Journal: Journal for Baptist Theology & Ministry
Volume: JBTM 19:2 (Fall 2022)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous

Book Reviews

Augustus Hopkins Strong and the Struggle to Reconcile Christian Theology with Modern Thought. By John Aloisi. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2021. 177 pages. Paperback, $29.95.

Augustus Hopkins Strong (1836–1921) is a towering figure in the Northern Baptist tradition. In the 2001 edition of Theologians of the Baptist Tradition, a chapter on Strong follows the “prince of preachers,” Charles H. Spurgeon. Strong served as the president of Rochester Theological Seminary from 1872–1912 and is best known for his three-volume Systematic Theology, a standard text for Baptist seminarians until the last quarter of the twentieth century.

Strong is arguably the last theologian from the New England tradition whose views could comport with conservative and evangelical readings of Scripture. Strong was neither a modernist nor a fundamentalist. Rather, he warmly accepted Darwinian evolution but also defended doctrines such as the virgin birth and bodily resurrection. A 2009 single-volume reprint of the 1907 edition of Strong’s Systematic Theology by Judson Press features a foreword by Gregory A. Wills, professor of church history at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. That Strong’s work continues to be read in evangelical circles today indicates that attempts to reconcile his own thought to orthodoxy are ongoing.

In Augustus Hopkins Strong and the Struggle to Reconcile Christian Theology with Modern Thought, John Aloisi seeks “to examine the role ethical monism played in Strong’s theology and ministry” (3). While “ethical monism” has an obtuse and pedantic ring, Aloisi explains the term’s meaning for Strong’s theology and his wider intellectual project. Aloisi supplies a swift, engaging summary of his life in the book’s first chapter. This includes details such as the remarkable fact that Augustus’s father, Alvah Strong, was converted under the preaching of Charles G. Finney in 1831 (p. 7), as was Augustus himself in 1856 (p. 14). Strong’s pastoral experience prior to becoming Rochester Theological Seminary’s president, including stints in Cleveland, Chicago, and Haverhill, Massachusetts

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(20–28), reminds readers that Strong did not initially pursue a career in academia.

In the second chapter, Aloisi covers the various intellectual currents and figures whose ideas influenced Strong’s thought. This list includes post-Kantian German idealists such as Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Schelling, and G. W. F. Hegel. Lesser-known American idealists such as Josiah Royce and Borden Parker Browne are also named. Aloisi notes that although Strong never cited a single philosophical influence, “references to these men . . . in Strong’s Systematic ...