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The Scottish Philosophy and American Theology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Sydney E. Ahlstrom
Sydney E. Ahlstrom
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Extract

The Scottish Philosophy is no longer in good repute despite its proud reign in another day. Indeed, few, if any, schools of philosophy have been given such disdainful treatment by historians as Common Sense Realism; and few, if any, philosophers have had to suffer such ignominious re-evaluations as Thomas Reid and Dugald Stewart, who were once lionized as the founders of a great and enduring philosophical synthesis. Yet the very decisiveness of this reversal creates at least two challenging problems, one philosophical and the other historical. First, was the Scottish Philosophy as undistinguished as posterity has judged it to be? (To this I would answer with a qualified negative, but the subject is outside the purview of the present essay.) Second, why, when its ultimate rejection was so complete, did the Scottish Philosophy for over a century play such a large and variegated role in Western thought, being in its origins a forceful liberalizing religious movement, in France the near-official “middle-way” of the Restoration and July Monarchy, and in America the handmaiden of both Unitarianism and Orthodoxy? The account which follows is directed to this second question as well as to the factors in Scottish and American intellectual history which demonstrate the importance of asking it.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , September 1955 , pp. 257 - 272
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1955

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References

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16. Hutcheson's implicit “necessitarianism” was unacceptable to Reid and Stewart who were indebted to him more for method and approach; in ethical doctrine Hume was a more direct heir. On Hutcheson see Fowler, Thomas, Shaftesbury and Hutcheson (London 1882)Google Scholar; Scott, William R., Francis Hutcheson (Cambridge, 1900).Google Scholar

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25. This is not Ivy League provincialism, but a consideration of four of the oldest centers of theological training in the country: The divinity schools are usually dated Andover, 1808; Harvard, 1811; Princeton. 1812; and Yale 1822. Others could be included in this study: e.g., the College of Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), on which see Temple, Sydney A. Jr, The Common Sense Theology of Bishop White (New York, 1946)Google Scholar.

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36. Foster's, Frank H.Life of Edwards Amasa Park (New York, 1936)Google Scholar though adulatory does scant justice to the man. On the Andover crisis see Williams, Daniel D., The Andover Liberals (New York, 1941)Google Scholar; Rowe, H. K., History of Andover Theological Seminary (Newton, 1933)Google Scholar.

37. “New England Theology,” Bibliotheca Sacra, IX (1852), 191.Google Scholar

38. Foster, , Park, 472.Google Scholar

39. Review of Stewart's, Active and Moral Powers, Bib. Sac., VII (1850), 191–193;Google Scholar “Natural Theology,” Ibid, III (1846), 241–284.

40. “Theology of the Intellect and that of the Feelings,” Ibid, VII (1850), 543, 549; Foster, , New England Theology, ch. xviiGoogle Scholar; “Thoughts on the State of Theological Science and Education in our Country,” Bib. Sac., I (1844), 745.Google Scholar

41. Bib. Sac., VII (1850), 549.Google Scholar This sermon on the theology of the intellect and feelings to the Mass. Conv, of Cong. Ministers in 1850 was one of Park's most memorable pronouncements. It involved him in a protracted controversy with Hodge; see Foster, , New England Theology, 263–69, 484,Google Scholar for an outline of Park's theology.

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48. The Bib. Rep. & Princeton Rev. was the vehicle of his polemics, the central ones of which are collected in Essays and Reviews; but his Sys. Theol. is also combative at every point.

49. Essays and Reviews, 583.

50. Sys. Theol., II, 296.Google Scholar This chapter is “philosophical speculation” from start to finish. Its consonance with Alexander's Moral Science is remarkable.

51. See Sys. Theol., on cosmological argument, I, 201 sq.; on rational intuition, I, 193; on “Realistic Dualism” as regards the nature of man, II, 46, 61; his critique of Edwards on mankind's unity with Adam, II, 216–27; and esp. his chapters on “Sin” and “Free Agency,” II, 130–309. At times (e.g., II, 263) Hodge himself draws back from his conclusions. Actually the influence of rational humanism is diffused throughout the work and is discernible not so much in particular as in the nuance of the whole.

52. Morais, Herbert M., Deism in Eighteenth Century America (New York, 1934Google Scholar) and Koch, G. Adolf, Republican Religion (New York, 1933Google Scholar) describe the challenge; above-cited works on Channing, Dwight, and Witherspoon, the response.

53. Macleod refers to it as “the Scottish Apologetic Philosophy of Common Sense;” Scottish Theology, 213.

54. This is approximately the period of Channing's adult life, c. 1805–1840. Its spirit is gracefully, though condescendingly, described by Frothingham, Octavius B., Boston Unitarianism (New York, 1890)Google Scholar.

55. “Remarks on the Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review,” Bib. Sac., VIII (1851), 177–180.Google Scholar

56. The epigoni, both in their histories and philosophical treatises, constantly treat Hume as a philosophical curiosity. The now forgotten Beattie reprimanded Reid for being “rather too warm an admirer of Mr. Hume.” Quoted by Fraser, Reid, 114.

57. The word “reinterpreted” is important. Scottish Philosophers were everywhere emphatically eclectic (in France they took the name “Eclectic”). But, they were not omnivorous. If, for example, they applauded Paley's natural theology, they warned against his “selfish ethic;” e.g. Review of Alexander's, Moral Science, Bib. Rep. & Princeton Rev., XXV, 4.Google Scholar