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The Social Implications of the Doctrine of Divine Providence: A Nineteenth-Century Debate in American Theology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Charles D. Cashdollar
Charles D. Cashdollar
Affiliation:
Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Indiana, PA 15705
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Extract

In a 1963 article in the Journal of Religion, Langdon Gilkey examined the troubled condition of the doctrine of providence and concluded that it had become “the forgotten stepchild of contemporary theology.” He attributed its demise to the violent eruptions of evil in our century, the unfortunate link between the doctrine and now defunct theories of natural theology, as well as the pervasive Arminianism and naturalism of contemporary thought. Current neglect of the concept was all the more striking, he reflected, because of its integral relationship to nearly all the theological systems of the preceding century.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 71 , Issue 3-4 , October 1978 , pp. 265 - 284
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1978

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References

1 Gilkey, Langdon, “The Concept of Providence in Contemporary Theology,” JR 43 (1963) 174Google Scholar.

2 For some light on the epistemological issues, see Cashdollar, Charles D., “European Positivism and the American Unitarians,” CH 45 (1976) 490–506Google Scholar, and “Auguste Comte and the American Reformed Theologians,” Journal of the History of Ideas 39 (1978) 61–79Google Scholar.

3 Nearly every article on the subject begins with such a definition. The quotation here is from Dwight, Benjamin, “The Doctrine of God's Providence,” BSac 21 (1864) 594Google Scholar.

4 Matthews, John, The Divine Purpose Displayed in the Works of Providence and Grace (2d ed.; Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1840) 64–65Google Scholar; Sherlock, William, A Discourse Concerning the Divine Providence (2d American ed.; Pittsburgh: J. L. Read, 1848) 49Google Scholar; Woods, Leonard, “Divine Agency and Government,” American Biblical Repository 11 (1844) 127Google Scholar; Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review 30 (1858) 339–40Google Scholar; Christian Spectator 1 (1819) 445Google Scholar; Methodist Quarterly 11 (1851) 296Google Scholar.

5 Woods, “Divine Agency,” 127; Ward, J. W., “The Consistency of the Eternal Purposes of God with the Free Agency of Man, BSac 4 (1847) 95Google Scholar; Dwight, “Doctrine of God's Providence,” 596; Christian Examiner 18 (1835) 315Google Scholar; Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review 30 (1858) 329Google Scholar.

6 Princeton Review 3 (1879) 56–58Google Scholar; Taylor, Nathaniel, Lectures on the Moral Government of God (New York: Clark, Austin & Smith, 1859), 1. 3Google Scholar.

7 William Sherlock, Discourse, 37. The intimacy was such that Nathaniel Taylor was a bit uncomfortable with the distinction. Since everything in the material world had some influence on man, would they not be part of the moral world? What, therefore, Taylor wondered, was the use of the dichotomy? This did not mean that Taylor saw no difference between God's actions in the two spheres. He was simply more impressed with the interrelationships than the separations. See Moral Government, 2. 297–98.

8 Taylor, Moral Government, 2. 311.

9 Methodist Quarterly 11 (1851) 296Google Scholar.

10 Woods, Leonard, “Divine Agency and Government II,” American Biblical Repository 12 (1844) 412Google Scholar; Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review 30 (1858) 319–20Google Scholar, 327–28. This latter article is particularly helpful. For other discussions of this issue which conveniently outline alternate positions, see Methodist Quarterly 11 (1851) 292Google Scholar and Smith, Henry B., System of Christian Theology (New York: Armstrong, 1884) 111ffGoogle Scholar. (Much of the material included in this work is based on Smith's 1857 classroom lectures.)

11 Smith, Christian Theology, 112.

12 See for instance, Morton, George, The Divine Purpose Explained (Philadelphia: Joseph Wilson, 1860) 68ffGoogle Scholar.

13 Hitchcock, Edward, “Special Divine Interpositions in Nature,” BSac 11 (1854) 777Google Scholar.

14 Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review 30 (1858) 335Google Scholar. This particular passage is in criticism of the views of James McCosh, whom we will meet later. McCosh argued that God had foreseen all and therefore needed no subsequent interruptions.

15 Ibid., 329–30. This was thought to be especially true of matters relating to salvation. See Plumer, William S., Jehovah-Jireh: A Treatise on Providence (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1866) 111–12Google Scholar; Methodist Quarterly 11 (1851) 300Google Scholar.

16 Hitchcock, “Special Divine Interpositions,” 776. This article, originally a paper read at the anniversary of Newton and Bangor Seminaries, contains one of the clearest statements of these distinctions. Hitchcock provided nearly identical phrasing in his Religious Truth, Illustrated from Science (Boston: Phillips, 1857) 107ffGoogle Scholar.

17 Hitchcock, “Special Divine Interpositions,” 783.

18 Ibid., 778.

19 BSac 12 (1855) 196–97Google Scholar.

20 Hitchcock, Religious Truth, 107; also BSac 12 (1855) 191Google Scholar.

21 Dwight, “Doctrine of God's Providence,” 584–85, 589.

22 For examples of the social thought of these men see Wayland, Francis, The Elements of Political Economy (New York: Leavitt, 1837)Google Scholar; Perry, A. L., Elements of Political Economy (New York: Scribners, 1866)Google Scholar; Bowen, Francis, The Principles of Political Economy (Boston: Little, Brown, 1856)Google Scholar. The best secondary works are: Smith, Wilson, Professors and Public Ethics: Studies of Northern Moral Philosophers before the Civil War (Ithaca: Cornell University, 1956)Google Scholar; Meyer, Donald, The Instructed Conscience (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1972)Google Scholar; Howe, Daniel Walker, The Unitarian Conscience: Harvard Moral Philosophy, 1805–61 (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1970)Google Scholar; and Viner, Jacob, The Role of Providence in the Social Order (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1972)Google Scholar.

23 Christian World, October 9, 1873.

24 Christian Spectator 5 (1823) 173–74Google Scholar.

25 Among the studies which deal with this theme are Unger, Irwin, “Money and Morality: The Northern Calvinistic Churches and the Reconstruction Financial Question” Journal of Presbyterian History 40 (1962) 38–55Google Scholar; Charles D. Cashdollar, “Ruin and Revival: The Attitude of the Presbyterian Churches toward the Panic of 1873,” ibid. 50 (1972) 229–44; Rosenberg, Charles E., The Cholera Years: The United States in 1832, 1849, and 1866 (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1962)Google Scholar; and Gribben, William, “Divine Providence or Miasma? The Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1822,” New York History 53 (1972) 283–98Google Scholar.

26 Krauth, Charles Porterfield, Poverty (Pittsburgh: Haven, 1858) 26Google Scholar.

27 Christian Spectator 8 (1836) 11Google Scholar.

28 Francis Bowen, Principles of Political Economy, 23.

29 Sherlock, Discourse, 297.

30 A. L. Perry, Political Economy, 132.

31 Christian Spectator 8 (1836) 10Google Scholar.

32 Mill, John Stuart, Three Essays on Religion (New York: Henry Holt, 1874) 243Google Scholar.

33 Elliot, Hugh S. R., ed., The Letters of John Stuart Mill (London: Longmans, 1910) 2. 63–64Google Scholar.

34 Mill, Essays on Religion, 32–33.

35 Ibid.

36 Spencer, Herbert, Social Statics (London: Chapman, 1851) 22Google Scholar.

37 Bixby, James T., “Law and Providence,” Unitarian Review 6 (1876) 304Google Scholar.

38 W. M. F., , “Apparent Inequalities of Providence,” Universalist Quarterly 1 (1844) 66Google Scholar.

39 Parker, Theodore, Sermons on Theism, Atheism, and Popular Theology (Boston: Little, Brown, 1853) 71–72Google Scholar.

40 Frothingham, O. B., “The Religion of Humanity,” Radical 10 (1872) 255–56Google Scholar.

41 See, for instance, Plumer, Jehovah-Jireh, 68–70, and Clarke, T. M., “The Problem of Evil,” American Church Review 38 (1882) 14Google Scholar.

42 Christian Spectator 5 (1823) 175Google Scholar; also Sherlock, Discourse, 47, 196; Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review 30 (1858) 339–40Google Scholar.

43 Plumer, Jehovah-Jireh, 39.

44 Sherlock, Discourse, 334.

45 Ibid., 25–26.

46 Christian Spectator 1 (1819) 333–34Google Scholar; also Mears, John, The Bible in the Workshop (New York: Scribners, 1857) 336–37Google Scholar and Dwight, “The Doctrine of God's Providence,” 331, 348. By mid-century the orthodox churchmen had become very defensive on this point. As an example of this apologetic attitude, see Fiske, D. T., “The Divine Decrees,” BSac 19 (1862) 429–30Google Scholar.

47 Of course, the key was Bushnell's rejection of the common-sense realism, which dominated most of the thought. Laurens Hickok of Amherst also departed from epistemological orthodoxy and followed a modified Kantian line.

48 Hickok, Laurens P., “God's Arrangements Successful,” Presbyterian Quarterly Review 6 (1857) 192Google Scholar.

49 McCosh, James, The Method of Divine Government, Physical and Moral (New York: Robert Carter, 1850) 191Google Scholar. Similar arguments can be found in Barnes, Albert, Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Harper, 1868) 80–86Google Scholar.

50 McCosh, Divine Government, 205.

51 Ibid., 185–90. Horace Bushnell adopted a similar, although less radical position. Unlike McCosh, Bushnell continued to use two words—natural and supernatural—to describe God's activity. But the total force of his writing was to emphasize the unity of the two rather than the distinction. See his Nature and the Supernatural as Together Constituting One System of God (New York: Scribners, 1872)Google Scholar.

52 McCosh, Divine Government, 206.

53 Taylor, Moral Government, 1. 249. For an example of the orthodox position linking physical affliction to the violation of moral law, see Smith, Christian Theology, 113–14. “The physical follow in the wake of the moral, and tend to uphold the moral.” Or, “obedience to his divine laws in the long run is seen to issue in greater temporal wellbeing.”

54 I am aware that the theory persisted, indeed persists, in popular thought long after the turn of the century. But the conclusion of the academic phase of the debate is well marked by the elimination of the subject from the theological journals by the 1890s.

55 Rauschenbusch, Walter, A Theology for the Social Gospel (New York: Macmillan, 1917) 183Google Scholar.

56 The entrance of Christology into the consideration of providence changed the tone considerably. For a good example of this emphasis, see Brastow, Lewis O., “The Christian Conception of Providence,” Andover Review 1 (1884) 121–32Google Scholar. Brastow basically identifies “providence” with the historic progress of Christianity, progress toward a purpose which is embodied in Christ. See also Faunce, D. W., Shall We Believe in a Divine Providence? (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1900) 100–102Google Scholar and Seward, Theodore F., The School of Life: Divine Providence in the Light of Modern Science (New York: James Pott, 1894) 3, 8–9, 14–15Google Scholar.

57 Faunce, Shall We Believe, 100–102; Seward, School, 143, 180; “Providence and Catastrophe,” Living Age 221 (1899) 200Google Scholar. The social implications of such a theodicy varied, of course, with each person's estimation of the degree of human control over the evolutionary progress.

58 Hickok, “God's Arrangements,” 191.

59 Rauschenbusch, Theology for the Social Gospel, 183; also Seward, School, 191; Faunce, Shall We Believe, 127. Faunce argues, in contrast to the stress upon the humbling influence of providence in orthodox theory, that an awareness of social solidarity impresses upon the individual the tremendous importance of each action.

60 Quoted by Brown, Ira V., Lyman Abbott (Cambridge; Harvard University, 1953) 111CrossRefGoogle Scholar.