Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 48:190 (Apr 1891)
Article: Suggestions As To Modifications Of The Dogmatic System Taught In The Congregational Schools And Churches, Required At The Present Time
Author: Frank Hugh Foster

BSac 48:190 (April 1891) p. 249

Suggestions As To Modifications Of The Dogmatic System Taught In The Congregational Schools And Churches, Required At The Present Time

Rev. Frank H. Foster

It is probable that at the opening of the late civil war in the United States the Congregational churches East and West were as heartily united in the acceptance of that general system of doctrine known as New School Calvinism, or technically New England Theology, as any body of free churches in the world ever were. Dr. Nathaniel W. Taylor had just passed away. Professor Edwards A. Park was at the height of his influence. The struggles of the past with encroaching error and with bad systems of administration were finished, and the churches were ready to enter upon new fields with mutual confidence and with common courage.

But this degree of union was the outcome of a troubled history. Scarcely were Pilgrims and Puritans upon the soil of the new world when disintegrating forces began to operate among them. When a century had passed, an Arminianism had crept in among them which called forth the earnest opposition of the great founder of the distinctive New England Theology, Jonathan Edwards. It was a thoroughly rationalistic Arminianism, born of the age when Deism was rife, and adopted in America by churches in which vital and biblical piety had faded away. It was natural that it

BSac 48:190 (April 1891) p. 250

should be met by methods somewhat akin to those which were employed to sustain it, for in reasoning with an opponent, it is necessary to occupy to some extent common ground with him; and so it came about that the reply was largely rational, and produced the impression upon posterity of one entirely so. It is a strange phenomenon that Jonathan Edwards, the most ethereal of all New England theologians, the most profound in his spiritual experiences, and the author of a great spiritual treatise, that upon the Religious Affections, should be famous chiefly for writings in which the logical element is predominant, his Freedom of the Will, his Original Sin, and his Nature of Virtue. But the weapons with which he fought his actual battles were believed to have the virtue of the victor in them, and his successors could but imitate his example. Their tendencies and training led to this, and when a new struggle came, again the nature of the contest thrust upon them favored the development of a purely rational style of argument. The Unitarians had no Scripture to stand upon, and the real reason of their resistance to orthodoxy had to be discovered in rational misconceptions, and answered by rational considerations. And thus, though the Bible was never laid aside, nor consciously subordinated, the strength and enthusiasm of the argument lay in the ratiocination, and the tone of the developing t...