No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 June 2011
John Hick has recently observed that within the “spectrum of disarray” in recent Christian theology regarding life after death, some “moderately traditional theologians,” while retaining the idea of an afterlife, have moved to an avowal of universal salvation. In part the importance of this trend lies in the fact that theologians of a universalist persuasion—Hick himself being a notable example—may now increasingly be accounted significant rather than peripheral figures. While universalism has always been an available option for a few, constituting since the early Christian centuries “a small underground stream of belief,” it has usually been strongly opposed by orthodox thinkers.
1 Death and Eternal Life (New York: Harper & Row, 1976) 92–93.Google ScholarPubMed
2 Ibid., 200. See chap. 13 for Hick's full discussion of universal salvation.
3 Cf. Smith, H. Shelton, Handy, Robert T., and Loetscher, Lefferts A., American Christianity: An Historical Interpretation with Representative Documents (2 vols.; New York, 1960 and 1963) 1Google Scholar. 380–83. For a full discussion of Chauncy, with special emphasis on his role as critic of the Great Awakening, see Jones, Barney Lee, “Charles Chauncy and the Great Awakening in New England” (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1958).Google Scholar
4 The Benevolence of the Deity, Fairly and Impartially Considered (Boston: Printed by Powars and Willis, 1784) viii.Google Scholar
5 Ibid., 34.
6 Ibid., 15ff.
7 Ibid., 18.
8 Ibid., 31.
9 Ibid., 38.
10 Ibid., 254ff.
11 Ibid., 174ff., 193.
12 The Mystery hid from Ages and Generations, made manifest by the Gospel-Revelation: or, The Salvation of All Men the Grand Thing Aimed at in the Scheme of God (London: Printed for Charles Dilly, in the Poultry, 1784; reprint ed., Arno and the New York Times, 1969) 45.Google Scholar
13 The Benevolence of the Deity, 203; cf. 113ff.
14 Ibid., 205.
15 Ibid., 119.
16 Ibid., 165ff.
17 The Mystery hid from Ages and Generations, 20. But he did not conclude, as the Universalist John Murray evidently had, that this relieved mankind of the arduous necessity of growth into a moral state appropriate to the gift of salvation. Cf. Wright, Conrad, introduction to the reprint ed. of Chauncy, , Salvation for all Men illustrated and vindicated as A Scripture Doctrine (Hicksville, NY: Regina, 1975).Google Scholar
18 The Mystery hid from Ages and Generations, 81. Some of the biblical texts cited by Chauncy in support of universalism were Matt 28:19; Mark 16:15; Rom 5:12–21; 8:18–25; Col 1:19–20; Eph 1:9–10; 1 Tim 2:3–4; Phil 2:9–11; 1 Cor 15:20–28; Heb 10:12–13; Rev 5:13.
19 Ibid., 1. Cf. Salvation for all Men, 24–25.
20 The Benevolence of the Deity, 293.
21 The Mystery hid from Ages and Generations, 3.
22 Ibid., 10–11. Cf. chap. 20, “A Possible Pareschatology,” in Hick, Death and Eternal Life.
23 Cf. The Mystery hid from Ages and Generations, 85–86.
24 The Benevolence of the Deity, 115.
25 The Mystery hid from Ages and Generations, 343; cf. 2, 170ff.
26 For a full discussion of Gordon, see my Ph.D. diss., “George Angier Gordon: Theologian of the Humanity of God” (Duke University, 1968)Google Scholar. A careful and appreciative treatment of Gordon within the context of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American liberalism is in Hutchison, William R., The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1976) 134–44Google Scholar, and passim.
27 “The Contrast and Agreement between the New Orthodoxy and the Old,” The Andover Review 19 (January, 1893)6.Google Scholar
28 Cf. The Christ of To-day (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1896) vii.Google Scholar
29 Humanism in New England Theology (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1920) 29.Google Scholar
30 Ultimate Conceptions of Faith (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1903) 67. CfGoogle Scholar. My Education and Religion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1925) 251–56.Google Scholar
31 Through Man to God (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906) viii.Google Scholar
32 Revelation and the Ideal (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1913) vii–viii.Google Scholar
33 Through Man to God, 7–8.
34 The Christ of To-day, 322; cf. 120–22.
35 The New Epoch for Faith (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1901) 128.Google Scholar
36 Through Man to God, 40–41.
37 The Christ of To-day, 101; cf. 77–81.
38 Ultimate Conceptions of Faith, 295.
39 The Christ of To-day, 17.
40 Aspects of the Infinite Mystery (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1916) 86.Google Scholar
41 Immortality and the New Theodicy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1897) 90.Google Scholar
42 The New Epoch for Faith, 396.
43 Revelation and the Ideal, 385.
44 Cf. Ultimate Conceptions of Faith, 135–36. In Immortality and the New Theodicy, 96–97, Gordon distinguished the “dogmatic assertion” of universalism from the idea of it as a matter of “purpose, aim, outlook, tendency, and legitimate hope.” Hutchison (The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism, 137) cites a similar disclaimer in an 1887 sermon.
45 My Education and Religion, 252–53.
46 Aspects of the Infinite Mystery, 60–61; cf. 253. Cf. also Revelation and the Ideal, 424–25: “The expulsion of the Deity from the context of human life is hopeless; the triumph of God through the persuasions of his reign is a legitimate hope.”
47 Immortality and the New Theodicy, 99.
48 Ibid., 98.
49 Through Man to God, 389–93.
50 Frederick Ferré has called attention to the element of pragmatism and to the emphasis on personal transformation in his father's theology. “Toward Transformational Theology: A Dialogue with My Father,” Religion in Life 47 (1978) 13, 16–17, 20–22.Google Scholar
51 “The Third Conversion Never Fails,” in Soper, David Wesley, ed., These Found the Way (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1951) 135Google Scholar. Ferré wrote his B.D. thesis at Newton, Andover on Gordon. In a letter to the present writer he said of Gordon that “perhaps no theologian has influenced me more deeply” (21 November 1964)Google Scholar
52 Reason in Religion (London/Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1963) 35.Google ScholarPubMed
53 Ibid., 61.
54 Ibid., 63.
55 Cf. Ibid., 74–75. Compare the discussion of Consummation in The Universal Word (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969) chap. 13.Google ScholarPubMed
56 Reason in Religion, 65.
57 Ibid., 67.
58 The Universal Word, 269.
59 Evil and the Christian Faith (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1947) 19; cf. 50.Google Scholar
60 The Universal Word, 157–59. Cf. Christ and the Christian (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1958) 75ff., and passim.Google ScholarPubMed
61 The Living God of Nowhere and Nothing (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1966) 206. CfGoogle Scholar. A Theology for Christian Education (Philadelphia: Westminster 1967) 109, 164.Google Scholar
62 The Universal Word, chaps. 5, 6, and 7. Cf. A Theology for Christian Education, 104.
63 Evil and the Christian Faith, 16, 50.
64 A Theology for Christian Education, 94, 110; cf. 139.
65 Ibid., 186–88. Cf. Reason in Religion, 179ff.
66 Evil and the Christian Faith, 44.
67 A Theology for Christian Education, 137. Cf. Reason in Religion, 164ff.
68 A Theology for Christian Education, 192.
69 Cf. Evil and the Christian Faith, 21–25. Cf. Christ and the Christian, 229–32.
70 Evil and the Christian Faith, 71.
71 A Theology for Christian Education, 202.
72 Reason in Religion, 276. Cf. The Universal Word, 228.
73 The Christian Understanding of God (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1951) 228–41. Cf. Evil and the Christian Faith, 117–22.Google ScholarPubMed
74 Reason in Religion, 245.
75 The Universal Word, 258. Cf. Evil and the Christian Faith, 119–20.
76 See A Theology for Christian Education, 204–8; The Universal Word, 186,238ff., 247, 252, 257–58. In Reason in Religion he suggested the possibility of reincarnation at one point (76) and argued against its adequacy as a Christian view at another point (257–58).
77 The Universal Word, 248.
78 Ibid., 124, and passim.
79 The Christian Understanding of God, 219–20. Cf. Evil and the Christian Faith, 117– 19; Christ and the Christian, 248; Reason in Religion, 255–56; A Theology for Christian Education, 202–9; The Universal Word, 237, 240–42, 258.
80 On Chauncy, see Smith, Handy, and Loetscher, American Christianity, 1. 382–83. Ferré argued in Christ and the Christian (I76ff.) that “moral influence” as such is quite inadequate to characterize the meaning and power of the atonement.
81 Evil and the Christian Faith, 119.
82 Death and Eternal Life, 273.
83 Ibid., 209–10.
84 Ibid., 250–59.