Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-01T07:42:39.969Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Theology of John Baillie: A Biographical Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

Donald S. Klinefelter
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

It is now nine years since the death of Principal John Baillie of New College, Edinburgh, and as yet there has been no adequate study of his extremely fruitful life and thought. This essay is intended as a prologue to such a study, and in it I hope to show not only that this kind of inquiry would be of considerable historical interest, but that it would also be helpful as a means of getting our bearings in the midst of the current theological confusion. For John Baillie was no stranger to theological struggle, breakdown, and renewal in either his private life or his theological reflection, although the irenic spirit of much of his writing might tend to give the opposite impression. Indeed it was just that nineteenth-century bifurcation of life and thought which provided much of the impetus for his most creative and penetrating theological work, and which may provide some helpful insights into the nature of the theological problems confronting us today.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 22 , Issue 4 , December 1969 , pp. 419 - 436
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1969

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 419 note 1 I would like to express my sincere appreciation to Mrs F. Jewel Baillie, Dr and Mrs R. T. Cameron, Dr and Mrs W. R. Forrester, and the Rev. Professor John Mclntyre for their generous co-operation in interviews on this and related subjects.

page 419 note 2 Mackay, John A., ‘John Baillie, A Lyrical Tribute and Appraisal,’ Scottish Journal of Theology, IX (Summer 1956), 226–227.Google Scholar

page 420 note 1 Baillie, John, ‘Confessions of a Transplanted Scot’, in Contemporary American Theology, ed. Ferm, Vergilius (Second Series; New York: Round Table Press, 1933), pp. 33–34.Google Scholar

page 421 note 1 Baillie, John, And the Life Everlasting (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1933), pp. 1–2Google Scholar. Cf. Our Knowledge of God (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1939), 4–5Google Scholar. The preceding autobiographical remarks are expanded in an unpublished BBC broadcast talk entitled ‘Why I Believe’ (13th July 1943). This address is available in MS. 4 of the John Baillie Papers which have been informally collected and arranged in ten volumes (MS. 1–10) by the New College Library. I am indebted to Mr J. V. Howard and his staff for their kind assistance during my research among these materials in June-July 1968.

page 421 note 2 Baillie, John, ‘Donald: A Brother's Impression’, in Baillie, D. M., The Theology of the Sacraments (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1957), p. 14.Google Scholar

page 422 note 1 ibid., pp. 14–15.

page 422 note 2 Baillie, ‘Confessions’, loc. cit., pp. 35–36.

page 423 note 1 ibid., pp. 36–37.

page 423 note 2 Baillie, John, The Idea of Revelation in Recent Thought (New York: Columbia University Press, 1956), p. 138.Google Scholar

page 424 note 1 Baillie, “Confessions’, loc. cit., p. 40.

page 424 note 2 Forrester, Isobel M., ‘John Baillie: A Cousin's Memories’, in Christian Devotion, Addresses by John Baillie (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1962), p. 5.Google Scholar

page 424 note 3 Dow, John, ‘Memoir’ (of D. M. Baillie), in Baillie, D. M., To Whom Shall We Go? (Edinburgh: St. Andrews Press, 1955), pp. 3–4.Google Scholar

page 424 note 4 Among the John Baillie Papers (MS.I) is an exercise in German translation of‘The Figurative Language of Jesus in its Significance for the Investigation of his Inner Life’ by Heinrich Weinel, who (apparently) was teaching New Testament at Jena at this time.

page 425 note 1 Baillie, ‘Confessions’, loc. cit., p. 44.

page 425 note 2 Baillie, ‘Donald, A Brother's Impression’, loc. cit., pp. 20–21.

page 426 note 1 e.g. Baillie, John, The Roots of Religion in the Human Soul (New York: George H. Doran Co., 1926), pp. 212–213Google Scholar; The Interpretation of Religion (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1928) pp. 353–356Google Scholar. See also, The Idea of Revelation in Recent Thought (1956), p. 146; and The Sense of the Presence of God (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1962), p. 258.Google Scholar

page 426 note 2 Hibbert Journal, XXIV (July 1926), 718–730Google Scholar. This article is adapted from ch. VII of Baillie's A Study of the Kantian Ethic: With Special References to its Historical Relations (October 1917). See the John Baillie Papers (MS.3).

page 426 note 3 Forrester, loc. cit., p. 7. A handsome collection of Songs and Sonnets by Peter Baillie was privately printed and circulated by the Baillie family at Christmas 1914.

page 426 note 4 Baillie dedicated his first major work, The Interpretation of Religion (1928), to Peter Ross Husband, Cecil Barclay Simpson, and Peter Baillie.

page 427 note 1 Cf. ‘Confessions’, loc. cit., pp. 55–56; and, The Roots of Religion in the Human Soul (1926), especially Chapter I.

page 427 note 2 McAfee, Cleland Boyd, Auburn Seminary Record, XVI, No. 5 (10th November 1920), 196–208.Google Scholar

page 428 note 1 For a very interesting view of Baillie's theological position and the nature theological education at Union Seminary in the early thirties, see Bonhoeffer's, DietrichNo Rusty Swords, ed. Robertson, Edwin H. (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), especially pp. 88–91.Google Scholar

page 429 note 1 Baillie, John, ‘Looking Before and After’, Christian Century, LXXV (2nd April 1958), 400–401.Google Scholar

page 429 note 2 Baillie, John, ‘The Predicament of Humanism, The Canadian Journal of Religious Thought, VIII (March-April 1931), 109–118.Google Scholar

page 429 note 3 Baillie, John, And the Life Everlasting (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1933)Google Scholar. This book is dedicated to the memory of his beloved mother who had just died.

page 429 note 4 cf. Baillie,‘Donald: A Brother's Impression’, loc. cit., p. 33.

page 430 note 1 cf. Horton, Walter Marshall, ‘The Development of Theological Thought’, in Twentieth Century Christianity, ed. Neill, Stephen (Garden City, N.Y.: Dolphin Books, 1963), p. 277.Google Scholar

page 430 note 2 Forrester, loc. cit., p. 11. Among the several ‘people of ability in many different fields’ alluded to by Mrs Forrester were, in addition to J. H. Oldham, M. Chaning-Pearce, (Sir) Frederick Clarke, Christopher Dawson, V. A. Demant, T. S. Eliot, Eric Fenn, Hector Hetherington, H. A. Hodges, Adolf Lowe, John MacMurray, Karl Mannheim, Walter H. Moberly, John Middleton Murry, William Paton, Michael Polanyi, Gilbert Shaw, and Alec R. Vidler. Some of John Baillie's most thoughtful and creative work was done in the form of ‘Moot Papers’ which served as a basis for discussion by this distinguished group. See below and the John Baillie Papers (MS.4).

page 431 note 1 cf. Baillie, John, ‘The Theology of War’, Christian Century, LX (24th March 1943). 354–356.Google Scholar

page 431 note 2 cf. John Baillie Papers (MS. 5). Another good example of Baillie's ‘liberal’ neo-orthodoxy during this period may be found in his ‘Introduction’ to the remarkable Barth-Brunner debate published in the brochure entitled Natural Theology (London: Centenary Press, 1946).Google Scholar

page 431 note 3 Forrester, loc. cit., p. 13. Baillie's Closing Address to the General Assembly was published as The Prospects of Spiritual Renewal (Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons, 1943).Google Scholar

page 432 note 1 See the John Baillie Papers (MS. 2, 4).

page 432 note 2 The term is Bishop Stephen Neill's. See W. M. Horton, Ioc. cit., p. 274.

page 433 note 1 Baillie, John, ‘Some Reflections on the Changing Theological Scene’, Union Seminary Quarterly Review, XII (January 1957), 7Google Scholar. Cf. Invitation to Pilgrimage (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1942), ch. 5Google Scholar; ‘The Theology of the Frontier’, The Frontier, III, No. 6 (June 1952), 212–226Google Scholar; and Lecture, Eugene William Lyman, ‘Liberalism in Theology’, (Sweet Briar, Virginia: Sweet Briar College, 1959) pp. 1–20.Google Scholar

page 433 note 2 See Baillie, John, Baptism and Regeneration (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1963).Google Scholar

page 433 note 3 cf. Forrester, loc. cit., p. 14. There a is wealth of material on Baillie's role and interest in these ecumenical meetings in the John Baillie Papers (MS. 6–10) which deserves more careful attention than I have been able to give it.

page 434 note 1 cf. MacQuarrie, John, Twentieth Century Religious Thought (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), pp. 339–350Google Scholar; and, W. R. Mathews, Review of The Sense of the Presence of God, by Baillie, John, Scottish Journal of Theology, XV (1962), 413Google Scholar. A recent confirmation of this judgment is found in Professor William, L. Power's careful and illuminating Theological analysis of ‘John Baillie: a Mediating Theologian’, Union Seminary Quarterly Review, XXIV, No. 1 (Fall 1968), 47–68.Google Scholar

page 435 note 1 Tillich, Paul, ‘Author's Introduction’, The Protestant Era (Abridged Edition; University of Chicago Press, 1957), p. ix.Google Scholar

page 435 note 2 Baillie, ‘Donald: A Brother's Impression’, loc. cit., pp. 28–29.

page 435 note 3 H. A. Hodges, ‘Some Tasks for Christian Thought’ (unpublished Moot Paper, n.d. [1941 ?]), pp. 1–2. Cf. Baillie, John, ‘Retrospect’, The Sense of the Presence God, pp. 253–254.Google Scholar

page 436 note 1 I am indebted to Professor John McIntyre for help in clarifying my thoughts on Baillie's significance for contemporary theology.

page 436 note 2 Torrance, Thomas F., ‘A Living Sacrifice: In Memoriam, John Baillie’, Religion in Life, XXX (Summer 1961), 329–330.Google Scholar