The Doctrine of Original Sin in Postrevolutionary America

By John D. Hannah

[John D. Hannah, Assistant Professor of Historical Theology, Dallas Theological Seminary.]

The doctrines of sin and redemption are vitally and inseparably linked. The history of the Christian church has demonstrated repeatedly that misconception and error in the doctrine of sin results in damage to the doctrine of redemption. Hutchinson captured this vital linkage when he said, “The character of salvation which is in Christ can never be properly comprehended apart from sin which is in the sons of Adam.”[1] Fisher notes: “The one word which expresses both the nature and end or aim of Christianity, is Redemption. The correlate of Redemption is Sin. Parallel, therefore, in importance with the doctrine of Redemption in the Christian system is the doctrine of Sin. The two doctrines, like the facts which they represent, are mutually inseparable.”[2] Alteration in the biblical teaching on the nature and capacity of man will inevitably bring changes in the content and appeal of gospel preaching.

A study of the history of the church is valuable in this regard in that it clearly reveals the relationship of hamartiology to soteriology.[3] Studying that relationship can sharpen one’s focus on the gospel and hopefully will alert Christians to the demands for clarity in preaching the “good news.” To emphasize the necessity of this vital relationship this article purposes to focus on the changing conception of the doctrine of sin at the beginning of the nineteenth century in America. It will be seen that when the biblical declarations of man’s need are denied, the gospel is perverted and inestimable damage is done to the cause of Christ.

The Causes for the Changing Conception of the Doctrine of Original Sin

The shifting conception of original sin can clearly be seen as a movement within New England Congregationalism beginning in the early eighteenth century, flowering in the early nineteenth century, and declining in the post-Civil War era. The particular modifications in traditional Congregational theology have been designated as New England theology.[4] Foster writes:

New England theology, in the technical sense of these words, designates a special school of theology which grew up among Congregationalists of New England, originating in the year 1743, when Jonathan Edwards began his constructive theological work, culminating a little before the Civil War, declining afterwards and rapidly disappearing after the year 1880.[5]

New England theology, which will be defined later relative to the doctrine of original sin, was an attempt to explain Calvinism in its consistency and simplicity to a postrevolutionary age enamored with the European Enlightenment that was sweeping the nation.[6] Fiske discusses this attempt at “improving” Calvinism:

It has long been opposed by its enemies as “new,” and admired and defended by its friends as “new.” The supposition that it is only a revival of Old Calvinism is inconsistent with every page of the history of the times in which it originated, and of the discussions which we have attended its gradual development…. New England Theology never disowned Calvinism; it is Calvinism, only better explained, systematized, made more coherent and self-consistent.[7] It excludes some of the unessential and repellant parts of the old system, which Dr. Emmons called the “gross absurdities…which must be pared off from true Calvinism, in order to make it appear consistent with both reason and scripture.[8]

“Old Calvinism,” which was espoused and defended by Jonathan Edwards,[9] gradually lost its appeal as rationalism, particularly Deism, prevailed. Calvinistic theologians, in light of the threats of the Enlightenment, sought to demonstrate the rationality and acceptability of Calvinism in the context of a changing world view.

Theological Change in the Eighteenth Century

The coming of the “Age of Reason” into New England religious life was, to say the least, gradual. Doctrinal decline within New England can be seen in the Half-way Covenant and Stoddardeanism in which means became increasingly looked to in salvation. Rationalistic biblicism gained increasing favor particularly in Boston as the works of Hobbes, Locke, Spinoza, and Leibnitz were read as well as the English Deists and free-thinking Englishmen like John Taylor.

For the first fifty years or more after the settlement of New England, there seems to have been a very general acquiescence in the Calvinistic system, as it existed among the Puritans at the commencement of the sixteenth century. There is evidence however, from some controversial pamphlets that still remain, that some time previous to the year 1700, these stricter views began, in some instances, to give place to a modified Arminianism. And this tendency was silently upon the increase…. Before the great Whitefieldian Revival occurred, about the year 1740, many of the Congregational ministers and churches of Massachusetts had either partly or entirely abjured their Calvinism.[10]

John Taylor of Norwich caused a stir on both sides of the Atlantic with his controversial views on the nature of man, which prompted Jonathan Edwards of Northampton to write a major treatise entitled Original Sin (1758). Daniel Whitby, who was first an Arminian and then a Unitarian, was also widely read. Broadman concludes, “It is clear then that in 1730 Calvinism was suffering an eclipse. The theological views of the people had, in many cases, swerved much from the old standard.”[11]

Jonathan Edwards assailed the latitudinal notions of Taylor, within the context of the Frontier phase of the first Awakening in New England, halting its growth. His death, however, left New England Calvinism without a defender and Edwards’s successors attempted to prove the compatibility of Calvinism with the prevailing notion of man’s ability. Hopkins wrote in 1796 that his “Consistent Calvinism” was gaining respectability:

About forty years ago there were but few, perhaps not more than four or five, who espoused the sentiments which since have been called Edwardian and New Divinity, and since some improvements were made upon them [have been called] Hopkintonian or Hopkinsian. But these sentiments have so spread since that time among ministers, especially these who have since come upon the stage, that there are now more than a hundred in the ministry who espouse the same sentiments in the United States of America. And the number seems to be fast increasing, and these sentiments seem to be coming more and more into credit, and are better understood, and the odium which was cast upon them, and these who preached them is greatly subsided.[12]

As the new century dawned, the growth of the Enlightenment within New England became so potent that Congregationalism suffered schism in 1805.[13] Churchmen polarized into two groups: Consistent Calvinists or New England theologians, with a biblical rationalism; and Unitarians, with a biblical humanism. What is of utmost importance is that the Calvinism of Jonathan Edwards no longer received a hearing in Congregational New England. The Consistent Calvinists were looked on as the defenders of orthodoxy, unfortunately not an entirely inaccurate assumption!

Politico-Religious Change in the Eighteenth Century

America’s clergy almost unanimously favored the political upheaval against the British, not because of the philosophic implications of Deism which provided the bases for the Declaration of Independence, but because of the feared English oppression of an Anglican Episcopate.[14] The writings of Locke and Sidney were widely read in the colonies by politicians and clergy alike.[15] Favoring the American Revolution, it is not surprising that the clergy favored the revolution that followed in France and cheered the overthrow of the Catholic Church in that country. Clerical opinion began to change toward the French Revolution following the bloody Reign of Terror with its violent antireligious backlash. Deism, which was an intellectually fashionable religious philosophy prior to the 1790s, suddenly became a growing popular movement at the end of the century. American churchmen suddenly saw Deism as a threat both to Christianity and to the well-being of the state.[16] The fear that militant Deism would produce an American “French Revolution” with its extreme anticlericism was prompted for several reasons:

1. Deism was beginning to make a transition from the fashionable elite to the grassroots. In 1790 John Fitch, inventor of the steamboat, established a deistical club, the Universal Society, in Philadelphia; Elihu Palmer lectured widely; and Thomas Paine wrote the Age of Reason in 1794. The importance of Paine’s work is captured by Morais:

From 1789 to 1805, deism assailed more vigorously than ever before the supernatural revelation of Christianity…up to the time of Paine, deism was an aristocratic cult confined almost solely to the well-to-do classes. With the publication of the Age of Reason, the axis about which deistic thought rotated, the new ideology, reached the rural and urban masses.[17]

In the same work Morais adds that Paine’s work was “the first blast of deistic dynamite to disturb the complacency of the faithful.”[18] The clergy’s deep concern was evident from the more than thirty-five printed replies to Paine’s book, many as abusive as the work they attacked.

2. In parallel with the influence of Deism were various political events in the 1790s in America. The Federalists, who sought a strong, centralized government, saw the anarchy produced by the French Revolution as the fruit of democratic rule and therefore wanted to limit popular rule. The Jeffersonians, Republicans, urged a popular rule. The Federalists secured the aid of the clergy to prevent majority rule and to maintain the status quo. The practical effect was a wedding of Constitutionalism with Christianity, the beginning of the American way of life—a self-righteous nationalism.[19] Another important byproduct of this wedding was that the clergy was viewed as instruments of the centralized government, Federalism, opposing popular rule and thus fostering the emergence of much anticlericalism.[20] Also the Whiskey Rebellion[21] and the Jay Treaty[22] in 1794 served to heighten the political and religious debate while filling Federalist hearts with fear.

Social Change in the Eighteenth Century

Closely and perhaps inseparably paralleled with the influence of Deism in post-revolutionary America was the evident moral decline that accompanied it. New England’s clergy interpreted the post-revolutionary era in a millennial, utopian context. Berk commented on this trend:

The Revolutionary experience fired a belief in the nation’s special mission to reclaim the world for Christian freedom and brotherhood. God seemed to have showered the bounty of Paradise on the virtuous republic. Successful resistance to the aims of a corrupt empire would set the United States on her millennial course. The New England clergy, firmly devoted to the National cause, considered this country a special recipient of Heaven’s blessing.[23]

The popularity of Deism, coupled with moral decline, threatened the prophetic calling of the new nation. Federalism urged the clergy to believe that the French Revolution was in the hands of atheists who were determined to spread infidelity to other shores. Coleman writes:

This last charge the Federalists exploited to the full in cultivating an alliance with the clergy. France was identified as the source of American infidelity, and the pro-French faction in the United States—the Jeffersonians—were charged with atheistic sympathies. Even though they blurred the distinctions between deism and atheism and ignored the spectrum of religious beliefs to be found among supporters of both parties, the Federalists succeeded in arousing clerical apprehensions at the rise of the Republicans.[24]

Clergymen then interpreted the religious indifference of the day as a result of French infidelity (atheism) that threatened the Messianic hope of the emerging nation. Thus Keller is led to write:

The advance of irreligion and indifference must be checked, the champions of orthodoxy chorused. The forces of religion met the challenge, with the result that from one end of the United States to the other, in all denominations, evangelical Protestantism appeared during the closing years of the eighteenth and the early years of the nineteenth century in what may be called the Second Great Awakening.[25]

To arrest democratic change, the popularity of Jeffersonianism which was viewed as insidiously atheistic and un-American, New England clergymen turned to religious revivalism as the only hope for the preservation of the nation and the faith.

The Nature of the Changing Conception of the Doctrine of Original Sin

In this complicated politico-religious matrix in the late eighteenth century, New England clergymen attempted to stem the religious tide that was drifting toward Rationalism. The motive for the attack on the Enlightenment was both deeply religious and political in motivation. To demonstrate the defendability of Christianity, clergymen attempted to delineate its rationality. In reality, historic Calvinism, being subjected to rationalism, was altered; that is, the “gross absurdities” were “pared off from true Calvinism.”[26] In their attempt to defend Calvinism by “restoring” it to purity and simplicity, New England divines drastically changed its structure and New England Theology was born. The diagram below indicates the theological synthesis of the era.

The theological change in the era is most clearly seen in the doctrine of the nature of man in relation to Adam’s first sin.

The scope of this particular paper permits only a few selected examples of the changing concept of original sin; namely, Timothy Dwight, Jonathan Edwards the Younger, and Nathaniel Taylor. New England theologians, however, fell into two categories: Hopkinsians and Edwardians. While the two branches essentially agreed in their theology, the Hopkinsians—followers of Samuel Hopkins—tended to engage in scholastic wrangling, and the Edwardians—followers of Jonathan Edwards the Younger—tended to be revivalistic. Berk writes:

Although these ministers were united in their espousal of Edwardian Calvinism,[27] their approach to religion tended to fall in two categories. They all viewed their doctrines and preaching as evangelical, but only a part of their number were effective revivalists. These evangelicals of the New Divinity followed in the path of the earlier Edwards. They subordinated metaphysics to a simple gospel of immediate repentance and faith in God’s mercy. The others were primarily metaphysicians, drawing their style of address from the later Edwards. The New Divinity metaphysicians tended to expound a form of scholasticism rather than experimental piety from the pulpit. Consistent Calvinists never acknowledged any important differences within their school, and to be sure, the distinction I have drawn was more the product of temperament than of any specific theological disagreement.[28]

Timothy Dwight (1752-1817)

[29]When Dwight assumed the presidency of Yale College, Deism had made tremendous inroads. Through his lectures Dwight stemmed its growth, but unwittingly altered the form of Calvinism that his grandfather, Jonathan Edwards, defended. This was particularly evident in the doctrines of hamartiology and anthropology as he sought to react to rationalism and yet preach and defend a “rational gospel.”[30] Berk captures Dwight’s theological purposes when he writes; “With the single goal of preserving and extending the Standing Order, Dwight worked at Yale to adjust Calvinism to prevailing conditions.”[31]

In the fundamental area of the doctrine of imputation Dwight, like most of the New England theologians, rejected the Reformed view that the relationship between Adam’s sin was both real, transferable, and penal. He maintained that guilt was strictly personal and that it was irrational for any person to be held guilty for another’s action. Dwight maintained that the English word impute never denotes “to transfer moral action, guilt, or desert, from one being to another.”[32] He wrote: “Moral actions are not, so far as I can see, transferable from one being to another. The personal act of any agent is, in its very nature, the act of the agent solely, and incapable of being participated (in) by any other agent…. The guilt is inherent in the action, and is attributable, therefore, to the Agent only.”[33]

As a result of Dwight's doctrine of imputation—that sin is personal and nontransferable—he was led similarly to reject the traditional explanation of the cause of total depravity. He taught that sin was universal, but not innate. To explain the universality of sin Dwight maintained a “divine constitution” view[34] of inherent sin, which viewed men as sinners because they sin but not because of their connection with Adam. “I do not intend that the posterity of Adam are guilty of his transgression…. Neither do I intend that the descendants of Adam are punished for his transgressions.”[35] With Adam’s headship merely parental, not causative, all sins are voluntary sins and innate depravity is consequently moral depravity. With the change in the basic nature and condition of man came also a reevaluation of the nature of the work of Christ. Since man’s liability was in his choices, not his nature, the governmental theory of the atonement became an accepted explanation of Christ’s death.[36] Christ’s death was viewed as effecting a virtuous environment and not as constituting a penal substitution.[37]

Jonathan Edwards, the Younger (1745-1801)

[38]Dr. Edwards, the son of the great Jonathan Edwards of Northampton, followed in the theological mode cast by Samuel Hopkins and the emerging school of New England thought. As Hopkins before him and Dwight after him, Dr. Edwards denied a causative, penal link between Adam’s first sin and his posterity—a denial of judicial imputation. “That Adam’s sin should be ours, and that we on account of it should be judged and condemned as sinners, or that we should be the same person as Adam, or that God should so consider or suppose us, has appeared to many to be absurd, impious, and impossible.”[39] To explain the universality of sin while rejecting imputation, Edwards adopted the divine constitution view of depravity. Each man is constituted with the sure propensity to sin and thus becomes a sinner through his first act of sinning. While mankind has a parental, familial relationship to Adam, he acquired no liability from that relationship. Fisk compares Edwards to the traditional view:

Thus while the old theory said men begin existence with an involuntary sinful disposition, Edwards says, men begin existence with a voluntary sinful disposition; while the old theory says, this sinful disposition comes as a penal consequence of an involuntary imputed sin, Edwards says, it comes as a natural and penal consequence of actual sin committed in Adam; while the old theory says, Adam’s sin is the sin of his posterity, because it is imputed to him, Edwards says, it “is not theirs merely because God imputes it to them; but it is truly and properly theirs, and on that ground God imputes it to them.” While the old theory says, Adam sustained a covenant and legal relation to his posterity, and therefore his sin is justly imputed to them, though they did not commit it, Edwards says, Adam and his posterity, by a divine constitution, form “one complex person,” so that his sin is “the common act of all,” and therefore is justly imputed to all because they all participated in it; while the old theory says, men are born with a double guilt upon them, viz. the guilt of imputed sin and the guilt of inherent sin, Edwards says, the guilt with which men are born is “one and simple, viz. the guilt of the original apostasy, their inherent guilt being only the extended pollution of that sin.” This modification of the doctrine of original sin is the beginning of one of those ten “improvements in theology,” attributed by Dr. Edwards to his father and his followers.[40]

Another major departure by this New England theologian concerned the nature of the death of Christ. Edwards rejected penal substitution taught by his father and popularized the governmental theory of the Dutch jurist, Hugo Grotius (1583–1645). To Edwards the atonement was not conceived as a payment of a debt, but as the establishment of divine justice (a demonstration that disobedience to moral government brings punishment). Edwards stated his view this way:

…if the atonement of Christ be considered as the payment of a debt, the release of the sinner seems not to be an act of grace, although the payment be made by Christ, and not by the sinner personally…. But, the fact is, that Christ has not, in the literal and proper sense, paid the debt for us…. The sense of this is, that since the atonement consists, not in the payment of a debt, but in the vindication of the divine law and character; therefore, it is not at all opposed to free grace in pardon.[41]

The implication of seeing sin as voluntary and guilt as solely personal is that the atonement need not be penal. If the death of Christ is moral in scope, it logically follows that the Christian life is viewed in moral terms with the result that Christianity is progressively humanized. In a recent biography of Edwards, Ferm speaks to this point:

The Christian life is obedience to the moral law, fitting in with it divine government. The death of Christ is clear and unmistakable evidence that God will punish wrongdoing. Divine government must be upheld at any cost, and fear of vindictive justice becomes the weapon to enforce obedience. This theory blended well with the current political temper…. If God’s government is not justly upheld by the king, armed rebellion and “vindictive” punishment is not just desirable but necessary. If God’s government is not upheld by men, vindictive punishment is necessary for those who transgress the law.[42]

Nathaniel Taylor (1786-1858)

[43]In many ways Taylor’s development of New England theology, called Taylorism or New Haven theology, demonstrates the progression of the movement. Taylor, like his predecessor Dwight, rejected the doctrine of imputation by stating that “the doctrine of imputed sin is contrary to the decision of the competent unperverted reason of man: i.e., contrary to common sense, and as such to be rejected.”[44] Again he asserted, “I do not believe that the posterity of Adam are, in the proper sense of the language, guilty of his sin, or that the ill-desert of that sin is truly theirs; or that they are punished for that sin.”[45]

Taylor, however, reveals the progression of New England theology, by rejecting the divine constitution view of inherent sin and making sin strictly and absolutely within the limits of voluntary choice: “I do not mean that their nature is itself sinful, nor that their nature is the physical or efficient cause of their sinning; but I mean that their nature is the occasion, or reason of their sinning;—that such is their nature, that in all the appropriate circumstances of their being, they will sin and only sin.”[46] According to Taylor moral depravity is “man’s own act consisting in a free choice of some object rather than God.”[47] In essence Taylor denied both original sin and inherent sin. Moral depravity consists in man’s free, voluntary choices; hence sin consists of voluntary sinning with no real or symbolic connection to Adam. Taylor adopted a governmental theory of the atonement, taught free will, real human ability, active regeneration, and conversion as a result of education. Warfield described the development of Taylorism as follows:

After Dwight came Taylor, and in the teaching of the latter the downward movement of the New Divinity ran out into a system which turned, as on its hinge, upon the Pelagianizing doctrines of the native sinlessness of the race, the plenary ability of the sinner to renovate his own soul, and self-love or the desire for happiness as the spring of all voluntary action.[48]

The New England theologians after Jonathan Edwards of Northampton attempted to address their theology to the religious needs of their day. To counterattack against the inroads of rationalism, which they interpreted in both a religious and politically eschatological context, they sought to “improve” Calvinism. The three main issues that occupied the attention of theologians of the post-war period were the “means” of regeneration, the issue of universal salvation, and the nature and extent of sin.[49] Conservative reaction to the last of these issues brought significant changes in the Calvinistic system as the doctrines of faith were scrutinized under the microscope of rationality. While the New England theologians were horror-struck by deistic rationalism, they undermined the foundation of Christianity, thus laying the path for a total collapse of Calvinism. Ironically the very thing they labored so hard to defend, they weakened by their obsession to make it reasonable and unoffensive.

The Results of the Changing Doctrine of Original Sin

The influence of New England theology with its shifting reconsideration and reinterpretation of the major doctrines of Christianity was considerable in the nineteenth century. New England theology brought a reinterpretation of the gospel and thus deeply affected the course of evangelism; it had a blighting effect on other denominations, particularly the Presbyterians; and it affected the rise of American liberal theology.

New England Theology and Evangelism

The changing theology of New England brought about a new understanding of the doctrine of conversion; in fact, Timothy Dwight so humanized soteriology that he removed it from the plane of the miracle and asserted that nothing extraordinary takes place in the first acts of virtue (“All that makes them extraordinary is that they are first”[50]). At the root of nineteenth century evangelism was a stress on moral action in the context of a virtuous environment. In this regard Berk explained that “the idea of a Christian environment was the cornerstone of Dwight’s religion.”[51] He allots a place in conversion for religious training so that natural motivation formed the heart of Dwight’s theology. (This is simply a broader conceptualization of the means of grace.[52]) Motives arise not directly from God but from nurture and when properly instilled, they generate virtuous habits. Influences, motives, and habits function as means by which religion and a virtuous society are advanced.

The influence of New England theology on nineteenth century evangelism is most readily seen in Charles G. Finney,[53] the most significant of the antebellum revivalists. As Foster stated, “Various underground currents set from New Haven westward, and some of them bore theological ideas in the region where Finney was. Subsequently he had personal associations with the great New Haven theologian [Taylor]…. It is not strange that he ultimately adopted most of Taylor’s positions, and was, among the great leaders of New England, Taylor’s true successor.”[54] This testimony is sustained by Ahlstrom: “As professor of theology and the President of Oberlin, the theological system that he developed and expounded to a generation of revivalists bore clear marks of Taylorism, notably in the strong emphasis Finney constantly placed on human agency in the work of an individual’s redemption.[55]

Charles Finney’s theological system clearly reflects an awareness of the more progressive New England theologians, but his unique ability came in applying the system to grass-roots revivalism. Finney explicitly denied both innate depravity and constitutional depravity and defined sin as selfishness or as any act or acts contrary to the moral government of God.[56] The atonement was viewed as a governmental transaction,[57] regeneration as simply a change of attitude,[58] justification with no forensic meaning,[59] faith as a virtue,[60] and the will as absolutely free.[61] As Warfield concluded, “It is clear that what Finney gives us is less a theology than a rationalistic system of morality.”[62]

And yet it must be said that Finney understood the democratic mind-set of the American people and fashioned his gospel to fit a people seemingly possessed of unlimited optimism both nationally and personally, a people eager for a faith of action through self-accomplishment. In the process Finney became a pivotal figure in the history of American revivalism in both his techniques and theory.

New England Theology and Presbyterianism

The Congregational churches and Presbyterianism were often linked together throughout the colonial era as pastors from New England colleges often served in Presbyterian pulpits. This interchange occurred at the level of college professors and presidents as well.[63] A continuation of this cooperative policy was the Plan of Union of 1801 through which the churches united their efforts to reach the frontier of western New York and the Western Reserve. As a result of this union New England theology penetrated the Presbyterian church. The effect of this cooperative evangelistic merger is explained by Marsden:

As a result, in the evangelical campaigns emanating from New England, the Presbyterians joined their Congregational allusion playing a leading role. The origins of New School Presbyterianism are found, therefore, in the fervor of the international and interdenominational evangelical reformation that was becoming the consuming religious passion of the day.[64]

The growing adherence to New England theology by Presbyterian pastors who were educated in union seminaries or had contacts through pulpit exchange reached a climax after 1829 as Albert Barnes[65] was tried for heresy twice by his church (once in 1831 for preaching a sermon entitled “The Way of Salvation,” which some felt denied depravity and imputation, and again in 1835 for his views as expressed in a commentary, Notes on Romans). In both trials Barnes was exonerated, which caused Smith to conclude that two things were clear: “first, that a large segment of Presbyterianism had, with respect to the doctrine of original sin, adopted New Haven views; second, that the New School men held decisive power in the Assembly of 1836.”[66]

The result of the inroads of latitudinarianism led to the New School-Old School schism of 1837–38 that lasted until 1869 when the two schools merged in the North creating the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. Smith’s words of the eminent union were somewhat prophetic: “Now it is evident that if a union be proposed between two churches, one of which adopts the strict, and the other the lax principle of subscription, such union must result in constant conflict, unless one of the parties agrees to renounce its own principle, and to adopt that of the other.”[67] In the decades that followed the merger, the two schools did clash over theology with the narrow subscriptionists losing their active voice in the denomination as the New School’s approach to theology became dominant.[68]

New England Theology and Liberalism

The influence of the more radical form of New England theology, particularly New Haven theology, is clearly seen in the rise of American liberalism through Horace Bushnell,[69] a student of Nathaniel Taylor. Mead states that Taylor’s “thought formed the main bridge from the inherited orthodoxy of the eighteenth century to the Liberal theology of the nineteenth.”[70] In essence Bushnell in his concept of “Christian nurture” absolutely denied the concept of depravity and advocated a Christian environmentalism, grace being hereditary (“children born of parents already pious, must be Christians by nature”[71]). As Hopkins notes, “The great liberalizer of mid-nineteenth century American theology was Horace Bushnell, from whom the social gospel of Washington Gladden and others was to stem directly. Bushnell’s Christian Nurture led more than any single factor to break down the extreme individualism of the old Puritanism.”[72]

Summary

The essence of the Christian faith pivots on the mighty axis of sin and grace. When either of these doctrines is perverted, the implications and consequences may have farreaching effects on gospel preaching. From this brief study several points can hopefully be sustained.

1. One’s understanding of sin will affect both the gospel that is preached and the mode of its presentation. When the doctrine of hamartiology becomes vague in the proclamation of the gospel, it is to the great detriment of Christianity.
2. While the gospel must be preached in a cultural setting, a “culturized gospel” is detrimental to true Christianity. New England theologians, in their zeal to speak meaningfully to an optimistic, democratic generation, fashioned a message that reflected more a rationalistic biblicism than a biblical gospel.
3. While patriotism is an acceptable and even a desirable virtue, the gospel message suffers if it is inseparably joined with the hope and aspirations of the state. Timothy Dwight was a true and loyal statesman, but his advocacy of a particular political system as a safeguard for preserving religion and a political-eschatological hope led him to a message that too closely connected Christianity with the government.

Notes

1. George P. Hutchinson, The Problem of Original Sin in American Presbyterian Theology (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1972), p. 1.
2. George Park Fisher, “The Augustinian and Federal Theories of Original Sin Compared,” The New Englander 27 (July 1868): 468.
3. The relationship of sin to grace was discussed in the ancient church in the context of the Augustinian-Pelagian controversy and again in the Reformation by the great Reformers. Luther clashed with Erasmus over the nature and bondage of the will as the two wrote treatises on the subject from divergent perspectives. These are but two examples of the occurrence of the debate in church history.
4. Various names have been given to this modification of Calvinism, but this is the one most frequently employed. It has been called “new light” or “new light divinity”; “Berkshire divinity,” because it was adopted by eminent pastors in Berkshire County, Massachusetts; “Hopkintonian divinity” or “Hopkinsian divinity”; “Edwardeanism”; “American theology”; and “Andover theology.”
5. Frank Hugh Foster, A Genetic History of New England Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1907), p. 130.
6. The best work in print on the influence and progress of the European Enlightenment as a causative factor in the rise of the American Enlightenment is quite a recent publication, written by Henry F. May: The Enlightenment in America (New York; Oxford University Press, 1976).
7. The underlying assumption by New England theologians after Jonathan Edwards of Northampton was that the Old Calvinism needed certain improvements so as to make it more logically consistent; i.e., Old Calvinism was conceived as making God the author of sin and it provided little hope for the all-too-frequent occurrence of infanticide.
8. Daniel T. Fiske, “New England Theology,” Bibliotheca Sacra 22 (August 1865):468-70.
9. Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758), the pastor of Northampton, was a defender of Reformed theology. His major theological treatises were written during the period of his labor among the Indians of Stockbridge (1751–1758). He must be distinguished from his son, Jonathan Edwards the Younger or Dr. Edwards, who adopted and developed New England theology.
10. William B. Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit (reprint ed., New York: Arno Press and The New York Times, 1969), 8:ix-x.
11. George Nye Boardman, A History of New England Theology (New York: A. D. F. Randolph Co., 1899), p. 29.
12. Hopkins, quoted by Boardman, ibid., pp. 11-12.
13. Schism within Congregationalism resulted from the Hollis Chair of Divinity controversy at Harvard College. The Hollis Chair was an endowed theological professorship that stipulated that Calvinism be defended from that chair. Upon David Tappan’s death, the chair was filled in 1805 by Henry Ware, an avowed Unitarian.
14. Isaac Backus, A History of New England, with Particular Reference to the Baptists, 2 vols. in 1 (1871; reprint ed., New York: Arno Press, 1969), 2:197–98.
15. Ibid.
16. Gary G. Nash, “The American Clergy and the French Revolution,” William and Mary Quarterly 22 (July 1965): 400-401.
17. Herbert M. Morais, Deism in Eighteenth Century America (New York: Russell & Russell, 1960), p. 120.
18. Ibid.
19. Stephen E. Berk, Calvinism versus Democracy (New York: Archon Books, 1974), p. xi.
20. Ibid., p. 29.
21. The Whiskey Rebellion (1794) was a popular revolt by farmers in western Pennsylvania. It was occasioned by an excise tax proposed by Alexander Hamilton to raise money by taxing whiskey. President Washington sent an army to disperse the rebellion but from that time on the West was wholeheartedly opposed to Federalism, a strong central government.
22. The Jay Treaty (1794) opened trade with England and gave the United States unquestioned possession of the Northwest Posts. Jeffersonians favored France and opposed normalizing relationships with England. The Federalists feared continuing relations with France. The Federalists’ victory was by the narrowest of margins.
23. Berk, Calvinism versus Democracy, pp. 20-21.
24. Nash, “The American Clergy and the French Revolution,” p. 405.
25. Charles Kelly, The Second Great Awakening in Connecticut (New York: Archon Press, 1968), pp. 2-3.
26. Fiske, “New England Theology,” p. 472.
27. By the term “Edwardian Calvinism” the writer does not mean to imply that the theology of Jonathan Edwards of Northampton agreed with the New England theologians. New England divines thought that they were improving, not deviating, the case set forth by President Edwards.
28. Berk, Calvinism versus Democracy, p. 54.
29. Timothy Dwight was a Congregationalist pastor and educator. After graduating from Yale College in 1769, he served his college as a tutor before distinguishing himself in the Revolutionary War. After a brief pastorate at Greenfield, Connecticut, he became president of Yale College, and held that position from 1795 to 1817. There he distinguished himself as a theologian by writing Theology Explained and Defended.
30. As stated previously, the New England theologians felt that Calvinism needed to be altered to answer the charges of deistic rationalism. To do this Dwight formulated a “Consistent Calvinism,” a “rational gospel.”
31. Berk, Calvinism versus Democracy, p. 74. It is not without significance that Berk entitles the chapter wherein he discussed the rise of Consistent Calvinism, “Humanized Calvinism.”
32. Timothy Dwight, Theology Explained and Defended, 4 vols. (New York: Harper Brothers, 1846), 1:478.
33. Ibid.
34. The divine constitution view is an attempt to explain the connection between Adam’s first sin and the sin of his posterity. This view, developed by Samuel Hopkins, teaches that Adam’s connection with mankind was not actual and penal, but that in Adam mankind was given an assured propensity to sin thus causing them to be sinners and under condemnation. This was put forth in order to exonerate God from the charge of being the author of sin by making condemnation based solely on human culpability.
35. Dwight, Theology Explained and Defended, 1:478.
36. The governmental theory of the atonement is the teaching that Christ’s death was not meant to be either penal or substitutionary, but was meant to be a public demonstration of God’s moral government, that disobedience to established moral laws will not go unpunished.
37. Berk, Calvinism versus Democracy, pp. 77-78, 87.
38. Jonathan Edwards the Younger (1745–1801) is so designated in order to distinguish him from his illustrious father, President Edwards. After graduating from the College of New Jersey in 1765 Younger Edwards served pastorates in White Haven (New Haven) and Coleridge, Connecticut, and then became president of Union College in Schenectady, New York. He was theologically educated by Bellamy and Hopkins and taught Timothy Dwight among others. He was instrumental in formulating the Plan of Union of 1801.
39. Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards (Boston: John P. Jewett & Co., 1854), 2:480–87.
40. Fiske, “New England Theology,” 497–98.
41. Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 2:25–27.
42. Robert L. Ferm, Jonathan Edwards the Younger, 1745–1801 (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1976), p. 119.
43. Nathaniel Taylor (1786–1858) was a Congregationalist educator who was trained under Timothy Dwight at Yale College and then served as professor of Didactic Theology at the Yale Divinity School (1822–1858). In that capacity he became the fountainhead of New Haven theology, a radical expression of New England theology.
44. Nathaniel W. Taylor, “Case of the Rev. Mr. Barnes,” Quarterly Christian Spectator 3 (June 1831):322.
45. Nathaniel W. Taylor, “Dr. Taylor’s Letter to Dr. Hawes,” Quarterly Christian Spectator 4 (March 1832):173.
46. Nathaniel W. Taylor, Concis ad Clerum (New Haven: Hezekiah Howe, 1828), p. 14.
47. Ibid., p. 8.
48. Benjamin B. Warfield, Biblical and Theological Studies (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1952), p. 536.
49. Ferm, Jonathan Edwards the Younger, 1745-1801, p. 96.
50. Dwight, Theology Explained and Defended, 3:70.
51. Berk, Calvinism versus Democracy, pp. 77-78.
52. This is why McLoughlin states in Modern Revivalism that nineteenth-century evangelism gradually shifted from the idea that conversions are surprising works of God to a belief that they are the natural result of the “correct use of means.”
53. Charles Grandison Finney (1792–1875) has been called the “father of modern revivalism.” His theological education came largely from his own study, although he had frequent contact with New England theology, particularly Taylorism. In the 1820s he became a rural evangelist, but after the Lebanon Convention of 1827 he became an urban, national evangelist. Following two brief pastorals in New York City, he became professor of theology at Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio and later president of that school. At Oberlin he systematized his theology, which, because of its many distinctives, has been designated as Oberlin theology.
54. Foster, A Genetic History of New England Theology, p. 453.
55. Sydney E. Ahlstrom, ed., Theology in America: The Major Protestant Voices from Puritanism to Neo-Orthodoxy (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1967), pp. 259-60.
56. Finney devotes a series of chapters in his Lectures on Systematic Theology to the concept of moral obligation and oughtness which he deposits in moral consciousness. Sin consists entirely and wholely of selfish choices, and the good consists of “disinterested benevolence.” He writes, “Moral depravity, as I use the term, does not consist in nor imply a sinful nature, in the sense that the substance of the human soul is sinful in itself. It is not a constitutional sinfulness. It is not an involuntary sinfulness. Moral depravity, as I use the term, consists in selfishness; in a state of voluntary committal of the will to self-gratification.
57. “I must say that the atonement was not a commercial transaction. Some have regarded the atonement simply in the light of the payment of a debt; and have represented Christ as purchasing the elect of the Father, and paying down the same amount in his own person that justice would have exacted to them” (Lectures on Systematic Theology, ed. J. H. Fairchild [Oberlin, OH: E. J. Goodrich, 1878], p. 231).
58. On the issue of regeneration, Finney wrote the following: “It is not a change in substance of soul or body. If it were, sinners could not be required to effect it. Such a change would not constitute a change of moral character. No such change is needed, as the sinner has all the faculties and natural attributes requisite to render perfect obedience to God. All he needs is to be included to use these powers and attributes as he ought…. “Regeneration then is a radical change of the ultimate intention, and of course, of the end or object of life…. A selfish ultimate choice is, therefore, a wicked heart, out of which flows every evil, and a benevolent ultimate choice is a good heart, out of which flows every good and commendable deed…. Regeneration…must consist in a change in the attitude of the will, or a change in its ultimate choice…to the interests of his kingdom” (Lectures on Systematic Theology, p. 285).
59. Finney is quite clear when he says that justification is not “a forensic or judicial proceeding” (Lectures on Systematic Theology, p. 382). Justification is “a governmental decree or amnesty based upon the infinite love of God” (p. 401), not in Christ’s literally suffering the exact penalty of the law for them (p. 395). “For sinners to be forensically pronounced just is impossible and absurd” (p. 384).
60. According to Finney, faith “implies a state of present sinlessness…yielding and committal of the whole will, and of the whole being to Christ” (Lectures on Systematic Theology, p. 377). It is “the reception and the practice of all known or perceived truth” (p. 377).
61. Finney simply writes: “The Bible everywhere, and in every way, assumes the freedom of the will. This fact stands out in strong relief upon every page of divine inspiration…. The strong language often found in scripture upon the subject of man’s inability to obey God, is designed only to represent the strength of his voluntary selfishness and enmity against God, and never to imply a proper natural inability. It is, therefore, a gross and most injurious perversion of scripture, as well as a contradiction of human reason, to deny the natural ability, or which is the same thing, the natural free agency of man, and to maintain a proper natural inability to obey God, and the absurd dogma of a gracious ability to do our duty. “…I maintain this upon the ground, that men are able to do their duty, and that the difficulty does not lie in a proper inability but in a voluntary selfishness, in an unwillingness to obey the blessed gospel. I say again, that I reject the dogma of a gracious ability, as I understand the abettors to hold it, not because I deny, but solely because it denies the grace of the gospel. The denial of ability is really a denial of the possibility of grace in the affairs of man’s salvation. I admit the ability of man, and hold that he is able, but utterly unwilling to obey God. Therefore I consistently hold that all the influences exerted by God to make him willing, are of free grace abounding through Christ Jesus” (Lectures on Systematic Theology, pp. 350-52).
62. Benjamin B. Warfield, Perfectionism (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1967), p. 193.
63. To illustrate this point Jonathan Edwards of Northampton was a Congregationalist clergyman trained at Yale College, but his first pastorate was in a Presbyterian Church in New York, and at his death he was president of the College of New Jersey (Princeton). His son, Dr. Edwards, was a Congregationalist pastor, but was trained at the College of New Jersey.
64. George M. Marsden, The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1970), p. 12.
65. Albert Barnes (1798–1870) was a Presbyterian pastor trained at Hamilton College in New York and the College of New Jersey. As pastor at the First Presbyterian Church in Morristown, New Jersey, he became embroiled in New School theology. Later as pastor of the First Church in Philadelphia he became an outstanding New School leader. He was prominent in the introduction of Taylorism into Presbyterianism through his famous sermon, “The Way of Salvation,” and his commentary, Notes on Romans.
66. Henry B. Smith, “Presbyterian Reunion,” Princeton Review 40 (January 1868): 130.
67. Ibid., p. 54.
68. For an excellent summary of the New School-Old School clash following the 1869 merger consult George P. Hutchinson, The History Behind the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod (Cherry Hill, NJ: Mack Publishing Co., 1974), pp. 153-93.
69. Horace Bushnell (1802–1876) was a graduate of Yale College, 1827, who, after a conversion experience in 1831, entered the Yale Divinity School where he studied under Nathaniel Taylor. After a pastorate at Hartford and travel in Europe, he published his first book, Christian Nurture, in 1847. He departed from New England theology to become the official founder of the Liberal School of Theology in America. After moving to San Francisco in 1856 for his health, where he helped establish the University of California, he returned to Hartford in 1857 to resume his pastorate.
70. Sidney E. Mead, NathanielWilliam Taylor (1786–1858): A Connecticut Liberal (New York: Archon Books, 1967), p. 233.
71. Shelton H. Smith, Changing Conceptions of Original Sin: A Study in American Theology Since 1750 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1965), p. 146.
72. Charles H. Hopkins, The Rise of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism: 1865–1915 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), p. 5.