The Emergence of Modern Protestantism 1725 1850

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The Emergence of Modern Protestantism1725 - 1850
Lecture 1 Introduction, Review and Preview
Dr. Dave Doughty
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The 5th class in a twenty-year course!

• 1992 (or was it 1993?)
• The Spreading Flame (33 to 456 AD)
• 1996 (postponed from 1995)
• The Church in the Middle Ages (500 to 1350 AD)
• 2000
• The Reformation (1350 1611)
• 2004
• The Expansion and Decline of Protestant
  Christianity (1607 1730)

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Review of 1607 - 1730

• In In 1607 the first group of 104 settlers land
  at Jamestown
• 1610 Arminius and the Remonstrants
• 1618 - Synod of Dort
• 1611 KJV
• Kepler (1571-1630)
• What voice has the heaven, what voice have the
  stars, to praise God as man does? Unless, when
  they supply man with cause to praise God, they
  themselves are said to praise God.
• Galileo (1564-1642)
• In disputes about natural phenomena one must
  begin not with the authority of Scriptural
  passages but with sensory experience and
  necessary demonstrations. For the Holy Scripture
  and nature derive equally from the Godhead, the
  former as the dictation of the Holy Spirit, and
  the latter as the most obedient executrix of
  Gods orders. Moreover, to accommodate the
  understanding of the common people, it is
  appropriate for Scripture to say many things that
  are different (in appearance and in regard to the
  literal meaning of the words) from the absolute
  truth.

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Review Puritans and Pilgrims

• 3 types of Puritans (Puritans, Presbyterians,
  Independents)
• 2 types of Independents (Separatists Pilgrims,
  Non-separatists Massachusetts Bay Colony)
• Pilgrims Arrive in US (1620)
• 1629 Charles Dissolves Parliament
• Puritans Arrive in US(1630)

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Review- Descartes (1596-1650)

• Philosophy
• Everything is to be doubted revelations,
  concepts about God, the world of values, physical
  things, opinions.

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Review - Descartes

• Proof for the existence of God.
• 1. I have an idea of God, a perfect being.
• 2. There must be as much reality or perfection in
  the cause of any thing as in the effect.
• This applies not only to the existence of ideas,
  but also to the reality of what they represent.
  Not only must the existence of the idea be
  explained, but also what it represents.
• 3. The idea of God represents something so
  perfect that I could not have been the cause of
  this idea.
• Therefore, God must exist as the only possible
  cause of the perfection found in my idea of Him.

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The Problem with Descartes

• He elevates reason
• His reasoning is not as previous philosophers
  and theologians requires mathematical style
  proof
• He elevates doubt
• Doubt becomes the primary virtue
• Doubt is the path to knowledge
• Belief in God becomes formal
• Like a mathematical proof
• How do you love a mathematical proof?
• If doubt and reason are the priority, what
  happens to miracles?

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Review Pascal (1623-1662)

• A Devout Christian
• I cannot forgive Descartes. In all his
  philosophy he would have been quite willing to
  dispense with God. But he had to make Him give a
  fillip to set the world in motion beyond this,
  he has no further need of God .
• Men despise religion they hate it and fear it
  is true. To remedy this, we must begin by showing
  that religion is not contrary to reason that it
  is venerable, to inspire respect for it then we
  must make it lovable, to make good men hope it is
  true finally, we must prove it is true.

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Review Pascal

• The Christian religion, then, teaches men these
  two truths that there is a God whom men can
  know, and that there is a corruption in their
  nature which renders them unworthy of Him. It is
  equally important to men to know both these
  points and it is equally dangerous for man to
  know God without knowing his own wretchedness,
  and to know his own wretchedness without knowing
  the Redeemer who can free him from it. The
  knowledge of only one of these points gives rise
  either to the pride of philosophers, who have
  known God, and not their own wretchedness, or to
  the despair of atheists, who know their own
  wretchedness, but not the Redeemer.
• What reason have they for saying that we cannot
  rise from the dead? What is more difficult, to be
  born or to rise again that what has never been
  should be, or that what has been should be again?
  Is it more difficult to come into existence than
  to return to it? Habit makes the one appear easy
  to us want of habit makes the other impossible.
  A popular way of thinking!

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Review the 17th Century America

• 1636 Roger Williams Leaves Mass. Bay Colony
  Rhode Island
• 1638 Anne Hutchinson banished from Mass. Bay
  Colony
• 1641 New York Public worship for Dutch Reformed
  and NE Calvinists (others in private)
• 1646 George Fox, Inner Light, and the Quakers
• Arrive in Massachusetts Bay in 1656 (some hanged)
• 1648 Puritans, the Visible Church and Baptism
• 1690 Maryland Church of England (originally
  Catholic)

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Review the 17th Century UK

• 1643 Charles I forced out of London
• Puritans take over
• 1643 - 1649 Westminster Assembly
• Mostly Presbyterian Puritans
• 1649 Charles I beheaded
• 1658 Cromwell dies
• 1660 Charles II followed by James II in 1672
• Tries to remake England into Catholic country
• 1685 The Killing Time (The Wigtown Martyrs)
• 1688 The Glorious Revolution (William and Mary)
• 1689 Acts of Toleration (more or less all
  protestants)

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Review Bunyan, Milton, Newton

• 1660 John Bunyan arrested for Puritan views
• Holy City Pilgrims Progress
• Milton
• Paradise Lost 1667
• Here we may reign secure and in my choice
• To reign is worth ambition, though in hell
• Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.   
• Paradise Regained 1671
• Newton
• Principia 1687
• Christ gave himself for me. Gal. 220

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Review Locke (1632-1704)

• Two Treatises of Government - 1689
• Men have natural rights to life liberty and
  property.
• Government established by consent of the governed
  to secure these natural rights
• The will of the majority must rule
• When that will is not carried out, the people
  have the right of revolution
• The legislative and executive functions should be
  carefully discriminated
• The legislative function is superior
• Government should not be coercive in matters of
  faith

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Review Locke

• Reasonableness of Christianity - 1695
• Scriptures contain a message beyond the power of
  unaided reason to attain, attested by miracles
• That message cannot be contrary to reason
• A miracle could not attest anything essentially
  unreasonable
• It was enough to acknowledge Jesus as the
  Messiah, and practise the moral virtues which he
  proclaimed, which are in fundamental accord with
  the dictates of a reason which is hardly
  distinguishable from enlightened common sense.

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Review Presbyterians in America

• Various Presbyterians migrated to America
• English Puritans of Presbyterian persuasion
• Welch Presbyterians
• Scottish immigrants (non-Cameronian)
• Hugenots, also reformed Dutch, Germ., Switz.
• Scattered and isolated
• Most in middle, some in NE, some in south
• 1706 the first inter-colonial presbytery formed
• Independent of any old-world synod
• to meet yearly or oftenerto consult the most
  proper measure for advancing religion and
  propagating Christianity
• 1716 Synod of Philadelphia with three
  presbyteries

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Summary of Presbyterianism

• 1729 - Adopted Westminster standards as
  confession
• In 1743 there are two Presbyterian churches in
  Scotland
• Church of Scotland
• Reformed Presbyterian Church of Scotland
  (Cameronians or Covenanters)
• In 1743 there are two Presbyterian churches in
  America
• Philadelphia Synod
• Reformed Presbyterian Church in America

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Review Deism

• Locke is the Key (Reasonableness!)
• Five articles (from 1624)
• Belief in the existence of a single supreme God
• Humanity's duty to revere God
• Linkage of worship with practical morality
• God will forgive us if we repent and abandon our
  sins
• Good works will be rewarded (and punishment for
  evil) both in life and after death
• Toland Christianity not Mysterious (1696)
• I hope to make it appear, that the Use of
  Reason is not so dangerous in Religion as it is
  commonly represented

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John and Charles Wesley

• Go to Oxford in 1720s
• Holy Club
• 1735 Head to Georgia
• John - My chief motive is the hope of saving my
  own soul. I hope to learn the true sense of the
  Gospel of Christ by preaching it to the heathen."
  

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John and Charles Wesley

• May 20-21, 1738 Charles had a conversion
  experience
• At midnight I gave myself to Christ assured I
  was safe, whether sleeping or waking. I had the
  continual experience of His power to overcome all
  temptation, and confessed, with joy and surprise,
  that He was able to do exceedingly abundantly for
  me, above what I can ask or think.
• "...Reason cannot produce faith. Although it is
  always consistent with reason, yet reason cannot
  produce faith, in the scriptural sense of the
  word. Faith, according to Scripture, is 'an
  evidence,' or conviction, 'of things not seen.'

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End of Review

• Questions?

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This Class Emergence of Modern Protestantism

• Mostly focused on U.S. Church History
• Because the most interesting church history
  developments were here in the colonies
• Mostly focused on Continental Philosophers
• Because the most interesting philosophical
  developments were happening in Europe

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Coming Topics

• Why Religious Freedom in the U.S.?
• Religious Beliefs of the Founding Fathers
• Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, John Adams, Sam
  Adams, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas
  Paine, John Jay
• The New (Christian?, Protestant?) Nation 
• Deism in the 18th Century
• Unitarianism
• Universalism 

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More Coming Topics

• French Revolution and Napolean
• William Carey and the Missions Movement
• Second Great Awakening
• Mormonism
• Public Schools in the U.S.
• Darwinism
• Slavery

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More (and deeper?) topics

• The Philosophers
• Voltaire (1694-1778)
• Hume (1711-1776)
• Paley (1743-1805)
• Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
• Schleirmacher (1768-1834)
• Hegel (1770-1831)

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Today Why Religious Freedom Here?
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Religion in European Countries

• England Anglican
• Germany Lutheran
• Scandinavia Lutheran
• Switzerland - Reformed
• Scotland - Reformed
• France Catholic
• Spain Catholic 
• All the dominant groups believed in and demanded
  religious uniformity within their civil
  commonwealth enforced by the civil power.

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Religion In America

• Initially mostly Protestant, many varieties,
  initially highly separated (they expected to
  reproduce what they had known back home).
• Puritans and Pilgrims in Mass., Dutch Reformed in
  NY, Swedes on the Delaware, Anglicans on the
  James.
• What is amazing is that in America, between 1607
  and 1787 these groups all came to live in peace
  with one another, unlike what happened elsewhere!
• Why?

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Why Religious Freedom in America?

• In The Lively Experiment, Sidney Mead
  postulates that the immense space available in
  the new world had much to do with it.
• When Roger Williams was banished to Rhode Island,
  Cotton Mather wrote, The Jurisdiction (whence a
  man is banished) is but small, and the Country
  round about it large and fruitful where a man
  may make his choice of variety of more pleasant,
  and profitable seats, then he leaveth behinde
  him. In which respect, Banishment in this
  countrey is not counted so much a confinement, as
  an enlargement.

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The Banishment Problem

• The Bay Puritans, in the attempt to protect
  their own religious absolutism, might banish such
  dissidents as Anne Hutchinson, Roger Williams,
  the Quakers and the Baptists. But they could
  neither keep them from establishing themselves in
  neighboring colonies, nor hide the attractive
  example of their freedom from the citizens of
  Massachusetts.

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Other Factors

• First religious multiplicity the sheer volume
  of different beliefs meant it was hard for any
  one group to enforce its will on the others. 
• Second Voluntaryism the idea that spiritual
  leaders had to seek and to hold the consent and
  the confidence of the faithful if they are to be
  effective. Various organizations were in constant
  competition with each other.
• Third England the motherland interfered
  periodically to disallow death penalty type of
  sanctions.

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Next Week

• The Great Awakening Edwards Whitefield and
  Franklin