The GOSPEL TRUTH

A GENETIC HISTORY OF THE

NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY

By

FRANK HUGH FOSTER

1907

 

 THE RIPENED PRODUCT

CHAPTER XIII:

Nathaniel W. Taylor

This great thinker has already been brought before the reader in connection with the discussions upon the will and with the Unitarian controversy. It may be said that the latter controversy determined his whole theological career for it was his purpose to refute the Unitarian reasoning thoroughly, and for this end to explore completely the whole subject of anthropology, that led him to the theological positions which he took and which have received the name of Taylorism. Yet it was his fate to wage his controversies with his brethren rather than with the common adversary; for he assumed the aspect to many of them of the theological innovator, and they felt called upon to oppose him in the interests of the very orthodoxy which he was trying to defend in a more fundamental and conclusive way. It is not the first example in the history of theology of men's confounding defending a doctrine in a new way with subverting that doctrine.

What has been already said of Taylor's doctrine of the will must therefore be constantly kept in mind in our further studies. And it must also be noticed that the full measure of his departure from Edwards remained concealed from Taylor himself. Neither his opponents nor he had a fine historical sense, nor perceived that they were in the midst of a great theological development, and themselves the actors in it. To agree with Edwards was still the high ambition of them all; and when they consciously disagreed, as did Taylor, they thought they were only expressing better Edwards' true meaning.

The great controversies of Taylor began with a sermon delivered in New Haven, in 1828, upon moral depravity, the famous Concio ad Clerum. The proposition maintained in this sermon was "that the entire moral depravity of mankind is by nature." In it Taylor successively maintained, among others, the positions that moral depravity is sinfulness; that this is not created in man, nor does it consist in acting Adam's act; that it is not a disposition or tendency to sin which is the cause of all sin; that it is "man's own act, consisting in a free choice of some object rather than God, as his chief good; or a free preference of the world and of worldly good, to the will and glory of God." He then advances to the proposition that this depravity is by nature. He defines it: "that such is their [men's] nature that they will sin and only sin in all the appropriate circumstances of their being." Men's nature is not itself sinful, nor is it the physical or efficient cause of their sinning, but it is the occasion of their sinning. In the applicatory "remarks" of the sermon he said again that "guilt pertains exclusively to voluntary action."

In these positions, while supposing himself to hold the essence of the doctrine of his predecessors, Taylor had consciously modified its form. He had, in fact, only brought out more clearly than they the positions toward which Hopkins, Emmons, and Dwight were historically tending. But the full meaning of his teaching depended upon his new conception of the will, upon the new and real freedom which he had at last succeeded in giving it. This constituted the strange element, and was the true occasion of the opposition which he aroused.

This opposition was, however, more directly excited by a position taken in the sermon quite incidentally to its main purpose. Taylor suggested a new idea upon the prevention of sin. In defending the proposition that universal moral depravity was not inconsistent with the moral perfections of God (thus intentionally meeting the grand objection of Channing and other Unitarians), he opposed the doctrine which, under the influence of Bellamy, had been prevalent in New England, that sin was the necessary means of the greatest good, and sought to substitute for it the supposition (for it was not presented as a matter susceptible of exact proof) that, owing to the nature of moral agency, God could not prevent sin, or at least the present degree of sin, in a moral system.

It is exceedingly important for a comprehension of the following discussions that Taylor's meaning be fully understood. He took the words of the old proposition in their obvious meaning. By "necessary" he understood indispensable; and by "means," that directly employed to effect a given purpose. The only means of good to Taylor was good itself; and since the greatest good, which is the permanent prevalence of the highest holiness, might be procured by the unvarying holy choices of all moral agents, if they only would thus choose, he could not call evil "necessary" to that good. He believed that God gave man free agency because he could thereby make him a being capable of holiness, which consists in free choices. He gave it to him for this positive purpose only. Incidentally, it involved the possibility of sin, which actually followed in the history of the human race. Perhaps God, having given, and maintaining free agency among men, could not prevent all sin. But he chose, not the sin, in any sense, but holiness, and free agency as the condition thereof; neither did he prefer sin even, in the words of some, "all things considered," or that degree of sin actually existing, but always holiness. He did prefer moral agency, though it would involve sin; and hence he never preferred or decreed sin directly. It is involved in his decrees, but not as itself a thing decreed.

To let Taylor speak for himself:

Is it more honorable to God to suppose that such is the nature of sin that he could not accomplish the highest good without it, than to suppose that such is the nature of free agency that God could not wholly prevent its perversion? . . . The prevention of sin by any influence that destroys the power to sin destroys moral agency. Moral agents must then possess the power to sin. Who then can prove a priori, or from the nature of the subject, that a being who can sin will not sin? How can it be proved a priori, or from the nature of the subject, that a thing will not be, when for aught that appears it may be?

It will be noted here that the fundamental thought underlying all the discussion is the new idea of freedom. God has given man the power of acting as a true first cause, and has thus placed him beyond the reach of true power, even the divine power, as a determining cause of his volitions.

Three controversies followed the appearance of this sermon, of which two sprang directly and solely from it, the third partially.

I. THE CONTROVERSY WITH HARVEY

The year following (1829), Joseph Harvey, pastor of the church at Westchester, Conn., reviewed Taylor's sermon in a pamphlet of forty pages. The review begins with discussing the proposition that moral depravity is man's own act. As soon as he has finished his review of Taylor's citations of authorities, he affirms that the theory is "irrational and unbiblical. It alleges an effect without a cause." He thus shows at the outset that he has not followed Taylor in the adoption of the new position as to the will, and cannot conceive of the cause of any volition lying entirely in the causing agent. He is still upon the old Edwardean basis. Such criticism is not likely to help. Hence he goes on to maintain, by a variety of arguments, that the corrupt nature of man is itself sinful, though even Edwards had taught that all sin was voluntary. The great proof is that God regards and treats infants as sinners. The fundamental objection to Taylor he states in these words:

If then Dr. Taylor means, as he says he does, that nature is not the efficient cause of sin, but the occasion or reason of it, he relinquishes the certainty of effect and admits that its actual occurrence depends upon circumstances. And this, according to his own definition, is Arminianism.

In other words, Harvey cannot understand the new theory of the will.

The last division of the criticism considers Taylor's views upon the permission of sin. Harvey begins with a complete misunderstanding of Taylor. He summarizes his opponent thus: "Sin is on the whole an evil in the government of God which he did not choose to permit, but which he could not prevent." Nothing is clearer than that Taylor taught that God did, on the whole, "choose to permit" sin. He said in the Concio "that the providential purposes or decrees of God extend to all actual events, sin not excepted." God ordained "the system" with a full knowledge of what it involved, and therefore he, on the whole, chose to permit what was involved. Harvey, in reply to what he has stated as Taylor's position, maintains that God can prevent sin, and cites the angels as a proof of this fact; but he does not touch Taylor's argument by this objection, since Taylor would include the angels in the system in which we are, would also cite the fallen angels, and even now had in mind a thought, which he brought out more clearly later, that God was limited by the best good of all considered, or could not consistently prevent sin in a moral system. So completely had he failed to understand Taylor. The idea of any self-limitation upon the part of the Deity was thoroughly abhorrent to his thinking.

The following June (1829) both these pamphlets, the Concio and Harvey's Review, were discussed in the Quarterly Christian Spectator, published in New Haven, and serving as the medium for the extension of the influence of the Divinity School and its leading professor. The position of Mr. Harvey, as lingering upon the untenable ground of Edwards, where he had remained after rejecting imputation, by an "utter confusion of personal identity," is exhibited, and it is declared necessary either to go back to imputation or forward to the position that all sin is actual. Harvey's argument from sin to a sinful cause is shown to rest upon the groundless supposition that "the cause of a given effort must have the same properties or attributes as the effect itself." The defects of his theory of the will are reduced to his failure to distinguish between the three faculties of the mind. A discussion of efficient and occasional causes is added, in which the former kind of cause is reserved for the acting agent. Pains are also taken in this review to present again Dr. Taylor's theories as to the prevention of sin, and to show how the theory that sin is the necessary means of the greatest good was, in Taylor's mind, an excess of speculation from which he desired to recall theology. The reviewer strikes again the keynote of the discussion in the following words:

The moral government of God, in distinction from his providential dominion, has been a subject of but little discussion. The views of men concerning it are apt to be loose and indefinite. Almost everything pertaining to the government of God has been referred to his physical agency. Hence it has been inferred from his omnipotence, as a kind of axiom, that God could, in a moral system, have prevented all sin. This has been supposed to result so directly from his power that a doubt respecting it has seemed to involve a question respecting his perfection. Yet it is not a limitation of his power to say that what in the nature of the case is impossible, could not have been done. And do we know that, in the nature of the case, all sin, or the present amount of sin, could have been prevented and yet a moral government have existed at all? Plain it is that, if sin be prevented, this must be done not by force alone but by a moral influence exerted upon created minds. Moral beings are voluntary beings. They act under the influence of motives. If they are kept from sinning, it is not because they cannot sin, but because obedience is their choice.

Mr. Harvey himself (it would seem) replied to this review in an Examination (1829). He tries, with little success, to turn the objections which had been made to his positions. For instance, he tries to modify the position that a cause must have the attributes and properties of the effect; but he ends by saying that "in the case supposed . . . they are in respect to each other invariably the same, like a stream to a fountain." He puts the question in dispute in this form: "Are men sinners from their birth?" Harvey answers this question in the affirmative because he does not acknowledge that the knowledge of law is necessary to sin. He thinks that there may be moral action, which is sinful, from birth, even before knowledge of law can be had, and this condition of sinful moral action is what he means by nature when he says that man is a sinner by nature.

Ineffective as all this was, Harvey nevertheless rendered some service in the dispute by pressing Taylor upon points which he had scarcely considered sufficiently. Thus he demands to know how Dr. Taylor accounts for the certainty of sin and for its certain universality upon his theory of freedom. Taylor had been quite indistinct as to this crucial point, and needed to be sharply called to a definite answer. But no such answer was forthcoming. And then Taylor had propounded an explanation of the way that sin rises historically in the developing life of an infant. He had said:

A child enters the world with a variety of appetites and desires which are generally acknowledged to be neither sinful nor holy. Committed in a state of utter helplessness to the assiduity of parental fondness, it commences existence the object of unceasing care, watchfulness, and concession, to those around it. Under such circumstances it is that the natural appetites are first developed; and each advancing month brings them new objects of gratification. The obvious consequence is that self-indulgence becomes the master principle in the soul of every child long before it can understand that this self-indulgence will ever interfere with the rights, or entrench on the happiness, of others. Thus by repetition is the force of constitutional propensities accumulating a bias towards self-gratification, which becomes incredibly strong before a knowledge of duty or a sense of right and wrong can possibly have entered the mind. That moment the commencement of moral agency, at length arrives. Does the child now come in a state of perfect neutrality to the question whether it will obey or disobey the command which cuts it off from some favorite gratification? If the temptation presented to constitutional propensities could be so strong in the case of Adam, as to overpower the force of established habits of virtue in the maturity of his reason, how absolute is the certainty that every child will yield to the urgency of those propensities under the redoubled impulse of long cherished self-gratification and in the dawn of intellectual existence! Could the uniform certainty of this event be greater if the hand of Omnipotence were laid upon the child to secure the result?

Evidently, this is an explanation of the case by "circumstances," as Harvey points out, and by circumstances which differ greatly in different cases. And though Harvey does not avoid forms of expression that lay him open to a sharp verbal reply, he is right in urging the necessity of explaining how universal sin results from such a condition of things as is here presented. "The consent or choice of the will is, then, after all, the turning point in the existence of sin. The reviewers have told us how the natural propensities are excited and increased, but they have not told us how they result in choice." In pressing Taylor so hard at this point, Harvey pointed the way to a necessary further advance. But Taylor was not able to make it.

Taylor, however, replied to Harvey in an Inquiry, in which he first defended himself from the charge of departure from Dr. Dwight, and then discussed the points brought forward in the Examination. He thought the prospect "fair" "of a speedy and an almost exact "agreement" between the contestants. He recalls Harvey from the point which that gentleman had stated as the true issue (whether men are sinners from their birth), to the true point as he conceives it, the nature of sin. He drives Harvey into the corner as to the possibility of a sin before conscious voluntary transgression; but he does not answer the difficulty about the previous certainty of sin upon the basis of a doctrine of freedom.

One or two more tracts followed in this controversy; but they added nothing to the presentation of the issue. Taylor's views were still too new to be properly understood by the churches.

II. THE CONTROVERSY WITH WOODS

We have already followed Dr. Leonard Woods, of Andover, in his controversy with the Unitarians, and have seen the immovable conservatism of his position, which prevented him from attempting any constructive work upon the doctrines involved, by which work alone a helpful reply could have been given and the state of theology really advanced. The same conservatism, joined with some inability to put himself at another man's point of view, led him to form an unfavorable estimate of the tendencies of Taylor's suggestions in the Concio, and, with a good deal of solemn and misplaced unction, to reply to them at considerable length.

The reply is principally confined to Taylor's suggestions as to the prevention of sin. But no sooner does Woods strike the subject than it is evident that he is incapable of understanding Taylor. Whereas Taylor's idea was that it was impossible for God to prevent sin while maintaining the moral system in which agents are inalienably able to sin, Woods infers that he meant that God had no power to prevent it "in the literal and proper sense." As soon as the discussion of the subject fairly begins, Woods presents his own theory, which may be concisely stated thus: The existence of sin is a mystery. "The incomprehensible God, for reasons which lie beyond human intelligence, taking a perfect view of his own attributes and of the whole system of created beings, saw it to be best not to prevent the existence of moral evil" and "chose to admit it into the universe," and "will make it a means of glory to his name and of good to his kingdom." Thus he takes a position midway between the plain, unvarnished Hopkinsian "means of the greatest good" and Taylor's ascription of the difficulty to the will of man. He later argues powerfully in support of Hopkins' view and is, on the whole, inclined to it. But he is always prepared to deny stoutly the supposition that God could not prevent sin.

The root of his opposition to the idea that God could not prevent sin while maintaining moral agency is exhibited as soon as he touches upon the subject of the will. He does not believe in "power to the contrary," thus occupying the Burtonian position. Taylor's theory, he says, "seems to imply that moral agents as such, that is, moral agents in the exercise of their moral agency, are not dependent upon God;" and dependence upon God he defines thus: "That it depends upon God's will whether their moral agency shall be exerted in one way or another." That is strict Edwardean determinism. He was thus led to believe that Taylor's scheme would tend "towards a denial" of all divine power and divine influence in the conversion of sinners except merely such a kind of power and influence as we have over the minds of our fellow men." He himself later recurs to the old theory of the arbitrary will of God, for he proves that God has power to convert men by several arguments, among which are, "God is omnipotent," and makes an antithesis between the "will, counsel, or pleasure of God" and his "power" to convert.

Thus it is evident that Woods could not understand Taylor, and that his part in the controversy was not calculated to throw any more light upon the subject than Harvey's had been. Both of these writers were, in fact, outside the current of the New England development, and, while loyal to such predecessors as Hopkins, failed entirely to comprehend Hopkins or his great constructive associates in the true significance of their labors. This was the less astonishing in Wood's case, for it was a fundamental idea in the constitution of Andover Seminary, for which he was more responsible than any other person, that a man could be both a Hopkinsian and a true follower of Westminster. The theological struggle to unite these irreconcilable positions is the tragedy of that institution.

As usual, the New Haven writers replied in the Spectator. The reply is exceedingly sharp when compared with the labored and cumbrous style of Dr. Woods. After showing that Woods has erected Taylor's hypothesis into a theory, thus improperly changing the point at issue, the reviewer goes on to prove that Woods "conceded the great principle maintained by Dr. Taylor . . . by affirming that all that the nature of the case admits of our saying is this: that God for wise and good reasons decided to permit the existence of sin."

Now if these things are so--if the reasons for God's permission of sin are known only to his own infinite mind, if we are incapable of discovering the reasons--if the case does not admit of assigning a reason, then to assign the reason in question, viz., "that sin is the necessary means of the greatest good," is wholly unwarranted. Has not Dr. Woods, then, most abundantly conceded all that Dr. Taylor asserts on this point? The whole includes the parts; and if no reason can properly be assigned in the case, then, this particular reason, Dr. Woods himself being judge, cannot be assigned. What concession could be more ample or complete? If God "only" knows the reasons for the entrance of sin into the universe, then Dr. Woods does not know them; and, as Dr. Taylor says, "ignorance is incompetent to make an objection."

But ample as these general concessions are, Dr. Woods has been more specific. He has actually adopted the very statements of those whom he has come forward to arraign before the public. Dr. Taylor asks in substance, may not God have chosen his present "method of administration" not because (as any part of the reason) it embraced moral evil, "but though or notwithstanding it would not entirely exclude (such) evil." Now this is the identical statement made by Dr. Woods in the following passage. May not this have been the case, says Dr. Taylor. Might not this be the case, says Dr. Woods; this is the sole difference. "Might not God see that the particular mode of proceeding which he actually adopted, was better than any other, . . . and though it would not entirely exclude evil, would ultimately raise his kingdom to a higher degree of holiness and happiness than any other?

Aggravating as this mode of turning the controversy must have been, it did in fact exhibit the entire consistency of Taylor's new explanations with the fundamental positions of his predecessors and contemporaries, and thus legitimatize his speculations in the system of New England thought. The remaining portions of the reply, while equally effective as an answer to Woods, did nothing to further the controversy. Others joined in the discussion, as, for example, Rev. E. R. Tyler in a sermon with the illuminating title, Holiness Preferable to Sin (1829); but the controversy was soon lost in the stir occasioned by a still greater one, viz.:

III. THE CONTROVERSY WITH TYLER

The roots of this controversy lie far back in the New England history. We have seen the great interest which was displayed from the time of Edwards himself in all the philosophy of revivals. The discussions of methods of exhorting sinners, and of the proper use of the "means" of regeneration, had been frequent; and the appearance of a new work upon this subject at any time would have been always regarded as entirely appropriate--indeed as a favorable indication as to the piety and earnestness of the churches.

It was therefore quite in the order of things when Gardner Spring, pastor of the Brick Church, New York, published in 1827 A Dissertation on the Means of Regeneration. He defines the means as "whatever is adapted to arrest the attention of men to moral and spiritual objects," including the Bible, ministry, word of God, sabbath, sanctuary, etc. God seems uniformly to connect the operation of his Spirit with these means, and in the offers of the gospel he is entirely sincere. Now, unregenerate men make only an insincere and wrong use of the means, and the question hence arises how such a use of means is connected with regeneration. Such a use is not acceptable to God; there is no promise made to such a use of means; they do not bring man to holiness; they do not always terminate in regeneration; they do not change the heart, which is the result of the immediate exercise of the divine power. Spring speaks of this as the "production" of holiness. He thus uses the phrase of Emmons, and his doctrine is that of Emmons, its metaphysical elements being omitted. He says:

The principal reason why this influence is necessary is that unregenerated men are enemies to God and holiness, and their hostility is so unyielding that no light communicated to their understanding, no obligations addressed to their conscience, no motives presented to their hopes or their fears, can produce holy love.

Thus they are substantially put out of the entire reach of the moral government of God and reduced under a government of force.

It can be of little interest to know that Spring found under these circumstances some use for "means." They enlighten the understanding, impress the conscience, illustrate the obduracy of the heart, exhibit the powerlessness of men. Hence the only true exhortation to be addressed to men when unrepentant is to repent, not to use the means of regeneration.

Taylor, who was a great preacher and evangelist, could not rest easy under the publication of such doctrines, after he had once got clear ideas upon the nature of the sensibility and the will, and had begun to understand the moral government of God. Accordingly, he reviewed Spring in the several numbers of the Spectator for 1829 at great length. Spring left the question why the sinner should do anything preparatory to conversion substantially unanswered. He did not show a way to the heart whereby it might be influenced to repent, nor justify his doctrine that the sinner should be exhorted to nothing but immediate repentance. The pulpit, unless sustained by reasons drawn from other regions, was prostrated by his argument. It was to raise it again, to perform the task left unperformed by Spring, to find a neutral point in the mind to which the motives of the gospel could be addressed and the pulpit make its appeal, that Taylor wrote.

He begins by denying that acts which are themselves sinful can be in any proper sense of the words called "using the means of regeneration." He lays down the great principle that "the mode of divine influence is consistent with the moral nature of this change as a voluntary act of man; and also that it is through the truth, and implies attention to truth on the part of man." Thus he rescues freedom and the divine government at the outset. For the purposes of the discussion he takes the liberty which every writer has, of defining his terms according to the way in which he proposes to use them, and confines the term "regeneration" to "that act of the will, or heart, which consists in a preference of God to every other object." He thus differs from Hopkins, but differs explicitly and consistently.

The process of regeneration (or, as the Hopkinsians would have said, Conversion) Taylor describes as follows:

There is in man a capacity of feeling, which responds to appropriate motives, even those which exhibit the glory and excellence of God. This he sometimes terms a "desire for happiness," which is constitutional in man, and hence unalienated by the course of sin in which the unrepentant man has lived. His usual designation for this was "self-love," which gave rise to a great amount of misunderstanding, and may have been the reason why he did not gain even a hearing from his opponents for the important suggestions which he had to make in human psychology. Hopkins had used the term synonymously with "selfishness," and so it was often interpreted in Taylor's use. In a reply to Dr. Tyler, Taylor subsequently said that the distinction between "self-love" and "selfishness" was the turning-point of the whole discussion; and so it was, for by propounding the idea of "self-love" he had made a most important addition to theory of the will. He added:

On the authority of Dugald Stewart, we use the term self-love to denote the simple desire of happiness. In this sense it is employed by Dr. Griffin and many other divines. "Mere self-love is only the love of happiness and aversion to misery; and so far from being sinful, is an essential attribute of a rational and even a sensitive nature" (Parkstreet Lecture, 3d ed., p. 74).

Such being the meaning of "self-love," the sinner acting upon this desire, has chosen the immediate gratification of his passions and appetites in preference to all other things, or has made his happiness to consist in self. He is supremely selfish. Let, now, God and duty, in contrast with the world and self, be presented to the mind, and let there be an "intellectual perception of their adaptedness to the nature of man as sources or means of happiness," and they will appeal to this desire of happiness. If, now, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, the sinner ceases to perform acts under the governing influence of his former selfish choice and stops to deliberate, and if thus "the selfish principle is suspended," and the man considers these objects as fitted to gratify his constitutional desire and if then, under the view of them as the greatest good, he actually chooses them, thus taking God as his portion, he is regenerated; and these motives which have appealed to his desire of happiness are the means of regeneration, and in yielding to them he "uses" them. The agent of regeneration is thus the Holy Spirit, who acts as such in presenting these motives. Here then is freedom, the neutral ground to which appeal can be made in the sensibility, and the divine government, preserved by the theory of the divine action through motives.

The following single and unbroken paragraph summarizes the whole position. Speaking of "self-love":

Nor ought it to be overlooked that this part of our nature is always with us, be our moral character what it may. It always longs for happiness, without including in itself the act of the will or heart fixed on any given source of object, whence we resolve to seek our happiness: for whether by an act of the will or heart we resolve to seek our chief happiness from one object or another, we still desire to be happy. Whenever we do fix upon the object, self-love primarily prompts to the choice (not determines it); and therefore exists prior to the act of will by which we fix our affections on any object as our chief good. To self-love the appeal may always be made, and feelingly made, even in the lowest stages of moral degeneracy, to produce both the conviction and impression that there is greater good in God than in the world. To this part of our nature all motives designed to change the governing purpose or supreme affection of the heart must always be primarily addressed. They cannot be addressed, to a holy heart, already existing in sinful man. Nor will it be pretended that God proffers gratification to the selfish principle in man as the means of winning him to holiness, since this would have no other tendency than to prevent the change. The motives fitted to destroy the selfish principle (and such must be all the motives addressed to man to restore him to holiness) can find nothing in that principle but resistance. If therefore there be not in man a constitutional capacity of happiness from some other source than the world; if man cannot be made to see and feel that there is to him greater good in God than in any other object, the motives of holiness might as well be addressed to the trees of the forest as to men. So certain as man is a moral agent and is properly addressed by motives to holiness, so certain is it that he has constitutional susceptibilities to that good which these motives proffer; and that, if he is led at all to prefer this good to every other, he is primarily prompted to the choice by the desire of happiness or self-love.

Taylor then takes up the issue more sharply with Spring and maintains that "no acts of the sinner while the selfish principle remains active in the heart constitute using the means of regeneration." And before he closes the series of articles he enters upon the nature of moral government at large, and upon the agency of the Holy Spirit through motives, rejecting with great emphasis the idea that the change in regeneration must be in the "very substance of the Soul."

To these articles Bennet Tyler, then minister in Portland, Me., replied in Strictures (1829). He was most unfortunate in having written his pamphlet before the articles in the Spectator were completed, although he supposed that they were complete. He had to adjust his discussion to the last article of the series by an appendix, in which he was rather unsuccessful. He had, in fact, thoroughly misunderstood Taylor, having failed to get the initial proposal of a neutral point in the soul, to which the preaching of the gospel could appeal, at all into his mind. Thus he thought that Taylor was already substantially gone over to Arminianism, and he scrutinized every word under this false light. He misstates the question to begin with. He says: The question is "whether any acts performed by the sinner antecedent to a change of heart are means of effecting this change." Taylor never confused acts with means. The motives were the means, and motives are not acts. Then Tyler makes a sharp, though totally incorrect, analysis of the mental operations. He says: "To my mind it is plain that if sinners use the means of regeneration, they must use them with a holy heart, or an unholy heart, or no heart at all; that is with right motives, or wrong motives, or no motive at all." He thus denies that there can be any volition (such, for example, as fixing the attention, which Taylor mentions) of a morally neutral character.

A passage will illustrate Tyler's difficulties:

But what is the moral character of the man after the suspension of the selfish principle and previous to regeneration? Is he holy? No. Is he sinful? No. Then he cannot be a moral agent. And how has his moral agency ceased? Has he lost his reason? No. Has he ceased to act? No. He is using the means of regeneration. But to use means for the accomplishment of an end is to act with some intention; and it must be either a good or bad intention. Consequently the act must be either sinful or holy. But what does he do? He "determines to direct his thoughts to the objects" of choice, viz., God and the world, "for the sake of considering their relative value, of forming a judgment respecting it, and of choosing one or the other as his chief good." He takes into solemn consideration the question whether the highest happiness is to be found in God or the world; he pursues this enquiry, if need be, till it results in the conviction that such happiness is to be found in God only; he follows up this conviction with that intent and engrossing contemplation of the realities which truth discloses, and with that stirring up of his sensibilities in view of them which shall invest the world, when considered as his only portion, with an aspect of insignificance, of gloom, and even of terror; he perseveres in this contemplation, till he discovers a reality and an excellence in the objects of holy affection, which shall put him on direct and desperate efforts to fix his heart upon them; and he enters upon this process of thought, of effort, and of action, as one which is never to be abandoned until the end proposed by it is accomplished. All this, it must be recollected, he does without either holiness or sin, and consequently without performing a single moral act. Believe this who can!

The reader, if entirely dependent upon the present history for his knowledge of this controversy, will be astonished at this extract and will be inclined to wonder how Tyler could ever have supposed that he was correctly representing Taylor's position. But a reference to the page in the Spectator to which Tyler refers (32) will show that nearly all these phrases, describing processes and acts of choice, are Taylor's own! The passage, however, was not designed as a careful view of Taylor's understanding of regeneration, but was designed to illustrate how a sinner might be regenerated in a totally different way from that which Spring had described. Natural as the misunderstanding was, especially when Tyler had not put himself at Taylor's central point of view, it might have been entirely avoided if Tyler had seen the following passage, from the article still unprinted when he was writing his Strictures.

The question arises . . . where do we place the using of the means of regeneration? We answer, under regeneration itself, in the comprehensive sense of that term--in those acts of contemplating divine truth which we have spoken of as necessarily co-existing with the act of choice or love, denominated regeneration in the restricted, theological meaning of the word. Up to that moment the selfish principle had predominated in the soul, and no acts performed under its influence could be a using of the means of grace. But at this moment, by the influence of the divine Spirit, the selfish principle ceases to predominate in the heart. At that moment, God and divine things stand before the soul, no longer pre-occupied by supreme selfishness and love of the world. At that moment this view of God and divine things becomes the means of regenerations A mind thus detached from the world as its supreme good, instantly chooses God for its portion, under the impulse of that inherent desire for happiness without which no object could ever be regarded good--as either desirable or lovely . . . In that moment--which is properly esteemed an indivisible moment--and in that only, does the sinner so use the truth of God that it can according to the laws of mental action become the means of a right act of the will or affection of the heart. All his previous perceptions of divine objects were so obscure and inadequate, his sensibilities were so far from the requisite excitement and direction, through the counteracting influence of the selfish principle--this principle itself, in the form of earthly affection, was so far from relinquishing its final hold of its object (though it may have ceased actively to pursue it), that without a farther change in these respects, the heart will never yield. This farther advance in respect to the suspension of the selfish principle in respect to the vividness of the intellectual perception--and in respect to the degree of excitement in the susceptibilities of the mind, must take place in every instance of regeneration.

To resume the argument of the Strictures: Tyler advances to charge Taylor with denying total depravity, because, if the means are used without motive, the heart is then not under the dominion of depravity, which is therefore not "total." And, finally, Tyler says: "The question is reduced to this single point, whether unrenewed men perform any acts in consideration of which God grants his renewing grace," as if the divine presentation of motives, which attract the attention of the sinner and cause him to suspend his wicked course to consider them, was made in consequence of anything which the man does. We may have more sympathy with the difficulty which the word "self-love" caused Tyler, when he said that the theory destroyed the radical difference between sin and holiness, since sin was seeking one's own happiness by choosing the world as his chief portion, and holiness seeking one's own happiness by choosing God. Yet he himself teaches that holiness is choosing God, and sin choosing self. Sometimes he identifies self-love, which Taylor made entirely non-voluntary, with a choice. In short, he stands substantially upon the ground of Hopkins and Spring, has no thought of any advance in the theory, and hence, especially after he has once classified Taylor under Arminians and Socinians, is unable to understand him.

The Strictures close with seven questions addressed to Dr. Taylor, which exhibit compendiously Dr. Tyler's opinion of the new proposals. They are: (1) Whether regeneration is not (to Dr. Taylor) a gradual and progressive work? (2) Whether the theory does not involve the inconsistency of supposing that the heart is changed antecedent to regeneration? (3) What becomes of the sinner's conviction of sin while using the means of regeneration? (4) Whether the theory does not dispense with the necessity of divine influence in regeneration? (5) Whether Dr. Taylor does not represent the sinner as laboring under a natural inability to do his duty? (6) Whether he does not, in effect, deny the doctrine of sovereign and distinguishing grace? (7) Whether this theory, if drawn out in detail, and inculcated by the teachers of religion, has not a direct tendency to stifle conviction of sin, and produce spurious conversions?

The Strictures were reviewed in the Spectator for 1830, probably by Taylor himself. The review is keen and meets Tyler's sharp distinctions with others equally sharp. The reviewer shows abundantly that Dr. Tyler himself differed from many of his predecessors, as indeed he must, since they differed among themselves. His orthodoxy was, therefore, not that of the universal consent of New England thinkers. There was no such consent. Taylor soon strikes the main question, viz.: What is a free moral agent? He rescues neutrality of voluntary action, states the question as "not whether regeneration includes the act of God, but whether it excludes the act of man," vindicates his use of the term "self-love," points out that Tyler's theory makes natural depravity physical and regeneration a physical change, that he robs the nature of man of any neutral point to which the gospel can appeal and thus denies that the gospel presents "motives to sinners," and so further clears up his theory--in which we have anticipated him in the first statement of it.

This controversy was well-nigh interminable, for it lasted eight years longer, and was carried on by means of a multitude of articles in the much-suffering Spectator, pamphlets, etc. We need, however, note but few of these, for the main points of proposition and of opposition are now before us, and the further discussion led to no essential modification on either side. In 1833 the Theological Institute at East Windsor was formed to resist the influence of New Haven in Connecticut, and Dr. Tyler was made its president. From this time, of course, there was no hope of an accommodation. We shall therefore dismiss the subject after noting a few incidental features of the debate.

Dr. Tyler replied to the review last mentioned by a Vindication (1830). A number of other writers came to Taylor's defense, such as Rev. Hubbard Winslow and Rev. Samuel Rogers. Dr. Hawes joined in the controversy by requesting from Dr. Taylor a fresh statement of his views, which was given in the Connecticut Observer, and was followed by a little interchange of articles in the Spirit of the Pilgrims. Dr. Taylor took occasion to affirm explicitly his belief in election, in total depravity, in the necessity of the atonement, in the moral character of the change called conversion and in its production by the Holy Spirit through the truth, in special grace, and in the perseverance of the saints. The most interesting of these later papers is the one in which Dr. Taylor followed the practice which he had introduced with the former disputants, and wrote an elaborate letter to show that, "on the basis of Dr. Tyler's last statements and explanations, all controversy between us may be terminated in an entire agreement on the chief points at issue." He abundantly shows in this article that Dr. Tyler had the same objections to certain implications of various terms (necessary means, etc.) which Dr. Taylor thought natural or inevitable implications, as he himself had. He also shows that their differences were not in the great facts of Christian doctrine, but in theories. Dr. Tyler identified his own theories, as many another theologian has done, with doctrine; and accordingly, no doubt somewhat incensed by the turn given to the discussion, he replied in a pamphlet, which may be regarded as closing this controversy, in which he reiterated most of his original objections and misunderstandings. As late as 1837, in a little book entitled Letters on the Origin and Progress of the New Haven Theology, an exceedingly interesting collection of the small personal gossip of the controversy in connection with a summary of the principal positions taken by both sides, Dr. Tyler is "of the same opinion still."

It would be gratifying to be able to state that Dr. Tyler finally, if slowly, came to understand the new positions better and to accept them. This is, however, impossible. He had still twenty years to labor and study, but his theological lectures, as published in their final form, the year after his death, reproduce unchanged the propositions and arguments of the controversy. His theory of the will remains the strict Edwardean theory, and hence he continues to ascribe moral character to the affections, although he distinguished between affections and volitions sufficiently to recognize the fact that Edwards united both under the Will. Hence native depravity is put in the emotions; right and wrong in conduct depend upon these affections, which are the "motives;" and hence regeneration is a change by the immediate power of God in the "relish," that is, the affections. All the old misunderstandings and misrepresentations of Taylor are repeated without even essential modification of their verbal expression. He refused to permit posterity to write him down among them who either assisted or understood the progressive movements of his day.

With Taylor the case was far different. He remained a student to the end of his days, and was always hoping to add to his knowledge and his teaching. As in Tyler's case, his theological lectures as published cover but a portion of the system of theology; but they make a marked advance upon the positions in which he was at the time at which we have left him. These volumes will therefore reward our careful examination.

It is significant that the first two volumes are entitled Moral Government. This subject had been a favorite one since the time of Bellamy. Hopkins, particularly, had distinguished between the providence of God, which operated through "power," and his moral government, which was conducted by "law." Emmons does not, in the fragmentary form in which his system has come down to us, treat specifically of moral government. All the writers upon the atonement were full of the subject; for the very idea upon which their theory was founded was that of a preservation, by means of the vicarious sacrifice, of the divine government. Dwight defines moral government with great accuracy as "a government of rules and motives;" and continues: "A government of mere power may be upheld in its full strength by the exercise of power only. But a moral government cannot be thus preserved, unless the motives to obedience are continued, to the view of its subjects, in their full force." But all these writers had failed to set forth the central element of divine moral government, because they had none of them arrived at a correct understanding of the freedom of the will. It remained for Taylor to clear the subject of many errors and infelicities. This he did with a very large degree of success, and may be said to have first formulated a correct theory of moral government.

His definition of moral government does not, at first sight, seem to differ from that common to his predecessors. It is a system of influences on moral beings, implying a moral governor, designed to control the action of moral beings, and possessing the character of authority. All this has been said as well before. But the word "influences" and the word "control" have a new meaning; for, while the idea of causation from without had always entered into their connotation heretofore, that idea was entirely eliminated by Taylor, who distinguished sharply between influence and causation. All the causation of volitional action resided in the agent putting forth the volition.

But this point has been abundantly illustrated before. We need only call attention to it now. With equal brevity may we dispatch the fact that Taylor founds the divine government upon the Edwardean theory of virtue, and that he follows Hopkins in reducing all sin to selfishness. A large portion of the treatment is devoted to the discussion of the sanctions of the divine law, where the principle is clearly brought out that the true punishment of sin is the suffering of the eternal world, and that all the sufferings which men undergo in this world, including death itself, are of the nature of correctives, and should receive the name of chastisements. An important turn to apologetic, adopted by Park, was the introduction of the doctrine of the immortality of the soul in the discussion of the divine benevolence to remove objections to the equity of the divine government as displayed in this world. The element of grace in the government, which effects its ends through revelation and atonement, is also newly emphasized. In all this we see the vigor and scope of the new and great suggestion of freedom which Taylor was thus working out.

One more of these details we must note, and this time at length, for it marks the point where Taylor became conscious of his fundamental difference from Edwards. He says:

The Edwardian theory of inability, what is it? The inability to love God, which it maintains, is the inability to love and hate the same object at the same time, or the inability to will opposites at the same time. The ability which this scheme affirms, to soften it may be the revolting aspect of the inability which it maintains, is the wonderful power of man not to will, or to avoid willing opposites at the same time, or power to will without willing against his will. Now as to this inability, it is an absolutely fatal possession, for God can never remove it, i. e., he can never impart power to man to will opposites at the same time, any more than he can impart power to a body to move in opposite directions at the same time. And then again, as to the ability, or natural ability of this scheme, there is the same difficulty; for the mind neither has nor can have in the nature of things, the power or ability specified. It doubtless has power to will, but has not power in willing to avoid willing against its will, any more than a part has power to be less than the whole, or than two and two not to be four . . . A part is less than the whole in the nature of things, and not as the result of power . . . The natural ability of man to obey God, as defined by Edwards and others, has no existence and can have none. It is an essential nothing. Thus, according to this Edwardian theory, while there is not a shadow of ability or power on the part of man to obey God, the moral inability of the theory, the inability to love and hate the same object at the same time, though undeniable, is unchangeable either by man or his Maker.

In one department of the system these final lectures of Taylor present an essential, advance. This is in the treatment of the subject of the prevention of sin.

The topic was introduced in connection with questions relating to the government of God. The subject of the divine benevolence must necessarily. arise in connection with the divine government, and did thus arise. Taylor found all the arguments for the divine benevolence before his own time defective. Particularly, he rejects the argument which would prove benevolence from the Scriptures, since it begs the question. To credit revelation, we must assume at least the divine veracity, which is but one form of benevolence, "which is the very thing to be proved." We must therefore prove the divine benevolence from the light of nature before we are capable of presenting a proof of revelation; but when the latter has once been done, we may, of course, gather additional evidence from revelation for our thesis. Here again Taylor laid down the method which New England theology was thenceforward to follow.

Considering the supposition of the divine benevolence in the light of nature, Taylor comes to the fact of the existence of sin in the world, which seems to impugn benevolence. He meets this objection in the following way:

The divine benevolence is the disposition to produce the greatest good, or the highest happiness which it is possible to produce. This requires that there should be not merely more happiness than misery in the world, but that God should adopt the best possible system in creating the world. That is, God could not have made a better world than this is in its stead. By this is meant that the present world contains the greatest good possible to God. There might be more good through the combined action of God and his creatures. If men and angels had voluntarily chosen holiness invariably, with the system of the universe otherwise unchanged, more good would thus have resulted than will now be attained. But sin has actually entered by the free act of moral agents. If, on the contrary, we should suppose that there is in the world the greatest good possible on the whole, or under any condition, then we should be driven to suppose that sin is the necessary means of the greatest good, because it actually exists. This is to say that the worst action is the best action, which is absurd. Hence what we mean when we say that the world is the best possible world, even though sin is found in it, is that it is the best possible to God. And if this is so, then the fact of sin is no detraction from his benevolence.

Taylor seeks therefore to prove that this is the best possible world by the following arguments:

1. If this system, containing evil, may be the best possible to the Creator, then the presence of evil in it is no impeachment upon his benevolence. Under this head he considers, first, natural evil, or pain, and, after several ingenious remarks, advances to the subject of moral evil, or sin. Now, it may be an impossibility in the nature of things that God should prevent the present degree of moral evil under the best moral system, and therefore moral evil may exist because, in respect to divine prevention, it is incidental to a moral system which is not only better than no system, but the best possible to the Creator.

In answering an objection to this line of argument, that it is better to leave the great question of the mystery of evil alone, as one that has baffled the minds of the best thinkers of all generations, Taylor cites the parable of the tares as containing the same solution which he has offered, thus meeting this objection, if it proceeds from Christians, who must allow any explanation given by our Lord. In this parable, he says, we are taught (a) that the kingdom of heaven is perfectly fitted to its great design of reforming and saving men; (b) that the existence in it of moral evil is in direct contravention of this great design of its divine author; (c) that the reason that moral evil exists is that there is an impossibility, in the nature of the case, that God should prevent it under the system which exempts him from all responsibility in respect to its existence. And hence (d) the interposition requisite to remove the evil would do more hurt than good by modifying the freedom of the will and thus diminishing the amount of holiness under the system.

2. Taylor now advances two points:

a) There may be an impossibility that God should prevent all sin under a moral system. Here he stands exactly upon the ground of the Concio, and sustains the position in exactly the old language. He repeats that this supposition does not derogate from the divine omnipotence because the creatures who have this power have it as a gift, and God is limited in the involved limitation only as he has limited himself. But he advances upon the doctrine of the Concio when he adds:

b) If it be conceded that God may prevent all sin in a moral system, it may still be impossible that he should prevent all moral evil, or even the present degree of moral evil, under the best moral system. That is, it may be better to suffer such an amount of sin as does actually enter into this system without taking those means which would prevent it, than thus to cause the degree of moral weakness, or that diminution in happiness, which might result. Against this supposition Taylor declares there are no valid objections. For himself, however, he still stands upon the ground of his former contention.

In a word, as the sum-total of results in this long discussion: The freedom necessary to a moral system, unchecked by influences which may be inconsistent with the highest, perfection of that system, may lead to that degree of sin which we actually find in the world.

Now, says Taylor, if this hypothesis is a rational hypothesis, it completely removes the objections to God's goodness derived from moral evil. We are now prepared for the positive proofs of God's goodness, and these are so great that the argument is soon complete.

Thus we close our review of the work of this great thinker. It must have become already manifest to every discerning reader that we have been following the thoughts of a bold and innovating, but logical and essentially conservative, mind. Radical as Taylor was in his determination to get at the root of every matter he handled, and unflinching in his loyalty to the logical outcome of new positions in respect to fundamental truths, he was thoroughly convinced of the divine truth and authority of the historic faith of Christendom, and sought only to defend it better and set it forth with greater power. And when we consider the topics upon which he made original contributions of the first importance, and the breadth of the theological field which he cultivated with distinguished success, his true greatness appears in the most striking light. Finding a fruitful suggestion as to the nature of the will and its relation to the other faculties in Burton, but, lost there in a tangle of inconsistencies created by the effort to buttress again the fabric of necessitarianism, he first affirmed and vindicated the freedom of the will, and made this to reside in a true power of original causation. In pursuance of this idea, he threw some light upon every topic of anthropology, upon original sin, human ability, prevenient grace, the means of regeneration, the process of conversion, the psychology of childhood, the processes of divine election and providence. His discussions of the prevention of sin surpass in depth and comprehensiveness those of any other theological writer, whether in New England or out of it. He saw more deeply into the Unitarian contention than any of his contemporaries, and formulated an answer more thorough; as well as defining the Trinity so as to escape the various evils of tritheism, subordinationism, modalism, and substantial unitarianism, as successfully as had ever been done, or more successfully. Besides these, he illuminated in passing a multitude of minor topics in theology. He contributed to Christian apologetics a better stating of its problems, and a more logical, and thus more successful, method of approaching them. In most of these suggestions, while not independent of his predecessors, he went largely his own way and was substantially original. While his acuteness was not inferior to Edwards', his originality in both substance and manner was far greater. He appears in the review of his work which we have now completed as the greatest mind which New England had produced for penetration and originality, and for that constructive force which carries a man on to great intellectual achievement.

 

 

 

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