Why In The Late 19th And Early 20th Centuries Did Many Congregationalists Turn Away From Congregationalism’s Traditional Calvinism? - Perspectives from 1907 and 1912 Congregationalists in America had long been Calvinists. For centuries they had espoused Calvin’s doctrines of: 1) Total Depravity 2) Unconditional Election 3) Limited Atonement 4) Irresistible Grace, and 5) Perseverance of the Saints. And Congregationalists long cited the Calvinistic Westminster Assembly’s Shorter Catechism of 1647 as an appropriate expression of their faith. But, that began to change, at least by 1865, when American Congregationalists held a national meeting in Boston and debated whether or not to include the words “Calvin” or “Calvinism” in a summary statement they were creating of the theology Congregationalists then generally shared. As it happened, Congregationalism’s famous “Burial Hill Declaration” was developed at that national meeting. And, as it turned out, the words “Calvin” and “Calvinism” were not included in that statement. Also, the Declaration contained no explicit reference to the Westminster Catechism. The delegates to that meeting and their wives took a train down to Plymouth one day during their meeting and that “Declaration” was read on Plymouth’s Burial Hill. ++++++ A description of this situation is given by Charles E. Jefferson, D.D. of New York in his article “Puritan Theology,” which appeared in the August 1912 edition of “The Homiletic Review,” 149. Rev. Dr. Jefferson long served as the minister of the Broadway Tabernacle, now Broadway Congregational Church, in New York City. As Jefferson wrote: “All through the eighteenth century and through more than half of the nineteenth century, Calvinism was the profest theology of the Congregational churches of America. Little by little, however, both ministers and laymen fell away from the old Calvinistic interpretations, and when, in 1865, the representatives of our churches met in Plymouth, Mass., and put forth what is known as the Burial Hill Declaration of Faith, it was deemed inexpedient to introduce into that declaration a statement recommended by the committee, to the effect that our churches still adhere to that body of doctrines known as Calvinism. Allegiance to the past was exprest in more general and elastic phrases, making room in American Congregationalism for all those who were no longer Calvinists. When the committee of our National Council formulated the creed of 1883, the Calvinistic tone and complexion were completely wanting, and when, in 1906, in Dayton, a creed was agreed upon by the representatives of our own denomination and two others seeking a basis of union, there was in it of Calvinism not a trace. So far, then, as our denomination is concerned, the Puritan theology may be said to have passed away. We are living in a new age, and the new wine can not be poured into the old skins.” ++++++ It should be noted that there are persons of Congregational heritage who continue to affirm Calvinism in our modern day. The point here is an historical one, that in the period spoken of in this post, the theological ideas of many Congregationalists were beginning to change significantly. ++++++ The following article appeared in the April 13, 1907 edition of “The Literary Digest,” 586. This article tells of a then new book by Frank Hugh Foster, D.D. Rev. Dr. Foster was a Congregational minister born in Springfield, MA, who graduated from Harvard in 1873 and Andover Theological Seminary in 1877. During his career, Foster was a professor at Middlebury College, Oberlin Theological Seminary, and Pacific Seminary in Berkely, CA. Has The New-England Theology Perished? The collapse of a great theology, if it has occurred, must be an event to cause more than a ripple in theological currents. This is what Frank Hugh Foster, D.D., in his Genetic History of New-England Theology, says has happened to that historic form of the Christian faith; a school of thought that, he declares, became the dominating school in New-England Congregationalism and that denomination took the initiative in the greatest forward movements of American Christianity in all its formative years. This and other facts show how fully New-England theology is a world phenomenon. Nevertheless, according to this author, this theology that at one time dominated American religious thought is gone, to leave scarcely a wrack behind. He says: But nothing is more remarkable about it than its collapse. At the beginning of the year 1880 it was in control of all the theological seminaries of the Congregational denomination, with possibly a single exception, and of some of the Presbyterian. At Andover the chair of theology was occupied by Park, at Yale by Harris, at Oberlin by Fairchild, at Chicago by Boardman. Fifteen years later these teachers had all been replaced, and in no case by a man who could be considered as belonging to the New-England school. It had endured more than one hundred and fifty years; it had become dominant in a great ecclesiastical denomination; it had founded every Congregational seminary; and, as it were, in a night, it perished from off the face of the earth. While the New-England theology had some achievements and excellencies to its credit, it finally failed precisely because of its Calvinism, including a determinism in which volitional freedom was apparent, only, and the will in fact constrained by divine sovereignty. We read: Calvinism exalts the sole causality of God; and New-England theology found a scheme of determinism essential to the maintenance of that causality. It felt the force of the argument from consciousness for freedom; and that argument almost carried the day. But to save the Calvinism, at last the word went forth for determinism; and when the new theology uttered this fiat, it pronounced at the same time its own judgment. Determinism belongs with materialism. The church was moving onward to a conflict such as it had never seen, with materialism in philosophy and with the materialistic spirit in practical life. On the one side stood the theory that the body is the man; that there is no soul, but all his thoughts and passions and purposes are the fruit of his brain; that, therefore, every human phenomenon stands under the strict law of cause and effect. Every deterministic theology is the unconscious ally of this theory. On the other side stood Christianity, teaching that man is an immortal and spiritual being, possessing a body as the organ of impressions and of activities, and possest of personality and freedom as his inalienable characteristics. The Christian Church knew it needed a philosophy which could sustain this position. It needed a clear doctrine of freedom, practical and theoretical. When New-England theology refused to give it such a doctrine, the church turned away from it. Nor was the content of this theology worse than its method. It fell at last before the inductive philosophy, just as a priori science gave way to the method of Bacon and the modern scientists. Thus: The theology had not fully grasped the meaning of the inductive method, because it did not yet know what it means to obtain the facts upon which an induction can be based. It had no conception of such processes of research as those by which Darwin got at the facts upon which he founded his theory of evolution. Its failure to appreciate Darwinism largely flowed from its failure to understand how comprehensive and thorough his experiments had been. However hospitable some of the leaders, like Park, were to all new ideas, and however careful to clear the way for any future prevalence of Darwinism, still the system was too fully committed to a multitude of presuppositions, such as the special creation of every human soul, and the entire separation of humanity from the animal world in dignity and meaning, to be able to survive the triumph of evolution as a philosophy of man and of life . . . . . . .” Its failure to get any satisfactory answer to the objections to the doctrine of depravity, its reference of the corruption of human nature to a `divine constitution, its blindness to the help offered it in its last days by the Darwinian doctrine of heredity, further accelerated the day of its own rejection. A theology which resorted for the defense of the most important Christian doctrines to an `ipse dixit, even if this self-contained and unanswering authority were that of the Bible, was thereby condemned-yes, self-condemned, since its great principle and the driving force of its long theological labors had been that whatever was Biblical was therefore rational. While Dr. Foster does not look for any revival of this perished school of thought, he sees in the present conflict, between the evangelical and the naturalistic wings of the church, the possibility of a recrudescence of some of its ideas. He says: If this great contest be decided in the favor of the evangelical theology, then the fundamental distinctions by which the New England fathers sought to define the holiness of God and bring the virtues of man into harmony and likeness with it, their emphasis upon the work of Christ, their better conception of the freedom and activity of man, will no doubt receive renewed attention. If the interval shall have sufficed to break certain illusions which they cherished, it will not have occurred in vain. The future evangelical theology even of New England will not be `the New England theology, but to it that theology will then be found to have contributed some of its most important principles. ++++++
Posted on: Sat, 23 Aug 2014 04:17:15 +0000
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