield, review of God's Image in Man, by James Orr, in Princeton TheoZogicaZ Review 4 (1906): 557. 36 Orr, "Evolution in its Bearings on man, " Hom2Zet c Review 52 (1906): 95.

37Woodside [Calderwood] The Life Henry Ca Zderwood, and , of pp. 189 ff. 380rr, God's Image in Man, p. 152. Compare Orr's rather sophistocated philosophical discussion of brain-mind correlation in his review of Why the Mind has a Body, by C. A. Strong, in Princeton Theological Review 2 (1904): 563-569.

39 James Orr, letters to G. F. Wright, 8 Nov. 1912,30 Nov. 1912. Orr was deeply gratified to discover and be able to expose errors in Cambridge professor W. L. H. Duckworth's mathematical calculations on the Pithecanthropus Erectus. "I had a controversy with Prof. Duckworth him having blundered badly in his ... and convicted of his Ibid., measurements. He wrote acknowledging error ... ." 8 Nov. 1912. 40See Twentieth Century Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, s. v. "Tennant, F. R. " For a summary of Tennant's response to evolution, see Kent, From Darwin to BZatchford, last section. 41Tennant worked this argument out most fully in his Sources of the Doctrines of the FaZZ and Original Sin (Cambridge, 1903), but see also his Origin and Propagation of Sin (Cambridge, 1902), pp. 17-39. 42Ibid., 85-118. 430rr, God's Image in elan, pp. 204 ff. So with Calvin: the justification of divine wrath is that "it is not from creation but from corruption of nature that men are bound to sin and can do nothing but evil. " John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian-Religion, 2.5.1. 44 0rr, God's iae in Man, p. 20, cf. pp. 205-206. 183

45Ibid., pp. 210-211. Orr's statement is based on a passage in Dorner, A System of Doctrine, 3: 36-37. Compare Orr, The Christian View, pp. 180-181 fn. 46David Cairns, unpublished review of God's Image in Man, by James Orr, n. d. 470rr, God's Image in Man, pp. 235 ff, 315-319. 48F. R. Tennant, letter to David S. Cairns, 14 Dec. 1905. 49F. R. Tennant, review of God's Image in Man, by James Orr, in Journal of Theological Studies 7 (1906) : 474. 50F. R. Tennant, Origin and Propagation of Sin, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1906), p. xv. 51Tennant, review of God's Image in Man, pp. 471-473. 52Tennant, Origin and Propagation of Sin, 2nd ed., p. xii. 53Ibid., pp. 2-3. 54 Ibid., p. xii. 55James Orr, "Prevailing Tendencies in Modern Theology, " Review and Expositor 3 (1906): 580. 56 James Orr, Sin as a Problem of Today (London, 1910), p. vi. 57W. Robertson Nicoll, ed., Letters of Principal James Denney to W. Robertson NicoZZ (London, (1920]), p. 168. 580rr, Sin as a Problem of Today, pp. 29-61,62-90 and 90-96 respectively. 59Ibid., p. 1. CHAPTER VII

THE QUEST OF THE HISTORICAL JESUS:

Continuity in Christology

Much of Orr's career was spent responding to the challenges to evangelical orthodoxy posed by Ritschlianism, Old Testament criticism and evolutionary theory. There was yet a fourth significant nineteenth century development with which-Orr had to come to terms, and that was the intense investigative initiative which came to be known as "the quest of the historical Jesus. "1

It was an axiom of nineteenth century religious thought that

Jesus Christ was of central importance to the religion that bore His name, but in the course of the century the focus of religious interest shifted from Christ in an idealistic sense to the Christ of history.

The Man of Galilee, His personality, life and teaching were increasingly viewed as subjects of primary importance. One reason for this shift was the widespread feeling that the Christ of dogmatic formulation was, by Himself, inadequate to meet the religious needs of

Christians. The Chalcedonian Christ did not have to be abandoned so much as He needed to recover a human face. Consequently studies of the life of Christ ("Lives" of Christ, as they came to be known) proliferated until they became a literary genre all their own. There was little exaggeration in James Stalker's retrospective remark in 1900 that "no characteristic of the theology of the second half of the

184 185

its nineteenth century has been more outstanding than preoccupation

with the life of Christ. "2

Another reason for such intense study of the life of Jesus was

the suspicion that the traditional picture and the historical reality

might possibly be discrepant, and along with that suspicion the

assumption that the historical facts were vastly preferable and worthy

of diligent pursuit. This critical approach', which reflected the

advance of historical consciousness generally, could not be content

with the Christ of the early Church, or even the Christ of the

apostolic writers. It pressed on, and-demanded to see the figure of

history face to face.

Particularly prominent in Germany, this line of investigation

often led to conclusions which called for revisions of the traditional

view of Christ, and in particular for revised estimates of his super-

natural attributes and divine nature. The most obvious explanation for

such revisionist conclusions is that the facts demanded them. Actually,

the matter was more complicated than that. As Albert Schweitzer

pointed out so convincingly, investigators did not always adhere

strictly to inductive methodology, and sometimes took very imaginative

liberties with the historical evidence. It was hardly surprising that

the Christ who emerged from such studies bore a striking resemblance to

their authors' ideals.

There was still another factor involved. In some studies, the

principles of historical criticism were applied in a thoroughgoing or

historicist fashion. According to this perspective, "history demanded natural explanations as imperiously as science, " and therefore demanded 3 a natural account of Jesus as well. When the historical task was 186

(and it undertaken on this assumption more and more was), there was little chance that the resultant picture of Christ would confirm the traditional one.

Britain experienced these developments on a delayed timetable.

The English-speaking world had been scandalized as early as 1846 by a translation of David Strauss's rationalistic Leben Jesu and again in

1865 by Ecce Homo, which J. R. Seeley did not dare to publish except anonymously. But the first of these could be dismissed as a product of Continental infidelity, and the latter as an attack upon the faith from without. By the end of the century, however, the challenges could not be so easily dismissed. The second volume of the Encyclopaedia

Britannica, published in 1901, marked something of a turning-point. It contained an extremely rationalistic article on the Gospels by Paul

Schmiedel of Zurich, but the most disturbing element was a major article on Jesus by A. B. Bruce. The article conceded a great deal to historical criticism. Many British Christians were shocked that a respected exegete of the Free Church of Scotland should appear to have capitulated at the end of his life to doubting criticism.

Certainly the fountain of studies compatible with orthodox Christology did not dry up on the spot, as David Smith's In the Days of His Flesh

(1906), and even A, C. H_eadlam''s The Life and Teaching of Jesus Christ

(1923) testify. But they did decline quite noticeably, and studies 4 compatible with Bruce's perspective became more frequent and accepted.

We would expect that Orr, who was ready to defend evangelical orthodoxy at every perceived point of vulnerability, would be especially vigorous in defence of what he regarded as the very heart

istian of the faith. After all, in his The Ch View of God and the 187

World, Orr described Christianity as "the religion of the Incarna- tion, " and suggested that "the central point in the Christian view is the acknowledgement of Jesus Christ as a truly Divine Person--the Son 5 of God made flesh., In other words, the most important thing to believe about Jesus Christ was that he was the God-Man, and the crucial point at which continuity with the doctrine of the Incarnation had to be maintained in the current milieu was the unequivocal affirmation of Christ's divinity.

At the same time Orr was unwilling to accept just any definition of divinity. It was only the bold, ontological Christology of

Chalcedon that he deemed adequate. The alternative conceptions of

Christ's divinity put forward by Schleiermacher and Ritschl were quite insufficient, since, as he said, consistency in Christology demanded

"the acknowledgement of a transcendental basis. " He viewed the various kenotic formulations as equally inadequate, since in the final analysis they described the self-extinction, not the self-emptying of

Christ. It had to be maintained, rather, that Jesus belonged by nature to the supernatural realm. He had to be understood as a transcendent being who had broken through "the charmed circle of a universe regulated by natural law. "6 For Orr, the divinity of Christ was more than anything else a synonym for personal transcendence.

Orr did not regard the divinity of Christ as an attribute to be defined more precisely, or as a concept to be somehow harmonized with. Christ's humanity, These were areas he was content to leave as mysteries, and he was not particularly interested in exploring new horizons in Christology, He would not have had more than a watchdog interest in such a work as, say, William Sanday's Christologies: 188

Ancient and Modern (1910). He simply believed that any retreat from the credal formulations would be perilous. It could be shown, he claimed, that the logic of history operates in its own inexorable fashion to eliminate "intermediate" Christologies. Invariably it reduced the options to two: a truly divine Christ or a purely humanitarian one. Anything less than an unequivocal affirmation of the

"full" divinity of Christ always led to a merely humanitarian one, and that in turn to agnosticism and despair. The only way to avoid the slippery slide tQ unbelief was to affirm the ontological divinity 7 of Christ.

Orr thus came to the quest of the historical Jesus feeling that there was a tremendous amount at stake in it. The surprising thing is that he had anything positive to say about the investigation at all. In face, he conceded that the newer historical approach had created an unprecedented consciousness of the truly human character of Christ, and had thus served as a healthy corrective to "a certain docetic element" that continued to cling to the conciliar conception of Christ's person. He also affirmed the methodology of the quest as well as its valid results. Theology, he said, must begin on the

"solid earth" of historical data, not Trinitarian dogma, and work up 8 from there to its Christological conclusions. Such a remark promised a great deal, but it remained to be seen whether such a champion of orthodoxy could really live it out.

It is safe to say that Orr considered the direction the quest of the historical Jesus had taken as threatening, and he 189

lay if belief realized that a formidable apologetic task ahead in the transcendent nature of Christ was to remain plausible. He recalled

"the Dorner's suggestion some years earlier that conflict of theological and ecclesiastical parties moves increasingly around the

Person of Christ, as a serious battle may finally concentrate around the person of the general. "9 Soon a similar military metaphor began to dominate his thought. The forces of rationalistic unbelief, no longer content to ravage the doctrinal hinterlands, were now pressing forward against the "bulwarks" of the Gospel narratives and were 1° actually threatening the "citadel" of the faith, Jesus Christ himself.

Orr announced the launching of his campaign in an impassioned lecture opening the 1904-1905 session of the Glasgow United Free ll Church College. Deeply exercised by the way Jesus had been depicted a in Percy Gardner's recent Jowett Lectures, which had been published as

A Historical View of the New Testament (1904), and by such works as

Auguste Sabatier's The Religions of Authority and the Religion of the

Spirit (1903, ET 1904) and Oscar Holtzmann's Life of Christ (1901,

ET 1904), Orr announced that Christology had reached a crisis and that it was time to take a stand. It was no longer desirable or even possible to behave in a conciliatory manner:

is if Certain it that any other treat controversy ... were attempted to be conducted in the same lukewarm, indecisive, concessive way, with exchange of compliments, and plentiful sprinkling of rose-water, as the Christian defence is being conducted at the present moment, the battle might well be given up at the outset. 12

In Orr's mind, there was a battle to be fought and the battle lines could easily be drawn. As before, he claimed that there were really only two opposing camps. On the one side were those who still believed, like the apostles, in the "full divinity" of Christ, and 190 13 " who still held fast to "the unweakened doctrine of the Incarnation.

On the other side were those who assumed that "only a Christ from whom all supernatural traits are stripped off can be accepted as historical by the 'scientific' mind. " Behind all the verbal disguises of this camp was a common determination to rob Christ of the supernatural evidence of his divinity and thereby reduce him to merely human proportions. There was no middle ground. There was, rather, a measureless gulf between a Christ who was merely reverenced for his moral and spiritual grandeur and a Christ who was worshipped for such a oneness with the Father as reached beyond the limits of creaturehood.

To understand the situation in these dichotomous terms, Orr suggested, was "an immense simplification of our task in defining the issue the j4 Church of today has to face. '

Orr now put forward a number of arguments designed to under- score the importance of retaining belief in the divinity of Christ.

As in The Christian View, he argued again for the logical necessity of theism finding its fulfillment and vindication in Incarnation. If the historic Incarnation was denied, men must either doubt the existence of the personal, loving God of Christianity or look beyond 15 Jesus for a superior revelation of such a God.

Orr's second argument was one which had already been expressed by Calvin and Anselm. The argument was that only a divine Christ was adequate to provide the salvation required by human need. Means were necessarily proportional to ends, and

No ordinary son of the race could take on him the burden of a world's redemption. The magnitude of the work to be accomplished justifies the Incarnation. 16

The argument, of course, presupposes that the work of Christ involved 191

human has been an objective atonement, and that the condition always one of helpless estrangement from God. For Orr, as for his colleague

James Denney, such a presupposition was axiomatic.

Orr's third, and possibly main argument was that the religious viability of Christianity hinged on continued belief in Christ's divinity. This was so because a humanitarian Christ could not possibly sustain the life of the Church or the world-wide activities through which its spiritual dynamic found expression. Historically, he argued, such a Christ had never inspired congregational activity, aggressive evangelism or sacrificial philanthropy on any scale, much less served as an adequate source of personal consolation and strength.

It was vain, therefore, to hope that a Christ of such reduced propor- 17 tions could ever perform such essential functions in the present age.

This was a fact, he said, of which the Church at large had always been instinctively aware, despite the fact that many scholars and cultured folk were blind to it. Orr's populist sympathies surfaced in his remark that orthodox Christology was an expression of the

Church's "instinct for what is, and is not, vital to Christian faith, " while humanitarian Christologies

are chiefly the work of closet-recluses, of men of philosophical and speculative bent, of literateurs, of men more at home in general culture, in historical and critical studies, than in experimental religion, and the practical work of the Church. They belong to coteries, and are not in the least fitted to take hold on, or bring help to, the masses of people. They are condiments for the few, not a Gospel for the man. 18

It was one thing to insist that the divinity of Christ was 192

hold necessary to the survival of Christianity, and quite another to that there were tenable grounds for maintaining such a belief. The challenge Orr faced as an apologist for orthodox Christology, then, was to demonstrate that the Jesus of history justified that formulation. Specifically, it had to be shown that the Gospel writers' supernatural portraits of Jesus were authentic. Orr was confident that an objective appraisal of the facts would lead to an acceptance of those portraits. When they were accepted, Orr could not imagine any legitimate objection to the apostolic and ecclesiastical inference 19 from them that Jesus was divine by nature.

Orr's initial strategy was to lower himself into the forum of historical criticism and try to deal with the issues at that "grass roots" level. The task had vast dimensions, and Orr chose to concentrate his energies on two particular events in the life of Jesus: the virginal conception and the resurrection.

It did not take him long to begin. Immediately following the end of the 1906-1907 academic session at the Glasgow College, Orr delivered a series of lectures on the Virgin Birth at the Fifth

Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City, under the auspices of the

Bible Teachers' Training School. The defence of this doctrine was a matter of growing interest among conservative evangelical Americans, and the doctrine itself was deemed essential three years later in the controversial five-point declaration of the General Assembly of the 20 Presbyterian Church CU. S. A. ).

Louis Matthew Sweet, Professor of Christian Theology and

Apologetics at the Bible Teachers' Training School, had just the year before published a book entitled The Birth and Infancy of Jesus Christ, 193 in which he replied to the critical challenges of such writers as 21 Karl Keim, Paul Lobstein and Wilhelm Soltau. Orr's lectures were published as The Virgin Birth of Christ (1907), and constituted the second (after Sweet's) full-sized volume on the subject in English 22 from a conservative point of view.

No doubt Orr's New York audience was a most sympathetic one, and the reputation he acquired there likely influenced the decision of A. C. Dixon, Reuben Torrey and others to invite Orr to contribute an article on the subject to the proposed The Fundamentals. Such an article appeared in 1910, and was in fact the lead article in the first volume of that celebrated series.

Like Sweet, Orr gave a great deal of attention to the works of

Lobstein and Soltau, which had just been translated in English in

1903. But his more immediate foil was Reginald John Campbell, the popular minister of London's Congregationalist City Temple, who claimed in his The New Theology (1907) that the Virgin Birth was worse than irrelevant; it was actually "a hindrance to spiritual religion and a real living faith in Jesus. "23

That same summer of 1907 Orr had opportunity to carry his crusade back to Britain. The leaders of the Evangelical Alliance, meeting in London, were greatly distressed by the liberal substance of Campbell's book. While P. T. Forsyth and Charles Gore personally replied to Campbell's theology at some length-, the Evangelical Alliance decided to express its corporate response in a series of polemical booklets on various doctrines. The task fell to Orr to write one 24 such booklet in defence of the Virgin Birth.

While Orr began his concerted effort to defend the Virgin 194

Birth in 1907, his interest in the matter was aroused much earlier as he followed a controversy which developed in Germany in 1892 over a Lutheran pastor who refused to subscribe to the phrase of the

Apostles' Creed affirming the Virgin Birth. To his advantage, the pastor acquired the weighty support of Adolf Harnack. Orr's remarks at that time are of special interest, for they indicate that he viewed the Virgin Birth as "a necessary presupposition" of faith in Christ as the divine Redeemer. The Virgin Birth was an "essential" doctrine, he said, and one which could be relegated to the periphery of concern only so long as faith did not clearly recognize its own presupposi- 25 tions.

Orr suggested that there was some truth to the time-honoured view that the Virgin Birth was the necessary means by which the

incarnate Christ evaded the taint of original sin, but he declined

(at least for the moment) to press that line of argument. Instead he stressed the idea that the supernatural entrance into history of a divine Christ necessarily involved "a supernatural act in the production of Christ's bodily nature. "26 This conviction was based in turn on an anthropological assumption that proved decisive in Orr's response to evolutionary theory. It may be recalled that Orr had insisted against Henry Calderwood that the psychosomatic unity of man made it untenable to regard man's intellectual nature as a product of direct creative action while viewing man's physical side as the result of 27 evolutionary process.

Now, "with all reverence, " Orr applied the principle to the person of Christ. At the very least, he reasoned, the Incarnation constituted a moral and spiritual miracle. By nature Jesus Christ was 195

mankind, and the result of God's discontinuous with the history of in history. It followed then that "there direct creative intervention

the to the must be a suitable humanity on physical side match perfec-

has docetic it, but tion of the spirit. "28 The remark a ring to Orr

believed that a physical body suitable to such a unique spiritual

creation could be obtained only through a complementary supernatural

act of creation. It is interesting that Charles Gore offered the same

argument for the Virgin Birth in his Dissertations on Subjects

Connected With the Incarnation (. 1895), although he did not acknowledge 29 any debt to Orr for it.

This argument, however, suggests only that Christ's entrance

into human history involved a physical miracle; it does not suggest

the particular form the miracle had to take. Orr replied that only history could disclose the precise way in which the necessary miracle

actually occurred. As it turned out, the Gospel accounts of the Virgin

Birth gave a trustworthy description of the manner in which a 30 condition of the Incarnation actually found its historic fulfillment.

Orr reiterated this argument in his subsequent writings on the subject, and by 1907 was bold enough-to suggest that the necessity of a miraculous birth to unaugurate the life of an incarnate Deity was

"as self-evident a proposition as the mind of man can frame. "31 But just in case it was not quite that self-evident to all, he stressed other considerations. Now he affirmed the classical argument explicitly, holding that Christ's conception by the Holy Spirit was the

"32 means by which Christ escaped "the Adamic liabilities of the race.

To this Orr added a tactical consideration. He had been much impressed by A. B. Bruce's remark that "with belief in the Virgin 196

life, "33 found it Birth is apt to go belief in the Virgin and that concurred with his own experience. Vf Among those who reject the Birgin birth of our Lord few will be found--I do not know any--who take in other respects an adequate view of the Person and work of the Saviour. It is surprising how clear the line of division here reveals itself-34

Orr saw the Virgin Birth as a Maginot Line for conservative evangelicalism in its war with rationalism. To abandon the doctrine would be 35 to give way to a thoroughgoing conquest of the divine Christ.

With these as his motives, Orr ventured into the realm of critical considerations with a determination to defend the doctrine effectively. He had, obviously, a tremendous investment in the outcome, and could hardly be expected to behave like a non-partisan. He began positively by arguing for the textual integrity of the Matthean and

Lukan narratives, and then attempted to commend the accounts by stressing their ostensibly historical settings, and by arguing that the two, despite apparent discrepancies, were actually in harmony.

Defensively he offered explanations for the biblical references to

Joseph as Jesus's father, and for the somewhat embarrassing silence of the rest of the New Testament concerning the Virgin Birth. He rejected the idea that the account might have been fabricated to fulfill a prevailing Jewish messianic expectation on the ground that such an expectation never existed. Against theories suggesting that the

Virgin Birth account was an imitation of pagan myths, Orr insisted that historians had yet to identify any equivalent Near Eastern ante- cedents, much less produce evidence of derivation from them. His triumphant conclusion was that the Virgin Birth demanded by faith had 36 indeed been granted by history. 197

In January of 1908, Orr turned his attention towards a second

supernatural event in the Gospel narratives: the bodily resurrection

of Jesus. In a series of articles in The Expositor, and soon published

as The Resurrection of Jesus (1908), Orr sought to demonstrate the historicity of this event as well. One of his main reasons for expending effort here was, as with his work on the Virgin Birth, to

strengthen the grounds for belief in the transcendent nature of Jesus

Christ. Admittedly, he was partly motivated by what he regarded as

the intrinsic significance of the Resurrection; it was a constitutive part of the Gospel and the necessary culmination of Christ's redemptive 37 work. But he was also very concerned about a truth to which he believed the event pointed. "The Resurrection, " he said, "is a retrospective attestation that Jesus was indeed the exalted and divinely-

sent Person He claimed to be. "38 It was historical evidence that Jesus had transcended death., the ultimate limit and sine qua non of humanity.

The Resurrection of Jesus was a companion volume to Orr's

The Virgin Birth of Christ. Published just one year after the latter, it was virtually identical in length, structure and purpose. For that matter, The Resurrection of Jesus followed rather closely the structure and content of William Milligan's 1879-1880 Croall Lectures on The

Resurrection of Our Lord (4th ed. 1894). Orr spoke favourably of the work of Milligan, formerly Professor of Biblical Criticism at Aberdeen

University, but justified his own book on the grounds that there had been new and altered forms of assault on the doctrine since Milligan's work had been published. Specifically, he identified the intensification L98

by of rationalistic historical criticism, epitomized Kirsopp Lake,

the Oxford-educated Professor of New Testament Exegesis at Leyden,

and his work on Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus

Christ (1907). Orr also identified as a more recently-felt challenge

the "Pan-Babylonian" outlook championed by Herman Gunkel and endorsed

in Britain by Oxford eccentric T. K. Cheyne, which sought to explain

New Testament stories like the Resurrection on the basis of Near

Eastern syncretism. Believing that his real opposition lay in the

intensified naturalistic temper or "psychological climate" of the

day, and convinced that the only final solution lay in a shift in the

spirit of the times, Orr resolved in the meantime to commend the

Resurrection by "fair reasoning, and the adducing of considerations 39 which set things in a different light. ,

Once again, on the positive side, Orr defended the substantial

reliability of the Resurrection narratives, although he did not insist

on their inerrant harmonization. He argued for the credibility of

the various witnesses to, and of the available evidence for, the event

itself. He also stressed, as secondary evidence, the dynamic of

apostolic resurrection faith, reasoning, it would seem, with A. M.

Fairbairn that "if the stream does not disgrace the fountain, the

fountain will not disgrace the stream. 4Q

All of this was frequently-traversed country. The most ýnter-

esting section of the book, and indeed its raison d''tre, was the portion in which Orr replied to some of the weightier counter-theories

of the Resurrection; namely, that the belief derived from either subjective visions or objective apparitions, or was borrowed from pagan mythologies. It is impossible to summarize everything Orr said in his 199

but efforts to demonstrate the improbability of such theories, the

by tenor and substance of his polemic may be fairly illustrated his remark that "the falsetto note in these [vision theories] is all too obvious, " and by his argument that

Psychologically, no good cause has ever been shown why the disciples should have this marvellous outburst of visionary experience; should have it so early as the third day, should have it simultaneously, should have it within a strictly limited period, after which the visions as suddenly ceased, should never afterwards waver or doubt about it, should be inspired by it for the noblest work ever done on earth-41

Scholarly response to both The Virgin Birth of Christ and

The Resurrection of Jesus was modest. Perhaps this was partly due to their lack of original content. The Virgin Birth of Christ did not say much more than Sweet had said in 1906.42 Orr's research in The

Resurrection of Jesus was characteristically thorough, but it involved no new evidence. The book was transparently polemic, and for such purposes it was enough to expose the weaknesses of existing critical theories.

There may have been another related explanation: Orr's so very obvious pre-commitment to orthodox conclusions. He was no more prepared to abandon a miracle than David Strauss was to acknowledge one. A. S. Peake, Orr's nemesis, noted of The Virgin Birth of Christ that

Here as elsewhere Dr. Orr is apt to appreciate rather too lightly the cogency of the case for the other side and to pass by with expressions of dissent, astonishment or contempt, arguments which. need a more thorough examination. We say this all the more freely because we are in sympathy Orr's with Dr. main position ."" 043

In a similar vein, the Church Quarterly Review somewhat gleefully reported that The Resurrection of Jesus was "polemical from end to 200

end, " and that Orr challenged his adversaries one after the other,

"only to defeat or rout them, or to leave them for dead upon the 44 field. ',

Orr's strategy thus far of marshalling evidence and arguments

in support of the New Testament's supernatural portrait of Christ was

not without its serious limitations. To be sure, as Orr noted, "the

Gospels are condemned before they are read" when approached with

rationalistic assumptions such as Wilhelm Bousset or Kirsopp Lake 45 candidly acknowledged. But even if it were possible, would it be

enough to approach the evidence with a mind open to the possibility

of the miraculous? Even under such conditions, David Hume's question

still haunted the conservative evangelical enterprise: What quality

or quantity of human testimony could ever be sufficient to outweigh a

man's experience-based bias against the probability of a miracle?

Orr's apologetic efforts in support of the Virgin Birth and

Resurrection were, by themselves, virtually hopeless. At best he

could weaken criticisms and eliminate certain problems. His strategy was little better than attempting to hold back the sea. What he needed was a means of turning the tide, of positively commending the

supernatural and putting skepticism on the defensive. He needed to

foster a perspective in which the miraculous no longer appeared so incredible.

This is precisely what Orr set out to do in a strategy shift which. began in 1911.46 In that year he began to write a book-length encyclopaedia article on Jesus Christ (it was published in 1915). It amounted to his own Life of Christ, and he may have been hopeful that it would prove as influential as the articles on the same subject 201 produced by A. B. Bruce and William Sanday for the Encyclopaedia

BibZica and Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible respectively.

In his article Orr conceded that a biography of Christ, in the

sense of a comprehensive account of his life, was precluded by the

limited nature of the biblical accounts. He also admitted that each

Gospel had been shaped by unique theological considerations. Never-

theless, he accepted the Gospel narratives at face value, and attempted

a moderate harmonization of their contents. None of the supernatural

incidents described was suppressed and everything was allowed to stand A7 pretty much as it was recorded in the most reliable manuscripts.

The article is virtually devoid of Orr's characteristic polemical sparring. There was an apologetic strategy behind all of

this, as we have suggested, and Orr's explanation of it is most intriguing:

The treatment of the subject is guided by the conviction that, while critical discussion cannot be ignored, a simple and straightforward presentation of the narrative of this transcendent life, in its proper historical and chronological setting, is itself the best antidote to the vagaries of much current speculation-48

Orr's strategy was based on the assumption that there is a self- authenticating quality to the New Testament portrait of Christ. He was confident that the narrative could create an immediate assurance of truthfulness and historicity. In the assurance itself lay the guarantee of eventual historical confirmation. And in the atmosphere created by believing assent to the Gospel narratives, miracles would not seem so incredible, but credible and even fitting. In his own way, Orr followed Dorner, and Anselm before him, in holding that fides quaerens inte ZZectum.

Orr regarded belief in the transcendent nature of. Jesus Christ 202 as the central element of Christian faith, and viewed it as part of his personal mission to impress its vital importance upon the Church.

He also regarded defence of the doctrine as the supreme apologetical task. In the face of challenges raised by the quest of the historical

Jesus, Orr's defence of the divinity of Christ eventually drew him into critical discussions of the evidence for the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection of Jesus. His success was somewhat limited, however, and in the end he came full circle and made his appeal through a simple presentation of the Gospels' own portrait of Christ. In this way Orr hoped to be able to leap clear over the slough of critical studies, and offer, not just to scholars, but to everyone a portrait that the common man was as equipped as anyone to evaluate and judge competently. a ENDNOTES

1This term comes from the title of the English translation of Albert Schweitzer's analysis of such works, Von Reimarus zu Wrede (1906). In Germany, the enterprise was known as Leben-Jesu Forschung. For a survey of the theological reflection as well as the historical research on Jesus in the period prior to F. C. Baur's death see Colin Brown, Jesus in European Protestant Thought, 1778-1860 (Durham, NC, 1985). 2James Stalker, "Our Present Knowledge of Christ, " Contem- porary Review (January 1900): 124; quoted in Daniel Pals, The Victorian "Lives" of Christ (San Antonio, 1982), p. 165. Compare Warren S. Kissinger, The Lives of Jesus: A History and Bibliography (New York, 1985).

3Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church, pt. 2,2nd ed. (London, 1972), p. 61. "History could not work upon the evidence about Jesus treating him that he " Ibid., . without as a man and assuming was a man. p. 110. 4Pals, Victorian "Lives", pp. 169-200. On British developments generally, see Chadwick, The Victorian Church, pt. 2, pp. 60-111, where he argues that the English churches did not accept biblical criticism until about 1887-1895, and even then only reticently and with some exceptions. Compare Stephen Neill, The Interpretation of the New Testament, 1861-1961 (New York, 1964), chap. 4; and F. F. Bruce, "The History of New Testament Study, "' in New Testament Interpretation, ed. I. H. Marshall (Exeter, 1977), pp. 44-46; also Bernard M. G. Reardon, Religious Thought in the Victorian Age (London and New York),, chap. 10. 5James Orr, The Christian View of God and the World (Edinburgh, 1893), p. 39. Charles Gore expressed the same conviction in his The Incarnation and the Son of God, 1891 Bampton Lectures (London, 1891), p. 17. It is consequently very little wonder that Orr replied so sharply to Adolf Harnack's suggestion that "the Gospel as Jesus proclaimed it, has to do with the Father only, and not with the Son" (What is Christianity?, 1901, p. 144). See James Orr, RitschZianism: Expository and Critical Essays (London, 1901), chap. 6. 61bid., p. 136. See also Orr, The Christian View, p. 47; and James Orr, The Progress of Dogma (London, 1903), pp. 331-333,337. For a brief summary of the alternative Christologies of the time, see H. R. Mackintosh, The Doctrine of the Person of Tesus Christ, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh, 19-13), pp. 247-284. . 7The argument was based on the alleged necessity of the Incar- To deny nation to realize the implications of theism. the Incarnation

203 204 put theism itself in doubt. Orr, The Christian View, pp. 44-53. Orr's attitude was similar to that of Calvin, who alleged that anyone who quibbled over the content of the conciliar formulations nursed "a secret poison. " John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian P,e ligion, 1.13.5.

8Orr, The Progress of Dogma, pp. 334-336. The influence of the historical method may be seen, for example, in the weight Orr placed on the gradual and very natural development of Jesus's personality and messianic consciousness. James Orr, "Jesus Christ, " in The International Standard Bible EncyZopae dia, 5 vols. (Chicago, 19L5), 3: 1634. 9lsaac August Dorner, A System of Christian Doctrine, 4 vols., trans. A. Cave and J. S. Banks (Edinburgh, 1880-1882), 3: 253. Orr appears to allude to this remark in his The Bible Under TriaZ (London, [1907]), p. 147. 10Ibid., chaps. 7 and 8. 11James Denney remarked that he had never heard Orr so impressive and eloquent. W. Robertson Nicoll, ed., Letters of Principal James Denney to W. Robertson NicoZZ (London, L1920]), p. 59. The " speech was soon published as "Christ in the Tought of Today, . ý' Baptist Review and Expositor 1 (1904) : 283-303. 12Ib id., p. 286. 13Ibid., p. 293. 14Ibid., pp. 286-293. 15Ibid., pp. 299-300. 161bid., p. 297. Compare Anselm, Cur Deus Homo, 2.6; and Calvin, Institutes, 2.12.2. 17 Ibid., 294-296. Compare John Bowden's remark that some writers of Lives "became fatally entangled with a second task, the construction of a figure considerable enough to replace the Christ of the Church's tradition a an object of faith. " A. New Dictionary of Christian Theology, s. v. "Jesus. " 18Orr, "Christ in the Thought of Today, " pp. 294,296. Human- itarian estimates of Christ "have never been wanting in speculative and cultured circles as a set-off to the higher dignity claimed and contended for in the Church. " Ibid., p. 292. Humanitarian Christolo- "the gies have always been emphatically rejected by general Church consciousness. " Orr, The Progress of Dogma, p. 333. l9Orr, "Christ in the Thought of Today, " pp. 300-303. Compare "what H. R. Mackintosh's vivid and corroborative remark: the New Testament reveals, in its thought of our Lord, is a vast movement from God to God, like the arm of a parabola sweeping in from incomprehensible 205 distances, then, after its point of proximity, travelling off once into infinitude Types of Modern Theology (London, 1937; more ... ." repr. London and Glasgow, 1964), p. 92. 20Lefferts A. Loetscher, The Broadening Church (Philadelphia, 1954), pp. 97-98. 21Sweet dealt individually with such works as Karl T. Keim, History of Jesus of Nazareth (1867, ET 1876); Paul Lobstein, The Virgin Birth of Christ (1890, ET 1903); and Wilhelm Soltau, The Birth of Jesus Christ (1902, ET 1903). Thomas Boslooper, The Virgin Birth (Philadelphia, 1962), pp. 116,120. W. W. Whjte, another Training School faculty member, also had an apologetic interest in the subject, and compiled the opinions of many scholars on the subject. Orr drew from White's research in an appendix to his The Virgin Birth of Christ (London, 1907), pp. 233-295.

`2Boslooper, The Virgin Birth, p. 116. Orr's work was also preceded by a briefer discussion by B. W. Randolph, the Principal of Ely Theological College, in his The Virgin Birth of Our Lord (1903). Ibid., p. 117. 23Reginald John Campbell, The New Theology (London, 1907), p. 104, quoted in Orr, The Virgin Birth, p. 3. 24See Orr's address to the Alliance: "Evangelical Principles in the Bible, " in Maintaining the Unity: Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference and Diamond Juni lee celebration of the Evangelical Alliance (London, 1907), pp. 142-151. Orr's thirty-one page booklet bore the same title as his major work on the subject. Other Evangelical Alliance booklet authors included Prebendary Webb- Peploe, W. Fuller Gooch., Harrington C. Lees, Canon Girdlestone and G. Hanson. J. W. Ewing, Goodly FeZZowship: Centenary Tribute to .4i the Life and Work of the World's Evangelical Fe ZZowships 1846-1946 (London and Edinburgh, 1946), p. 90. On Campbell, see Westminster Dictionary of Church History, s. v. "Campbell, Reginald John. " 25James Orr, "The Miraculous Conception and Modern Thought, " in The Thinker 4 (1893): 136-142; repr. in Orr, RztschZianism, pp. 221-238. See pp. 226,233. 26Orr, "The Miraculous Conception, " RitsehZianism, p. 227. 27 "It is a corollary from the known laws of the connection of mind and body that every mind needs an organism fitted to it. If the mind of man is the product of a new cause, the brain, which is the instrument of that mind, must share in its peculiar origin. " Ibid., p. 230. 28Ibid., p. 231. 2g"Does not all we know of physical heredity, all we know of believe the relation of spirit and body, lead us to that the miracle of a new moral creation must mean the miracle of a new physical 206 creation? " Charles Gore, Dissertations on Subjects Connected :-ith the Incarnation (New York, 1895), p. 66. 30 0rr, "The Miraculous Conception, " RitschZianism, pp. 233-235. 31 0rr, The Virgin Birth, p. 210. 32 Orr, The Virgin Birth (London: World's Evangelical Alliance, n. d. ), p. 31; also James Orr, "The Virgin Birth of Christ, " in The Fundamentals, 4 vol. ed. (Los Angeles, 1917; repr. Grand Rapids, 1970), 2: 260. Christ's conception by the Holy Ghost was "a divine, creative miracle wrought in the production of this new humanity which secured, from its earliest germinal beginnings, freedom from the slightest taint of sin. " Ibid., p. 258. 33A. B. Bruce, Apologetics (Edinburgh, 1892), p. 410, quoted in Orr, The Virgin Birth, p. 192. "The connection is so close that few who earnestly believe in the absolute worth of Christ's Person will be disposed to deny the truth of the Evangelical narratives relating to the manner of His entrance into, and exit from, the world. " A. B. Bruce, The Miraculous Elements in the GospeZs, 2nd ed. (London, 1890), p. 352, quoted in Orr, The Virgin Birth, p. 184. Compare Karl Barth: "One thing may be definitely said, that every time people want to fly from this miracle of the the Virgin Birth], a theology is at work, which has ceased to understand and honour the mystery as well, and has rather essayed to conspire away the mystery of the unity, of God and man in Jesus Christ Dogmatics in Outline. Quoted by Boslooper, ... [173.." The Virgin Birth, p. 34 0rr, "The Virgin Birth, " The Fundamentals, 2: 248. 35J, Gresham Machen, a champion of the Princeton Theology, agreed with-Orr on the strategic importance of the Virgin Birth. J. Gresham Machen, review of The Virgin Birth oj Christ, by Orr, in Princeton Theological Review 6 (. 1908): 505-508; compare his own The Virgin Birth of Christ (London and Edinburgh, 1930), pp. 383-391, which shows that Machen was mainly concerned to prevent a concession which might undermine the doctrine of scriptural inerrancy. Charles Gore, who agreed with Orr on the necessary connection of Christ's Virgin Birth and divinity, was also, as a High Churchman, concerned to preserve the authority of Church tradition. Gore, Dissertations, pp. 67-68. 36Orr's fullest treatment of these matters is in The Virgin Birth, pp. 30-181. 37James Orr, The Resurrection of Jesus (London, 1908), pp, 274- 288. 38Ibid pp. 270-271. The Resurrection was, he said, "the "stands crowning miracle" in the life of Christ and as a changeless barrier in the way of all naturalist explanations of His Person. " Orr, "Christ in the Thought of Today, " p. 302. Orr was fond of declared quoting Romans 1: 4, which states that Christ was with power 207 to be the Son of God by the resurrection from the dead; see, for example, Orr, The Resurrection of Jesus, p. 270. 39Ibid., pp. 12-23. Kirsopp Lake concluded his work by saying that the doctrine of the bodily resurrection was "indefensible by any historical arguments, " Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ (London, 1907), p. 277. In the same work, though, he candidly admitted that the Resurrection is such an improbable phenomenon that "any alternative is preferable to its assertion. " Ibid., p. 267. 40A. M. Fairbairn, Studies in the Life of Christ (New York, 1880]), p. 3. For Orr's argumentation, see his she Resurrection of Jesus, pp. 57-211. 41Ibid., pp. 221,225. 42For Gore's work, see his Dissertations, pp. 3-68. 43Peake also hesitated to attach the same doctrinal importance to the Virgin Birth. A. S. Peake, review of The Virgin Birth of Christ, by James Orr, in Primitive Methodist Quarterly Review 30 (1908) : 364. 44Unsigned review of The Virgin Birth of Christ, by James Orr, in Church Quarterly Review 69 (1909): 198-199. 450rr, "Jesus Christ, " International Standard Bible Encyclopae- dia, 3: 1629. 46James Orr, letter to E. Y. Mullins, 8 February 1911. 47 Orr, "Jesus Christ, " International Standard Bible Encyclopae- dia, 3: 1624-1668. 480rr, Introduction to International Standard Bible Encyclopae- dia, 1: x. Compare Gore: "But then of course you say, 'Can I trust these Gospels? ' In part I think the answer lies within the scope of our perceptions without any inquiry into their origin. I confess that as I read these old books [the Gospels], so naive and so small in compass, I receive an impression which is almost irresistible, that this picture is coherent and such as would have passed the wit of man to invent. " Charles Gore, The Deity of Christ (Oxford, 1922), pp. 7-8. CHAPTER VIII

POPULARIZING CONSERVATIVE EVANGELICALISM:

An Appeal to the Public

Orr's career, from start to finish, was characterized by a

strong sense of respect for, and responsibility to, the Christian

public. This orientation did not make him exceptional, for it was

really characteristic of Scottish churchmanship, a brand of church-

manship that conformed to the democratic ethos of the nation, to the

principles of its indigenous common sense philosophy, and to its

predominantly Presbyterian church polity.

This orientation was fostered among Scottish theologians in

a number of ways. For one, professors were almost always promoted 1 from the ranks of the Church's experienced ministers. Presumably

parish. ministry is not the only way, nor even a fail-safe way, of

acquiring a sympathy for lay Christians; yet even so, it is of obvious

advantage. For another, Scottish theology, certainly more than its

German counterpart, was carried out with direct accountability to the 2 whole Church. Despite the fact that church courts sometimes en-

croached on theologians' academic freedoms, there was general agreement in principle that theologians should be servants of the Church.

The United Free Church. College in Glasgow certainly lived out the spirit of this commitment. While Orr was there, the entire faculty was active in Church life. Each member, with the exception 208 209 of Lindsay, who declined for health reasons, was out speaking in churches every Sunday. With over two hundred United Free Churches in the Glasgow Presbytery alone, it was all they could do to keep up with 3 invitations.

That Orr shared this commitment was not exceptional. What was exceptional was the relative strength of his personal commitment to this shared ideal. He absolutely scorned the labels "closet" or

"ivory-tower" theologian, and anyone that he considered deserving of 4 such appellations. This fits our picture of the man. His seventeen years at Hawick provided an opportunity for him to become thoroughly acquainted with the needs and outlook of the man in the pew. But even before that, his unprivileged childhood must have instilled some abiding populist instincts. He was raised a United Presbyterian, and remained a loyal son of its egalitarian tradition. And politically, he was an enthusiastic Liberal, openly opposing the Tories and the class structure he believed they helped to perpetuate.

Orr's exceptional devotion to the laity of the Church is epitomized by the editorial responsibilities which he, along with

Denney, assumed for The Union Magazine and its brief successor The

United Free Church Magazine. In the first issue of The Union Magazine, which Denney apologetically described to William Robertson Nicoll as 5 "our poor little Church paper,, the editors explained that:

The Magazine will not be in any sense professional. It will not be conducted for the benefit of ministers or of theologians. Theological questions, no doubt, have their interest for the Church at large, and may even be of acute and vital interest, but they will not be discussed here in fashion it is Christian any technical ... the general mind which is in view, not the professional interest of a class in the Church-6 210

This editorial commitment remained when The United Free Church Maga-

"will zine started up. The new magazine, the editors repeated, seek to merit a welcome, not from ministers or office-bearers only, but in the homes of the Church at large. "7

Orr and Denney paid a price to fulfill this commitment. There is something almost incongruous about two weighty theologians troubling themselves month by month with serialized novels, literary articles on everything from a sail up the Irrawaddy to recent Irish poetry, and even children's puzzles. Denney groaned under the burden, and longed to be rid of it, but Orr maintained a keen interest and sentimental attachment to the project throughout, and was primarily responsible for keeping it going as long as it did. When The Union Magazine failed in February 1904, Denney admitted to being relieved. "The unfortunate and inevitable Magazine, " he reflected, "sometimes came near being the last straw. "8 But Orr was keen to persist, and when

Robertson Nicoll, with the backing of Hodder and Stoughton, offered to underwrite a second attempt under the new title of The United Free

Church Magazine, Denney reluctantly and after some vacillation agreed to try again.

Although Orr had always displayed a special commitment to the

Christian public, 1906 marks a watershed in his career, for from that point onwards he intensified his efforts to express himself in popular forms. There was a significant shift in his priorities about this time. More frequently thereafter, he offered the public, through lectures and the printed page, simple, hurried restatements and skeletal summaries of views that he had more definitively expressed in The Christian View and other earlier works. While offering little 211 that was new, Orr appears deliberately to have carried his case to the

Christian public.

Denney, who was as qualified as anyone to assess Orr's motives, remarked of him: "The traditional Scottish ideal of an intelligent

Christian public, before which all Christian causes must be argued

deeply in his "10 In Orr did out, was rooted mind .. . other words, not believe that issues of great significance to the Christian faith could safely be left to scholarly specialists. While Denney's remark helps one to understand the general orientation of Orr's apologetic work, it does not explain the shift of 1906.

Perhaps popularization is the only possible direction to be

taken by a theologian whose views are fixed and already fairly definitively expressed. No doubt there is some truth in this interpretation of Orr's actions. Nevertheless, two other developments

significantly determined the course of his career.

The first of these was a decline in Orr's influence in certain

scholarly circles. The pattern of declining influence that we are

suggesting was marked by a number of milestones. A. E. Garvie's more

sympathetic assessment of Ritschlianism generally superseded Orr's as

the authoritative British evaluation of that theology. In addition,

the number of channels of scholarly communication open to Orr decreased.

The Thinker, to which he contributed a number of substantive articles,

lasted only four years and ended in 1895. More seriously, the Cri ticaZ

Review, to which Orr frequently contributed, ceased publication at the end of 1904, just before the death of its editor, Aberdeen United Free

Churchman S. D. F. Salmond. The succeeding generation of theological

(b. journals, such as the Journal of Theological Studies 1899), --7ýe 212

Hibbert Journal (b. 1902), and the Review o' Theo Zogy and Phi Tosophy

(b. 1905) were not so sympathetic to his views. Orr seldom contributed to them, and his books were seldom reviewed in them.

There was yet another milestone, and probably it was the most decisive of all. Most of British biblical scholarship considered

Orr's negative verdict on the Wellhausen theory of the Pentateuch, first in 1906 The Problem Old published ," quite unconvincing. of the

Testament was quite emphatically rejected, and Orr seems to have felt this rejection acutely. There is just a trace of bitterness in his subsequent remark:,

For the last quarter of a century the so-called 'Graf - Kuenen-Wellhausen' theory has ruled in Old Testament criticism till it has become in wide circles almost a heresy deserving it of excommunication to question .. More .. conservative scholars have contested its fundamental positions, but they of course could be dis- regarded as of no account.,,

And there is a similar tone of irony elsewhere, as when Orr said: 12 "When a scholar speaks about the Bible, let no man peep or mutter.,

We are suggesting that Orr was more or less forced to turn from his alienated peers in order to obtain an audience sympathetic to his views. There was also another development that appears to have acted as a catalyst for Orr's move towards intensified popularization. In

September 1906, The United Free Church Magazine, after a withering away of a viable readership, collapsed for good. The failure of the 4aga- zine with which, under three different titles, Orr had been associated since the 1840s, was a great disappointment to him.

The Magazine may have failed simply because other Edwardian religious journals, such as Robertson Nicoll's own British Weekly, made it largely redundant. It is unlikely that the Magazine failed 21 3

13 due to literary deficiencies; if it had any, they are not glaring.

There was some opposition to the magazine within the Church from early

on, and at least some of it was rooted in objections to the Liberal 14 political stance Orr and Denney took on public issues. Still, most

of the magazine's potential readership would have been supportive of

Liberal politics. It is possible that the magazine's collapse

indicated a general lack of support for the conservative theological viewpoint that permeated its pages. That theological stance was more

than obvious, and the extensive sections set aside in the magazine for

editorial comment gave ample space for jabs not only at the Wee Frees, but also at The Hibbert Journal and sundry liberal theologians and biblical critics.

At any rate, the decisive thing for Orr personally was that the

Magazine was a thing of the past., His subsequent intensification of

effort to popularize might thus be seen as a search for alternative

channels of communication with the Christian public to which he remained committed. As Orr took this step, he began to move in increasingly trans-Atlantic and inter-denominational circles. Since he had acquired a large reputation by this time, it was natural that he should begin to move in wider spheres of influence. Granting this,

Orr may well have interpreted the Magazine's collapse as a vote of non-confidence in him from his own Church. His subsequent appeal to a broader denominational range of Christians may have been a case of deliberately looking elsewhere for appreciative response. It is interesting that from this time Orr began to withdraw from involvement in the proceedings and committee work of the General Assembly of the

United Free Church. From the union of 19.00- until 1906 Orr's voice was 214

heard in the Assembly regularly, and he sat on an average of six

committees each year. After 1906, however, he accepted no new appoint-

ments, and by 1909 had divested himself of all committee respon-

sibilities (the single exception was that in 1911 he agreed to sit on

a vast committee holding conference with the Church of Scotland).

Likewise, Orr maintained a complete silence in the General Assembly

after 1906, except for a spirited outburst in the last Assembly he 15 attended.

This new stage in Orr's career was inaugurated, shortly after

The Problem of'the OZd Testament had received its hostile reception, by

a series of twelve articles on biblical criticism which Orr published 16 in The Life of Faith magazine. Far from a scholarly journal, The Life

of Faith was successor to The Christian's Pathway to Power, the house

organ of the British Keswick Movement. The annual summer Keswick

Conventions in the English Lake District began in 1875 as an off-shoot

of D. L. Moody's evangelistic campaign in Britain. The Conventions

attracted interdenominational and international audiences through their

stress on prayer, Bible study and foreign missions; through their

distinctive emphasis on personal holiness, and their message of the

possibility of a "victorious" and sanctified life in the power of the 17 Holy Spirit.

These articles were collected and published the next year by

Marshall Brothers, the Keswick publisher, under the suitably combative

title, The Bible Under Trial: Apologetic Papers in View of Present-Day

Assaults on Holy Scripture. By publishing in The Life of Faith, and 215 then allowing the articles to be reissued in book form, Orr was able to extend his influence into new circles.

Perhaps some persons considered the tone of the book (not to mention its rather garish typestyle, full of exclamation marks and capitalizations-for emphasis) below the dignity of a professor of the

United Free Church of Scotland. Somewhat defensively Orr explained in

a preface to the work that he had contributed its contents to The Life 18 of Faith by desire. , In other words, he claimed to have published

because had . them there voluntarily, and not more reputable publishers

closed their doors to him and left him without alternatives.

He added that he hoped the articles, in their republished form,

would "do something to steady the minds of those who are in perplexity

in these times regarding the Sacred Book. " He had deliberately

designed them, he said, "for the general Christian reader, " and

expressed his prayer that they would be of assistance "to some who 19 may feel that their feet have been sliding beneath them. " The Bible

Under TriaZ became the basis for many of Orr's subsequent popular

contributions. A substantial number of the lectures and essays

that he later prepared with-the general Christian public in mind were

based, often with very little revision at all, on different chapters

of this work.

And what was Orr's message, by which he hoped to steady the minds of the perplexed? It was that the traditional view of Scripture was fixed and secure. The Bible, as Orr put it, had withstood every

test thus far and might confidently be expected to withstand its present ones just as successfully. Archaeology was continually vindicating the traditional views over against the alternatives put 216 forward by the higher critics. Assaults on the traditional views were not grounded in newly-discovered facts; they were simply old-

"Settled fashioned unbelief in new dress. results" were in fact far from settled. They were imaginative reconstructions rooted in the anti-supernatural prejudice of their advocates. As for orthodoxy's opponents, there was really nothing to worry about. Far from being a solid phalanx, the critics themselves were in disarray, and many of them, in fact, were actually abandoning the tenets of higher criticism 20 and moving back in the direction of traditional conviction.

Near the beginning of The Bible Under Trial, Orr expressed what might be described as a "plebeian" interpretation of the history of

Christianity.

When Jesus introduced His religion into the world He did not choose 'scholars, ' but humble, simple-minded men, attached to Himself by a living faith, and endued with from high Surely it is power on .... the greatest thing we can say about these first disciples of Jesus had that they had the ... that they eyes to see ... power to take, in some degree, the measure of that great spiritual movement which the heads of the people, the Caiaphases, Pilates, Scribes and Pharisees, Rabbis, were blind They in degree the all to .... took some measure Jesus Christ of the spiritual greatness of the Lord .... By means of it they became the instruments of a revolution which changed the face of the world. God hid it from 'the wise and prudent, ' but revealed it 'unto babes. '21

He claimed that it had never been by learning, by philosophy, by science or by scholarship that the Church had been revived and saved in eras of religious laxity and infidelity. Rather, he said, it was through

folk movements of spiritual awakening and through simple who possessed

insight. It had the requisite spiritual discernment and always been 22 this way.

beyond In making these claims, Orr went merely affirming the 217 general Christian public's capacity to judge on matters of paramount religious concern. He was actually suggesting that the "simple- minded" believer possessed a superior capacity for apprehending religious truth. Widespread scholarly rejection of the traditional view of Scripture, and Orr's apologetic for it, may well have helped to solidify this conviction in Orr's mind. Certainly it constituted a rationale for appealing to the general Christian public.

By this time Orr was an experienced visitor to the United States and Canada, where his activities had been largely scholarly and more or less restricted to Presbyterian, and to a lesser extent Congregational, circles. This pattern of restricted circulation and scholarly address began to change during Orr's visit to North America in 1907. In April of that year, he delivered a series of lectures in New York under the 23 auspices of the interdenominational Bible Teachers' Training School.

On this same tour he spoke at various conferences and Bible schools, and the contents of his lectures on such occasions were reproduced as

SideZights on Christian Doctrine. This book, like The Bible under TriaZ, was published by Marshall Brothers. It contained nothing new. It was really only an abbreviated and more popular version of The Christian

View. "Perhaps the less formal nature of the studies, " Orr suggested,

"will adapt them better to the needs of those whom technical works on theology might repel. "25 The work received little attention from 26 reviewers.

In 1910, Orr published yet another collection of essays under the title The Faith of a Modern Christian. It dealt with what he

Christian. Orr considered essential issues for a contemporary meant

be that the adjective "modern" in the title should read emphatically. 218

After heaping scorn upon the term for years, he now did an about-face

and tried to reclaim it for conservative orthodoxy. The Fat; h o." a

modern Christian was trimmed of all but a few footnotes, and this

time Orr did not try to back up his assertions with the arguments he

had spelled out elsewhere. The result was a work with a certain

authoritarian flavour. The Anglican Church Quarterly Review was

mildly appreciative, but suggested that the book displayed a certain 27 unpleasant "cocksureness. , Allan Menzie's Review of TheoZogy and

Philosophy complained that the book bristled with generalizations, 28 and half-truths uttered in the most dogmatic fashion. "Professor

" Orr, the Westminster Review mused, "is either one of those happy men

who are always 'quite sure'; or he has been a little frightened by his

excursions into the 'higher criticism, ' and finds himself compelled to

shout aloud to keep up his courage. " Then it added: "We welcome the

book kind "29 as a of orthodox pronunciamiento .. .

In Orr's popular lectures and writings such as these, his tone

was one of triumphal reassurance and fixity. There was no compelling

reason, he insisted, to modify any of the basic affirmations of

evangelical orthodoxy.

These are days in which theology is at a discount. The cry is loud for 'reconstruction' of Christian doctrines; for re-statement in terms of living thought. This book has little to offer in the way of novelties. It rests on the conviction that, however necessary it may be to state Christian doctrines constantly anew in relation to advancing knowledge, there is an essential content in the Christian system which does not change-30

In a similar vein he insisted that the Church ought to countenance

theological reconstruction only if reconstruction meant intelligent and relevant restatement, as opposed to modification and abandonment

he of the evangelical scheme of doctrine which affirmed. 219

The teachers of our new theologies are never under a greater mistake than when they imagine that it is the preaching of this old Gospel of the grace of God--old, yet ever new--which is alienating the modern world from the Churches. It is not the preaching of this Gospel which is emptying the churches, but the want of it-31

Orr took this message to the Christian public in vigorous, blunt language. His remarks were never quite libelous, but they were

frequently scathing and sometimes derisive. This seemed to enhance

his popularity with partisan audiences, who often found his remarks

as entertaining as they were assuring. Orr's lectures at the 1910

Mundesley Bible Conference in Suffolk, England afford a suitable

case in point. Mundesley was patterned after D. L. Moody's famous

Bible Northfield, Mas led by conference at sachuss etts , and was the

Congregationalist G. Campbell Morgan, a renowned expository preacher 32 from London. There Orr remarked sarcastically about prevailing

theories of higher criticism:

These theories generally originate in Germany or in Holland, then they come over here and finally get to America! By the time they get to America the infection is very strong; it takes people hard and they write very wildly; about the time they are at their wildest the thing is well-nigh done in Germany-33

One Mundesley observer (with a male chauvinist bias? ) later reported

[Orr's] that "the presence of so many ladies at lectures betokened

that they were not 'dry'--in fact the only thing dry about them was 34 the humour which convulsed us from time to time. " But humour was only a means to the end of steadying the perplexed and doubting. And along these lines Orr appears to have experienced some success. While some scholars disapproved of his cocksureness, the Mundesley reporter claimed that Orr's "clear judgment on matters which had caused many a considerable amount of perplexity did much to strengthen faith and 220

is ýý35 embolden men 'to give all reason for the hope which within them.

Orr was also a controversialist and polemicist, as the preceding chapters reveal. All his work as a theological popularizer bear the stamp of this inclination. He was never reluctant to mount a platform to debate his convictions before the public; in fact, he seemed to relish that sort of rough and tumble arena. Once again there was nothing particularly unusual about a nineteenth century 36 Scottish divine engaging in such activities, but for Orr it was a way of life. Stewart Scott described Orr as a born fighter "who rode into battle with a fierce joy and who {wasj never afraid to deal 37 a lusty blow. "

Even so, Orr's deportment was always characterized by a cordiality and tolerance that are unfrequently associated with such activities. These qualities were evident in Orr's speaking tour of southern Ontario, Canada, in the Spring of 1909. After religious circles in Toronto had become embroiled in a fierce controversy over biblical criticism and the "New Theology, " Orr was invited over by a number of the local leading evangelicals "who desired his assistance 38 to combat the spread of the higher criticism in the Dominion., A three-week series of lectures was arranged throughout the province 39 under the auspices of the Bible League of Canada.

The local press geared up for a knock-down verbal war. Orr's arrival in Toronto's Union Station was featured in a large photograph on the front page of the city's major newspaper, and in a lead article

Scotch under the headline "May Settle All Doubts: Eminent Bible 221

Authority May Clear Toronto Air. "40 Id did not take long, however,

for the press to realize that Orr had no intention to operate in the 41 bellicose manner they anticipated. Press coverage decreased

accordingly. The lectures towards the end of Orr's tour, even though

they continued to be well-attended, were deemed barely newsworthy.

One venue, however, still held promise of fireworks. That was

Kingston. The Glasgow Herald reported that a public confrontation 42 with a leading Canadian Modernist was being planned. William G.

Jordan, Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament Exegesis on the Pres-

byterian theological faculty of Queen's University in Kingston had

devoted the bulk of his 1906-1907 Chancellor's Lectureship at Queen's

to refuting Orr's The Problem of the OZd Testament in favour of the

documentary hypothesis of the Pentateuch. In 1909 Jordan expanded 43 and published this rebuttal as Biblical Criticism and Modern Thought.

Jordan and Orr were scheduled to cross swords in Kingston. They met

and did so, but in a most pacific manner. Orr's final lecture was

followed by a dissenting but cordial reply from Professor Jordan.

But most remarkable of all, while in Kingston Orr stayed in the Jordans' 44 home. Such hospitality and fraternity would become unthinkable

among contestants in the Fundamentalist controversy ahead.

None of Orr's essays obtained a wider exposure than the four he

contributed to The Fundamentals, a series of twelve pamphlets published between 191G and 1915 and circulated to some two hundred and fifty thousand ministers and church. leaders throughout the English-speaking world. The concept of The Fundamentals crystallized when Lyman

Stewart, a millionaire California oilman, met Amzi Clarence Dixon, the pastor of the Moody Memorial Church in Chicago. Stewart agreed to fund, 222 if Dixon would edit, a series of theologically conservative essays for the purpose, as they put it, of saving conservative evangelicalism 45 from the onslaught of Modernism.

Dixon and his editorial committee eventually solicited ninety articles, a good number of which had been published previously, from sixty-four contributors. Most, but not all the contributors were

American. The English contingent, led by Handley Moule, Bishop of

Durham, included some respected Anglicans and Nonconformists, though none of them was a truly outstanding theologian. Thomas Whitelaw, moderator of the 1912 General Assembly of the United Free Church of

Scotland, was the only Scot other than Orr to contribute.

The Fundamentals was not obscurantist. Generally the articles reflect mainstream nineteenth century evangelical orthodoxy. The

Premillennialism and Dispensationalism which were such distinctive and determining features of later Fundamentalism are seldom mentioned in

The Fundamentals. The series reflects a moderate style and temper that

"contrasts strongly with the stridency"46 of the Fundamentalist movement of the 1920s.

The lead article, in the very first volume of The Fundamentals was by Orr, on the Virgin Birth. This first volume came off the press early in 1910. Three more articles by Orr appeared in subsequent volumes. All four of the articles had previously been published else- 47 where. Orr, then, wrote nothing specifically for The Fundamentals.

His association with this venture may not have amounted to more than a single letter granting Dixon permission to reprint these four articles.

Having said this, there is little in The Fundamentals to which Orr would have objected, and he would have strongly endorsed the various 223 authors' uniform insistence that the root cause of opposition to 48 evangelical orthodoxy was a prejudice against the supernatural.

Ir Orr's relationship to The Fundamentals was an arms-length one, it was quite another matter with a companion enterprise undertaken at about the same time and centred, like The Fundamentals, in

Chicago. This was the production of the International Standard Bible

Encyclopaedia (ISBE), a major reference work which, it was hoped, might serve as a viable alternative to such recent standard works as

Encyclopaedia BibZica (. 1899-1903) and Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible

(1898-1904). A number of the contributors to The Fundamentals also 49 wrote articles for the ISBE.

The project was undertaken by the Howard-Severance Company of

Chicago and Orr agreed to assume the duties of general editor. The distinctive features of the ISBE were to be its conservative critical perspective and its design for a popular market. With respect to the latter, the editors believed that there was room for a Bible encyclopaedia "somewhat less technical in character than the existing larger works, adapted more directly to the needs of the average pastor and

Bible student. "50 The ISBE shared its two distinctive features with

The Fundamentals, but unlike the latter, which was really a collection of tracts for the times, the ISBE constituted a more substantial and permanent means of extending conservative orthodoxy's line of defence.

And the editors interpreted their mandate to produce a Bible encyclopaedia broadly enough to allow inclusion of articles on such topics as evolution and comparative religion.

Orr was assisted by two younger men: Edgar Y. Mullins, President

in Louisville, of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Kentucky, 224 and John L. Nuelsen, a Bishop of the Methodist Church with respon- 51 sibility after 1912 for that Church's European work. By April of

1909, while Lyman Stewart and A. C. Dixon were planning The Funda- mentaZs, this international and interdenominational editorial trio was in place and the tasks of soliciting and writing articles began.

Orr wrote to George Frederick Wright in Oberlin, Ohio in the hope of enlisting his aid. Orr explained:

I have been asked to undertake the supervision of yet another Bible Encyclopaedia in three volumes. It is being produced. by a responsible Chicago firm, and is intended to be scholarly, yet more conservative on 0. T. lines than many recent works of the kind, and also less technical and more adapted for the general reader and preacher. We are getting good help from both sides of the Atlantic-52

Altogether close to two hundred individuals contributed articles to the ISBE, and their geographic distribution fully justified the

Encyclopaedia's claim to being international. Twenty-nine of the. contributors were Scots. Just six of these were professors; the rest were either active or retired clergymen. No one from New College, and only one of Orr's colleagues in Glasgow contributed. Excepting those by Orr himself, only a few of the Scottish contributions were sub- 53 stantial or strategic.

Orr did more than solicit contributions from others. He wrote hundreds of minor entries, and reserved some of the most important ones for himself. Predictably, he wrote on "Criticism of the Bible, " and took personal responsibility for, among other things, what amounted to treatises on the Bible and on Jesus Christ. Meanwhile, the stream of books and journal articles which had flowed steadily from Orr's pen for two decades dried up. Under the pressure of this work, and with the disadvantage now of failing health, Orr focused his attention on this 225 single project.

Orr's health continued to decline as he laboured to complete the

Encyclopaedia. He suffered from a painful heart disease that made breathing and sleep difficult. In January of 1913 he made out his 54 will. He was unable to attend the General Assembly of the United

Free Church in May. He made a last visit to Germany in the company of his two sons, one of whom was a medical doctor, and came home "in a 55 very alarming condition.ondition. "55 Then, on 6 September 1913, he died. The

Encyclopaedia was essentially finished. Both Denney and Lindsay suspected that Orr's dogged determinati on to complete it had hastened 56 his death.

The ISBE was published in five volumes in 1915. It was a sober, broader, more impressive and much less theatrical achievement than

The Fundamentals, which was completed the same year. The preface to the ISBE claimed that its outlook was one of "reasonable conservativism. "57

In Britain, where it suffered from the disadvantage of being handled by a minor publisher who prevented bookstore distribution and insisted on 58 direct sales, it went virtually unnoticed. But the same did not hold true in America and elsewhere. It is suggestive of the role that ISBE came to play in the ensuing Modernist-Fundamentalist controversy that one of the first objectives of the (Fundamentalist) Bible Union, founded among Protestant missionaries to China in 1920, was to secure a Chinese translation of ISBE as a preferable alternative to the existing trans- 59 lation of Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible.

One conservative American reviewer, J. Oscar Boyd of Princeton

Seminary, complained that the consistency of the ISBE's conservative outlook was marred by the presence of a minority of excessively liberal 226 and critical articles (Orr had, for example, permitted inclusion of a dissenting opinion on biblical criticism by an able advocate of the documentary hypothesis). Boyd predicted that the presence of these 60 would detrimentally affect the encyclopaedia's longevity. In 1929 the Encyclopaedia underwent a modest revision in a more conservative direction, under the editorship of Melvin Grove Kyle, then editor of

BibZiotheca Sacra. Certain "heterogenous" articles were excised, and 61 some others more in keeping with the temper of Fundamentalism added.

In 1939 the Encyclopaedia passed into the hands of a major

American religious publisher. One measure of the extent of its enduring influence is that between 1974 and 1983 no less than thirty- 62 five thousand sets were published. It remains a standard work in many conservative Protestant ministers' libraries, and is still in print. It h4s helped to shape the thinking of three generations of American

Protestants. Probably it has been one of the more important means of extending conservative orthodoxy's line of defence in twentieth- century America. ENDNOTES

As the theological disciplines increased in sophistication, professional competence called for a greater degree of specialization. Robertson Smith, who went directly from studies in Germany to a chair in Aberdeen in 1870, and J. A. Paterson, who went from Cambridge to the United Presbyterian College as Professor of Hebrew and Old Testa- ment in 1876, perhaps mark the acceptance in Scotland of an alternative career path to professional theological scholarship. 2H. R. Mackintosh, Types of Modern Theology (London, 1937), p. 11. 3William Robertson Nicoll, ed., Letters of Principal James Denney to W. Robertson NicoZZ, 1893-1917 (London, 62. [19203), p. George Adam Smith and his family attended a Glasgow mission for years. Lilian Adam Smith, George Adam Smith (London, 1943), pp. 66-68. A series of public lectures delivered at Renfield Church, Glasgow, over the course of the winter of 1903-1904, further illustrates the faculty's commitment to the theological education of the public. Lindsay, Denney and Orr joined with three New College colleagues and the minister of the church to expound the abiding significance of the Apostles' Creed. The lectures were published as P. Carnegie Simpson, ed., Questions of Faith (London, 1904). 4James Orr, "Christ in the Thought of Today, " Baptist Review and Expositor 1 (October 1904): 296. 5Nicoll, ed., Letters of Denney, p. 23. 6The Union Magazine 1 (j90-l): 5. Illustrating the same point, Denney and especially Orr were quite involved in the work of the Glasgow School of Christian Workers, an evening school held on the premises of the United Free Church College for men and women who intended to serve as catechists, Bible-women and unordained missionaries. Orr attended the School's Board meetings regularly, and at the time of his death was scheduled to give a session-opening lecture on "Methods of Bible Study. " Minutes of the Board of the Glasgow School of Christian Workers, 6 October 1913. The School's programs are described in its Calendars, 1911-1912 and 1912-1913. 7 The United Free Church Magazine (October 1904) : 1. 8Nicoll, ed., Letters of Denney, p. 43. 9Ibid., pp. 45-48.

227 228

10 James Denney, "The Late Professor Orr, " British Weekly, 11 September 1913, p. 576. Compare Denney's own reason for continuing with The United Free Church Magazine: "It is a pity to see the Chris- tian religion beaten out of the region in which people generally lead their intellectual life. " Nicoll, ed., Letters of Denney, pp. 42-43. 11James Orr, "A Critical Revolt, " Glasgow Herald, 28 August 1909, p. 9. 12James Orr, The Bible Under Trial (London, L1907]), p. 9. 13Nicoll esteemed the magazine's literary qualities highly. Nicoll, ed., Letters of Denney, pp. 70-71. 14A. R. MacEwen and Ross Taylor were behind a circular calling for other political views to be expressed within the United Free Church. Ibid., pp. 45-46. Other individuals objected to the use of the United Free Church name in the magazine's title, since the magazine was an independent undertaking. These persons even threatened to take legal action, but nothing appears to have come of this threat. Ibid., p. 52. 15These observations are based on an examination of The Principal Acts of the United Free Church and The Proceedings of the United Free Church from 1900 to 1913. Interesting insights into these Assembly deliberations are available in George M. Rith, Reminiscences of the United Free Church General Assembly (1900-1929) (Edinburgh and London, 1933), pp. 11-147. 16The series ran on a weekly basis from October 10 to December 26,1906, thus beginning soon after a number of critical review of The Prob Zem of the OZd Testament had been published in other journals. 17New International Dictionary of the Christian Church, rev. ed., s. v. "Keswick Convention. " A more comprehensive study is Steven Barabas, So Great Salvation: The History and Message of the Keswick Convention (London, 1952). Orr never spoke at any of these Conventions. There was a reasonably positive report on the 1905 Keswick Convention in The United Free Church Magazine (September 1905): 32-33. 18 Orr, Bible Under TriaZ, q. v. 19Ibid., pp. v-vi, 20This latter argument is also developed in a tract by Orr, From Unbelief to Faith (_ Stirling,. 1906]), pp. 21 ff. Orr gleefully discussed the dissent of B. D. Eerdmans, successor to the renowned Dutch biblical critic Abraham Kuenen, from the Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis. Orr, "A Critical Revolt, " p. 9. 21 0rr Bible Under Trial, 9-10. , pp, 22 Ibid . 23The series was published as The Virgin Birth Of Christ (London, 19(17). 229

24 L1909J), James Orr, Sidelights on Christian Doctrine (London, [iii]. p. For highlights of Orr's itinerary, see "Dr. Orr's American Visit, " British Weekly, 25 April 1907, p. 53. 25 0rr, Sidelights, p. [iii]. 26The reviewers' oversight may have been due partly to Marshall Brothers' reluctance or unwillingness to distribute review copies of their publications. See A. S. Peake's complaint about Marshall Brothers in his review of The Virgin Birth of Christ, by James Orr, in the Primitive Methodist Quarterly Review 30 (1908): 364-365. 27Review of The Faith of a Modern Christian, in Church Quarterly Review 72 (1911): 187-188. 28Henry D. A. Major, review of The Faith of a Modern Christian, in Review of Theology and Philosophy 6 (1911) : 617. 29Review of The Faith of a Modern Christian, in Westminster Review 174 (1910): 594. 30 Orr, Side Zights Ciii- iv ]. , pp. 31 James Orr, The Faith of a Modern Christian. (London and New York, 1910), p. 234. The words are transcribed from Orr's 1907 address to the Evangelical Alliance, recorded in Maintaining the Unity Proceedings the Eleventh International Conference : of ... of the Evangelical Alliance (London, 1907), pp. 150-151. 32New International Dictionary of the Christian Church, rev. ed., s. v. "Morgan, G(eorge) Campbell (. 1863-1945). " 'Compare Jill Morgan, A Man of the Word (London, 1951). 33James Orr, "Topics of the Hour, " Westminster Bib Ze Conference, Mundes Zey, 1910: Verbatim Report (London, n. d. ), p. 123. 34, fMundesley Bible Conference, " The British Congregationalist, 21 July 1410., p. 3. 35Ibid.

36Religious controversy, in both periodical literature and on public platforms, flourished in the Victorian age. Scotland was shaken and entertained by such events as the Apocrypha Controversy (with cane-thumping Robert Haldane), the Voluntary Controversy, the Dis- ruption, the Robertson Smith. Trial, and the Wee Free debacle in the early twentieth century. 37Stewart R. Scott, East Bank Church, Hawick (Hawick, 1923), p. 42. As a young person, Orr was swayed by a public religious debate. James Orr, From Unbelief to Faith, pp. 12-13. Perhaps the experience had impressed upon him the potential influence of such events. In Hawick, he actively debated public questions, and later in Edinburgh 230 participated in the rallies to counter Otto Pf leiderer's "anti-supernatural" Gifford Lectures. 38"Professor Orr in Canada, " Glasgow Herald, 22 April 1909, p. 3. In 1908, William Jennings Bryan, later the Fundamentalist champion in the "Scopes Monkey Trial" of 1925, came to Toronto under the auspices of the Bible League of North America. That same year, Elmore Harris, the Baptist President of Toronto Bible Institute publically criticized McMaster University Professor I. G. Matthew's view of Scripture. In February of 1909, Methodist minister George Jackson's Y. M. C. A. lecture on "The Early Narratives of Genesis" provoked a strong reaction from many Methodists, including the venerable Albert Carmen, Superintendent of Canadian Methodism. Jackson's lecture was reprinted in the Toronto Star, 1 March 1909, pp. 1,9. Orr and his Canadian tour organizers insisted that Orr's visit had been arranged prior to the outbreak of the most recent controversy. Carmen and Harris were among the tour organizers, however, and Orr borrowed Jackson's lecture title for one of his first Toronto lectures.

39The Bible League of Canada began as a branch of the American Bible League (ABL), which was formed in 1903 to "reassert the prominence of the Bible" in church and national life. It pursued this objective through local branches, regional conferences and a periodical entitled Bible Student and Teacher. The composition of the ABL initially was largely Presbyterian, but it soon expanded. to include other denominations and premillenarians. Ernest Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism (Chicago, 1970), pp. 201-203. William MacLaren, Principal of Knox College, Toronto, was a prominent figure in the Bible League of Canada, which became independent of its parent organization in 1909. Orr's tour centred in Toronto, but included Hamilton, Kingston and Ottawa, and possibly other points as well. 40Toronto Star, 7 April 1909, p. 1. Orr's arrival was anticipated in Toronto Star, 6 April 1909, p. 3. 41A newspaper editor expressed surprise and approval over Orr's temperate and calm approach, Toronto Star, 10 April 1909, p. 6. Similar remarks were made in a religious newspaper, The Christian Guardian, 14 April 1909, p. 6. 42"Professor Orr in Canada, " Glasgow Hera Zd, p. 3. 43See the preface to William George Jordan, Biblical Criticism and Modern Thought (Edinburgh, 1909), On Jordan, see Macmillan Dictionary Canadian Biography 3rd "Jordan, William of , ed., s. v. George. "' 44"Story of Creation, " The [Kingston] DaiZy British Whig, 24 April 19.9, p. 2. Orris stay as Jordan's guest is mentioned in "Rev. Dr. Orr in City, " The x, ngston 3 Daily British Whig, 15 April 1909, p. 2. A Toronto weekly speculated that Orr was not altogether com- fortahle in the Bible League's narrow bed. "'News of the Churches, " 231

The Presbyterian, 29 April 1909, pp. 533-534. Orr's geniality and breadth of churchmanship are also reflected in a warm letter he sent to David S. Cairns, advising Cairns that Orr had recommended him to the President of Auburn Seminary (N. Y. ) for a professorship there, and encouraging him to accept the post. James Orr, letter to David S. Cairns, 30 June 1906. Cairns, the nephew of John Cairns, had recently made his mark by publishing Christianity in the Modern World (London, n. d. ), a work which embraced a number of Ritschlian emphases. 45Sandeen, Roots of Fundamentalism, pp. 188-207. See also George Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture (New York and Oxford, 1980), esp. pp. 118-123. 46Sandeen, Roots of Fundamentalism, p. 207. 47"The Virgin Birth of Christ" was printed earlier in the American Bible League's Bible Student and Teacher. Ibid., p. 203. The substance of "Science and Christian Faith" had been printed in The Bib Ze Under Trial (chap. 9) and The Faith of a Modern Christian (chap. 11), and delivered as a lecture at Mundesley. The third and fourth, on "Holy Scripture and Modern Negations" and "The Early Narratives of Genesis" match lectures Orr gave in Toronto in 1909. These Toronto lectures were printed separately by Toronto publisher L. S. Haynes. 48The pervasiveness of this theme is noted by Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, p. 121. 49Those contributing to both were: Orr, E. Y. Mullins, John L. Nuelsen, James Gray, Melvin G. Kyle, William G. Moorehouse, George F. Wright, George L. Robinson, B. B. Warfield, W. H. Griffith-Thomas, H. C. G. Moule, and Thomas Whitelaw. 50James Orr, ed., International Standard Bib Ze Encyclopaedia, 5 vols. (_Chicago, 1915), 1: vii. 51 On Mullins (1860-1928) Encyclopedia Southern Baptists, , see of s. v. "Mullins, E. Y. " On Nuelsen (1867-1946), see Encyclopedia of World Methodism, s. v. "Nuelsen, John Louis"; and also F. Wunderlich, Methodists Linking Two Continents (Nashville, 1959). 52James Orr, letter to George F. Wright, 27 August 1909. 53The six professors were James Iverach and James Stalker of the United Free Church College, Aberdeen; Henry Cowan and Thomas Nicol of Aberdeen University Divinity Faculty; James Robertson, Emeritus Professor of Hebrew at Glasgow University; and Orr's Glasgow colleague T. M. Lindsay. The most important Scottish contributions were three few articles on minor prophets by Robertson, a on Old Testament by criticism by Whitelaw, one on the Gospels Iverach, and another on the Kingdom by Stalker. Lindsay confided to a friend that he agreed had to write for the ISBE to oblige Orr, and to test whether he the 232 patience to accept an offer to write an equally tedious volume for the Oxford University Home Library. T. M. Lindsay, Letters of Principal T. M. Lindsay to Janet Ross (London, 1923), p. 199. 54James Orr, Trust Disposition and Settlement of James Orr, Settlements (22 Sept. 1913--3-1 Dec. 1913), Scottish-Record Office, 55Nicoll, ed., Letters of Denney, p. 218. 56T. M. Lindsay, "The Late Professor Orr, " British Weekly, 23 October 1913, p. 94. 57 Orr, ed., International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia, 1: viii. 58See advertisements in original British edition of 1915. 59 Paul Hutchinson, "The Conservative Reaction in China, " The Journal of Religion 2 (1922): 346-347. 60 J. Oscar Boyd, review of the InternatwonaZ Standard BibZe Encyclopaedia, in Princeton Theological Review 15 (1917): 338-339. 61See preface to the 1929 edition. For example, two relatively less conservative articles (on Pauline Theology and Sin) were excised. To the existing article on evolution was added "Evolution: The Theory Disproved, " by Fundamentalist John Roach Straton. The Premillenarian view of the Second Coming was now given extensive treatment. 62 Letter from Phyllis L. Janis, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 29 April 1983. CONCLUSION

It should be clear by now that James Orr deserves to be recognized as an able and exceptionally vigorous participant in a period of dramatic theological challenge and change. With an almost encyclopaedic capacity for scholarship, he set himself the task of thoroughly understanding the full range of ideas and movements that ' challenged the theological status quo of his day. And drawing on the philosophical and theological traditions of his native land, as well as on the writings of confessional and mediating theologians from the Continent (especially I. A. Dorner), he proceeded to evaluate those newer ideas and movements, usually, as it turned out, in a 2 negative light.

The significance of his theological contribution lay neither in its brilliance or its originality. Rather, it lay in the breadth of his grasp of orthodox theology and the exhaustiveness of the reading upon which his conclusions were based. As theological science has continued to expand and demand specialization, few indeed have been able to match the success with which Orr blended a comprehensive perspective with an accurate mastery of detail.

The significance of his contribution also lay in the vigour 3 with which he defended and diffused his views. In the space of just twenty years, he edited a major encyclopaedia, wrote sixteen books, literally hundreds of articles and reviews and numerous published sermons and addresses, Simultaneously he travelled widely,

233 2? 4 seeking to stay abreast of the latest theological developments on the

Continent, and criss-crossing North America and his native Britain on indefatigable lecture tours. Sometimes he went to press precipitously; often he repeated himself, and not all that he wrote or spoke was especially useful. Yet the cumulative effect was that his voice seemed omnipresent in his day. At the very least he forced all those who espoused new views to proceed with caution, and his death was lamented as marking the loss of a familiar reference point. Many of his works, due to their preoccupation with literature and opinions of transitory interest, soon became dated and were eventually forgotten.

There were some exceptions, though; in particular, Orr's last great work, the International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia, pressed the stamp of his influence on several generations of conservative Protes- tants in North America..

In light of the impression of theological intransigence that

Orr left (and seemed sometimes deliberately to cultivate), it is important to note that in fact he was far from unaffected by the newer currents of religious thought. For example, reflecting the influence of the widespread nineteenth-century movement that elevated the authority of moral consciousness, he joined those Scots who retreated from strict adherence to Westminster Calvinism. The Hegelian idealism he encountered at Glasgow University, by both attracting and repelling him left an indelible impression on his thought. Then, within certain significant limits, he conceded the veracity of evolutionary theory, while his biblical studies led him to acknowledge many newer critical

's insights and to abandon the older theory of Scripture verbal inerrancy. Moreover, reflecting a general tendency in theological 235 scholarship, he sought to appreciate the humanity and human development of Jesus Christ, while at the same time treating Him as the focal point of the Christian faith.

Yet even after these accommodations to contemporary influences have been fully acknowledged, it is still most appropriate to describe

Orr's contribution overall as a call for continuity with the older orthodoxy. An anonymous contemporary of Orr astutely observed of him that "his mind was early made up, and its bent was towards defence, 5 and never towards accommodation., By his first book, The Christian

View (1893), his theological position was fixed and his defensive posture set. Subsequently, virtually all his copious remarks on such topics as Ritschlianism, biblical criticism and evolutionary theory were critical and negative in emphasis. His principal concern, apparently, was always to identify the dangers and weaknesses, as opposed to the positive gains and strengths, that inhered in such developments.

Not only so, but as the Glasgow Herald suggested, "the habit of being a defender of the faith grew on him. "6 As he aged and the fortunes of conservative orthodoxy declined, he did grow more stubborn. His writing gradually lost what freshness and elasticity it possessed in earlier years, and his thought hardened into familiar outlines.

Nevertheless it would be a misunderstanding of the situation,

label him and a grave injustice to Orr, simply to an old curmudgeon

dismiss who failed to keep pace with the times, and to his theological

brittle defective contribution as the unfortunate consequence of a and temperament. To be sure, factors of temperament did help to shape his 236 contribution, and these ought to be acknowledged in their place, though it needs to be remarked that they influenced the flavour more than the substance of his work. Orr's theological contribution was also, and more decisively, shaped by a number of intellectual convictions and perceptions that need to be understood.

The first of these was that evangelical orthodoxy (which he considered the Gospel in doctrinal outline) amounted to essential

Christianity and was most certainly true. It commended itself to him on a number of grounds. In the first place, there was his frequent suggestion (interestingly, quite akin to the Ritschlian concept of value judgment) that the Gospel, interpreted along the lines of the older evangelicalism, was so incomparably wonderful that it must be of divine origin (and therefore authentic). In the second place, as he once said,, it "has the stamp of reason and reality upon itself, and can amply justify itself at the bar both of history and experience. "7 And closely allied to this, in the third place, was the coherency of the world-view Orr alleged that conservative ortho- dozy provided. For Orr it made sense out of life; therefore, it had to be true. Thus Orr's apologetic for evangelical orthodoxy, while it tended to stress rational considerations, was actually a multi- dimensional appeal to a range of intuitive capacities to apprehend truth. As such, it fit well within the common sense traditions of his native Scotland and his personal teachers, John Veitch, John

Cairns and Henry Calderwood. The important consequence was that for

Orr evangelical orthodoxy was more or less self-authenticating, and

impregnable. his confidence in its truth virtually

into insular fideism, He might have lapsed quite easily an were 237

the it not for a second significant conviction, namely, rational unity of all truth. James Denney, who was perhaps as qualified as anyone to assess his work, noted that

Nothing marks [Orr's] whole work as a teacher of theology more strongly than his sense of the unity of knowledge The for him just instrument for .... mind was the the unification of all truth within our reach, and a difference at any point made a difference through all-8

It was a marvellous vision of universal rational coherency, one which the modern mind tends to view, somewhat wistfully perhaps, as belonging to a bygone age of innocence. Yet Orr certainly came by it honestly enough. It was the very one that had been proclaimed both by Veitch and by the Cairds during Orr's student days. The 9 common sense vision of wholeness, and the Hegelian vision of rational unity simply bore fruit in the mind of an impressionable student. By 10 his own admission, Orr learned his lessons well.

Once acquired, this conviction protected Orr against the temptation to preserve one's beliefs by cutting them off from all possible refutation by contrary external referents. He held that everything within the scope of human experience had the potential either to confirm or to undermine the claims of evangelical orthodoxy.

Once he remarked rather vividly that his faith would be devastated if the Gospels could be shown to be Medieval hoaxes. In principle at least, he was prepared to be dislodged from his position if the facts warranted it,

Orr's conception of truth's unity implied that the range of

indeed. To his challenges to orthodoxy might be very extensive credit

In his he responded with an equally broad apologetic agenda. efforts to buttress orthodoxy, he ranged across the disciplines of science, 238 philosophy and history, as well as biblical criticism and contemporary

theology. And no less remarkable than the sheer scope of his work was the degree of his competence in all these endeavours. He was a

rare polymath.

A third conviction, no less significant than the aforementioned

two in shaping Orr's contribution, was that genuine Christian faith

(that is, evangelical orthodoxy) implied what we might describe (.though L Orr never did) as a two-story cosmology; that is, belief in the

existence of two distinct realms, the natural and the supernatural,

and in the fact of periodic miraculous intersections of the two in the

interests of religion. Orr's perception of later nineteenth century

developments tended to intensify his conviction about this. The

pressing question of the day, he suggested, was:

Is everything in nature, history and religion reducible to 'natural' explanation? Or is there a plane of divine action above the 'natural'--a true 'supernatural'--in an economy of revelation culminating in Jesus Christ and his redemption? 11

For Orr, of course, the question was rhetorical. He was

certain that such a conceptually simple bi-level cosmology was a

fundamental component of Christian belief. It was woven inextricably

into the very fabric of the religion, and could not be excised without

dealing a mortal blow to the religion itself. Orr's conclusion was

just the opposite of that to which Rudolf Bultmann came some years 12 after Orr's death.

In effect, Orr affirmed two things. One was the transcendence

of God. This was, of course, basic to traditional theism, and

but it had been especially reinforced in Calvinist thought, rather

by seriously challenged in the nineteenth century various monistic 239 philosophies. Evidently Orr had taken to heart Veitch's incessant diatribe against Hegelian idealism, as well as Veitch's plea that dualism was essential to the survival of religion. Such an assumption, at any rate, would help to account for Orr's extraordinary concern to denounce pantheism and monisms of any kind, even when, as far as the publics. to which he appealed were concerned, he was battling straw men.

The other thing Orr affirmed was the possibility of various means of contact with the transcendent God. He envisioned a sort of

Jacob's ladder of perpetual intercourse between the supernatural and natural planes in the interests of divine-human relationship. Divine

revelation could break through in a downward direction while human reason and other intuitive faculties could climb freely upwards into

the higher metaphysical realm, all such interplay occurring in the shadow of the most magnificent intersection of all, the Incarnation.

In Orr's mind, all such divine initiatives were by definition miracu-

lous or supernatural, and often involved a temporary suspension or 13 transcendence of natural law.

Orr's responses to the various challenges he faced were consequences of these cosmological ssumptions. Ritschlianism was so

terribly horrifying because it threatened to seal off the transcendent

(or metaphysical) realm from man altogether. It not only denied the legitimate claims of reason, but also the capacity of any human faculties to reach upwards to God from the confines of nature. Not-

like withstanding the appealing case made in works Wilhelm Herrmann's

Communion iv-,th God, Orr was convinced that Ritschlianism substantially denied the possibility of the divine-human intercourse that was the 240 essence of relational religion. This fatal flaw, as Orr conceived it, was one that was rooted in Ritschl's theological method. Consequently his entire system had been corrupted. Nothing of worth cculd be salvaged; the system deserved to be discarded as a whole.

Orr's encounter with Ritschlianism made him prone to detect similar "dangerous" tendencies in other movements. It is not surprising, then, that he should see in the prevailing theories of Old Testament criticism another weighty attack on supernatural-natural, divine- human intercourse. The great flaw, as he saw it, of all the popular reconstructions of Old Testament history was that they declined to affirm the historic incidence of direct and supernatural action by

God, and pure, propositional revelation from God. The new theories hedged on what James Barr has more recently described as the "prophetic 14 paradigm" of revelation. To withdraw such conceptions of revelation from Christianity, Orr believed, was to emasculate its character as an interpersonal religion, and to undermine confidence in its claim to possess infallible and authoritative truth.

There seems to be a curious inconsistency in Orr's thought when we compare this stand on Old Testament criticism with that which he took concerning evolutionary theory. If divine revelation had to be

"direct" and to suspend natural law in order to be truly supernatural, it should follow that the creation of man as a supernatural being could not be achieved by God working immanently through the evolutionary process. But this is precisely what Orr seemed willing to allow. At the same time, however, he was adamantly opposed to any evolutionary

long theory of man's moral history. His concern here, sensitized by

Hegelian rationalizations of sin's necessity, was that the seriousness 241 of sin might be diminished by indexing it to the relative standards of the evolutionary process rather than to the absolute standard of the will of a transcendent God. Hence Orr's insistence on a transcendent moral reference point. In the face of F. R. Tennant's reasonable qualifications of man's guilt and liability, Orr adamantly defined

sin as that which absolutely ought not to be.

Finally, Orr detected naturalistic presuppositions again in the

intense quest for the historical Jesus. In this instance the naturalistic ethos expressed itself in an unwillingness to acknowledge

the transcendent character (the divinity) of the Jesus of history. In

Orr's mind, however, the orthodox doctrine of Incarnation was at once

the greatest affront to the naturalistic Zeitgeist and the greatest.

proof that the line between the supernatural and the natural had been

decisively breached. He viewed the Incarnation as absolutely essential

to religion. Only a divine Christ was adequate to support the faith

needs, and to sustain the activities, of believers dwelling in the natural sphere.

These three convictions--the authenticity of evangelical

orthodoxy, the unity of all truth, and the abiding necessity of this

two-story cosmology, were particularly decisive for Orr. Alongside L them, and to some extent already implied in our discussion, was a

fourth and equally decisive conviction concerning the character of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Like many other thinkers,

ideas Orr acknowledged the existence of a range of and theories which

have just seriously challenged all three of the assumptions we 242 described. But Orr went further and generalized the character of

"ism" this opposition. The enemy of true Christianity was no single or heresy, or even cluster of them, but the spirit of the times, the

Zeitgeist itself. The very times were warped.

Inevitably this led to the suspicion that the enemy was omnipresent, and that any and all innovations and deviations from orthodoxy might very well be rooted in this pernicious influence. Here was a rationale par excellence for conservativism. On such a premise, clearly the safest thing to do was to stand fast and hope that the pressure would eventually abate.

At this point we must acknowledge the significant influence of that which was more a matter of temperament than rational conviction.

It was suggested at the time of Orr's death that he had a temper hostile to accommodation, and inclined profoundly to distrust "all 15 that was not direct and decided., He was inclined to regard scholarly caution and tentativeness as indicative of hedging or hypocrisy, and consequently to despise it. For his own part, he gravitated towards dichotomous conflict as his basic interpretive paradigm. Christianity was in cosmic struggle with naturalism. No eclecticism was possible. Quoting Franz Julius Delitzsch, he held that "the answer can only be yes or no. The deep gulf remains. It 16 will remain to the end of time. "

This was an extremely convenient analytic tool. With it Orr

"heart" issue, in doing could slice through to the of an and so dismiss books, thinkers and even whole movements at a stroke. It is hardly

frequently levelled him surprising, though, that a criticism against

And was that he indulged in inaccurate generalizations. without a 243 doubt Orr sometimes used this paradigm of conflict unfairly as a polemical bludgeon. As long as "new light" did not jeopardize his

theological position, he was most agreeable to it. But once he had worked out his own view, and made what he deemed necessary adjustments,

he reintroduced his paradigm and consigned all those who accommodated modern thought to a greater degree than he had to the side of natural-

ism and unbelief. Those who went farther than he, regardless of the

sincerity of their motives, were in fact capitulators to the spirit of

the times. Needless to say, Orr's charges were not appreciated by

those he accused.

Given the centrality of the supernatural to Orr's conception

and 'defence of the Christian faith, it is curious how little he said

over the years to commend the supernatural's plausibility. Basically

he stressed the reasonableness of the idea that a personal, loving God

should take nature-suspending initiatives to communicate with, and

establish fellowship with., his creatures. It was theism, then, that 17 made divine, supernatural activity plausible. Otherwise Orr said

very little to cushion the offensiveness of miracle. He made no

effort, for example, to modify prevailing views of the relationship

between divine agency and natural law. Rather, he tended to treat the

supernatural like a gauntlet. He challenged his generation with it.

Whether people accepted or rejected it, it was the price of Chris-

tianity.

Generally speaking, Orr's call for continuity failed to evoke a

his in Britain. Often sympathetic response from scholarly peers they

found his arguments less than compelling, and they tended not to

the times. At endorse his blanket negation of the spirit of the same 244 time they could not help but feel that Orr was partially blind to the host of sincere motives and sound reasons that lay behind the innovations he so stoutly resisted.

In response Orr increasingly engaged in efforts to popularize his views. While he felt some pangs about his growing alienation from the academic community, he probably felt fewer than many others would in similar circumstances. For someone with his unprivileged upbringing and populist, United Presbyterian bent, the shift was somewhat natural and even comfortable. And it was made a good deal more

comfortable by the positive reception he received.

Orr's success as a popularizer may be attributed to a number of factors. First, he encountered in popular circles a much greater willingness to pay the price he charged for the preservation of

Christianity--a countenancing of the supernatural. Apparently the

"modern view" had not yet permeated the ranks of uninitiated laypersons.

But Orr's success was also due to the fact that many of the arguments he employed in defence of conservative orthodoxy did not presuppose

any special theological expertise. For example, any layman could

appraise Orr's argument that evangelical orthodoxy must be authentic because it made sense out of life, and rang true to personal experience.

Just as easily could a layman evaluate his argument that the traditional view of Israel's history was vindicated by the wonderful impres-

it sion it conveyed of harmony and progress. Similarly, seemed to make

in sense that if the historical framework presented the Old Testament

itself discredited was proved false, the Old Testament was effectively

As for Ritsch- as a trustworthy guide in religious matters as well. lianism, how could anyone take seriously a system whose very premises, 245 as Orr claimed, flew in the face of common sense?

In ways such as these Orr made intelligent laymen feel that they were competent to judge on the theological questions of the day.

And while it might be argued that Orr improperly encouraged laymen to reach beyond their grasp, it should also be kept in mind that he was perpetrating a longstanding democratic and particularly Scottish ideal.

There was yet another factor. Not all laymen were willing or able to follow the intricate arguments of theology and biblical scholarship. But almost everyone could grasp (and enjoy) the idea of conflict

--two lines drawn up, no quarter given, a battle to the death, only one victor. The imagery was clear, entertaining and gripping. And it was just this sort of thing that Orr delivered so well. When these factors are combined with Orr's platform ability, wit and scathing ridicule, one can begin to understand his success as a popularizer of conservative orthodoxy.

As he felt rationalism encroach more tightly, and as he saw unbelief extending its line of advance, Orr concluded (as we have already noted) that the problem lay, in the final analysis, in the spirit of the times itself. Other conservative Protestants, faced with the relentless erosion of their position, came to more or less the same conclusion. Consequently they grew pessimistic, disengaged themselves from the "apostate" world, and even adopted a premillennial

fearfully degenerating, its eschatology that saw the world as and only hope in an imminent Parousia.

Orr, however, declined to take refuge in such radical alternatives. 246

To the end of his career he held that history was teleological, that its

direction was upward, that all was still well. Unlike many proto-

Fundamentalists with whom he associated, he remained postmillennial in 18 his eschatology. He continued to expect much Kingdom advance even

prior to the Second Coming, and so he could confidently say:

It is not with a sense of failure, therefore, but with a sense of triumph, that I see the progress of the battle between faith and unbelief. I have no fear that the conflict will issue in defeat. Like the ark above the waters, Christ's religion will ride in safety the waves of present-day unbelief, as it has ridden the waves of unbelief in days gone by, bearing in it the hopes of the future of humanity. 19

This attitude helps to account for Orr's quite pronounced

tolerance of opinions differing from his own, a tolerance which he

demonstrated in the ecclesiastical cases of David Macrae, Fergus

Ferguson and George Adam Smith. Orr's "large=hearted toleration"

stood out even to T. M. Lindsay, whose obituary of Orr otherwise 20 damned him by faint praise. George Adam Smith agreed, noting that

our late colleague was a big-hearted man and a genuine supporter of freedom in the Church for those from whom he conscientiously differed. I could not agree either with the premises or with the arguments of his book on the Old Testament, but these differences never disguised from me the strength of his powers and the liberality of his mind. 21

Orr was invariably ready to fight for his convictions, but his method was always strictly argumentative. He carefully abstained from

ecclesiastical manipulation and suppression of convictions. This

issued partly from his ability to distinguish between the worth of

from persons and the merits of their views, and partly his conviction

that history was a divinely-guided logical movement. Truth would

triumph inevitably, but it would do so most efficiently in a free marketplace of ideas. 247

Still, Orr's position had dissonant elements. How could the conviction that history was moving in the direction of belief and the

Kingdom be reconciled with his view that the present time was one of growing unbelief and skepticism? Orr's answer was that the present malaise (infection, abnormality, bias) of the Zeitgeist was only a temporary one. It was a passing thing. And its cure lay in a new wave of spiritual renewal and evangelical awakening that would sweep the Zeitgeist away and restore credibility to the supernatural scheme 22 of Christian truth.

In the meantime one had to accept the unpopularity of one's orthodox convictions. The arguments in favour of orthodoxy had to be patiently restated. There was no need for alarm or panic amid such perplexing times. Rather, what was needed in the way of a proper response was- "

above all, a cool head, strong faith, a little patience, action like that of the mariners with Paul, who when they feared lest they should have fallen among rocks, and when for many days neither sea nor star appeared, sensibly dropped four anchors, and waited for the day-23 ENDNOTES

1Orr "did not speak about men like Kant and Hegel, Hartmann and Schopenhauer, Schleiermacher and Ritschl, Spencer and Darwin, from hearsay, or on the strength of compendiums; he had mastered them in James Denney, "The Late Professor Orr, " their own writings ... ." British Weekly, 11 Sept. 1913, p. 576. In the course of such study, Orr acquired a quantity of "German Works and Pamphlets" which he offered to the United Free Church College, Glasgow. Trust Disposition and Settlement of James Orr, Settlements (22 Sept. -31 Dec. 1913), SRO. 2Orr was familiar with the challenges posed to Christianity by the comparative examination of other contemporary world religions. His comments on this subject, however, were generally incidental in nature, as when he replied to a series of articles in the Hibbert Journal which had been sympathetic to Japanese Buddhism. See James Orr, "Does Japan Need the Gospel? " Missionary Record of the United Free Church (January 1906): 6-9; and James Orr, "Religion and Morality in Japan, " United Free Church Magazine (January 1906): 26-31. Orr's argument was that Christianity demonstrated a moral superiority and beneficial influence that indicated its unique and divine origin. This apologetic, already presented in such works as C. Loring Brace, Gesta Christi 2nd ed. (London, 1886), may also be seen in James Orr, "The Factors in the Expansion of the Christian Church, " in Christ and Civilization, ed. by John Brown Paton and others (London, 1910), pp. 189-233. 3Arthur S. Peake referred to Orr's "vigorous conservativism" in his review of Revelation and Inspiration, by James Orr, in the Ho Zborn Review 1 (1910): 560. 40rr's direct influence continues to be felt along other lines as well, Carl F. H. Henry, the dean of American conservative evangelical theologians, was greatly impressed in his student days by Orr's concept of an evangelical world view, and now edits a series of monographs that seeks to spell out the multi-disciplinary implications of that world view, Carl F. H. Henry, letter to Glen Scorgie, 12 November 1983. The series is entitled Studies in a Christian World View. Arthur F, Holmes, one contributor to the same series, quotes from Orr's The Christian View in his Contours of a World View (Grand Rapids, 1983), p. 13. In addition, Orr's Revelation and Inspiration has been held on both sides of the Atlantic to offer the most inerrantist doctrine articulate conservative alternative to the of Scripture championed by the Princeton giant B. B. Warfield. See I. Howard Marshall, Biblical Inspiration (Grand Rapids, 1983), p. 40; Case for Orthodox Theology (Philadelphia, 1949), and E. J. Carnell, The pp. 99-100. 248 249

5"Dr. James Orr, " Athenaeum, 13 September 1913, p. 254. 6"Death of Dr. James Orr, " Glasgow Herald, 8 September 1913, p. 11. 7James Orr, The Christian View, 3rd ed. (Edinburgh, 1897), p. 16. $Denney, "The Late Professor Orr, " p. 576. 9George Elder Davie describes common sense as "a primitive vision of the whole" in his The Democratic InteZZect (Edinburgh, 1961), p. 255. 10George M. Reith, Reminiscences of the United Free Church General Assembly (Edinburgh and London, 1933), p. 131. 11James Orr, "The Scientific Meaning of Inspiration, " Homi Zetic Review 60 (1910) : 261. 12Bultmann's programmatic essay "Neues Testament und Mythologie" (1941) may be read in English translation in Rudolf Bultmann, New Testament and Mythology, and Other Basic Writings, ed. and trans. Schubert M. Ogden (Philadelphia, 1984), pp. 1-43. 13In keeping with this, it is fascinating to note Orr's description of the millennium: "a period of open vision and of actual inter-communion between heaven and earth, such as we now know nothing intercourse heaven be of ... a period when the gates of with will reopened, and the angels of God will be seen ascending and descending, in Jacob's James Orr, Sidelights Christian as vision . ." on Doctrine (London, [1909)), p. 175. 14James Barr, Escaping From Fundamentalism (London, 1984), pp. 20-32. 15 "Dr. James Orr, " Athenaeum, p. 254. 16Orr, The Christian View, p. 372. There are some similarities, though we would not attempt to press them unfairly, between Orr's outlook and that which lay behind Pope Pius IX's Syllabus of Errors (1864) and Pope Pius X's suppression of Catholic Modernism in 1907. These Roman Catholic developments are mentioned in Alec R. Vidler, The Church in an Age of Revolution (Harmondsworth, 1971), pp. 153, 179-180. 17For Orr's treatment of miracles, see his David Hume (Edinburgh, 1903), pp. 192-216; Revelation and Inspiration (London, 1910), 109-130; The Faith of a Modern Christian (London and New York, 19101, pp. 61-78. 18Orr, Sidelights, pp. 174-175. 19Orr The Christian View, p. 347. , 250

20T. M. Lindsay, "The Late Professor Orr, " British Weekly, 23 October 1913, p. 94. This is a transcript of Lindsay's memorial address to the opening session of the 1913-1914 academic year at the Glasgow United Free Church College.

21George Adam Smith, letter to Glasgow United Free Church Presbytery, "Glasgow Presbytery and the Late Professor Orr, " British Weekly, 18 September 1913, pp. 611-612. This tendency of Orr's is manifested as well in an otherwise insignificant event. Shortly after the publication of David S. Cairns's Christianity in the Modern World, in which Cairns shows a rather marked debt to Ritschl, Orr recommended him for a post at Auburn (New York) Theological Seminary and encouraged Cairns to consider it. James Orr, letter to David S. Cairns, 30 June 1906. 22James Orr, The BibZe Under Trial (London, x19071 ), pp. 302- 303. 23James Orr, "Prevailing Tendencies in Modern Theology, " Review and Expositor 3 (1906): 571. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. UNPUBLISHED PRIMARY SOURCE MATERIAL

Glasgow University Matriculation Album, 1865-1871. Glasgow University Archives.

Henry, Carl F. H. Letter to Glen Scorgie, 12 November 1983.

Inventory of the Personal Estate of James Orr. Inventories, 13 November 1913--31 December 1929. Scottish Record Office.

Janis, Phyllis L., of William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. Letter to Glen Scorgie, 29 April 1983.

Minutes of the Board of the Glasgow School of Christian Workers, 1910-1914. Glasgow University Library, Special Collections.

Minutes of Glasgow Presbytery. of the United Presbyterian Church, 1868-1873. Scottish Record Office.

Minutes of the Glasgow United Free Church College Senate, 1900-1913. Glasgow University Archives.

Minutes of the Managers of East Bank Church, Hawick, 1873-1891. Trinity Church, Hawick.

Minutes of Melrose Presbytery of the United Presbyterian Church, 1872-1891. Scottish Record Office.

"Critical Heb. 4: 9 With Special Orr, James. Dissertation on ... Reference to the Sabbath. " Glasgow University Henderson Prize Essay, 1869. Glasgow University Archives.

"Critical Examination of Passages in the Writings of the Fathers of the First Three Centuries Bearing on the Sabbath Controversy. " Glasgow University Henderson Prize Essay, 1870. Glasgow University Archives.

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Orr, James McMichael. Grandson of James Orr. Interview, May 1982.

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Tennant, F. R. Letter to David S. Cairns, 14 December 1905. Property of David Cairns, Aberdeen.

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B. THE PUBLISHED WORKS OF JAMES ORR (listed chronologically)

"Calvin. " In The Reformers, pp. 241-295. [Edited by James Brown]. Glasgow, 1885.

"Work Among Young Men in Germany: Herr von Schlumbach. " United Presbyterian Magazine 5 (1888) : 201-204.

The Christian View of God and the World, as Centring in the Incar- nation. Edinburgh, 1893.

"The Kingdom of God. " Expository Times 4 (_1893) : 464-466.

Review of Apologetics, by A. B. Bruce. The Thinker 3 (1893): 272-277.

Review of Der Verkehr des Christen mit Gott, by Wilhelm Herrmann. Critical Review 3 (1893): 401-410.

" Expository Times 5 (1893): "Wendt on the Self-Witness of Jesus. 23-28.

"Can Professor Pfleiderer's View Justify Itself? " In The Supernatural in Christianity, pp. 35-67. By James Orr, Robert Rainy and Marcus Dods. Edinburgh, 1894. 253

"The Edinburgh Reply to Professor Pfleiderer's Gifford Lectures. " The Thinker 5 (1894): 427-429.

"Professor Pfleiderer's Gifford Lectures, " The Thinker 5 (1894): 333- 335.

"Revelation and Inspiration. " The Thinker 6 (. 1894): 35-43.

Review of Christianity and Evolution, by James Iverach. Critical Review 4 (1894): 264-265.

Review of Les Origines Historiques de Za Theologie De RitschZ, by Henri Schoen. Critical Review 4 (1894): 412-413.

"The Coming of the Kingdom in the Church, as Dependent on the Knowledge of the King. " United Presbyterian Magazine 12 (1895): 485-488.

Review of Gesa=eZte Aufsätze, by Albrecht Ritschl. Critical Review 5 (1895) : 270-272.

"Some Aspects of Kant's Theory of Religion. " The Thinker 8 (1895): 238-243.

Orr, James, ed. United Presbyterian Magazine, vols. 14-17 (July 1896-1900).

"The Contribution of the United Presbyterian Church to Religious Thought and Life. " In Memorial of the Jubilee Synod of the United Presbyterian Church, pp. 88-98. Edinburgh, 1897.

Introduction to The Right of Systematic Theology, by B. B. Warfield. Edinburgh, 1897.

The RitschZian Theology and the Evangelical Faith. London, 1897.

"Professor Calderwood's Work in Philosophy. " United Presbyterian 15 (_1898) 10-12 Magazine : .

Hastings Dictionary of the BibZe, 1899 ed. S. v. "Kingdom of God, of Heaven. "

Neglected Factors in the Study of the Early Progress of Christianity. London, 1899.

Review of Reconciliation by Incarnation, by D. W. Simon. United Presbyterian Magazine 16 (1899): 137.

2 Review of The Fundamental Ideas of Christianity, vols., by John Caird. United Presbyterian Magazine 17 (1900): 19-21.

The Early Church: Its History and Literature. London, 1901.

The Progress of Dogma. London, 1901. 254

Review of The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation: The Positive Development of the Doctrine, by Albrecht Ritschl. Critical Review 11 (1901): 3-11.

Orr, James, and Denney, James, eds. The Union Magazine, vols. 1-4 (1901-Feb. 1904).

"The General Assembly of the United Free Church of Scotland. " Pres- byterian and Reformed Review 13 (1902): 615-619.

David Flume and His Influence on Phi Zosophy and Theo Zogt'. Edinburgh, 1903.

RitschZianism: Expository and Critical Essays. London, 1903.

"Christ in the Thought of Today. " Baptist Review and Expositor 1 (1904) : 283-303.

"Westminster Confession of Faith. " In Proceedings of the Eighth General Council of the AZ Ziance of Reformed Churches Holding the Presbyterian System, pp. 113-114. London, 1904.

"What is God? " In Questions of Faith: A Series of Lectures on the Creed, pp. 1-27. Edited by P. Carnegie Simpson. London, 1904.

"Why the Mind Has a Body. " Princeton Theological Review 2 (1904): 563-569.

Orr, James, and Denney, James, eds. United Free Church Magazine, October 1904 - September 1906.

God's Image in Man and its Defacement in the Light of Modern Denials. London, 1905.

"Does Japan Need the Gospel? " Missionary Record of the United Free Church 6 (1906): 6-9.

"Evolution in its Bearings on man. " Homiletic Review 52 (1906): 93-97. C1906] From Unbelief to Faith. Stirling, .

"The Issues in Criticism. " Scottish Review 2 (1906): 247.

"Old Testament Problem. " Glasgow Herald, 25 October 1906, p. 3.

"Prevailing Tendencies in Modern Theology. " Review and Expositor 3 (1906) : 571-587.

The Problem of the OZd Testament. London, 1906.

"Professor W. E. Addis on Hebrew Religion. " Ew os Cory Times 18 (1906) : 119-125. 255

Church "Religion and Morality in Japan. " United Free Magazine (Jan. 1906): 26-31.

The Bible Under Trial: Apologetic Papers in View of Present-Day Assaults on HoZy Scripture. London, 1907].

"Evangelical Principles in the Bible. " In Maintaining the Unity: Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference and Diamond Jubilee Celebration of the Evangelical Alliance, pp. 142-151. London, 1907.

"The Problem of the Old Testament Re-Stated. " Contemporary Review 92 (1907): 200-212.

"Some Recent Developments in Criticism and Theology. " Princeton Theological Review 5 (1907): 177-187.

The Virgin Birth of Christ. London, 1907.

[1907; The Virgin Birth of Christ. London, repr. 1938]. A 31-page booklet.

"Professor Peake on Biblical Criticism. " The Interpreter 4 (1908) : 364-372.

The Resurrection of Jesus. London, 1908.

Orr, James. "American Theology as seen by a Scottish Theologian. " Homiletic Review 58 (1909): 102-105.

"Calvinism and Protestantism. " Missionary Record of the United Free Church 9 (1909): 196-198.

"A Critical Revolt: Professor B. D. Eerdmans' 'Old Testament Studies. "' Glasgow Herald, 28 August 1909, p. 9.

"Need and Basis of a Doctrine of Holy Scripture. " Review and Expositor 6 (1909) : 379-393. [1909]. Side Zights on Christian Doctrine. London,

"Calvinism. " In Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Re Zigion and Ethics, vol. 3 (1910), pp. 146-155.

"The Factors in the Expansion of the Christian Church. " In Christ and Civilization: A Survey of the Influence of the Christian Religion upon the Course of Civilization, pp. 189-233. Edited by John Brown Paton and others. London, 1910.

1910. The Faith of a Modern Christian. London,

1910. Revelation and Inspiration. London, 256

"The Scientific Meaning of Inspiration. " Homiletic Review 60 (1910): 261-262.

Sin as a Problem of Today. London, 1910.

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"The Virgin Birth of Christ" (1910). In The Fundamentals. 4-vol. ed., 2: 247-260. Edited by R. A. Torrey and others. Los Angeles, 1917; repr. Chicago, 1970.

"The Early Narratives of Genesis" (1911). In The Fundamentals. 4-vol. ed.,, 1: 228-240. Edited by R. A. Torrey and others. Los Angeles, 1917; repr. Chicago, 1970.

"Science and Christian Faith" (1911). In The Fundamentals. 4-vol. ed., 1: 334-347. Edited by R. A. Torrey and others. Los Angeles, 1917; repr. Chicago, 1970.

"The Holy Scriptures and Modern Negations" (1912). In The Fundamentals. 4-vol. ed.,. 1: 94-110. Edited'by R. A. Torrey and others. Los Angeles, 1917; repr. Chicago, 1970.

The History and Literature of the EarZy Church. London, 1913.

Orr, James, gen. ed. International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia. 5 vols. Chicago, 1915.

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