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Poems, Propositions, and Dogma: The Controversy over Religious Language and the Demise of Theology in American Learning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

D. G. Hart
D. G. Hart
Affiliation:
Postdoctoral fellow in history and religion in Duke University, Durham, North Carolina.
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Extract

One of the ironies in the annals of nineteenth-century American Protestantism is the impact that Horace Bushnell's famed address “Dogma and Spirit” had upon the theological scene. In his remarks before the Porter Rhetorical Society at Andover Seminary in September 1848, the Congregationalist minister from Hartford established his reputation as one of the more controversial, if not gifted, theologians in New England. Bushnell offered a vision of Christianity that he hoped would eliminate the theological bickering that, as he saw it, had plagued the church throughout its history. To be sure, many in Andover's audience would not have been surprised if Bushnell's quirky views on the Trinity and the Atonement drew fire from New England Calvinists. But few would have predicted that this reconciliatory address would provoke one of the era's more noteworthy debates, a lengthy one-and-a-half-year, 250-page quarrel between America's two most prominent Calvinist theologians, Princeton Seminary's Charles Hodge and Andover's Edwards A. Park.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 57 , Issue 3 , September 1988 , pp. 310 - 321
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1988

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References

1. Bushnell, , “Dogma and Spirit,” in God in Christ (Hartford, 1849), pp. 277–356.Google Scholar The contest between Hodge and Park ran as follows under these imaginative titles: Park, , “The Theology of the Intellect and that of the Feelings,” Bibliotheca Sacra (hereafter cited as BS) 7 (1850): 533–569;Google ScholarHodge, , “The Theology of the Intellect and that of the Feelings,” Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review (hereafter cited as BRPR) 22 (1850): 642–674;Google ScholarPark, , “Remarks on the Princeton Review,” BS 8 (1851): 135–180;Google ScholarHodge, , “Prof. Park's Remarks on the Princeton Review,” BRPR 23 (1851): 306–347;Google ScholarPark, , “Unity and Diversities of Belief even on Imputed and Involuntary Sin: with Comments on a Second Article in the Princeton Review,” BS 8 (1851): 594–647;Google ScholarHodge, , “Prof. Park and the Princeton Review,” BRPR 23 (1851): 674–695;Google ScholarPark, , “New England Theology,” BS 9 (1852): 170–220.Google Scholar

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10. On biblical Criticism in antebellum America, see Brown, Jerry Wayne, The Rise of Biblical Criticism in America, 1800–1870: The New England Scholars (Middletown, Conn., 1969);Google ScholarMoorehead, James H., “Joseph Addison Alexander: Common Sense, Romanticism, and Biblical Criticism at Princeton,” Journal of Presbyterian History 54 (1978): 51–65.Google Scholar On theological method, see Bozeman, , Protestants in an Age of Science;Google ScholarGura, , Wisdom, pp. 15–31;Google Scholar and Marsden, “Everyone One's Own Interpreter?”

11. “God in Christ,” pp. 440–445. On Princeton's notion of Scripture, see Hodge, Charles, Systematic Theology, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1975), pp. 1–19;Google ScholarMarsden, George M., Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism, 1870–1925 (New York, 1980), pp. 109–118;Google ScholarSandeen, Ernest, The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism (Chicago, 1970), pp. 114–131;Google Scholar and Mouw, Richard J., “The Bible in Twentieth-Century Protestantism: A Preliminary Taxonomy,” in Bible in America, pp. 142–144.Google Scholar

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14. “The Theology of the Intellect,” pp. 535–540, 545–551, 558–561. On Park's Convention Sermon, see Cecil,, Anthony C. Jr., The Theological Development of Edwards Amasa Park: Last of the “Consistent Calvinists” (Missoula, Mont., 1974), pp. 81–154;Google Scholar and Foster, , Edwards Amasa Park, pp. 148–171.Google Scholar

15. Hodge, , “The Theology of the Intellect and that of the Feelings, Article I,” in Essays and Reviews, p. 545.Google Scholar Some historians—Perry, , Intellectual Life, pp. 230–233;Google ScholarDouglas, , Feminization, pp. 177–178;Google ScholarHovenkamp, , Science and Religion, p. 55Google Scholar—incorrectly place Park's sympathies with the theology of the feelings. He identified his “Consistent Calvinism” with the intellect and Hodge's Old Calvinism with the feelings. Thus his intent was to defend the use of reason in theology and to demonstrate the intellectual superiority of his modified Calvinism.

16. Hodge, , “Theology of the Intellect,” pp. 548–549,Google Scholar and “God in Christ,” pp. 440–441; Smith, , “The Relations of Faith and Philosophy,” pp. 29–30.Google Scholar For a similar criticism of Park, see Smith, , “The Theological System of Emmons,” in Faith and Philosophy, pp. 218–219, 228–229.Google Scholar

17. “God in Christ,” pp. 443–447; and “The Theology of the Intellect and that of the Feelings, Article II,” in Essays and Reviews, pp. 607–611.

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19. Park, , “New England Theology,” pp. 178–184;Google ScholarSmith, , “Relations of Faith and Philosophy,” pp. 42–43.Google Scholar On the effects of preaching upon theology, see Bushnell, , Twentieth Anniversary: A Commemorative Discourse Delivered in the North Church of Hartford, 05 22, 1853 (Hartford, 1853), pp. 12–21;Google ScholarCalhoun, Daniel, The Intelligence of a People (Princeton, 1973), pp. 279–291;Google ScholarScott, Donald M., From Office to Profession: The New England Ministry, 1750–1850 (Philadelphia, 1978), pp. 112–147;Google Scholar and Calhoun, Daniel H., Professional Lives in America: Structure and Aspiration, 1750–1850 (Cambridge, 1965), pp. 167–177.Google Scholar

20. “Theology of the Intellect,” p. 609.

21. See Clarke's, An Outhne of Christian Theology (New York, 1898), pp. 1–57,Google Scholar and Brown's, Christian Theology in Outline (Edinburgh, 1910), pp. 1–54.Google Scholar For other conceptions of theology, see Warfield, Benjamin B., Brown, William Adams, and Smith, G. B., “The Task and Method of Systematic Theology,” American Journal of Theology 14 (1910): 170–233.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On the trends in American theology, see also Hutchison, , Modernist Impulse, pp. 76–144;Google ScholarAhlstrom, , “Theology in America,” pp. 285–298;Google ScholarKuklick, , Churchmen, pp. 216–229;Google ScholarHorton, Walter M., “Systematic Theology,” in Protestant Thought in the Twentieth Century: Whence and Whither? ed. Nash, Arnold S. (New York, 1951), pp. 105–111;Google Scholar and Smith, , “Religion and Science,” pp. 425–436.Google Scholar See also Ahlstrom's reasons for including James, William and Royce, Josiah as representatives of theological study in the late nineteenth century in Sydney Ahlstrom, Theology in America: The Major Protestant Voices from Puritanism to Neo-Orthodoxy (New York, 1967), pp. 63–74.Google Scholar

22. On Princeton's theology of Scripture, see Hodge, Charles, “Inspiration,” BRPR 29 (1857): 660–687;Google Scholar and Warfield, Benjamin B., “The Real Problem of Inspiration,” in The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, ed. Craig, Samuel G. (Phillipsburg, N.J., 1948), pp. 169–228.Google Scholar On the place of Scripture in Princeton's theology, see Noll's, Mark A.introduction to The Princeton Theology, 1812–1921, ed. Noll, Mark A. (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1983), pp. 25–27, 41–45;Google ScholarMarsden, , Fundamentalism, pp. 109–118;Google ScholarAhlstrom, , “Theology in America,” p. 263;Google Scholar and Sandeen, , Roots of Fundamentalism, pp. 114–131.Google ScholarStrong, Augustus H., Systematic Theology, 7th ed. (New York, 1907)Google Scholar, and Mullins, E. Y., The Christian Religion in Its Doctrinal Expression (Philadelphia, 1917)Google Scholar, deserve mention as exceptions to the trends within academic theology. Yet the influence of idealistic philosophy often compelled Strong and Mullins to rely upon religious experience as the most certain source for knowledge of God. On Strong, see Wacker, Grant, Augustus H. Strong and the Dilemma of Historical Consciousness (Macon, Ga., 1985);Google Scholar on Mullins, see Ellis, William E., “A Man of the Books and a Man of the People,” E. Y. Mullins and the Crisis of Moderate Southern Baptist Leadership (Macon, Ga., 1985)Google Scholar.