Sunday, October 5, 2014

Waligore on Frazer's Thesis

In this same article Dr. Joseph Waligore takes on Dr. Gregg Frazer:
Gregg Frazer is the best-known scholar trying to exclude thinkers like the Christian deists from being considered Christian.  Frazer asserts that in the eighteenth century there was a remarkable unanimity about the basic core content of Christianity.  These core, defining doctrines were clearly listed in the official creeds of the Catholic Church and the Protestant denominations.  According to Frazer, these central doctrines were the Trinity, original sin, Virgin Birth, Jesus’ bodily Resurrection, hell, justification by faith, the atonement, and the inspiration of all of Scripture.  Frazer maintained belief or non-belief in these doctrines constituted a clear dividing line in the eighteenth century between Christians and infidels.   He thus declared that thinkers like the Christian deists I am discussing should not be called Christian as they were considered infidels by all their contemporaries.[lviii]
Frazer is focused on eighteenth-century American thinkers, including Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin.  By my definition given earlier that Christian deists were deists who dedicated their theological writings to restoring pure Christianity, I would include both of these thinkers as Christian deists.   (Elsewhere I argue that both Jefferson and Franklin were influenced by English Christian deists.)[lix]  Frazer says the thinkers I am calling Christian deists considered themselves Christian based on their ‘own definition of Christianity, which did not comport with the way every major church defined it.’  He goes further, saying these thinkers ‘appropriated the word Christianity and attached it to a belief system that they constructed and found more to their liking than authentic Christianity.’  He concludes by saying these thinkers ‘rejected Christianity.  Consequently, it is improper and misleading to include a form of the word Christian in a term for those whom I describe as theistic rationalists.’[lx]

Frazer’s argument for the exclusion of the Christian deists from Christianity, and from using the name Christian is based on the churches’ creeds establishing a strong dividing line between Christian and non-Christian in the eighteenth century.  These creeds, however, did not actually perform this function in the eighteenth century.  For example, in the most important English church, the Church of England, the church’s beliefs were legally encapsulated in the Thirty-nine Articles, and every minister had to subscribe or say he believed in these articles.  These articles clearly state that the doctrines Frazer mentions were the official doctrines of the Church of England.  The problem for Frazer’s argument, though, was that during this time there were two main factions in the Church of England, and they had very different ideas about what subscribing to these Articles meant.  One faction of the church’s clergy, the conservative, tradition-minded High Church faction, said that subscribing to the Thirty-nine Articles meant believing in the traditional doctrines that Frazer mentions.  The other faction in the Church of England, the Latitudinarians, did not agree.

The Latitudinarians emphasized reason and natural religion as well as the Bible.  When scholars refer to an English clerical Enlightenment in which the ministers emphasized reason and science, they are primarily thinking of the Latitudinarians.  Many of the Latitudinarian ministers were prominent figures in English science: one Latitudinarian, Joseph Glanvill was a major apologist for the Royal Society and New Science; another, Samuel Clarke, was a collaborator with Isaac Newton on his scientific and mathematical works.  As proponents of science, the Latitudinarians had a very positive attitude towards reason.  One prominent Latitudinarian minister, Richard Bentley, said the Latitudinarians were “as much concerned” as the deists “for the use and authority of reason in controversies of faith.” He thought reason so supported Christianity “that the Christian religion is so far from declining or fearing the strictest trials of reason, that it every where appeals to it, is defended and supported by it. . . .”[lxi]   The Latitudinarians also had a very positive attitude towards natural religion.  One Latitudinarian bishop, Dr. Sherlock, identified Christianity with natural religion, saying, “the Gospel was a Republication of the Law of Nature, . . . which was as old as the Creation.”[lxii]

Many Latitudinarians, because of their emphasis on reason and natural religion, no longer believed in the doctrines contained in the Thirty-nine Articles.  They even openly announced that subscribing to the Thirty-nine Articles did not mean they believed in the doctrines the articles said were the official church teachings.  One of the Latitudinarian bishops, Gilbert Burnet, with the blessing and encouragement of many other Latitudinarian bishops, wrote a long book explaining the Latitudinarian way of interpreting the articles.[lxiii]  Burnet said the articles were deliberately written in such a way they “can admit of different literal and grammatical senses.” He wrote that people could interpret the articles to contain the beliefs Frazer describes.  But he also wrote the articles could be interpreted in a sense which contradicted some of its traditional doctrines.  Burnet said that this meant people who did not agree with the traditional doctrines “may subscribe the Article with a good Conscience, and without any Equivocation.”[lxiv]

Leaders of the High Church faction accused Burnet, one of the foremost bishops of the Church of England, of heresy.  In 1701, they even convened a formal investigation of his book by a committee of the lower house of convocation.  The committee charged Burnet’s book with endorsing positions that were “contrary to the true meaning of them [the articles] and to other receiv’d doctrines of our Church.”  They argued his methods of interpretation stripped the creeds of any authority and encouraged people who did not agree with the creeds to subscribe to them.  They further charged that Burnet’s subordination of revelation to reason and natural religion logically led to deism.[lxv]
The High Church faction was unable to have Burnet declared a heretic,[lxvi] and they were unable to force the Latitudinarians to accept that subscribing to the Thirty-nine Articles meant agreeing with the traditional church doctrines.  In fact, Burnet’s book became mandatory reading in the eighteenth century for future ministers during the process of their ordination, thus ensuring that future ministers of the Church of England were exposed to the Latitudinarian way of viewing the articles.[lxvii]   A German visitor to England at the end of the eighteenth century, Gebhard Friedrich Wendeborn, described the results of the ministers’ exposure to Burnet’s views.  Wendeborn said he heard that a great part of the English clergy were inclined to the heresies of either Arminianism or Socinianism.  He said these ministers did not resign as they wanted a minister’s salary, and ‘they have even bishop Burnet for an advocate, who is of opinion, that every one who subscribes to the Thirty-Nine Articles, has a right to interpret their meaning as he thinks proper, and consistently with his private opinions.’[lxviii]

Official church creeds fail to give a clear dividing line between Christian and non-Christian for members of the Church of England.  Creeds also fail to give this clear dividing line in the eighteenth-century Presbyterian Church.  Frazer is right that the Westminster Confession of Faith was the official creed of the Presbyterian Church.   However, in the early eighteenth century, the Presbyterian ministers in England decided that their ministers no longer had to agree with this creed.  After one prominent Presbyterian minister was accused of preaching Arianism, in 1719 the Presbyterian ministers held a synod in London at Salters’ Hall to discuss whether it should be required that all ministers believe in the Trinity.  The synod decided this important belief, and every other belief in the Westminster Confession, should not be required of English Presbyterian ministers.  Instead, all Presbyterian ministers were free to believe and preach whatever they thought the Bible contained.  As a result of the synod at Salters’ Hall, one scholar said, “the majority of Presbyterians were on the side of rejecting the authority of the Westminster Confession and the 39 Articles. . . .”  After this time, Arianism became an acceptable and even popular opinion among the Presbyterian ministers in England.[lxix]

12 comments:

Tom Van Dyke said...

Gregg Frazer is the best-known scholar trying to exclude thinkers like the Christian deists from being considered Christian.


I have some agreement with this, but unless one believes Jesus is more than just a man, more than just one prophet among many, I think it's a stretch the other way to call him a "Christian."

Arianism and Socinianism can easy see Jesus as the Messiah without being divine, but Jefferson is an example of someone who shows no indication Jesus is Messiah, or the Bible is the Word of God.

Tim Polack said...

Even though I'm late to this group of postings, thought I'd chip in. I guess my main critique to Waligore's comments, are that, at least in this post, his focus on an offshoot of Anglicanism - Latitudinarinism - is pretty ineffective.

Anglicanism was the most important English Church, but it was not the most important theological influence in the colonies - that was Calvinism. And while elements had interesting influnence on important individuals, the culture by and large remained very tied to the traditional Christian doctrines Frazer mentions.

So his focus on the smaller, less influential (though interesting) aspect of Anglicanism is arguing against a less influential aspects of Colonial/American Christianity.

Joseph Waligore said...

Tim, my point is not about how influential or important Latitudinarianism was in America in the eighteenth century. The point is whether Frazer is right in maintaining there was an absolutely clear dividing line that everyone agreed about between Christian and non-Christian. The presence of the Latitudinarians show that he was wrong. You are clearly right that Calvinism was much more important in seventeenth century New England. But in the eighteenth century John Tillotson, a major Latitudinarian writer, was the most popular theological writer in the colonies, and George Whitefield (a Calvinist) was severely attacked throughout the colonies when he attacked Tillotson as a deist. I do not yet know enough about colonial religion to say how popular Calvinism was versus Latitudianarianism or other kinds of rational Christianity was in the colonies.

Tom Van Dyke said...

Joseph, friend-of-the-blog Mark David Hall may be of help here.

http://www.heritage.org/research/lecture/2011/06/did-america-have-a-christian-founding

It is worth noting that all of these men wrote before Locke published his Two Treatises of Government and that this tradition was profoundly influential in America. Indeed, between 55 percent and 75 percent of white citizens in this era associated themselves with Calvinist churches, and members of the tradition were significantly overrepresented among American intellectual elites.[13]

The influence of the Reformed political tradition in the Founding era is manifested in a variety of ways, but particularly noteworthy is the almost unanimous support Calvinist clergy offered to American patriots. This was noticed by the other side, as suggested by the Loyalist Peter Oliver, who railed against the “black Regiment, the dissenting Clergy, who took so active a part in the Rebellion.” King George himself reportedly referred to the War for Independence as “a Presbyterian Rebellion.” From the English perspective, British Major Harry Rooke was largely correct when he confiscated a presumably Calvinist book from an American prisoner and remarked that “[i]t is your G-d Damned Religion of this Country that ruins the Country; Damn your religion.”[14]


This further illustrates the complication of examining deist currents in England for applicability to America.

[I]n light of the many and powerful claims that the Founders were deists, it should be noted that there is virtually no evidence that more than a handful of civic leaders in the Founding era—notably Benjamin Franklin, Ethan Allen, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and (if we count him as an American) Tom Paine—embraced anything approximating this view. Moreover, a good argument can be made that even these Founders were influenced by Christianity in significant ways...

[ibid.]

I see what you're after. "Judeo-Christian" was a politically ecumenical term invented in the 20th century. It too describes the monotheistic and providential God of the Bible, and the Bible itself as some sort of direct revelation from God, i.e., God's Word. [Even if partially corrupted by later authors and editors, and misinterpreted by any and all sects.]

By appending "deist" or "Judeo-" to "Christian," we steer around the disputes about the nature of Jesus, while keeping the nature of God the Father unified and above controversy.

It's not unfair to call Jehovah the God of the Founding.

Joseph waligore said...

Tom, "Christian deist" was not a term I invented; it was used in the eighteenth century by some figures to describe their ideas. I think it is a useful term for historians of ideas, but whether these deists deserve to be called "Christian" is a much bigger question than I deal with in my article. Instead I dealt with the littler question of whether Frazer is right in excluding them from being called "Christian" just because their contemporaries supposedly had a clear line between Christian and non-Christian.
I am totally unconcerned with whether the Founders were deists or Christians or some mix of them. I am not on the side of those who claim the Founders were deists.
You quote Hall as saying, "[I]n light of the many and powerful claims that the Founders were deists, it should be noted that there is virtually no evidence that more than a handful of civic leaders in the Founding era—notably Benjamin Franklin, Ethan Allen, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and (if we count him as an American) Tom Paine—embraced anything approximating this view." I am currently writing a book on christian deism in eighteenth century america and there is a good amount of evidence, that there were other christian deists in america.
Again, in this article I am making no claim about the Founders or the nature of the God that colonial Americans were following. Even though I am American, that is not an issue I am concerned with. So what I am saying does not contradict your point about the importance of Christianity to colonial Americans. I agree with you that the importance of Christianity is often very underrated. I was reading Garry Wills' book Head and Heart: American Christianities this morning and I was horrified the way he gave all the credit to the deists for bringing toleration to America and totally neglected the contribution of Christian non-Anglican groups.

Tom Van Dyke said...

I dealt with the littler question of whether Frazer is right in excluding them from being called "Christian" just because their contemporaries supposedly had a clear line between Christian and non-Christian.

Depends on who's drawing the lines, eh? I've found it's usually the clergy, who have their own reasons for putting other people out of bounds.

I do repaeat my proviso that Jesus has to be something resembling the Messiah for "Christian" to make any sense. Jefferson was not a Christian in any recognizable sense, and I question whether he believed in Exodus literally, which would make him at least Judeo-Christian-y.

I am currently writing a book on christian deism in eighteenth century america and there is a good amount of evidence, that there were other christian deists in america.

Sounds fresh.

I was reading Garry Wills' book Head and Heart: American Christianities this morning and I was horrified the way he gave all the credit to the deists for bringing toleration to America and totally neglected the contribution of Christian non-Anglican groups.

That's become Main St. around here. I have no personal connection with Calvinism, but one cannot understand the Founding without it.

Tom Van Dyke said...

And Joseph, with all due respect--and forgive me if I misread it--this 1837 essay

http://is.gd/V91nXt


claims the Presbyterian Salters' Hall synod of 1719

"freely declared that we utterly disown the Arian doctrine and sincerely believe the doctrine of the Holy Trinity."

[I found your statement interesting and looked it up--my purpose was not to question you.]

joseph waligore said...

Tom, there are two different questions: 1) should the Christian deists be considered Christian and 2) is frazer right in thinking there was a clear dividing line between Christian and non-Christian in the eighteenth century. I took no position in my article on the first question. I just think Frazer is wrong about the clear dividing line. It is a much bigger question whether Jefferson could be considered a Christian and how to draw those lines. I happen to know many liberal Christians who do not think Jesus was the Messiah so I am more reluctant than you seem to be about saying Jefferson was not a christian. Nevertheless, as a professional philosopher i know it is all about the definition of the word in question.

joseph waligore said...

Tom, I found the Salters' Hall piece you referred to hard to read. Many of the ministers who were against subscribing were not themselves Arians, but they did not like forcing peoples' beliefs. Over a short time later, though, many of the ministers moved more into Arian positions.

Tom Van Dyke said...

We've done a lot of work around here on unitarianism, and indeed they sat cheek-by-jowl with Trinitarians in the Congregational churches until the big fractures in the 1800s. You may find this helpful.

http://americancreation.blogspot.com/2010/02/who-were-unitarians.html

It's about a period after your focus, but the issues remain the same. "Unitarian Christians" still hold Jesus as Lord and the Bible as divine writ.

In the 1850s, unitarianism itself finally fractures between the biblical types and the "fee-thinkers" led by Theodore Parker and reluctantly joined by an aged Wm Ellery Channing. It's this latter group that most resembles your "Christian-deists."

Is their God Jehovah? If not, I don't see how they're remotely Christian. If so, I'm with you.

joseph waligore said...

Tom, I totally agree with you about the fracturing of the American Unitarians and how the group led by Theodore Parker resembles Christian deists the most. It is a very difficult question if the Christian deists are Christian. I originally dealt with that question in my article, but the reveiwers absolutely hated it and so I had to cut it out. Now I only answer that it is not a question I am concerned about.

Tom Van Dyke said...

A pox on the reviewers, then!

I've been following your work via Jon for awhile now, Joseph. Great stuff, props.

You certainly touch on it, but IMO the natural law angle is the most probative, where orthodoxy and deist heterodoxy converge, obviating the theological questions.

Alexander Hamilton, The Farmer Refuted, a passage with which you're well familiar. Could be deist, could be orthodox Xtian. Doesn't matter, as long as it's not Hobbesian!

"There is so strong a similitude between your political principles and those maintained by Mr. Hobb[e]s, that, in judging from them, a person might very easily mistake you for a disciple of his. His opinion was, exactly, coincident with yours, relative to man in a state of nature. He held, as you do, that he was, then, perfectly free from all restraint of law and government. Moral obligation, according to him, is derived from the introduction of civil society; and there is no virtue, but what is purely artificial, the mere contrivance of politicians, for the maintenance of social intercourse. But the reason he run into this absurd and impious doctrine, was, that he disbelieved the existence of an intelligent superintending principle, who is the governor, and will be the final judge of the universe.

As you, sometimes, swear by him that made you, I conclude, your sentiment does not correspond with his, in that which is the basis of the doctrine, you both agree in; and this makes it impossible to imagine whence this congruity between you arises. To grant, that there is a supreme intelligence, who rules the world, and has established laws to regulate the actions of his creatures; and, still, to assert, that man, in a state of nature, may be considered as perfectly free from all restraints of law and government, appear to a common understanding, altogether irreconcileable.

Good and wise men, in all ages, have embraced a very dissimilar theory. They have supposed, that the deity, from the relations, we stand in, to himself and to each other, has constituted an eternal and immutable law, which is, indispensibly, obligatory upon all mankind, prior to any human institution whatever.

This is what is called the law of nature, "which, being coeval with mankind, and dictated by God himself, is, of course, superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times. No human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid, derive all their authority, mediately, or immediately, from this original." Blackstone.