DAYS OF ACCUSATION
"I shall merely enumerate a few of the most common of these feelings that present obstacles to the pursuit or propagation of truth: Aversion to doubt; desire of a supposed happy medium; the love of system; the dread of the character of inconsistency; the love of novelty; the dread of innovation; undue deference to human authority; the love of approbation, and the dread of censure; regard to seeming expediency." -WHATELY'S Annotations on Bacon's Essay on Truth, p. 10.
"The principles on which I have taught: First, The establishment of positive truth, instead of the negative destruction of error. Secondly, That truth is made up of two opposite propositions, and not found in a via media between the two. Thirdly, That spiritual truth is discerned by the spirit, instead of intellectually in propositions; and, therefore, truth should be taught suggestively, not dogmatically. Fourthly, That belief in the human character of Christ's humanity must be antecedent to belief in his divine origin. Fifthly, That Christianity, as its teachers should, works from the inward to the outward, and not vice versa. Sixthly, The soul of goodness in things evil." -Life of F. W. Robertson, vol. ii. p. 160.
DR. BUSHNELL wrote few letters beyond those addressed to his family. His friends were near at hand, and his relations to them were, for the most part, direct. But the letters we have are of utmost value as showing the oneness of the theologian and the man. He is reticent as an author, but among friends he was a free talker, hiding nothing, and ready to express his entire thought and feeling. The only extensive correspondence carried on by him was with the Rev. C. A. Bartol, D. D., of Boston, a catholic-minded man of genius, who represented the more spiritual side of Unitarianism. A sermon preached in Boston by Bushnell in June, 1846, on "Barbarism, the First Danger," seems to mark the beginning of "a friendship which became one of the most valued of his life, and a source of untold refreshment in the desert of controversy through which he was about to pass."
The value of this friendship, theologically, was great. Through it he came into close contact with Unitarianism on its most real and representative side. So far as personal sympathy had weight, its attraction could not have been stronger. The
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relation proved to be a fine test of the reality of his opinions. While it begot a charity and respect for the other side, things greatly needed at the time, it does not seem to have had much effect in molding his views.
The following letters were written to Dr. Bartol, one just before, the others soon after, the publication of "God in Christ."
HARTFORD, October 11,1848.
MY DEAR FRIEND, I thank you for your very kind letter. It is refreshing to know somebody that dare let out his heart; for I begin to find that I am looked upon hereabouts as a mortally dangerous person. I think I have never seemed to be quite so much isolated as now; not that I am really and finally cast off, but every man seems to say, and almost every one actually says, "When is the book coming out?"...I think I understand how much is depending on it, and, of course, what my responsibilities are. Still, though it is the "crisis of my life," as you intimate, I suffer no anxiety whatever as to the result. Not because it may not, in one view, be important to me, but because I am willing to trust myself, and can do it calmly, to God and the conscious honesty of my convictions. I have a certain feeling, too, I will not deny, that if what I am about to say should be stifled and killed by an overhasty judgment, it will yet rise again the third day. This feeling I have, not in exultation, it seems to me, not so
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much in the shape of defiance, as in the shape of consolation, a soft whisper that lingers round me in my studies, to hold me firm, and smooth me into an even, uncaring spirit. Still, the best of all attitudes, I know, is this, let me do the right, and let God take care of me, I want to be in no better hands.
TO DR. BARTOL
HARTFORD, January 8, 1849.
My book is now in the hands of the printers, and I expect to see the last of the proof-sheets tomorrow. . . . My hope is not that it will convert anybody to me or my ways, but, what is dearer to me by far and more welcome, that it will start up inquiries of a different type, and lead to thought of a different character from those which have occupied the field of New England theology, and so to revisions, recastings, new affinities, more faith, and less dogma, and, above all, to a more catholic and fraternal spirit. I expect to be set upon all round the circle; and yet I have a confidence that a class of men who have heart enough to go into the aesthetic side of religion, and eyes to see something besides propositional wisdom, will admit that I have some truth in my representations. These, I think, will even wonder a little at the disturbance I have made by these expositions. . . .
One thing will be clear to many, that I am a good deal more for a Theos than for a theology.
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With a heart full of refreshing Christian remembrances, I am your brother,
H. BUSHNELL.
TO THE SAME
HARTFORD, February 13, 1849.
MY DEAR FRIEND AND BROTHER, - I send you herewith the long forthcoming book. I have spoken somewhat freely of the Unitarians here and there, as I have of the orthodox. I hope they will not be any angrier with me than I expect the orthodox to be.
... I rejoice not a little in spirit to see the signs that are beginning to be unfolded of a new spiritual relation between our divided families. I see tokens of a mitigation of repugnance, and a more indulgent and fraternal charity, sometimes in quarters, too, where I should not look for it. I rejoice, too, in the fact that the Unitarian side in Boston are evincing just now signs of spiritual life that rebuke the dullness of orthodoxy. You remember, perhaps, that I expressed a conviction that the Unitarian side would ultimately take the lead of orthodoxy in spiritual vivacity and real piety of character. I am more and more confident of this, and nothing but this is wanted to silence all controversy and compel a fraternal state. Unitarians, however, will need, in order to this, to come off their moralistic, self-culturing method, cease to think of a character developed outwardly from their own centre, and pass over
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by faith to live in God, which only is religion or Christianity. It is to be what God in Christ and God in the Spirit will make us, and what we cannot be in ourselves.
Your brother in Christ,
H. BUSHNELL.
TO THE SAME
HARTFORD, March 20, 1849.
MY DEAR FRIEND, - What you say regarding the un-theological character of my book, or its value as a "suggestive" instrument principally, exactly meets my feeling. It is what I wish to hear; for it is my very theory, you know, that nothing more is possible in the way of theology than to act suggestively. I have no doubt that some of the orthodox will say - it has been said to me privately, as you hint that, protesting against logic, I have used it, and that, casting out dogmas, I have done it only to set up a dogma of my own. But it will be observed that I have used logic principally as a negative and distinctive instrument, and as ad hominem to the disciples of logic. And as to dogma, the point to which I have brought everything is this, and this, in my view, includes all I have done, viz., that God, in the matter of trinity and atonement, is seen to approach us or come into knowledge, not under terms of logic and nationality, but under the laws of expression. To this, trinity is brought down; to this, atonement. They meet us poeti-
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cally, aesthetically, to pour their contents into us through feeling and imagination; to deposit their contents, not in our reason, but in our faith, by faith to be experimented or known experimentally. ... If any one chooses to call my doctrine dogma, and will call every right instrument of suggestion, or expression, even the last cry of Jesus, dogma, I have no objection.
TO THE SAME
HARTFORD, April 11,1849.
MY DEAR FRIEND, - I thank you for the only too undeserved compliment of your note in the "Inquirer," but more for the very beautiful, and in many points convincing, article you sent me in the "Examiner." There are passages in that article which I should like mightily to have written, and the whole spirit of it is such as to kindle a true Christian fire in my heart. If I must choose between it and the common view of orthodoxy, I should not long hesitate.
And yet there is a want in it, a vital defect of something. My heart cries, more, more! It leaves God too far off, interposing, between me and God, a creature-being, whom I want to worship more than him, and who really deserves my worship more than he; for surely it was more in him to die for me, a deeper love, than it was for the Father simply to let him. Just here, I perceive, is going to be the difficulty as regards that "reorganization" of which you speak. The tendency of
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German speculations and 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 meet in any other point than this; partly, because the miraculous conception of Jesus, regarding him as a creature-being already in esse, is too awkward, too virtually impossible, for belief; more, because the religious want we have on our side is too vast to be answered by any means of so slender a quality. Nay, your human or creature Saviour is, in one view, an offense to us, because it justifies that frigid dictum of the logical judgment which asserts that God is too far off, too essentially incommunicable, to suffer a real union with humanity. I read your eloquent article, thrilled and melted by its presentations, offended or shocked by nothing, as I am by some of our orthodox teachings, scarcely dissenting anywhere, feeling that God's character is everywhere justified, and that I must offer myself to communion in the true brotherhood of the faith. And yet, when I had come to the end, said Amen to almost everything and closed the book, I was still obliged to say, "Well, this is not enough; it does not fill me; my Saviour is more, closer, vaster, God himself enshrined in this world-history with me to sanctify both it and me, and be in it and me, the fullness
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of him that filleth all. It is only part of the same general defect, that you seem to be more shy of supernaturalism than I could wish, in the view you take of sacrifices, and especially in your view of pardon; for I hope it will some time or other be made to appear that there is a great deal more of supernaturalism in the management of this world than even orthodoxy has begun to suspect, - even a systematic, world-ruling, nature-redeeming super-naturalism; therefore, such as may aspire to separate sins (in pardon) from the damnation of mere nature, and the causative hell that nature contains or adds as a destiny to sin.
"The days of accusation," to which Bushnell refers in the dedication of "Sermons for the New Life," had fully come. A contemporary writer describes the situation: -
"At the time of the publication of 'God in Christ,' the atmosphere was sensitively tremulous with suspicions in respect to the orthodoxy of the author, a state of things of which he himself was not ignorant. On the issue of the book from the press in February, 1849, a few of the religious newspapers and magazines spoke of it tolerantly, one or two perhaps kindly, but the larger number with decided expressions of dissent and denunciation. The May number of the 'New Englander' for that year contained a notice of 'God in Christ' from the pen of Dr. Leonard Bacon, kindly in tone, and marked by discrimination and
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fairness in the statement of its teachings. Two ministers residing in Hartford, afterwards abundantly friendly to Dr. Bushnell, published lengthy reviews, more or less dissenting from its statements of truth.
"But these criticisms, and others such as these, were the milk of human kindness itself, compared with the language employed by another class of writers. No sooner did the book see the light than it became apparent that the theological authorities were determined to strangle the infant in its very cradle. It was extensively believed, and publicly charged at the time, that the fierce and. systematic onset which was made upon the author and his new work was the result of a concerted plan, originating in Hartford and its vicinity. As a part of this plan, the leading theological centers were to furnish each a champion to assist in crushing the man, who, though he had denied none of the cardinal doctrines of Christianity, had ventured to express his faith in them under formulas and philosophic explanations somewhat different from those which were assumed to be canonically settled for all time.
"The first of these criticisms came from the Divinity School at New Haven. Under the caption, 'What does Dr. Bushnell Mean?' three articles, signed 'Omicron,' appeared in successive numbers of the 'New York Evangelist.' On their completion, these were gathered into a pamphlet of twenty-eight pages and extensively circulated.
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In the course of a week or two, Princeton gave her weighty verdict, in an article of some forty pages, in the 'Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review.' This, though the most courteous and discriminating of all the reviews proceeding from centers of theological authority, yet failed in many respects to represent fairly the teachings of the book, and pronounced upon its alleged errors with judicial severity. The next assault was made by the 'Christian Observatory,' a new religious monthly published in Boston, which devoted sixty pages of its issue for June to a criticism of 'God in Christ.' The tone of this review was bitter and severe to a degree almost unequaled in the history of modern controversial theology. About the same time, from Bangor Theological Seminary emanated a volume of one hundred and eighteen pages, en-titled 'Review of Dr. Bushnell's God in Christ;' a book characterized by the calm and positively assured conviction that a well-settled theological system is the one touchstone of all truth, and that the regions beyond are dangerous ground, not worth the exploring. The Theological Seminary at East Windsor furnished no formal review, but performed its full share in the attempted enterprise of extinguishing the new heresy by keeping up a running fire against it in the columns of the 'Religious Herald.'"
The controversy, if such it can be called, has Special interest because it was probably the last of the kind that will be witnessed in New England.
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Bushnell himself closed the era of such debates, not by settling the disputed questions, but by introducing a way of treating them, which is not "under terms of logic, but under the laws of expression." Suggestion began to take the place of definition, and the verdicts of experience the place of dogma. He prepared the way for "Christian consciousness," at that time hardly a recognized factor in theology. Moreover, evolution has taken the cataclysmic feature out of criticism as out of all else, and has introduced instead a habit of regarding all things as in a process of becoming. Antagonism has given place to orderly phases, each phase being a result and a cause. The polemic no longer has a vocation, or lingers like a chance survivor of an extinct species.
Bushnell prepared himself for the storm by a stout resolution not to be drawn into any reply "unless there is produced against me some argument of so great force that I feel myself required out of simple duty to the truth, either to surrender or to make important modifications in the views I have advanced," a resolution that sounds strangely in connection with the fact that his most brilliant book in some respects is an aggressive and slashing defense, in which he surrenders and modifies far less than he reiterates and asserts. Still, the resolution indicates, even if it was not kept, a mind that played in a higher field than that of dialectic combat.
But the situation was not without humor. In
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a letter to Rev. Henry Goodwin, one of his earliest and ablest defenders, he wrote: "Have you read the long review in 'The Princeton'? You have seen me a pantheist in 'The Evangelist.' "Why not an atheist as well, with a special incarnation and a plan of supernatural redemption? This would enlighten the Germans! "Rev. Mr. Chesebrough had noticed the discrepancies between the reviewers; and inasmuch as the leading attack was headed with the question, "What does Dr. Bushnell mean? "Mr. Chesebrough, in a series of letters to the "Religious Herald," raised the question, "Do they understand him?" These letters, written under the signature C. C. (Criticus Criticorum), formed a unique and effective piece of criticism. His method was that of placing quotations from the critics in parallel columns. It had been claimed in the "Religious Herald" that they concurred in their understanding of the book. The parallel quotations showed violent contradiction, both by assigning to Bushnell different opinions on the same subject, and by indicating conflicting beliefs and opinions among the writers themselves. He is accused not only of all the heresies from the Docetae down, but of those that exclude each other. But this is not more marked than the disagreement among themselves on the points under consideration. New Haven and Princeton and Bangor flatly contradict one another on the trinity and atonement; Professor Goodrich contends for a view of the person of Christ which
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Dr. Hodge declares was never heard of, and all are at sea as to Sabellianism and the Logos. It was also strange to see Dr. Hodge of Princeton holding a view of the trinity more nearly in accord with that of Bushnell than that put forth by such New England divines as Adams, Albro, Edwards, Beecher, Kirk, McClure, Stearns, and Thompson in the "Christian Observatory." We may remark in passing that the close contact of these ministers with Unitarianism, for all lived in or near Boston, is the explanation of their strenuous orthodoxy, which, in turn, is the explanation of Unitarianism. It is not rash to say that had these eminent divines tolerated Bushnell's semi-Sabellianism even to the extent to which Dr. Hodge of Princeton tolerated it, a schism that never ought to have existed might have been in a great measure healed. Who, for example, could object to the following statement, unless he has retreated from the church into pure theism with its impenetrable mystery? "Neither is it any so great wisdom, as many theologians appear to fancy, to object to the word person. . . . We only need to abstain from assigning to these divine persons an interior, metaphysical nature, which we are no wise able to investigate, or which we may positively know to contradict the real unity of God." (God in Christ, p. 174.) To this Dr. Hodge says "Amen," and adds: "What Trinitarian wishes more, or can say more, than Dr. Bushnell says here?" (Princeton Review, pp. 260, 261.)
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We do not mean to intimate that the Unitarians of that day or of this would have been satisfied with Bushnell's doctrine of the trinity, but only that, had his view been tolerated, they would have felt relief from the tritheism which so troubled them.
The movement had in view a trial before the Consociation, a body that needs to be described in order to be understood by the general reader. In 1708 the Saybrook Synod made a statement of doctrine known as the Saybrook Platform, which provided that the churches should be grouped in Consociations or Standing Councils, generally one in each county. The Consociation was not only a Standing Council, but a court for considering and deciding all cases of discipline not easily settled by the local church. Its decisions were final, though another Consociation might be called into the case. It was in substance Presbyterianism. The ministers, at the same time, were divided into Associations for consultation, and for licensing candidates for the ministry, but the Consociation had charge of all strictly ecclesiastical affairs.1 As it was Presbyterian in form, so it came to represent the more conservative side in theology, espe-
1 See History of Congregational Churches, by Professor Willis-ton Walker, p. 206; also An Historical Address, by Rev. E. P. Parker, D. D., on "The Hartford Central Association and the Bushnell Controversy," a contribution of permanent value to the history of Congregationalism in Connecticut, and the fullest account of the efforts to bring Bushnell to trial. (Printed in Hartford, 1896.)
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cially when, under the teaching of New Haven, the lines were closely drawn between the Old and New Schools. Bushnell could not be brought before the Consociation until he had been presented for trial by his Association. The first step in this direction was taken June 5, 1849, by the appointment of a committee "to examine the book in question, and confer with Brother Bushnell, and report at an adjourned meeting of this body whether he have, in fact, published views fundamentally erroneous."
Two reports were presented; that of the majority said: -
"We are satisfied that whatever errors the book may contain, it furnishes no sufficient ground for instituting a judicial process with him. We regret his departure, in some of his statements, from the formulas of the church. We adhere to these formulas; but we regard him, notwithstanding the exceptions he has taken to them, as holding whatever is essential to the scheme of doctrine which they embody.
"He could not, in our view, be properly or justly subjected to the charge of heresy and a consequent trial, or be denied the confidence of his brethren."
A minority report declared that the book in question contains fundamental errors, justly subjecting the author to the charge of heresy.
At a later meeting of the Association the majority report was adopted by a vote of seventeen to
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three. This practical unanimity rendered it improbable that the Consociation could ever bring Bushnell to trial; but the question was at last settled by the spontaneous withdrawal of the church of which he was pastor from that body. Meanwhile another Association, the Fairfield West, undertook to secure action in the General Association, but failed on the ground that only district Associations can institute discipline in cases of error among their members. Under the Congregational system trial for heresy is a self-limiting disease. Foiled in this direction, it next addressed (January, 1850) a "Remonstrance and Complaint" to the Hartford Central against its acquittal, and urged a reconsideration. This it declined to do, but protested against the conclusion that it gave its sanction to any peculiarity of Dr. Bushnell's scheme of doctrine. Its position was simply that of toleration. The Fairfield West then addressed a letter to each district Association, except the Hartford Central, urging them to meet and consider the subject, and asserting that Dr, Bushnell had" denied nearly all that is precious in the Gospel of Christ." Nothing was done until the meeting of the General Association in Litchfield, June, 1850, when the following result was reached on a motion made by Dr, Bushnell himself: -
"Voted, That we regard it as the duty of any Association receiving such a remonstrance to reconsider the case in question, and, if they do not reverse their former action, to use their best en-
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deavors to satisfy the complaining Association in respect to their proceedings so complained of."
The Association did not see fit to "revise its former action," and the effort to bring Bushnell before the General Association for trial came to naught. It did not fail for lack of persistence, but chiefly because Congregationalism does not readily lend itself to trials of any sort; it is a spiritual rather than an ecclesiastical system. The result was also clue to Bushnell's own management, which was both adroit and honorable. He recognized his accountability to his Association, and by his resolution placed himself once more in its hands. A main element in the case was the fact that his brethren, little as they agreed with his views, could not bring themselves to believe them heretical in substance. Moreover, New Haven, which had sent out one of the most severe but least weighty attacks, had itself so long been under charges of heresy that the cry had lost something of its force. Half of the clergy had been pronounced heretical by the other half. That men accused of heresy in regard to decrees and atonement should join hands with their accusers in condemning views involving a definition of the trinity accorded neither with human nature nor common sense. The atmosphere of Connecticut has always been favorable to freedom both in State and Church. Its theologians, a long list, were men of progress, and the direction was that of sympathy with the unfolding of society and with
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the humanity of its civil institutions. It had sustained Dwight and Taylor, and it was reluctant to place the stamp of rejection upon a son whom it had bred to thought and courage. The victory won at this stage had but slight theological significance. Only a few agreed with the opinions in question; the victory was of a higher order, a triumph of toleration and charity.
A quotation from Dr. Bacon's article in the "New Englander," September, 1879, p. 701, is in place: -
"It was with much, more than ordinary interest that a large assembly of clergy and intelligent laity listened to the 'Concio' in 1848. . . . Nobody who heard that sermon could say that the preacher was a Unitarian. Yet there was room to ask: Is he orthodox? Is he not chargeable with dangerous tendencies? . . . By this time it had become evident that Dr. Bushnell was not a Unitarian. But what was he, and what was to be done with him? Here was a strong man, driving the ploughshare deep into the subsoil of theology; and who could tell what would spring up in such furrows? . . . Could he be refuted? Certainly. Nothing was easier than to refute him by the ordinary methods of theological controversy. Make him responsible for all possible inferences from his language, call him by hard names fished up out of the chaos of post-Nicene and ante-Nicene controversies, prove him guilty of dangerous complicity with Monothelite, Monophysite, Patripas-
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sian, and Sabellian errors; and would not the refutation "be complete?"
The peace thus won did not last long, and it must be said that the cause did not lie wholly on the side of the accusers. Bushnell had made an elaborate defense before his Association, and he had also read extensively on the subjects under debate. The outcome was another volume on the same subject under the title, "Christ in Theology," a book now out of print.
In the preface he disclaims a controversial purpose, or even defense of his doctrine, but his intention is rather to make "a fuller exposition of certain points." The following quotation reads like a caricature of the theological situation, but it was not only true, but an explanation in part of Bushnell's career as a theologian. It was to escape from this dialectic trifling that he turned aside in search of simpler and more natural interpretations of a gospel that was revealed in the terms of human life.
"As my former volume was called 'God in Christ,' I have called the present 'Christ in Theology,' with a design that will be sufficiently obvious. To complete the descending series begun, there is wanted another volume, showing the still lower, and, as it were, sedimentary subsidence of theology itself, precipitated in the confused mixtures of its elements; a volume that shall do upon the whole body of theological opinion in New Eng-land what my anonymous friend C. C. has done
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with such fatal effect upon the particular strictures of my adversaries. To see brought up in distinct array before us the multitudes of leaders, and schools, and theologic wars of only the century past, - the Supralapsarians and Sublapsarians; the Arminianizers and the true Calvinists; the Pelagians and Augustinians; the Tasters and the Exercisers; Exercisers by divine efficiency and by human self-efficiency; the love-to-being-in-general virtue, the willing to be damned virtue, and the love to one's greatest happiness virtue; no ability, all ability, and moral and natural ability distinguished; disciples by the new-creating act of Omnipotence, and by change of the governing purpose; atonement by punishment and by expression; limited and general; by imputation and without imputation; trinitarians of a threefold distinction, of three psychological persons, or of three sets of attributes; under a unity of one-ness, or of necessary agreement, or of society and deliberative council: nothing, I think, would more certainly disenchant us of our confidence in systematic orthodoxy, and the possibility in human language of an exact theological science, than an exposition so practical and serious, and withal so indisputably mournful, so mournfully indisputable." (Preface to Christ in Theology.)
This volume is one of the most eloquent and interesting produced by Bushnell. While disclaiming controversy, it is filled with the fire of battle. Personal antagonists are transfixed by his
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pen, not from malice, but for necessary illustration of his subject. He does not loiter, as often was the case, loath to leave his thought, "but rushes on, - "brilliant, sententious, epigrammatic, and always with a splendid sense of strength and vitality. The memory of recent experiences runs along the pages, so that while he is more careful in statement at some points, he is more audacious in others. In no other work is there so much evidence of wide reading, - enough at least to exclude the reproach of imperfect scholarship. Still the hook illustrates a peculiarity, and, it must be confessed, a weakness of Bushnell If regarded as a professional theologian; he not only wrote, but published first, and read later, with the result of a real or apparent modification of his opinions. The semi-Sabellianism with which he started yields somewhat, and the trinity becomes more than a method of revelation. Fearing he had left the door open to pantheism, he reexamines the Nicene Creed, and is led to confess that he "had not sufficiently conceived its import." While there is a movement of his mind towards an immanent trinity, he stops short, predicating that "in some high sense indefinable, he is datelessly and eternally becoming three" in order to come within finite apprehension. If here there is an acknowledgment of the immanence of the trinity, it is so related to revelation that a way is left open for retreat into the law of expression as contained in his theory of language. That he so retreated,
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there is no doubt. "Let us stay in the simple Three of revelation, receiving them, not as addressed to our scientific instincts, but under the simple conditions of expression" (p. 120).
Whatever his approaches to the Nicene statement, he never fully reached it. If one cares to classify Bushnell, it would be as ante rather than post Nicene, but neither would signify much. He does not belong to early theology, either heretical or orthodox. All through, in his writings and in his life, he forces upon us the conclusion that there were a few general truths which he held half intuitively and wholly by reflection, from which he never substantially departed. His mind was of the intuitive order, and his strength lay there. He is best seen and most fairly judged by his simple and large contentions, and not by his refinements upon them. These primitive, spontaneous assertions made him a modern man; his explanations put him back among those spinners of theology whose company he had forsaken at the outset; try as he might, he could not make himself at home among them. He belonged half to the mystics and half to science, and wholly to himself. What he felt he trusted, and what he saw he knew. When he speculated he became uncertain, and finally gravitated back to his first positions. His apparent and almost formal denial of the real humanity of Christ was due to his overwhelming sense of God, who seemed to him to have simply used humanity for reaching it. But he recognized a suffering
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humanity in God, and Christ as the expression of that humanity. Under such conceptions, dispute over the subject becomes almost a logomachy. The oneness of God and humanity is fully implied. When Bushnell undertook to follow his keen and relentless critics, it was as though Tennyson had been betrayed into a defense of "In Memoriam." All efforts to square his doctrine of the trinity with historic orthodoxy are needless; we no longer think under such a restriction. The defect of his treatment lay in his approach to the doctrine, If he had at first fully grasped the humanity of Christ, and by it had ascended to a conception of God, he would have interpreted the doctrine in a way not only more in accord with Christ's own growing consciousness of his relation to the Father, but also in better accord with the present conception of humanity.1
Bushnell was always hovering about this conception, but his Sabellian bias obscured it.2
Bushnell's discovery of his substantial agree-
1 Among the six principles on which F. W. Robertson taught, the fourth
is: "That belief in the human character of Christ's humanity must be
antecedent to belief in his divine origin." (Life, vol. ii. p. 160.)
Elsewhere (p. 169) he says: "Son of God because Son of Man. . . . Only
through man can God be known; only through a perfect man, perfectly
revealed." Again: "Perfectly human, therefore divine."
2 It may interest the reader to know the exact form in which Bushnell
accepted the Nicene Creed; and as the book Christ in Theology is becoming rare,
we quote from it (p. 178 ): -
"The Nicene Creed, taking Athanasius for its interpreter, as-sumes for its point of departure, and a point that must not be moved, the unity and strict simplicity of God. It hinges on the
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ment with the Nicene Creed was a satisfaction to him, not so much because it established his own orthodoxy, as that it revealed the heresy, not only of his critics, but of the entire New England School, if tested by the Nicene Creed, as will be seen from the following quotation (p. 186): "By this careful examination of the Nicene Council, which is the fountain of Church doctrine as regards this particular subject of trinity, you have discovered, I think, that our New England doctrine has little to say of orthodoxy; having itself cast away precisely that on which the Church doctrine hangs, namely, the eternal generation and procession, and affirmed precisely that which the Church doctrine denies, namely, a threefold substance in the divine nature. And, as to myself, while I have
word homoousios, commonly translated 'one substance,' or 'same in substance.' And so rigidly is this held that the Word, or Son, whatever conception of his personality may be offered in the Scripture, is yet declared to be 'proper to the substance of the Father' and not another substance. Arius had affirmed that the Son was 'made' or 'created' by the Father; that He was 'of the will' of the Father, existing without or exterior to the Father. Against Him it affirms that He is 'of the substance' of the Father, or, as Athanasius declares again and again (Library of the Fathers, pp. 232-264) 'proper to the substance of the Father,' not created, not of the will, not exterior. "Farther on he so defines the phrase "begotten not mad" as to embrace it under the Logos idea, the "begotten" being an eternal process, and, like the radiance of light, constant and coterminous with it. On page 184, speaking of the Council, while he "disowns all their supposed knowledge of God . . . concerning his internal mode of life and active being," he claims that "they assert the active and strict unity of God, deny a trinity in the divine essence, discover a trinity grounded in act as distinct from essence, and draw from the Scripture the same conception of the Word or Logos."
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as little care as possible to secure a shelter under any form of orthodoxy, it is, I confess, a most refreshing surprise to me to find that I can so heartily approve the general truth of what I supposed I had rejected; and that I can welcome, with a respect so genuine, the fathers of a remote age, who had lost their hold of our reverence, simply because we had lost our hold of their meaning."
It may occur to some who read this passage that Bushnell epitomized in his own thought on the trinity the history of the doctrine up to, and inclusive of, the Council. It is unfair, however, to transfer his thought to that age and label it with its terms, Sabellian, Arian, or Athanasian. The mutatis mutandis can hardly be accomplished, so completely does his thought belong to himself and to his own day.