Mark A. Noll
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195151114
- eISBN:
- 9780199834532
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195151119.003.0013
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
The historic Calvinist churches that still enjoyed significant leadership in American public life thoroughly incorporated common sense and republican emphases into their theology. In general, these ...
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The historic Calvinist churches that still enjoyed significant leadership in American public life thoroughly incorporated common sense and republican emphases into their theology. In general, these theologians condemned the revolutions in France and were suspicious of the “infidel” Thomas Jefferson and his friend James Madison. American Calvinists were, however, not unified; their disputes grew from the different approaches they took to the problems of religious organization and national civilization posed by the new American nation.Less
The historic Calvinist churches that still enjoyed significant leadership in American public life thoroughly incorporated common sense and republican emphases into their theology. In general, these theologians condemned the revolutions in France and were suspicious of the “infidel” Thomas Jefferson and his friend James Madison. American Calvinists were, however, not unified; their disputes grew from the different approaches they took to the problems of religious organization and national civilization posed by the new American nation.
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.
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.
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/9780199740420.003.0015
- Subject:
- Religion, Church History
Chapter Fifteen offers an overview of the influence of the ideology of democracy on American Protestantism. American theology began to change in the early nineteenth century as Americans increasingly ...
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Chapter Fifteen offers an overview of the influence of the ideology of democracy on American Protestantism. American theology began to change in the early nineteenth century as Americans increasingly believed in an egalitarian ethic. Princeton Seminary remained firmly committed to a high sense of God’s sovereignty and the implications that had for a hierarchical church governance structure.Less
Chapter Fifteen offers an overview of the influence of the ideology of democracy on American Protestantism. American theology began to change in the early nineteenth century as Americans increasingly believed in an egalitarian ethic. Princeton Seminary remained firmly committed to a high sense of God’s sovereignty and the implications that had for a hierarchical church governance structure.
Amanda Porterfield
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226337746
- eISBN:
- 9780226337883
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226337883.003.0008
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
This concluding chapter reviews how the Andover Seminary supported a cadre of Christian scholars who helped revolutionize intellectual life in nineteenth-century New England. It discusses Sara ...
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This concluding chapter reviews how the Andover Seminary supported a cadre of Christian scholars who helped revolutionize intellectual life in nineteenth-century New England. It discusses Sara Paretsky's 1977 dissertation, which describes the creative process of intellectual outreach that more familiar narratives of theological declension during this period failed to capture. Authored by an intellectual historian who turned to crime fiction instead of building an academic career, this work invites readers to take up where Paretsky's inquiries into post-Calvinist American intellectual life left off, perhaps with the independent spirit of Paretsky's feminist detective V. I. Warshawski. The important thrust of Paretsky's argument can be appreciated by comparing it to Mark Noll's, the best-known historian of American Calvinism in the early twenty-first centuries.Less
This concluding chapter reviews how the Andover Seminary supported a cadre of Christian scholars who helped revolutionize intellectual life in nineteenth-century New England. It discusses Sara Paretsky's 1977 dissertation, which describes the creative process of intellectual outreach that more familiar narratives of theological declension during this period failed to capture. Authored by an intellectual historian who turned to crime fiction instead of building an academic career, this work invites readers to take up where Paretsky's inquiries into post-Calvinist American intellectual life left off, perhaps with the independent spirit of Paretsky's feminist detective V. I. Warshawski. The important thrust of Paretsky's argument can be appreciated by comparing it to Mark Noll's, the best-known historian of American Calvinism in the early twenty-first centuries.
Sara Paretsky
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226337746
- eISBN:
- 9780226337883
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226337883.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
This introductory chapter traces the origin of the Andover Seminary back in 1810, and finds a noteworthy band of intellectual Calvinists. They tried to take in the compass of human learning: ...
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This introductory chapter traces the origin of the Andover Seminary back in 1810, and finds a noteworthy band of intellectual Calvinists. They tried to take in the compass of human learning: classics, languages, biblical studies, philosophy, and natural science—in addition to the orthodox theology which they preached. The men who founded the seminary belonged to a new type of Christian intellectual. Unlike their predecessors, for whom all paths of knowledge led to theology, these men explored learning for the sake of scholarship as well as religion. Because their work revolved around twin centers of faith and knowledge, this new type can be called the Christian scholar. As a result, the theological seminary at Andover provided an impetus for its early faculty members to concentrate on the emerging disciplines of philology and textual criticism.Less
This introductory chapter traces the origin of the Andover Seminary back in 1810, and finds a noteworthy band of intellectual Calvinists. They tried to take in the compass of human learning: classics, languages, biblical studies, philosophy, and natural science—in addition to the orthodox theology which they preached. The men who founded the seminary belonged to a new type of Christian intellectual. Unlike their predecessors, for whom all paths of knowledge led to theology, these men explored learning for the sake of scholarship as well as religion. Because their work revolved around twin centers of faith and knowledge, this new type can be called the Christian scholar. As a result, the theological seminary at Andover provided an impetus for its early faculty members to concentrate on the emerging disciplines of philology and textual criticism.
Sara Paretsky
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226337746
- eISBN:
- 9780226337883
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226337883.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
The author, a crime writer, is known the world over for her acclaimed series of mysteries starring Chicago private investigator V. I. Warshawski. Before she started a writing career, the author ...
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The author, a crime writer, is known the world over for her acclaimed series of mysteries starring Chicago private investigator V. I. Warshawski. Before she started a writing career, the author earned a PhD in history from the University of Chicago with a dissertation on moral philosophy and religion in New England in the early and mid-nineteenth century. Now, for the first time, fans of the author can read that earliest work. The book analyzes attempts by theologians at Andover Seminary to square and secure Calvinist religious beliefs with emerging knowledge from history and the sciences. It carefully shows how the open-minded scholasticism of these theologians paradoxically led to the weakening of their intellectual credibility as conventional religious belief structures became discredited, and how this failure then incited reactionary forces within Calvinism. That conflict between science and religion in the American past is of interest on its face, but it also sheds light on contemporary intellectual battles. An afterword discusses where this work fits into the contemporary study of religion. And in a sobering—sometimes shocking—preface, the author paints a picture of what it was like to be a female graduate student at the University of Chicago in the 1970s. A treat for the author's many fans, this book offers a glimpse of the development of the mind behind the mysteries.Less
The author, a crime writer, is known the world over for her acclaimed series of mysteries starring Chicago private investigator V. I. Warshawski. Before she started a writing career, the author earned a PhD in history from the University of Chicago with a dissertation on moral philosophy and religion in New England in the early and mid-nineteenth century. Now, for the first time, fans of the author can read that earliest work. The book analyzes attempts by theologians at Andover Seminary to square and secure Calvinist religious beliefs with emerging knowledge from history and the sciences. It carefully shows how the open-minded scholasticism of these theologians paradoxically led to the weakening of their intellectual credibility as conventional religious belief structures became discredited, and how this failure then incited reactionary forces within Calvinism. That conflict between science and religion in the American past is of interest on its face, but it also sheds light on contemporary intellectual battles. An afterword discusses where this work fits into the contemporary study of religion. And in a sobering—sometimes shocking—preface, the author paints a picture of what it was like to be a female graduate student at the University of Chicago in the 1970s. A treat for the author's many fans, this book offers a glimpse of the development of the mind behind the mysteries.
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/9780199740420.003.0046
- Subject:
- Religion, Church History
Chapter forty-six examines Hodge’s relationship with James Henley Thornwell, perhaps the most influential southern Presbyterian of his generation. The two men seldom agreed. As conservative as Hodge ...
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Chapter forty-six examines Hodge’s relationship with James Henley Thornwell, perhaps the most influential southern Presbyterian of his generation. The two men seldom agreed. As conservative as Hodge was in his theological views, Thornwell was even more conservative. Thornwell approached the Bible as a strict constructionist. If the Bible did not actually say it, then it could not be true. The effects of Thornwell’s approach included his opposition to voluntary societies and boards being used by the American Presbyterian Church. Hodge supported the use of such boards and societies. Thornwell also believed in a higher status for the Ruling Elder than did Hodge. Ultimately, Thornwell lost faith in his northern Old School brethren and became a founding member of the Presbyterian Church of the Confederate States of America. He also helped found The Southern Presbyterian Review. Less
Chapter forty-six examines Hodge’s relationship with James Henley Thornwell, perhaps the most influential southern Presbyterian of his generation. The two men seldom agreed. As conservative as Hodge was in his theological views, Thornwell was even more conservative. Thornwell approached the Bible as a strict constructionist. If the Bible did not actually say it, then it could not be true. The effects of Thornwell’s approach included his opposition to voluntary societies and boards being used by the American Presbyterian Church. Hodge supported the use of such boards and societies. Thornwell also believed in a higher status for the Ruling Elder than did Hodge. Ultimately, Thornwell lost faith in his northern Old School brethren and became a founding member of the Presbyterian Church of the Confederate States of America. He also helped found The Southern Presbyterian Review.