F1'!ty 1'ea1's of Proqrese in Church History, 65 FIFTY YEARS OF PROGRESS IN CHURCH HISTORY. RY ALBERT HENRY NEWMAN, D.D., LL.D., PROFESSOR OF CHURCH HISTORY IN THE SOUTHWESTERN BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, WACO, TEXAS. No new epoch in the study and writing of Church History is marked by the date of the founding of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, though the founding of this institution may no doubt be regarded as marking an epoch in the history of the Baptists of the Southland. Long before the year of our Lord, 1859, the principles and methods which since that date have guided historical study and teaching and writing, had come into effective application and had produced in Germany a literature that endures and will endure. The fresh impulse given to historical studies in general by the Hegelian philoso­ phy, with its profound conviction that no phase of life or thought is fortuitous or insignificant, but that each has its place in the working out of the great scheme of ideas that constitutes the goal of history, had already borne fruit abundantly in the writings of F. C. Baur, Gieseler, Neander and Hase in the field of general Church History, and a good start had been made in exhaustive research work on individual leaders and movements ann in local ecclesiastical histories. Ferdinand Christian Baur survived the beginning of our half-century by a single year, but his distinctive work was done many years before, and he had been influential in directing the studies of several church historians who predeceased him, as well as many that outlived him and extended their activities into the present period. As early as 1824 he had come under the influence of Schleiermacher and gave utterance to the maxim: "Without philosophy, history seems to me dumb and deaf." During the decade 1826 to 1836 the Hegelian philoso­ phy wrought a transformation in his views of religion and history) and he was led to attempt to explain the rise and prog- Downloaded from rae.sagepub.com at MCMASTER UNIV LIBRARY on June 30, 2015 66 The Review and Expositor. ress of Christianity as a process of development in which indi­ vidual will and initiative had little place, but in which each individual, with his activities, was regarded as tile product of other influences and teachings that converged in him. Best known and most objectionable is his application of these prin­ ciples to Jesus and to primitive Christianity. The "tendencies" of thought to which he ascribed the various books of .the New Testament he found more clearly manifest and more perfectly developed in Gnosticism and Manichaeanism on the one hand, and Ebionism on the other. His works on Gnosticism and Manichaeanism were based upon a thorough study of the mate­ rials that were available to him and still have their value. His monograph on the Doctrine of the Aionemeni, first pub­ lished in 1838, and that on The Trinity and tM Incarnation, published in 1841-3, applied the principles of historical criti­ cism and of development to these important doctrines in a w~y that greatly influenced all subsequent study of the history of doctrines. It does not fall within my province to define or to criticise Baur's attempt to reconstruct apostolic history on the basis of radical and persistent antagonism between the Judaizing and the Pauline or universalistic types of Christians. gmfice it to say that, in the opinion of some of his most enthusiastic disciples, he allowed the fact of such antagonism to assume' before his vision such exaggerated proportions as to blind him to all the rest of the great moving thoughts and interests of the time. His university lectures on the History of Doctrines and on Church History, published for the most part posthumously and just after 1859, are still of some value, though not rest­ ing upon so thorough a study of the sources as his works on the apostolic and immediately post-apostolictimes. Contemporary with Baur was August Neander (b. 1789, d. 1850). His great Hist(Yl'Y of the Chri8tian Religion and Church had been available for readers of German for twenty­ four years, and for five years an excellent translation had been diffusing its light throughout the English-speaking world. A convert from Judaism, deeply religious, deeply philosophical, full of enthusiasm for his newly found faith, 'he resolved while still a youth to devote his life to knowing and making known Downloaded from rae.sagepub.com at MCMASTER UNIV LIBRARY on June 30, 2015 Fifty Year8 of Proqrees in Church HiBtory. 67 to the profane the one Savior in the one sense, that is, the Lord Jesus Christ as God manifest in the flesh. He was greatly in­ fluenced by Schleiermacher and such semi-pantheistic philoso­ phers as Fichte and Schelling, as well as by earlier Platonizing modes of thought. But he became convinced that Schleier­ macher made too great concessions to the rationalistic spirit of the time, and he now gave to the New Testament its proper place of supreme authority and devoted much of his time and strength to the study of the early church fathers. His New Testament and patristic studies bore fruit in several valuable monographs. .He'early resolved to make Church History his life work, and earnestly prayed for divine guidance and preser­ vation from all errors. His earlier monographs, in which his conceptions of Church History and historiography were clearly revealed, constituted a preparation for his magnum OpU8. He became utterly dissatisfied with the pragmatism that prevailed among rationalistic and supernaturalistic writers on Church History alike, with its ascription of undue importance to indi­ vidual leaders and great public events (councils, etc.) ,and its tendency to ignore divine Providence and the gradual working out of God's purpose in history. He recognized Christianity as a power not born out of the depths of human nature, but as having its roots in Heaven, in its essence and in its origin ex­ alted above everything that human nature is able to create, as not merely doctrine, but JlS power and life, a life in which the divine enters into the human and transforms it. The history of the church or of Christianity he looked upon as the history of the permeation of human life with the life that came down from above in Christ Jesus. As the bit of leaven thrown into a great measure of meal brings about fermentation therein, and through its indwelling power leavens the whole, so Christianity as the heavenly ferment brings about in human nature a fer­ mentation that permeates it through and through and mani­ fests itself in life and thought. His maxim "pectu« est quod facit theologum" ("It is the heart that makes the theologian"), implies that he considered a right attitude toward God and a hearty sympathy with and understanding of his plans and purposes just as essential to a proper understanding of the Downloaded from rae.sagepub.com at MCMASTER UNIV LIBRARY on June 30, 2015 68 The Review and Expositor. meaning of the facts of Church History as it is to a proper understanding of the Scriptures and the divine teachings con­ tained therein; and he was by no means disconcerted by the sneers of his irreverent opponents who stigmatized his teaching as "pectoral theology". The history of the church was for Neander its consciousness of its own life. He regarded Church History in itself, without any doctoring or special effort to make it so, as edifying. He refused to distinguish between edificatory and instructive Church History, considering the errors and per­ versions of the past, rightly understood and described just as well calculated to edify as pious and heroic deeds and true teach­ ings. The history of the church, rightly understood and written, he regarded as a speaking testimony to the power of Ohritsian­ ity, as a school of Christian experience, as a voice of edification sounding on through all the centuries,as instruction and warn­ ing for all who will hear. Thus to write Church History was the purpose of his life, and right nobly and successfully did he fulfill the self-appointed task. It is doubtful whether any of us, even in this twentieth century, has attained to a juster conception of Church History or has used more effectively the materials of Church History for the betterment of humanity. It goes without saying that much material is available today that was not available seventy years ago, and it is not claimed that Neander's arrangement of his materials or his literary style are all that could be desired; but I do insist that the stu­ dent of Church History of fifty years ago, with Neander and Gieseler on his table, was not so ill equipped, even though he was obliged to do without the Church Histories of Schaff, Sheldon, Fisher, Hurst, Moller, McGlothlin, Moncrief and New­ man. Johann Karl Ludwig Gieseler was a contemporary of Baur and Neander (b. 1793). His works had long been available in German when this institution was founded and an English translation had already appeared. The excellent edition of Henry B. Smith was in course of publication. Gieseler was in almost every respect the antithesis of Neander. He was not deeply religious, not at all mystical, not at all philosophical or speculative, rationalistic rather than supernaturalistic. Nean- Downloaded from rae.sagepub.com at MCMASTER UNIV LIBRARY on June 30, 2015 Fifty Years of Proqress in Ohurch History~ 69 der was so absorbed in his studies and his religious meditations as to be incapable of managing aright his business affairs, and is said to have sometimes lost his way in going from his home in Berlin to the university, and even to have occasionally for­ gotten his name.