Jonathan Dickinson And The Problem Of Synodical Authority -- By: Leslie W. Sloat

Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 08:2 (May 1946)
Article: Jonathan Dickinson And The Problem Of Synodical Authority
Author: Leslie W. Sloat


Jonathan Dickinson And The Problem Of Synodical Authority

Leslie W. Sloat

THE name of Jonathan Dickinson is chiefly associated, in the minds of those who know it, with the organization of the College of New Jersey. This institution, later named Princeton University, was formally established in Elizabeth, New Jersey, in 1746–7, and he became its first president.

But the organization of this college occurred in the last year of Dickinson’s life. His real career was that of pastor, preacher, presbyter, writer and theologian in the Presbyterian Church during its formative period. Although he maintained an independent status from his ordination in 1709 until a Presbyterian Synod was formed in 1717, he was even then closely associated with the infant body. And after his formal adherence to it in 1717, he was continually and prominently involved in its affairs. The records of the Synod from 1717 to 1747 bear abundant witness to the high regard which his fellow ministers had for his wisdom and his ability.

The name of Dickinson has been variously used in Presbyterian circles since his time. He has been hailed for his orthodoxy and for his spirit of toleration. Archibald Alexander, the first professor of Princeton Seminary, writing as a member of the “Old School” branch of the Presbyterian Church in 1851, says of Dickinson that he was “a man of superior abilities both as a preacher and a writer, and truly evangelical; a friend of revivals, and a zealous promoter of missions among the aborigines of this country. He deserves to stand in the foremost rank among the fathers of the Presbyterian Church in these United States” (Biographical Sketches of the Founder and Principal Alumni of the Log College, p. 83). D. S. Schaff, writing in The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, says, “his name stands out in the early Presbyterian history of the middle colonies much as that of Jonathan Edwards does in New England” (Vol. III, p. 419). Charles A. Briggs,

a leading liberal who was to be suspended from the Presbyterian ministry on charges of heresy in 1894, wrote in 1885, “Jonathan Dickinson became the great representative American Presbyterian of the Colonial Period, the symbol of all that was noble and generous in the Presbyterian Church” (American Presbyterianism, its Origin and Early History, p. 177). And in another place he adds, “It is due chiefly to him that the Church became an American Presbyterian Church, and that it was not split into fragments representing and perpetuating the differences of Presbyterians in the mother countries of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, and the several parties in those countries” (ibid., p. 216).

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