THE WORK OF BUSHNELL
"Dr. Bushnell had a creative mind of a high order, striking out a path of his own, an innovator, indeed, turning the mind of the churches into new directions, in order that they might escape the wearisome confusion bred by the old controversies, and yet aware also that the full significance of the old doctrines had not been measured. If he did not always solve the issues which he raised, yet he never failed to shed light upon them, revealing by his personal disclosure of his own religious need the positive directions which theology must take." - Professor A. V. G. ALLEN, D. D., Religious Progress, p. 11.
"I 'm apt to think the man That could surround the sum of things, and spy The heart of God and secrets of his empire, Would speak but love, with him the bright result Would change the hue of intermediate things And make one thing of all theology." BISHOP GAMBOLD.
IN his old age, Bushnell seemed to have entertained the thought of writing an autobiography under the title "God's Way with a Soul," but the following quotation is nearly half of the few "dimly penciled" lines left by him.
"My figure in this world has not been great, but I have had a great experience. I have never been a great agitator; never pulled a wire to get the will of men, never did a politic thing. It was not for this reason, but because I was looked upon as a singularity, not exactly sane, perhaps, in many things, - that I was almost never a president or vice-president of any society, and almost never on a committee. Take the report of my doings on the platform of the world's business, and it is naught. I have filled no place at all. But still it has been a great thing even for me to live. In my separate and merely personal kind of life, I have had a greater epic transacted than was ever written, or could be. The little turns of my way have turned great changes, what I am now as distinguished from the merely mollusk and pulpy state of infancy; the drawing-out of my powers,
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the correcting of my errors, the winnowing of my faults, the washing of my sins; that which has given me principles, opinions, and, more than all, a faith, and, as the fruit of this, an abiding in the sense and free partaking of the life of God."
This exquisite picture of personal history, while untrue as to his "figure in this world," is full of interest as showing what he valued in life, and what he regarded as achievement; it was life itself rather than what is done in life; his separate and merely personal kind of life was to him a greater epic than was ever written. The spirit of these words breathes from almost every page of his writings and constitutes their power. He is always dealing with life and striving to put it in the way to realize itself. It is in striking contrast with the older theologians of New England, who spent their lives in efforts to justify the ways of God to men rather than in teaching them how to justify their own ways before God. It is not strange that he seemed to himself to have been a small "figure in the world." His life was a simple one, void of striking incidents, and much like that of most New England ministers, even to the storms that beat upon him. Few rose to eminence who escaped them; indeed, it was through accusations of heresy or attacks upon it that eminence was usually achieved. Nearly every memorable book on theology was either an attack or a defense. Bushnell came out of this general warfare less scathed, and with larger gains in his
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hands, than any of his predecessors. But aside from controversy, his life was without special incident, save that it was overshadowed by disease during half his years. A critical reader would look for signs of weakness, but it is not easy to place the finger upon a page where his thought is qualified beyond the point where human finiteness would naturally affect it; it chastens and humanizes, but it does not color nor deflect nor depress it. There was in him superabundance of vitality and of rough combative force that needed just this subduing influence. Without it, he might have been a stormy polemic, lacking in sympathy with an order of men and of things that called for gentle treatment. As it was, there was enough of robustness, but also how much of tender consideration and yearning fellowship!
It can be said of Bushnell as Professor George B. Stevens has said of St. Paul, "He challenged men to a new habit of thought." It was not so much to certain theological opinions that he objected as to a way of arriving at all theological opinions. He was the first theologian in New England to admit fully into his thought the modern sense of nature, as it is found in the literature of the century, and notably in Wordsworth and Coleridge. He was not a student of this literature beyond a thorough study of "The Aids to Reflection," but through this open door the whole spirit of that great thought movement entered his mind and found a congenial home. The secret of this
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movement was a spiritual interpretation of nature. It was a step in the evolution of human thought; and appearing first in literature, its natural point of entrance, it was sure to reach all forms of thought, as in time to come it will reach all forms of social life. The thing that the world had begun to see was that not only is the world God's, but that God is in his world. Bushnell was by nature widely open to this thought, and its undertone can be heard in almost every page of his writings. Each of his treatises is, with more or less distinctness, an effort to bring natural things and divine things into some sort of relevance and oneness. He took the path by which superior minds have always found their way into new realms of truth. They do not pass from one school to another, but instead rise into some new or larger conception of nature and start afresh. Bushnell, with the unerring instinct of a discoverer, struck this path and kept it to the end. He did not deny a certain antithesis between nature and the supernatural, but he so defined the latter that the two could be embraced in the one category of nature when viewed as the ascertained order of God in creation. The supernatural is simply the realm of freedom, and it is as natural as the physical realm of necessity. Thus he not only got rid of the traditional antinomy between them, but led the way into that conception of the relation of God to his world which more and more is taking possession of modern thought.
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It is a popular impression of Bushnell that he was the subject of his imagination, and that it ran away with him in the treatment of themes, which required only severe thought. The impression is a double mistake; theology does not call for severe thought alone, but for the imagination also and the seeing and interpreting eye that usually goes with it. It is not a vagrant and irresponsible faculty, but an inner eye, whose vision is to be trusted like that of the outer; it has in itself the quality of thought, and is not a mere picture-making gift. Bushnell trained his imagination to work on certain definite lines, and for a definite end; namely, to bring out the spiritual meaning hidden within the external form. "These temporals," he said, "are the scabbards of the eternal, or the capsules in which it grows, as the matches whose fires are kept hid in their bodies" (Living Subjects, p. 269).
He bridged the apparent chasm between form and spirit by a theory of language, to which a previous chapter is devoted and frequent reference, is made because it everywhere underlies his work. This conception of language does not discredit the rational faculty; it is only another path for reaching a rational conclusion. A phrase in "Work and Play" indicates perhaps better than any other his real standpoint, and the spirit in which he worked: -
"No more will it be imagined that poetry and rhythm are accidents or figments of the race, one side of all ingredient or ground of nature. But
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we shall know that poetry is the real and true state of man; the proper and last ideal of souls."
This conception reaches to his style. It is made up of long sentences full of qualifying phrases, until the thought is carved into perfect exactness; or, changing the figure, shade upon shade is added, until the picture and conception are alike. But with all this piling up of phrases, he not only does not lose proportion and rhythm, but so sets down his words that they read like a chant. It is varied, however, by frequent condensation into apothegmatic phrases, but the chant is quickly resumed, a requirement of his nature, for it may be said of him that he thought musically. The harmony of one thing with another and of all things with the Life of all, subdued the play of his mind and his expression into likeness to it-self. His style has been criticized as garish and extravagant, a just criticism at times. He not only followed that sound rule of good writing, to lean heavily on the subject, but he sometimes overworked not only his subject but the best feature of his style. He always gave a fine loyalty to his theme, and laid the universe under tribute to it; all realms were ransacked for material to uphold it, but seldom with too evident remoteness to serve it well. The commonest fault in his writing is over-insistence, a fault incident to his profession, and fed by the very nature of the end in view. The clearest marks of his style are its elevation and dignity. Not in all his volumes can
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a sentence be found that falls below a high standard of these qualities. His discourse is always bathed in beauty and high solemnity, as though he saw all things in that light, Without comparing his style as to merit with that of Milton and Jeremy Taylor and Sir Thomas Browne, it may be claimed that he belongs to their class; he has the same majestic swing, and like them he cannot forbear singing, whatever he may have to say. His theme may be roads, or city plans, or agriculture, or emigration, or the growth of law; yet he never fails of lifting his subject into that higher world of the imagination where the real truth of the subject is to be found.
We come now to a more definite examination of his work.
The New England theology at no time assumed that finality had been reached in theological accuracy. The Congregational Order, with its individualism and absolute equality, looked in the opposite direction and invited change. But it had reached a crisis through which it could not pass in safety. Re-definition and re-debating were no longer adequate to meet the new order of thought that had come in with science and the unfolding of society. Already a defection of the most serious character, and involving deplorable results for both parties, had taken place. On theological grounds it was more than half justifiable; on ecclesiastical grounds it was schismatic and had the weakness of schism. The Unitarian movement was clearly
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without promise of success as a visible church. Its most brilliant leaders failed it in construction and outran it in critical denial. In its long list of great names, poets, scholars, orators, preachers, statesmen, none appeared with the disposition or the ability to lead and to construct. Extreme individualism and the rapid shifting of opinion in every department of thought probably explain this feature of the movement. Its justification and its weakness were that it was a protest and a denial. Being such, reconstruction into a corporate church life was difficult if not impossible.
Midway in this movement, Bushnell appeared on the scene. With no antecedents or environment to account for him, he stood out between the two parties under the impulse of his own thought, separated from each, but having a common message for both. It may be safely asserted that in the conflict, now almost a century long, Bushnell affords almost the only conspicuous example of an effort to compass both sides of the question at issue. Many efforts at reconciliation have been made, but the terms demanded have been the surrender of the other party.1 It is not yet easy to
1 Exception should be made of the Rev. Dr. George A. Gordon's able book, The Christ of To-day, in which the anthropology, the real field of the long debate, is treated with a fairness and freedom from tradition that deserve the consideration of both parties. Exception should also be made of the works of the Rev. Dr. James M. Whiton, and of many pages in the books of the Rev, Dr. Lyman Abbott, whose voluminous writings, both as author and editor, have been of incalculable service, not less in clarifying the thought of both parties than in promoting a spirit
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realize the importance of the position maintained by Bushnell. Less and less will his theological opinions be quoted, though they will not soon be for-gotten, but his stand and method will more and more take on the form of deliverance for Orthodoxy. One has only to read the pamphlets of Dr. Tyler and "Omicron" and the protests of "The Christian Observer" to see the gulf that was opening before it. The bequeathed contention of Edwards had already more than half yielded to Arminianism and modern thought. What would follow, no man knew. Relief was needed at four points: first, from a revivalism that ignored the law of Christian growth; second, from a conception of the trinity bordering on tritheism; third, from a view of miracles that implied a suspension of natural law; and fourth, from a theory of the atonement that had grown almost shadowy under "improvements," yet still failed to declare the law of human life.
The time had also come when a rational, scientific, cause-and-effect habit of thought was imperatively required, not only on these four points, but in the whole realm of theology. But the doctrines, even as they were held, were not to be cast out and trodden under foot. They sprang out of
of charity which combines the truth of both. Nor would we intimate that other writers in each denomination have not, from their own standpoint, done much by concession and mutual recognition of each other's strength, to heal a schism which Bishop Phillips Brooks said would not have happened if modern exegesis had existed in the early part of the century.
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great and nourishing truths, the germs of which, still lay within them. Bushnell undertook to reinterpret these doctrines, and to restate them in the terms of life itself; to find their ground in nature and revelation, and in the processes of the human spirit.
The question of revivalism will not be debated here; it was a phase in the development of the church; but when Bushnell assumed his pastorate, it had overwhelmed the law of normal Christian growth. Salvation had become a matter for adults, or for children under adult conditions. Baptism had lost its significance; the doctrine of the Holy Spirit was buried under trivial and debasing assertions; emotion outweighed reflection; the whole matter of entrance upon the Christian life was made to wait upon times and seasons and the most adventitious circumstances, even while all the means of grace and the full organization of the church were at hand. But at the same time revivalism brought life and force into the churches. It outran the tendency in theology, and became Arminian in its tone and its use of the will. It begot a spirit of action that led to missions and personal activity in good works. But it had no theory or law of its own; as a matter of fact, its working depended on individuals of a certain temperament, whose presence in a community seemed to determine the coming of the Holy Spirit. But this tendency to superstition was not so serious as the almost total obscuration of the historic doctrine as to the
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place of children in the church, and the concurrent doctrine of the growth of the church from within by its own nurture. Revivalism was practically Anabaptist.
Bushnell early fixed his eye upon the system, and slowly came to certain conclusions which he held substantially to the end. He did not oppose the system, but he disagreed with it at so many points that it was equivalent to opposition. His criticism, however, did not turn on details of method; he went to the root of the question by asserting that the church had forgotten the law of its growth. It is enough to say that "Christian Nurture" has slowly and quietly supplanted revivalism in New England, - not the thing itself, for it still lingers in a harmless and often useful and even necessary way, but it has taught the churches that the law of their growth does not lie in revivals, but in the Christian nurture of the young. The theological objections to it vanished long ago, and it has passed into the religious life of New England as a permeating and transforming influence. The revival system would have worn itself out in time through contact with modern ideas and methods, but it would have left the churches without a doctrine of Christian growth, and also without a working method. "Christian Nurture" furnished both, and saved the church from that worst of all fates, the loss of a vital doctrine without one to fill its place. But even a greater achievement of this book was that it so effectively turned the current
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of Christian thought toward the young, where it is now going and must continue to go.
The next marked service of Bushnell to the theology of his day was rendered in connection with the Trinity.
It will not be claimed that it corresponds in value or even in kind with that rendered in connection with Christian nurture and the supernatural and the atonement. In each of these he fought and won a battle. On the Trinity, his work was a skirmish, and had only the value of a diversion, but it was greatly needed. The fundamental questions at issue between Orthodoxy and Unitarianism did not pertain so much to the being of God as to the nature of man.1
The real dispute was over the fall and depravity and regeneration. In respect to the last, Bushnell's influence as contained in "Christian Nurture" and the first volume of "The Vicarious Sacrifice" may be justly quoted as sustaining the protests of the Unitarianism of the day. That the real point at issue was anthropological quite as much as theistic is evident from the fact that Arianism was -
1 "It must he remembered that the real point of controversy between the two parties in New England was the doctrine of Sin and the correlated doctrine of Conversion. The field of debate was Anthropology. . . . It is remarkable, although the Trinity and the person of Christ were nominally the subject of contention in the Unitarian controversy, how little of importance was contributed on either side to the elucidation of these topics. Even Norton and Stuart, the best equipped disputants, say little that had not been said before." (Professor George P. Fisher, D. D., History of Church Doctrine, p. 429.)
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almost carelessly, it would seem adopted as defining the nature of Christ, a view of little repute in the world of thought. Unitarianism felt no passion for Arianism and very soon gave it up altogether, but it protested with unmeasured emphasis against total depravity, reprobation, and the inferno of Edwards and Hopkins. The flag that was raised, however, was inscribed with a denial of the Trinity, and Unitarian became the name of the movement. It was naturally chosen because it was easily understood, and could be effectively put to the people, as that trinity meant three Gods; was a survival of polytheism; was derogatory to the Deity; that if apparently taught in one text of Scripture it was denied in others; that it was a contradiction, three are one and one is three. It was under such a presentation that the Unitarian movement made its successful appeal to the people. There was much in the orthodox presentation of the Trinity to justify the criticism. The Nicene symbol was not understood, and Calvinism suggested, even if it did not assert, a distinction of persons that was hot misnamed tritheistic. Never really held, it was often so preached that the imputation could not be denied. But however the Trinity was preached and taught, it was incorrectly taught, and so far as criticism went, Unitarianism was right. The situation was dangerous to Orthodoxy, especially at this point. On the real points of difference changes were going on that might have prevented
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the schism, had not haste on one side and intolerance on the other prevented patience from having its perfect work. Edwards and Hopkins were no longer names to conjure with. Decrees had been softened into an Arminian sense. Imputation and reprobation and penal satisfaction were nearly "improved" out of existence. Human nature was not held to be quite so corrupt as Edwards had taught. The deepening sense of humanity, the literature it inspired, democratic institutions, and a better exegesis were busy in uprooting these perversions of doctrine. All would have been well in time, if time had been made a factor in the question. As the unity of God was the conspicuous postulate on one side and the Trinity on the other, the battle raged over that question so far as it was carried on by the people. Bushnell himself, in college days, had felt the difficulties of the orthodox position, and had lived in silent skepticism of it, to be delivered at last by his heart, but not restored to full orthodoxy. His position has been fully stated in previous chapters. "God in Christ" did not defend historic orthodoxy, nor did it place the doctrine of the Trinity where it stands to-day, but it served the purpose of a diversion against the charges of tritheism, and it checked the recasting of church creeds into tritheistic terms, - a measure that had been adopted to stop the growing heresy.1
1 It is hardly necessary to say that each Congregational Church makes its own creed, and adopts it by a majority vote of its male
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The next point at which. Bushnell brought sensible relief to the thought of his day was that of miracles, or the supernatural.
He was early led to think of the relation between the order of nature and the fact of a miracle, and of course the first play of his mind upon it was skeptical; the prevailing conception could have induced no other result in him. The doctrine of miracles has been held in two leading forms. First, that they are to be accepted on the strength of the evidences as stated in Scripture;
members. The independence oŁ the local church is grounded in an ideal conception of Christian personality; but while it favors and stimulates the development of character, it often makes sad work of it when it undertakes to check error by framing a definitive creed. It was an immense relief, especially to young pastors, to be freed from the necessity of affirming three metaphysical persons in the substance of the Godhead; and to feel at liberty to relegate the distinction of persons to the mystery of the Divine Existence without affirmation or denial; and to put in its place an "instrumental trinity" as sufficient for faith and practical religious uses. It was exactly at this point that relief was experienced. The subject was taken out of speculation, the ground of which was shifting from day to day, and made a matter of Christian experience. Whether Bushnell's view was correct or not, it was exceedingly workable: it brought God in all his fullness into humanity, and its patripassianism made it all that the human heart required for its personal needs. While it relieved the doctrine from the tritheistic cast that had gathered about it, it was removed toto caelo from the Arian conception of Christ that prevailed in eastern Massachusetts. His recognition, later on, of the central idea of the Nicene symbol did not weaken the delivering power of his first utterance, or indicate that it was groundless. He carried the doctrine out of a region where it was going to pieces, and brought it where only it can be made to stand, - the consciousness of the Christian life; that is, as he said, it is "a practical truth."
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second, that the character and teaching of Christ are internal proofs of the reality of his miraculous works; Christ carries the miracles, and not the reverse. While there was an immense advance from Paley's view to that of Coleridge, for such is the order in which the chief expounders of the two theories stand, - neither touched the real grounds of the doubt that had begun to prevail, because neither covered the relation of miracles to the laws of nature; each theory left them in antagonism. It was here that doubt lingered, however much the figure of Christ might plead for faith; it grew strong under a growing sense of natural law, and all the more because thought was rapidly turning to nature as a factor in the religious life of man. It was getting to be felt that the laws of nature could not be regarded as set aside as in the first view, or ignored as under the second view. Bushnell saw the difficulty with each, though recognizing a certain force in them. He was always ready to differ with Paley, an author whom he undervalued; and equally ready to agree with Coleridge, whom he followed almost without question; but he was a century in advance of one, and he had developed under the teaching of the other.
It is at this point our readers will perceive why, in these pages, we have continually spoken of Bushnell's steady appeal to nature and its laws. His vision was not full, but it was real. An excessive sense of evil and of its reach at times clouded his eyes, and he shrank from a view of
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nature that included God yet was not transcended by Him, but he still saw that nature and the super-natural could not be put in essential antithesis, but must form "one system."1 His method, however, was not to bring the supernatural down into what is called the natural, but to lift the natural into the supernatural. The point of contact was anthropological; - man is supernatural by virtue of his will; his consciousness of free agency delivers him from the grasp of endless causation, and makes him one with God in freedom, and creative energy. There are indeed passages in "Nature and the Supernatural" where nature is treated almost with contempt, and, as naturalism, is made the synonym of infidelity; but it is not nature itself that he has in mind, but the use and relation put upon it. When dissevered from the supernatural, and regarded as being in it the measure of God and of all appertaining truth, he treats it with scorn, as revealing nothing, as without meaning, as a limitation and a debasement; but when made a co-factor with the supernatural in the one system
1 "The supernatural, in its broadest sense, is that which manifests the operation of personality; so Horace Bushnell would have defined it. So we must define it today. In the narrower sense, it is that which manifests superhuman personality; only, whereas in former times the criterion of personal operation was under-stood to be lawlessness or caprice, in modern times it is seen to be at its divine perfection only in the perfect adjustment and adaptation of the law. The continuity and uniformity of the divine action should now belong to the rudiments of our faith in God." (Professor Benjamin W. Bacon, D. D., The Church Union. January, 1898.)
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of God, it becomes its true self, full of light and prophecy and all manner of revelation, - "a vast analogon of the world of the spirit." Thus viewed, the natural and the supernatural are not two worlds; the antithesis fades out, and all things and all processes are divine. Such was Bushnell's habitual look at nature.
This was the announcement that the age was waiting from the lips of faith. The long debate over the will had come to a practical end, and consciousness was left free to assert its freedom, no longer entangled in theories of motives and natural causation. On the other hand, literature, political freedom, and evolution had forced thought up to a point where a new definition of man was required; he must be relegated to the play of natural laws, - a thing with things, - or lifted into the divine order with God. The Incarnation had come to the front, and stood ready to be accepted or denied. It could be realized and fulfilled only under a conception of man that should ally him with God; that is, he must be defined as supernatural. This is the work attempted by Bushnell. It will not be claimed that he compassed man's nature and fixed his place in this still mysterious world, nor even that he defended his great thesis on wholly defensible grounds; but he enunciated a conception of man, and inferentially of miracles, imperatively needed to save faith from lapsing into Deism, and from longer deferred realization of the incarnation. Bushnell did not himself foresee how his thesis
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linked itself with this basal fact of Christianity; indeed, he said much that looked away from it, but later thought has taken up his essential contention and carried it to its logical conclusion, not, however, without aid from other sources.
But the immediate effect of "Nature and the Supernatural" was that of immense relief, felt especially by the younger clergy. At no point was the pressure of doubt in the fifties and sixties so great as in respect to miracles. Unitarian thought was fast lapsing into total denial, and, as at every step, not without partial justification. Science, with its dawning theory of the continuity of force, forbade an interruption of natural law. The perplexity was deep and general. Bushnell took off the pressure from either side. One was no longer forced to meet the charge of carrying a miracle in one hand and its denial in the other, and yet claiming both as from God. To all such Bushnell opened a door of relief in man himself, and said, "Here is the reconciliation; enter and believe."
This view of man as a supernatural being, and of "one system," seems to have come to stay, at least in its main features. The physical interpretations of the world and of man wane and grow dim, and shade off into impenetrable mystery; the spiritual grows clearer and firmer, and justifies us in claiming it as the abode of our life and the field for the play of its highest power; the creative will is one with God's will. It is largely due to Bushnell that Faith can say this today
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without meeting the charge of unreason. It is true that there still prevail conceptions of miracle as the violation of natural law, and also a crass rejection of the supernatural as a superstition, but the best thought of the day links them together and leaves them by the wayside. This thought, of which Bushnell saw the early gleam and was the first among us clearly to herald, stands before nature, the revelations of science, and the unfolding nature of man, in wonder and silence, confessing that God is behind and in all, and that his laws like himself are one.
The final value of this book is that it delivers us from the evanescence of the material world, and gives us a place in the enduring order of the will of God. Granting the antithesis between the transient and the eternal, the visible and the invisible, the natural and the supernatural, and that there is antithesis cannot be denied; the book finds a place for us under the larger factor. It makes us feel and confess the supernatural. Imperfect in many ways, it is still a spur to thought and a stimulus to the spirit, and by awakening a sense of ourselves as sharing in the supernatural, it prepares us for that conception of God and his relation to the world, which lies before us to be realized and wrought into life and doctrine.
This much is to be said of Bushnell's work; whatever doctrine or subject he touched was left in better shape than he found it. He advanced the whole line of theology in New England without
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creating schism. His wide and violent rupture with Orthodoxy is not to be regarded as out of the line of theological development. He did not make himself an alien in the world where he found himself. Its dogmas were essential to his denials; they furnished the only background on which his work can now be seen. This is eminently true of his last treatise, "The Vicarious Sacrifice," especially the first volume.
The governmental or Grotian theory of the atonement never took a strong hold on the thought of New England, and whatever strength it had was derived from the fact that it was a deliverance from the penal view, and also from the great ability with which it had been set forth by the younger Edwards, Dwight, Taylor, and other theologians of the New Haven School. It was a scholastic and not a human doctrine. It was far off and general. Simple souls wanted an atonement to sustain themselves rather than the government of God. It was not the maintenance of general justice that they felt the need of, but something that would help them to become personally just before God. Thought could not go on much longer with its overemphasis of the atonement and its under-emphasis of the Incarnation without losing its relation to human society. The atonement as something done for and upon man, leaving him not an actor but a receiver, threw him out of gear with the modern idea of personality. This idea was rather to be found in the Incarnation, the inmost
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meaning of which is divine Fatherhood and obedient Sonship. It means Christ, not dying for man to fill out some demand of government, but living in man in order to develop his divineness, or, as Bushnell phrased it, that he might become "Christed." It was getting to be seen that whatever Christianity is to do for man must be done through the Incarnation; that is, through the oneness of God and humanity, the perfect realization of which is to be found in the Christ. It is a truth instinct with action; it allies itself closely with human development and is a co-working cause of it. Now, it does not matter what particular view Bushnell may have taken at one time or another as to the nature of the Godhead; whether Sabellian or Nicene, his thought and teaching pointed steadily toward the Incarnation. NOT does it matter how he represented God in humanity; He is there, and He is there because humanity exists eternally in God; and, being there, He must appear in created humanity. Bushnell's pages overflow with this truth; it is the backbone of his doctrine of the atonement. He not only brought relief to many minds who could not accept a penal atonement, and did not feel the force of the governmental theory, but he outlined, however roughly and with whatever of hesitation over side questions, that view of the atonement which has its centre in the Incarnation, and in the process by which man realizes his oneness with God.1
1 This view of the Incarnation is seen as early as 1849 in a letter to Dr. Bartol: "The tendency of German speculations and
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The strength of his teaching lies in the fact that It was not a work of speculation, but a personal achievement. He walked in the light of his day. He lived, and he watched the ongoing of his own life. He had great strivings within himself in his relation to evil and to God, and he had respect to the way in which he found peace. He went where all thought is to-day going for a knowledge of man, to the facts themselves, to human nature, its needs and its relations, and made a "first-hand" matter of what had not been considered as within reach. In all this there was little consciousness that he had a part to play, except to clear a path for himself and for those under him. But being what he was, he wrought out the deliverance that the church about him was waiting for. He saved its central doctrine without rupture or a temporary eclipse of faith. We may or may not render formal assent to the moral view of the atonement, but as a matter of fact it is generally preached, and it underlies and enters into all the work of the church.1 No change of religious opinion was
reactions, you have seen (as in Ullman's article on the 'Essence of
Christianity') is towards the 'Incarnation,' the union of the divine and the
human in the person of Jesus, understanding that union in its highest sense. I
am confident that Unitarianism and Orthodoxy can never unite in any other point
than this."
1 "Thirty years ago, Bushnell's great work, The Vicarious Sacrifice, appeared and provoked a heated controversy. The author was excluded from many pulpits. But now his theory is more generally accepted than any other." (Sermon preached in Central Church, Worcester, Mass., 1895, by President George Harris, D. D., of Amherst College.)
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ever more beautiful in its process, - silent, gradual, and making its way by its inherent reasonableness. It has not been put into dogmatic form, and it is to be hoped that it never will be; it is the surest way to devitalize a truth. Less and less is there a disposition to make it a matter of speculation and definition. The reason oftenest given for hesitation is that it is a mystery, but the real reason is that it is felt to be God's own life in the world lived out under the laws of life; to define it is like defining life; when it has been done, you instantly feel that it has not been done. The penal or satisfaction theory is sometimes preached because it is tangible and has the apparent support of the Scriptures and the real support of the Westminster Confession; but the governmental theory, though held in respect, is seldom presented as a ground for human conduct. The Incarnation has enfolded and drawn up into itself the atonement, where man becomes one with God in Christ Jesus. Sin does not draw God down to endure its penalty, or to maintain his government; rather does He enter into humanity, - having it eternally in himself, - in order to save and regenerate it by participation in its life. This was Bushnell's teaching, and since his day the eye of theology in New England has been fixed on the Incarnation as the central doctrine; and there it stands awaiting full development, and in natural alliance with all thought. Theism is shaping itself for its easy admission, and Humanity is opening its eyes to its own divine-
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ness. The realized ideal of the union and oneness of the two will probably not "be henceforth a subject for debate and definition, but will be regarded as a fact in the development of human history.
"While a very definite effect can be ascribed to these four treatises, inducing as they did a new use of terms and new conceptions of truth, they did not measure the range and depth of Bushnell's work. It was not strongest in theological circles. He never came to be en rapport with the professional students of theology; they did not like his elusive use of language, and he did not like their way of defining; each had some just ground of complaint against the other. His appeal was strongest to a different order of mind, - the spiritual, the sympathetic, those who lived by the heart and knew by insight. It is through such minds that his influence has been deepest and broadest. Though not read so widely as he was twenty years ago, he is far more widely preached; he has become a part of the common thought of the church.
It was often asked why Bushnell did not go over to Unitarianism, The question was a natural one. As early as 1847, the year of the publication of "Christian Nurture," he wrote to Dr. Bartol: "I think you will find that I am able to appreciate some of the feelings and intellectual struggles of Unitarianism, and to look upon them with such a degree of sympathy as one who has
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suffered the like may be expected to feel. I consider myself to be an orthodox man, and yet I think I can state my orthodox faith in such a way that no serious Unitarian will conflict with, me, or feel that I am beyond the terms of reason," His four treatises separated him widely from the orthodoxy of the day, a fact made evident by unmeasured criticism. They also seemed to favor much for which the earlier Unitarianism was contending, - a fact it recognized with cordiality. Why did he not cross the line? It is a question ordinarily not to be asked of a strong man; he does not change his religion or his church except under the direst necessity, but follows St. Paul's advice as to marriage, and abides in the state wherein he is. Nor would any discerning Unitarian have asked it at the time "God in Christ" was published. If the change had been made on the strength of that book, it would necessarily have been based by the very term "Unitarian" - on the doctrine of Christ. So far as Unitarianism had a Christology, it was Arian; but if Bushnell departed in any way from orthodoxy, it was in the direction of Sabellianism, which is as far from Arianism as east is from west. Had he made the change on Christological grounds, he would have stultified himself and imposed on those to whom he went. There was enough to flee from, but not enough to go to. In getting rid of tritheism he would not have escaped polytheism, for this phrase can as properly be applied to the Arianism of
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Charming as the term tritheistic to the Trinity of the orthodox.1 Had Channing, whose genius did not lead to theology, adopted almost any view of Christ except the Arian, the movement of which he was the recognized head would have been far stronger.2
It must not be supposed that the Unitarian
1 "It was not a mistake on the part of the orthodox to look on
Arianism as in reality an introduction of a species of poly-theism into
Christian theology." (Fisher, History of Doctrine, p. 135.)
2 "What was Channing's conception of Christ? Christ was a
preexistent rational creature, an angel or spirit of some sort, who had entered
into a human body. He was not even a man except so far as His corporal part is
concerned, but was a creature from some upper sphere." (Fisher, History of
Doctrine, p. 431.)
Principal Tulloch says (Ency. Brit., "Arius"): "The
peculiar heresy known by that name has never assumed any influence, or
regained, for any length of time, its influence in the church."
The Rev. Frederick Henry Hedge, D.D., one of the ablest and most learned theologians in the Unitarian Communion, wrote even more emphatically: "The Arian saw neither God nor man, nor a God-man, but a hypothetical being who is different from both, a sheer invention, an unintelligible, ghostly chimera, whom one can neither repose in as true God nor sympathize with as genuine man. The Athanasian doctrine preserves the humanity intact, and even guards it with jealous care, leaving me at liberty, as my spiritual wants or mental habits incline, to fasten on the human or divine in the hypostatic union. The Catholic or Orthodox Christology is precisely that which, by the comprehensiveness and impartiality of its statement, allows the largest liberty of speculation, and admits the greatest diversity of view. It merely affirms what every one believes, who believes in Christianity at all, - that God and man wrought together in Christ for the regeneration of humankind. . . . The Arian doctrine, on the other baud, is a rigidly defined, abrupt hypothesis, intractable, insoluble; to be taken bodily, if at all, and held by an act of volition as a stubborn anomaly which the mind can neither historically adjust nor philosophically assimilate." (Ways of the Spirit, p. 76.)
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movement was due to the force with which this crude doctrine pressed on the minds of men, even though, as Channing wrote in 1815, "A majority of our brethren believe that Jesus Christ is more than man." The immediate source of the movement was a reaction against the inhumanity of Hopkins and Emmons, or more generally against Calvinism, however presented. In short, the movement was not theological, but humanitarian, and was incorrectly named. If, instead, it had been named according to its nature, by some other phrase than Unitarian, always a disputed or rather a universally accepted phrase, for no Trinitarian denies the unity of God, how different and possibly how much happier the later history of New England theology might have been; and how much better fitted to enter into the conceptions of God and of humanity which the new century will bring before us! At present neither party has yet a theism fitted to cope with the questions they will be called on to meet.
As we look back upon the movement and examine it in the light of its Christology, it seems strange that it won any following; but when regarded in the light of its doctrine of man, it is strange that it was not greater. The former blocked the latter, and so it was all the way through, a cross play in which one thing neutralized another. There was scarcely a criticism or a denial that had not some ground and measure of truth in it, but in no case was it worth the price
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of schism, whether forced by the Orthodox party or demanded by the Unitarian. It was a movement that ought to have been a reform instead of a revolution. The order of development was broken, and in the breach great truths fell out of sight, or were retained in old-time forms on one side, and ruthlessly denied on the other side; in either case the truth suffered. Bushnell saw all this; saw how just were many of the criticisms, how necessary each party was to the other; but he also saw that to have gone from one to the other would not only have been weak, but would have defeated the end which he most desired to bring about, - namely, a realization of the truth on both sides. A deserter in religion always goes away empty-handed. Dr. Bartol did injustice to his denomination when he said that Bushnell was a "fish too big for the Unitarian net."1 It was not that which kept him away. To a great man no place is small if the truth is there. He gave different reasons at different times for standing off, though never did he ever seriously contemplate taking the step; the reasons always involved a question of the Unitarian position on some fundamental doctrine. But the real reason was a subconscious dread of schism, and a clear sense that the germinal truths of Christianity are contained in historic Orthodoxy, though deeply overlaid and fearfully misstated. Hence, his whole work in theology was one of deliverance and recovery and restatement. He
1 The Unitarian Review, September, 1880, p. 247.
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had an instinctive sense that if anything was to be done by him, he must stay where the truths are and dig them out and set them in order, rather than go abroad on a crusade of denial under doubtfully inscribed banners.
In a letter written to Dr. Bartol in 1872, he says:-
"I have a certain pity, as I read, for what I should call your unstandardliness. I think of an egg trying to get on without a shell, and it seems to be a rather awkward predicament. I am very fond of liberty, it is true, but I should not like to have the astronomic worlds put up in it, even if it were given them to go by their inspirations. Liberties are good, inspirations are good, but I like to have some standard forces, to which I can advert when I get tired.
"Well, God help you, as He, no doubt, will and does. Here we touch bottom together, if nowhere else, and it is good, firm, land."
But if Bushnell did not go to Unitarianism, he served what was best and truest in it; and that it had goodness and truth he unfailingly recognized, better than if he had entered its ranks. Unitarianism was a general and specific denial of Calvinism, but it dealt no such blow as that which came from Bushnell in "Christian Nurture." The denial aroused it to self-defense, but "Christian Nurture" induced its readers to forget it, a process that has been going on ever since, until it is no-where much remembered except in scholastic cir-
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cles. So of the atonement; Unitarianism justly denounced the prevalent theory, but believers in a doctrine do not drop it because it is assailed. Bushnell gave them the "Moral View," a theory that satisfies all whom Unitarianism could expect to reach. The middle of the century found the doctrine of miracles in a weak condition, heavily attacked by critics and feebly defended by its friends. Channing accepted it. Theodore Parker omitted it, and suffered Christianity to settle down upon the simple order of nature. Whether right or not, the wrench to faith was severe and possibly unnecessary. Bushnell opened up a larger conception of man, and a broader conception of law that not only affords standing ground for honest doubts, but suggests grounds of belief that we may all be forced to accept. Thus the whole face of Orthodoxy was changed, and whatever was vital in it was retained and set to fresh use. A great deal of it was expelled by the introduction of new truth. Total depravity, decreed salvation, reprobation, a commercial atonement, magical regeneration, a mathematical trinity, these are vanishing along with the inferno that tortured those who rejected them, or had not heard of them, and instead there is getting to be a theology, simple, humane, ethical in its main features, rational yet spiritual, natural and also supernatural, that confesses one God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and so holds to the oneness of God and humanity in the Spirit, a relation through which
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life and hope and salvation are revealed to all men.
It is not denied that Unitarianism, by its sincerity, its culture, its cheerful piety, and profound humanity, has contributed to this result; nor would we claim for Bushnell a totality of influence. The analysis of causes which evolution is now teaching forbids insistence on specific causes; change is the phase of a process behind which lie innumerable causes. The most that can be said is that one thing affects another. That Orthodoxy and Unitarianism have influenced each other is as clear as that neither is wholly right nor wholly wrong. But the degree of influence is a petty question, and indicates an intellectual and moral condition from which each side should pray to be delivered. The only question worthy to be raised is how to reach that ideal of truth which is higher than either has yet conceived, the first condition of the question being that they shall not quarrel by the way, nor sit down in self-satisfaction as having attained. Bushnell made no mistake in either respect; he was always kind and respectful to the side he would not join, and thought only of what might be if all could be brought into that "vein of comprehensiveness" which he claimed for himself. He seems to us to have been as catholic as he was intelligent in his faith, and more deeply grounded in the spirit than in the form of his belief; not a common virtue at a time when fear and intolerance filled the air. He seldom came nearer to
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censure than In the following letter to Dr. Bartol, written December, 1858, In answer to one in which Dr. Bartol states his purpose to review "Nature and the Supernatural:" "What I say of charity and liberty is in this view. Not that every man who calls himself a liberal, or rejoices in the epithet, is therefore off the balance. He is only on the way to be, and, holding on under that flag, he certainly will be. There is a certain under-force in words, which many make no account of, and which yet is too strong to be permanently resisted by any body. Thus there is a losing element in the type of the word liberal. I found it having finally an effect on me which I did not like; wondering not a little that Jesus, so abundant and free in the charities of his life, had yet the more than human wisdom to assume no airs of liberalism. No man or denomination of men can make a flag of that word, I am perfectly certain, without being injured by it. The under-force of it would finally move mountains. I want you to think nothing of me, and everything of truth. I don't ask you to be liberal to me; I am not so much as that to myself. God give you the truth and then the heart to say what belongs to truth."
The influence of Bushnell on theology was often a matter of question while he lived. "Christian Nurture" was soon perceived to be a useful book, but its theological significance was not as quickly detected. Public attention was so steadily directed
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to his heresies and "tendencies" that it saw little of his real thought. His very gifts of imagination and style made him untrustworthy. But this estimate was chiefly due to the fact that he spoke slightingly of system and the metaphysics that went with it. His break with method was greater than with the matter in hand. Since modern thought and criticism have prevailed, he has fared more justly, and has gained in standing as a theologian. The criticism of today does not pause an instant to inquire if he was orthodox or not, and almost as little does it care for his inconsistencies, but for impulse and tendency and general spirit which he imparted to theological thought, it cares a great deal. It was not his way to reject; he was never a come-outer; to deny and go away empty-handed violated his mental thriftiness; there must be some other way to find the path to truth than to leave the highway and strike into the open. He first found it in his theory of language; that put him into the atmosphere of the spirit, and also into the world of unfolding fact which had begun to move rapidly from one phase to another and always into growing light, - in short, into the world of modern thought. Almost every page of his writings is true to this theory; he suggests his idea, paints it, makes one feel it, and seldom goes farther than to say, the truth lies hereabout; find it for yourself, and then you will know it. It is the achievement of Bushnell that he introduced this method of dealing with theology into New England in the actual
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form of treatise and sermon; it may be called the method of suggestion. It would have come in time, but it might have been too late for Orthodoxy.
There is little occasion to compare Bushnell with the great doctors of theology before him, but he had what they had not, a unifying law of thought that delivered him out of the antinomies into which they led the church while seeking to deliver it from existing ones. He was a theologian as Copernicus was an astronomer; he changed the point of view, and thus not only changed everything, but pointed the way toward substantial unity in theological thought. He was not exact, but he put God and man and the world into a relation that thought can accept while it goes on to state it more fully and with ever-growing knowledge. Other thinkers were moving in the same direction; he led the movement in New England, and wrought out a great deliverance. It was a work of superb courage. Hardly a theologian in his denomination stood by him, and nearly all pronounced against him.
The recognition of Bushnell will grow as the theological crisis passes and leaves the New England theology of the past standing out in its full and bare proportions, and in contrast with that which seems to be taking shape under conceptions of God and man and evil and redemption that accord with modern thought and with the great law by Which all things are interpreted. Then it will be
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seen how pivotal was his work in a transition that will grow more significant as the contrast deepens between what was driven out and what was brought in. It will be said of him as Harnack has said of Luther: "He liberated the natural life, and the natural order of things."