The Debate over the Atonement in 19th-Century America Part 4: Aftermath and Hindsight of the Atonement Debate -- By: David F. Wells
Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 145:577 (Jan 1988)
Article: The Debate over the Atonement in 19th-Century America Part 4: Aftermath and Hindsight of the Atonement Debate
Author: David F. Wells
BSac 145:577 (Jan 88) p. 3
The Debate over the Atonement in 19th-Century America
Part 4:
Aftermath and Hindsight of the Atonement Debate
Andrew Mutch Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology
Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, Massachusetts
[Editor’s Note: This is the fourth in a series of four articles delivered by the author as the W. H. Griffith Thomas Lectures at Dallas Theological Seminary, April 7–10, 1987.]
If the issues of the 19th-century debate over the Atonement are difficult to untangle, so too are the lessons that might be drawn from it. Indeed it is even riskier to venture out onto this terrain, for here one passes from fact to judgment, from the reconstruction of what happened to the perspective in which one attempts to see the significance of those events. There will be no unanimity in this, for these questions have divided Christians for a long time: Calvinism and Arminianism, postmillennialism and premillennialism, revivalism and an ecclesiastically ordered faith, gospel preaching and a Christian world view.
This then is the point at which partisan interests naturally and perhaps inevitably come into play. It is important, however, to keep these interests at bay in order to provide the best context for understanding some broadly worked out shifts in 20th-century evangelicalism, for these transformations cannot be reduced simply to debates between Calvinists and Arminians. Naturally, as someone who thinks within a Reformed perspective, this writer has his own opinions on these matters, but he wants to hold these opinions in abeyance in order to focus on matters of broad and general interest.
BSac 145:577 (Jan 88) p. 4
However, one preliminary consideration needs to be borne in mind. As alluded to in the first article, in the flow of cultural and social life from the late 19th century to the early 20th century the tradition of thought represented by Hodge was deposited in the muddy backwaters of irrelevance. This needs a little elaboration and perhaps the most illuminating way to provide it is to reflect on the different audiences Hodge and Machen addressed.
In 1869 at the invitation of the American Sunday School Union, Charles Hodge published The Way of Life and in 1923 Gresham Machen published Christianity and Liberalism. They were undoubtedly both speaking for Reformed theology, but the audience to whom they were speaking had changed greatly during the passage of those 54 years. Hodge also spoke for and to a great phalanx of evangelical belief; Machen really did not, though other evangelicals agreed with his position.
Princeton Seminary was founded in 1812, and for much of the 19th cent...
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