Search Results

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.

The chief theological concern in Taylor's doctrine of original sin lay in avoiding the notion that sin resided as a property or component of humanity's natural constitution. While many Old Calvinists held to the belief that depravity passed to humans through natural procreation, Taylor argued that this made God the author of sin, an unacceptable conclusion. In opposition to the Exercisers, Tasters, and Tylerites, who put the majority of their emphasis on human inability, the Taylorites worked hard to maintain what they believed to be continuity with the Edwardsian tradition as it related to the doctrine of original sin. Taylor recognized that there was a delicate balance between the doctrines of natural ability and divine dependence that required constant redress. In the end, the difference between Taylor's emphasis on the human ability to obey God in spite of the fact that sin was certain to prevail prior to regeneration proved largely semantic; but even this semantic difference was significant for his relationships with fellow Edwardsians and his identity as a theologian.

Yale’s Nathaniel William Taylor was the most controversial Edwardsian theologian of his era. He scandalized the country with his recontextualization of Edwards’s views of original sin, freedom of will, and regeneration. His New Haven Theology split the ranks of Connecticut Congregationalists, inciting strong reaction from conservatives led by Taylor’s rival, Bennet Tyler. It also yielded a schism in the Presbyterian Church. This chapter explains and assesses the nature of the controversy sparked by Taylor’s teaching, focusing closely on the debate between Taylorites and Tylerites (who founded a Pastoral Union, a Christian periodical, and a seminary in opposition to Taylor and Yale Divinity School). Revising older views of this dispute, which saw Taylor as a symbol of the decline of Edwardsian theology in America, the chapter interprets Taylor and the contest over Edwards as a sign of the vitality of Edwardsian divinity to the time of the Civil War.