Douglas A. Sweeney
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195154283
- eISBN:
- 9780199834709
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195154282.003.0008
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
Threatened by Unitarianism and Finneyite progressives, the Edwardsians of the 1820s banded together to fight off the encroachment of theological liberalism and “new measures” revivalism. By 1828, ...
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Threatened by Unitarianism and Finneyite progressives, the Edwardsians of the 1820s banded together to fight off the encroachment of theological liberalism and “new measures” revivalism. By 1828, with the publication of Taylor's Concio ad Clerum, the fissures in the Calvinist front that remained hidden during the first part of the decade became more noticeable. Fears spread that Taylor had fallen into Arminianism and abandoned Edwardsian Calvinism. As Lyman Beecher moved to Cincinnati to take the presidency of Lane Seminary, Bennet Tyler continued to warn of the dangers of Nathaniel William Taylor's teaching. By 1850, when the sabers ceased rattling between Taylor and Tyler, Catharine Beecher publicly began teaching a form of Arminianism, which she claimed she learned from Taylor. In his seventies, Taylor was unable to fight the errant claims. Sweeney argues that the battle between Taylor and Tyler was symptomatic of the decline of Edwardsian Calvinism in New England. The true decline of New England Calvinism began when the leaders of New England Theology became so self‐absorbed in their minor theological battles that they lost their voice in the culture wars of the mid‐nineteenth century.Less
Threatened by Unitarianism and Finneyite progressives, the Edwardsians of the 1820s banded together to fight off the encroachment of theological liberalism and “new measures” revivalism. By 1828, with the publication of Taylor's Concio ad Clerum, the fissures in the Calvinist front that remained hidden during the first part of the decade became more noticeable. Fears spread that Taylor had fallen into Arminianism and abandoned Edwardsian Calvinism. As Lyman Beecher moved to Cincinnati to take the presidency of Lane Seminary, Bennet Tyler continued to warn of the dangers of Nathaniel William Taylor's teaching. By 1850, when the sabers ceased rattling between Taylor and Tyler, Catharine Beecher publicly began teaching a form of Arminianism, which she claimed she learned from Taylor. In his seventies, Taylor was unable to fight the errant claims. Sweeney argues that the battle between Taylor and Tyler was symptomatic of the decline of Edwardsian Calvinism in New England. The true decline of New England Calvinism began when the leaders of New England Theology became so self‐absorbed in their minor theological battles that they lost their voice in the culture wars of the mid‐nineteenth century.
Douglas A. Sweeney
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195154283
- eISBN:
- 9780199834709
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195154282.003.0009
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
In his conclusion, Sweeney moves beyond the usual story of Edwardsian decline to a summary of Taylor's own substantial legacy to post‐Edwardsian America. He notes that in New England, Taylor's ...
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In his conclusion, Sweeney moves beyond the usual story of Edwardsian decline to a summary of Taylor's own substantial legacy to post‐Edwardsian America. He notes that in New England, Taylor's theology managed to split Connecticut's General Association, but his opening up of the Edwardsian culture changed the face of New England Theology. As America moved westward, Taylor's dilation of New England's traditional regional orthodoxies paved the way for the spread of its churches and their theology on the frontier. For Taylor, as for his American successors, the proof of one's theology lay in preaching and virtuous living.Less
In his conclusion, Sweeney moves beyond the usual story of Edwardsian decline to a summary of Taylor's own substantial legacy to post‐Edwardsian America. He notes that in New England, Taylor's theology managed to split Connecticut's General Association, but his opening up of the Edwardsian culture changed the face of New England Theology. As America moved westward, Taylor's dilation of New England's traditional regional orthodoxies paved the way for the spread of its churches and their theology on the frontier. For Taylor, as for his American successors, the proof of one's theology lay in preaching and virtuous living.
Oliver D. Crisp and Douglas A. Sweeney
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199756292
- eISBN:
- 9780199950379
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199756292.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
The Introduction to the volume sets out the background to the New England Theology, its development, and its importance. It also includes an outline of each chapter of the book.
The Introduction to the volume sets out the background to the New England Theology, its development, and its importance. It also includes an outline of each chapter of the book.
Charles Hambrick-Stowe
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199756292
- eISBN:
- 9780199950379
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199756292.003.0013
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
This chapter describes how the “light” of Edwardsian theology was “refracted” within the life of Congregational churches and institutions in New England and the New England diaspora from the ...
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This chapter describes how the “light” of Edwardsian theology was “refracted” within the life of Congregational churches and institutions in New England and the New England diaspora from the late-eighteenth through the nineteenth centuries. Mapping its influence among Congregational pastors, educators, editors, publishers, and mission agency leaders, the chapter explores the movement’s importance in constructing a distinctively Congregationalist identity within the broader religious milieu of the rapidly expanding United States. During this era in which a new type of ecclesial organization emerged in America in the form of the modern denomination, the New England Theology provided a foundation on which to construct the idea of a Congregational denomination with a national mission. The New England Theology fueled institutional development that gave structure to Congregational denominationalism and helped distinguish Congregationalism within the American denominational marketplace.Less
This chapter describes how the “light” of Edwardsian theology was “refracted” within the life of Congregational churches and institutions in New England and the New England diaspora from the late-eighteenth through the nineteenth centuries. Mapping its influence among Congregational pastors, educators, editors, publishers, and mission agency leaders, the chapter explores the movement’s importance in constructing a distinctively Congregationalist identity within the broader religious milieu of the rapidly expanding United States. During this era in which a new type of ecclesial organization emerged in America in the form of the modern denomination, the New England Theology provided a foundation on which to construct the idea of a Congregational denomination with a national mission. The New England Theology fueled institutional development that gave structure to Congregational denominationalism and helped distinguish Congregationalism within the American denominational marketplace.
Charles Phillips
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199756292
- eISBN:
- 9780199950379
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199756292.003.0012
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
Edwards Amasa Park championed Edwardsian Calvinism from the Jacksonian era until the very close of the nineteenth century. His own training at Andover in the irenic divinity of Moses Stuart and ...
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Edwards Amasa Park championed Edwardsian Calvinism from the Jacksonian era until the very close of the nineteenth century. His own training at Andover in the irenic divinity of Moses Stuart and Leonard Woods, his application as rhetorician of the work of Hugh Blair and George Campbell and his exposure in Germany to the Vermittlungstheologie of Friedrich Tholuck gave specific definition to his theological project. Park ought not to be viewed as a romantic idealist in the line of Horace Bushnell or as a proto-liberal in advance of the Andover liberals who succeeded him. Instead he commingled epistemology and methodology derived from Lockean empiricism, Baconian induction, natural theology, and Scottish commonsense realism. As a formidable apologist for his revivalist inheritance, Park conserved the substance and prolonged the influence New England Theology by securing for it modes of expression well fitted to his nineteenth-century audience.Less
Edwards Amasa Park championed Edwardsian Calvinism from the Jacksonian era until the very close of the nineteenth century. His own training at Andover in the irenic divinity of Moses Stuart and Leonard Woods, his application as rhetorician of the work of Hugh Blair and George Campbell and his exposure in Germany to the Vermittlungstheologie of Friedrich Tholuck gave specific definition to his theological project. Park ought not to be viewed as a romantic idealist in the line of Horace Bushnell or as a proto-liberal in advance of the Andover liberals who succeeded him. Instead he commingled epistemology and methodology derived from Lockean empiricism, Baconian induction, natural theology, and Scottish commonsense realism. As a formidable apologist for his revivalist inheritance, Park conserved the substance and prolonged the influence New England Theology by securing for it modes of expression well fitted to his nineteenth-century audience.
Gerald R. McDermott
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199756292
- eISBN:
- 9780199950379
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199756292.003.0009
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
Nathanael Emmons is one of the most peculiar but influential theologians of the New England Theology. He declared that God would be judged on the Day of Judgment, and that God loves Lucifer as much ...
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Nathanael Emmons is one of the most peculiar but influential theologians of the New England Theology. He declared that God would be judged on the Day of Judgment, and that God loves Lucifer as much today as before the Fall. Although his influence on abolitionism and democratic liberalism is important to American social and political history, this chapter focuses on his eccentric theology. It shows how this tobacco-chewing thinker, “the most extraordinary specimen of the Calvinist personality ever developed in the historic seedbed” (Henry F. May), used a radically individualist hermeneutic that would eventually undermine the Calvinism of his tradition.Less
Nathanael Emmons is one of the most peculiar but influential theologians of the New England Theology. He declared that God would be judged on the Day of Judgment, and that God loves Lucifer as much today as before the Fall. Although his influence on abolitionism and democratic liberalism is important to American social and political history, this chapter focuses on his eccentric theology. It shows how this tobacco-chewing thinker, “the most extraordinary specimen of the Calvinist personality ever developed in the historic seedbed” (Henry F. May), used a radically individualist hermeneutic that would eventually undermine the Calvinism of his tradition.
Oliver D. Crisp and Douglas A. Sweeney (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199756292
- eISBN:
- 9780199950379
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199756292.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
In the past half century there has been a significant amount of scholarly attention paid to the thought of Jonathan Edwards so that he is now one of the most studied figures in American history. Much ...
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In the past half century there has been a significant amount of scholarly attention paid to the thought of Jonathan Edwards so that he is now one of the most studied figures in American history. Much less attention has been directed toward the theological movement that took its point of departure from Edwards, namely, the New England Theology. Yet this school of thought had a profound influence on the shape and character of nineteenth-century American theology, and it is to date the most important and influential indigenous theological movement in the history of the United States. This set of chapters by an international team of specialists in the philosophy, theology, and history of Edwards and the New England theology offers a fresh look at how Edwards’s ideas were transmitted, received, and reworked in the different phases of the life of the New England Theology. The chapters also trace the way in which his thought, and that of his intellectual progeny, had an international impact on the shape of theology in the UK, Europe, and Asia, and on present-day Reformed theology.Less
In the past half century there has been a significant amount of scholarly attention paid to the thought of Jonathan Edwards so that he is now one of the most studied figures in American history. Much less attention has been directed toward the theological movement that took its point of departure from Edwards, namely, the New England Theology. Yet this school of thought had a profound influence on the shape and character of nineteenth-century American theology, and it is to date the most important and influential indigenous theological movement in the history of the United States. This set of chapters by an international team of specialists in the philosophy, theology, and history of Edwards and the New England theology offers a fresh look at how Edwards’s ideas were transmitted, received, and reworked in the different phases of the life of the New England Theology. The chapters also trace the way in which his thought, and that of his intellectual progeny, had an international impact on the shape of theology in the UK, Europe, and Asia, and on present-day Reformed theology.
Douglas A. Sweeney and Oliver D. Crisp
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199756292
- eISBN:
- 9780199950379
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199756292.003.0019
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
Along with the Introduction, this postscript is a bookend. It argues that the chapters in this volume have shown that the New England Theology is a source of important theological development in ...
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Along with the Introduction, this postscript is a bookend. It argues that the chapters in this volume have shown that the New England Theology is a source of important theological development in nineteenth-century American theology and that it had a significant international impact as well. The ideas of Edwards, the taproot of the movement, were transmitted, changed, and adapted in important respects by successive generations of adherents. Nevertheless the New England theologians influenced and shaped a century of Christian thought in North America and left an important legacy that is of continuing significance for theologians, historians, and scholars of religion and philosophy.Less
Along with the Introduction, this postscript is a bookend. It argues that the chapters in this volume have shown that the New England Theology is a source of important theological development in nineteenth-century American theology and that it had a significant international impact as well. The ideas of Edwards, the taproot of the movement, were transmitted, changed, and adapted in important respects by successive generations of adherents. Nevertheless the New England theologians influenced and shaped a century of Christian thought in North America and left an important legacy that is of continuing significance for theologians, historians, and scholars of religion and philosophy.
Paul C. Gutjahr
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199740420
- eISBN:
- 9780199894703
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199740420.003.0042
- Subject:
- Religion, Church History
Chapter forty-two examines one of the most titanic theological battles of Hodge’s career. It recounts the many articles published in the Repertory and Bibliotheca Sacra as Hodge and Edwards Amasa ...
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Chapter forty-two examines one of the most titanic theological battles of Hodge’s career. It recounts the many articles published in the Repertory and Bibliotheca Sacra as Hodge and Edwards Amasa Park at Andover Seminary sparred over the exact nature and reliability of biblical language. Park argued that for a different between figurative and descriptive language in the Bible. Hodge held that no such distinction existed. Reason alone could understand the Bible; an intuitive faculty was not needed, nor was it reliable.Less
Chapter forty-two examines one of the most titanic theological battles of Hodge’s career. It recounts the many articles published in the Repertory and Bibliotheca Sacra as Hodge and Edwards Amasa Park at Andover Seminary sparred over the exact nature and reliability of biblical language. Park argued that for a different between figurative and descriptive language in the Bible. Hodge held that no such distinction existed. Reason alone could understand the Bible; an intuitive faculty was not needed, nor was it reliable.
David W. Kling
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199756292
- eISBN:
- 9780199950379
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199756292.003.0010
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
The Edwardsians were not only thinkers but doers; speculative theologians, but like their eponymous leader, revivalists. This was particularly evident among the third generation of Edwardsians, a ...
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The Edwardsians were not only thinkers but doers; speculative theologians, but like their eponymous leader, revivalists. This was particularly evident among the third generation of Edwardsians, a postrevolutionary cohort whose ministry extended from 1790 to the 1820s. Among the Edwardsian revivalists of the Second Great Awakening in New England, Edward Dorr Griffin and Asahel Nettleton excelled at the craft. Griffin, the “prince of preachers,” who held several pastorates and then presided over Williams College, wielded the sermonic rhetorical conventions of his day with “tenderness and tears” to lead sinners to Christ. As an itinerant revivalist who specialized in personal small group “conference meetings,” Nettleton far exceeded Griffin’s success. In the words of Francis Wayland, “I suppose no minister of his time was the means of so many conversions.” This chapter examines the theology and preaching of the New Divinity revivalists of the Second Great Awakening.Less
The Edwardsians were not only thinkers but doers; speculative theologians, but like their eponymous leader, revivalists. This was particularly evident among the third generation of Edwardsians, a postrevolutionary cohort whose ministry extended from 1790 to the 1820s. Among the Edwardsian revivalists of the Second Great Awakening in New England, Edward Dorr Griffin and Asahel Nettleton excelled at the craft. Griffin, the “prince of preachers,” who held several pastorates and then presided over Williams College, wielded the sermonic rhetorical conventions of his day with “tenderness and tears” to lead sinners to Christ. As an itinerant revivalist who specialized in personal small group “conference meetings,” Nettleton far exceeded Griffin’s success. In the words of Francis Wayland, “I suppose no minister of his time was the means of so many conversions.” This chapter examines the theology and preaching of the New Divinity revivalists of the Second Great Awakening.
