EPISTEMOLOGY AND THEOLOGY IN AMERICAN METHODISM
James E. Hamilton
Asbury College
A distinguishing mark of biblical religion is the rejection of idols. All images and
symbols of Deity are forbidden by the second commandment for the evident reason that
symbols too often become substitutes for the thing symbolized. Scripture teaches us that
the created order does in fact bear some evidence of divine origination and that the
attributes of the Creator are reflected in His work. It was characteristic of pagan
religion to allow its vision and hence its worship to terminate upon the reflection, the
symbol; and it was the task of Hebrew faith to reject the symbol in order that the
ultimate reality, God, might again be seen.
There is an intriguing parallel between ancient pagan religion and modern philosophy at
this point of symbols or images. The religious symbolism of the ancients is strikingly
similar to the conceptual symbolism of post-Cartesian epistemology. It was Descartes who
introduced into modern philosophy the view that we do not have direct knowledge of the
world. The only direct, immediate knowledge which we have is knowledge of "ideas" which represent the world.
John Locke adopted Descartes' notion, popularized it, and passed it on to Berkeley and
Hume, and through Hume to Kant. Locke held that the direct objects of our perceptions are
always and only ideas. These ideas are caused by real existences lying outside the
mind-existences, however, which we do not apprehend directly, but only indirectly. The
implicit acceptance of the doctrine of ideas by these heavyweights of modern epistemology
has been extremely consequential. It has led, as Mortimer Adler points out,
to all the riddles and perplexities of later empiricism concerning the subjective and
the objective, concerning our knowledge of the external world, concerning the logical
construction of "objects" that we cannot directly apprehend from the sense-data
that we do directly apprehend, concerning the referential meaning of any words that do not
have directly apprehended items, such as sense-data; and soon. l
Although Locke and Hume as well as Kant maintained that a real world exists independent
of human cognition, it is difficult to understand how such confidence was warranted by
their epistemology. As Adler again states:
The evident problem is that the theory of ideas itself provides no criteria for
evaluating the ability of ideas to represent a reality distinct from them. As Abraham
Heschel says: "In order to prove the validity of symbols in general and in order to
judge the adequacy of particular symbols, we must be in possession of a knowledge of the
symbolized object that is independent of all symbols . " 3
It is precisely this latter knowledge which the theory of ideas excludes.
The legitimate consequences of such a position are clear. Genuine knowledge of the
outer world is excluded. In Heschel's words, "Objects possessing attributes, causes
that work, are all mythical."4 Neither can there be knowledge of
such aspects of the inner world as personal identity, free will, etc. The question of the
status of religious knowledge comes also to mind. Heschel's answer is perceptive:
We must, of course, give up the hope ever to attain a valid concept of the supernatural
in an objective sense, yet since for practical reasons it is useful to cherish the idea of
God, let us retain that idea and claim that while our knowledge of God is not objectively
true, it is still symbolically true.5
The "idolatrous" character of the doctrine of ideas thus becomes manifest.
Conceptual symbolism, like its ancient religious counterpart, has not gone
unchallenged. The modern Moses who arose to reject this epistemic idolatry was the
Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid. The intention and the result of Reid's work was to
provide philosophical justification for the view that our knowledge of reality is direct,
not indirect; immediate, not mediate; presentative, rather than representative. Reid
maintained that we have immediate awareness of the world as it is and of ourselves as we
are and that there is no sufficient reason for thinking otherwise.
While it is not our purpose in this paper either to justify or to refute the doctrine
of ideas, it will be helpful to give an example of the sort of argument Reid utilized to
establish his position. Reid held that there are certain beliefs which we do and must hold
as (practical) human beings, which are held by men universally and are consequently
reflected in our behavior and in the structure of all languages, and the denial of which
leads to absurdity. One such belief is the conviction that our wills are free. Others
include
Concerning freedom of the will, Reid says:
This natural conviction of our acting freely which is acknowledged by many who hold the
doctrine of necessity, ought to throw the whole burden of proof upon that side; for, by
this, the side of liberty has what lawyers call a jus quaesitum, or a right of ancient
possession, which ought to stand good till it be overturned. If it cannot be proved that
we always act from necessity, there is no need to produce arguments on the other side to
convince us that we are free agents.7
Reid's point is that our convictions concerning human freedom, personal identity, the
material world, etc., are convictions which common sense teaches us are in no need of
independent justification. To deny them is to deny common sense. Unless more convincing
arguments are adduced to the contrary, such convictions stand as self-evident, hence
self-justified.8
Another parallel between ancient religious thought and modern philosophical movements
is worthy of note. Biblical religion is distinguished from all other major religions
except those which it has influenced by its view of God as transcendent and free.
Elsewhere the divine is found within the processes of nature and is subject to the
fatalism inherent in nature's inexorable laws.9 What is true of the gods
is true also of man. Man emerges from the natural order and, like the gods, is determined
by its laws. In biblical thought, however, man, who is made in God's image, has a measure
of distinctness from nature as well as a limited though real freedom of will. In
comparative religion the ideas of idolatry, naturalism, and determinism are generally
associated, as are the ideas of supranaturalism,10 human freedom, and
the rejection of idolatry.
Modern philosophy has tended to reflect these groupings of ideas. Nonrealistic
epistemologies have generally led to naturalistic metaphysics and to denial of free will.
When freedom ~s maintained in such a context, it is usually found to be a type which may
be "reconciled with determinism." Commonsense realism, on the other hand, has
generally if not exclusively been associated with supranaturalism and with a clear
doctrine of freedom. In America the followers of Reid and Dugald Stewart, many Methodists
among them, argued that acceptance of the doctrines of epistemological realism and of
freedom leads logically to theism, while denial of either leads to atheism. Thus, there
was a spate of books by the academic orthodoxy on mental philosophy, on the freedom of the
will, and on natural theology.
It is not the purpose of this paper to demonstrate the relation of implication between
the ideas of idolatry (religious or conceptual), naturalism, and determinism or between
realism, freedom, and theism. It is our purpose to use this schema as an explanatory
hypothesis for understanding the character of the relation between epistemology and
theology in two major eras of American Methodist history: the era of academic orthodoxy
and the era of modern personalism. Our intention is not to reach final conclusions but to
open up new avenues of potentially fruitful investigation in an area which has been
largely ignored.
In spite of John Wesley's profound respect for reason, the Methodist movement never
attempted any consistent or thoroughgoing work in philosophy during the days of his
leadership. This fact may be attributed to two things primarily. The first is that Wesley
received his academic foundations and began his ministry during the period of John Locke's
greatest influence in British universities. Although Wesley paid his respects to Locke,
there were fundamental incompatibilities between the implications of Locke's epistemology
and Wesley's understanding of the Scriptures. The second is that Wesley's primary calling
was to give leadership and direction to the evangelical revival, not to do detailed work
in philosophy. Thus, while Wesley gave some critical attention to Locke, he wrote
comparatively little in the field of philosophy. A tendency to neglect philosophy
characterized Methodism during the entire Wesleyan period in England as well as the
Asburian period in America. It is not clear that British Methodism has ever diverged
significantly from this nonphilosophical orientation.
However, it should be made clear that there was in Wesley and other early Methodists a
commonsense approach to theological matters which bore an affinity to Reid's philosophical
method. Leland Scott states in this connection that
the very claim of the Scottish philosophy to be one of "common sense," thus
non-abstract, dealing in evident realities apart from speculative metaphysics or
scholastic divinity, served to attract the Methodist theologians to it. They found such a
method congenial to their own interests and concerns. Indeed, the appeal to "common
sense" (viz. common consent, the obviously reasonable, etc.) was characteristic of
the evangelical theologies in the period of Wesley and Edwards, and their immediate
successors, and this, of course, was prior to the specification of such an approach in a
philosophical school .11
Although Wesley read Reid's first book, Inquiry into the Human Mind, in 1774 with mixed
feelings of delight and disappointment,12 it was in American Methodism
that the mature works of Reid were most heartily appreciated.
Three years before Francis Asbury arrived on American soil bearing the message of the
evangelical revival, John Witherspoon came with the philosophy of the Scottish
renaissance, commonsense realism. Witherspoon utilized the same conceptual artillery with
which he had combatted Lord Kames's empiricism in Scotland to effectively rid Princeton of
its prevailing idealism. By the turn of the century Witherspoon and others had made Reid's
philosophy a major influence in American intellectual life.
It was not long before the name of Reid began to appear in Methodist literature. Asa
Shinn, a self-educated itinerant preacher who wrote the only theodicy in American
Methodism's first hundred years,13 was the first to see the intrinsic
compatibility between Arminian theology and Scottish philosophy, but he was far from the
last. In his Essay on the Plan of Salvation, Shinn wrote: "It affords me unspeakable
pleasure to find I can screen myself under the authority of a Reid, a Beatty, and a
Campbell, among philosophers; and . . . of a Baxter, a Wesley, a Fletcher . . . among
divines."14 Scott rightly points out that "these words of Asa
Shinn, published in 1813, were to prove methodologically prophetic of this
early-nineteenth-century American Methodism."15
The intellectual treatment of the Wesleyan message by American Methodists was from the
beginning characterized by a philosophical preference for Reid over Locke. Nathan Bangs,
the first major polemicist, historian, and theological editor,l6 was a
diligent student of theology and of mental philosophy. In his youth he mastered his
favorite author, John Locke. During his pastorate in New York City he mastered Berkeley
and Hume as well as Reid, Beatty, and Stewart. Of these studies, Bangs's biographer
writes: "Reid's 'Essays on the Intellectual Faculties and Active Powers' were
especially his delight; he made an ample synopsis of them in his commonplace book, and
considered them the best solution of the chief problems of the science which had yet been
given to the world."17
Bangs continued to respect Locke, but he judged that Reid had detected the errors in
Locke's epistemology and had rescued philosophy from the "barefaced Atheism" to
which these errors had led in Hume's theory of successive impressions.l8 In his influential letters on the "Importance of Study to a Minister of the
Gospel," Bangs urged that "Reid's Essays on the Intellectual and Active Powers
of Man ought to grace the library of every Christian minister "19
American liberal arts education is as indebted to Scotland for original inspiration and
example as our university system is to the German ideal.20 Thus it is
not surprising to find in Methodism's first college president a critical appreciation for
Scottish philosophy. Wilbur Fisk maintained that understanding the analytic elements of
both mental and moral philosophy is crucial for the detection of theological error and
serves to confirm and clarify scriptural truth. Fisk admired Upham but was critical of the
latter's Mental Philosophy (1827-28) because Upham made the will the passive creature of
the motives.21 However, as Scott points out, "Fisk spoke more
enthusiastically of Upham's later Treatise on the Will, wherein there is a shift from a
Lockeian to a Reidian psychology, involving the stress on the distinction between the
desire and the will."22
At the time of his unexpected death in 1839, Fisk "planned three new books, one on
Mental Philosophy, one on Moral Philosophy, and one on the Philosophy of Theology."23 Fisk's influence and ideas lived on, however, in the person of his
younger colleague at Wesleyan, Methodism's most determinative theologian of the nineteenth
century,24 Daniel Whedon.25
During three critical decades of American thought, 1856-84, Daniel Whedon edited
Methodism's foremost theological journal (the Methodist Quarterly Review). Scott informs
us that
somewhat early in his academic life, Whedon came under the dominant influence of the
new critique of Lockeian modes of philosophical thought-such a critique as was found not
only in the writings of Stewart and Reid, but also in those of Jouffroy and Cousin.26
Whedon held, as had Fisk and Bangs, that Lockeian epistemology leads logically to
determinism and atheism,27 while commonsense realism supports free will
and theism. The determinative influence of Reidian categories is evident in Whedon's most
important work, Freedom of the Will as a Basis of Human Responsibility (1864),28 a book which he was originally encouraged to write by Wilbur Fisk.29
The philosophical orientation of Shinn, Bangs, Fisk, and Whedon is characteristic of
American Methodism during the major portion of the last century. As Scott points out, for
example:
Evidence of decisive influence from the studies of men such as Reid, Cousin, Tappan,
Mahan, Bledsoe, et al., may be discerned (at least indirectly) in such American Methodist
writings as Ralston's Elements of Divinity (1847), Wakefield's Complete System of
Christian Theology (1858), and Comfort's Source of Power, or the Philosophy of Moral
Agency (1858).30
Bishop Randolph F. Foster, whose "theological writings spanned fifty of the most
intellectually decisive years in the history of American Christianity,"31
was a thoroughgoing, commonsense realist. Similar examples could be multiplied. It is
interesting to note that American dissatisfaction with Watson's widely endorsed theology
focused on his commitment to Lockeian epistemology. Rising demands for a systematic
theology to replace Watson's identified the revision of his theory of knowledge as a chief
concern. 32 When such works did appear, chiefly those by Miner Raymond
(1877) and John Miley (1892, 1894), they were characterized, in Scott's words, by "full acceptance . . . of an epistemology of intuitional realism."33 Thus, it was in democratic America that the philosophy of the "democratic
intellect"34 was most highly respected and enthusiastically
embraced by the exponents of a democratic gospel.
For most of the nineteenth century Scottish commonsense philosophy provided an
intellectual context in which evangelical Christianity in general and Arminian theology in
particular flourished. During these years philosophy was looked upon as the handmaid of
biblical revelation. Philosophy and theology, particularly Methodist theology, agreed at
the points of God's supranatural existence and man's freedom. In Whedon's words, "Free-will in Wesleyan Arminian theology is like theism in Christianity, both
philosophy and theology the same."35 Within Methodism Wesleyan
doctrine was maintained in basic unity as well as intellectually defended and zealously
propagated.
Although there is some overlap, the modern period in Methodist theology may be
conveniently dated from the 1876 appointment of Bordon Parker Bowne to a chair in
philosophy at Boston University. It was during the last quarter of the nineteenth century
that such movements as pragmatism, idealism, evolutionism, liberalism, and the higher
criticism of the Bible emerged triumphant in the American academic mind. Probably no
single individual was more influential in laying the intellectual foundations for and
propagating the message of Protestant liberalism than Bowne.36 More
specifically, Bowne's personal idealism inaugurated "a new era in the history of
Methodist theology."37
For our purpose it will be sufficient to notice that Boston personalism constituted a
philosophical shift in the direction of epistemic "idolatry," naturalism, and
determinism, and that it led to a consequent abandonment of Methodism's Wesleyan
theological heritage. Such assertions may well raise some eyebrows and undoubtedly would
have been rejected by Bowne himself as ridiculous. Was he not the great champion of
voluntarism, the ardent foe of naturalism, and the architect of a genuine and
sophisticated epistemic realism? Bowne's devotion to the theology of Wesley is less
obvious, though he did profess continuing faith in historic Christianity.38
Bowne gained thorough acquaintance with Scottish realism during a seven-year stay at
the home of Bishop Randolph Foster. Bowne always felt that Foster's commonsense
epistemology was inadequate and that it prevented Foster from achieving any satisfactory
metaphysics.39 In place of realism, Bowne developed the epistemology of
personal idealism, well summarized by Charles Bertram Pyle as follows:
He reduces nature on the human side to idea, on the side of causality to Infinite
thought and deed.... Bowne makes the object our own percept, its meaning our own
construction. The object is a mental product, from the human standpoint, Infinite thought
and deed from the standpoint of God. The object does not exist apart from mind. Its
stimulus may exist apart from your mind or mine but not apart from all mind. The material
world is perceived through the senses and has no existence as a material world except to
human minds .40
It is clear from this statement that we do not see beyond our own perceptions, because
the world has in fact no existence apart from our perception of it. Bowne seeks to avoid
the implicit solipsism of Kant by his Berkeleian contention that it is God who gives
objective rational order to "the world," and he differs from absolute idealism
primarily in his interpreting the world as divine deed as well as divine thought. His
epistemic idolatry is nevertheless manifest irrespective of these modifications.
Although Bowne contended, and with some justification, that he was neither a
materialist nor a pantheist, it is not so clear that he was not a naturalist. His
personalism made no provision for ontological discontinuity between God and the world. His
view of the immanence of God was such that it "removes the antagonism of divine and
natural and helps us to see the naturalness of the divine and the divineness of the
natural."'41
Let us see how these things are so. Bowne maintained that his view of God as personal
distinguished his theory from both pantheism and materialism. God is neither the substance
of the world nor is the world a mere emanation from the being of God. The relation between
God and the world must be conceived differently. God is the cause of the world. The
relation between them is a volitional one. Yet as the world's cause God is radically
immanent. Does He in any way transcend the world? Not in the sense that He is outside of
or discontinuous with the world, but only in the sense that the world depends upon Him. In
any other sense, says Bowne, the word transcend is without meaning.42
It is interesting to note that Bowne's pupil, A. C. Knudson, relates Bowne's rejection
of realism to his denial of orthodox biblical supranaturalism. He says of Bowne's theory
that
it rejected the crude realism commonly assumed by earlier Protestant theologians, and
thus eliminated the traditional sharp antithesis between the natural and the
supernatural.... If the popular distinction between the natural and the supernatural was
to be retained, it was necessary to restrict the distinction to the phenomenal order and
to reinterpret the words natural and supernatural.43
Bowne's move toward determinism is more difficult to identify. Personalism had at its
very heart the assertion of rational freedom of the will interpreted in terms of contrary
or alternative choice. One wonders, however, whether Bowne's reduction of all causation in
the universe to volitional causation must not require some modification of his doctrine of
freedom. Close examination reveals that Bowne does in fact view "freedom" and
"determinism" as basically compatible. These have been viewed as incompatible,
he contends, only because they have been discussed in the abstract rather than the
concrete.
Concrete problems can never be safely considered in the abstract. Many a proposition
may seem self-evident when abstractly taken, which looks very different, when put into
concrete form. And many ideas are mutually contradictory when abstractly compared, which
harmonize admirably when concretely realized. This is especially the case with the
doctrine of freedom. The difficulties in it have largely arisen from an abstract
consideration, which puts asunder things that belong together.44
The apparent incompatibility between freedom and determinism when they are related
abstractly dissolves, says Bowne, when we consider them concretely.
If we consult the dictionary only, we may easily persuade ourselves that fixity and
freedom are incompatible; but if we consult experience, we shall find that we cannot
dispense with either.... Freedom and necessity are contradictory only as formal ideas, and
are not mutually exclusive as determinations of being.... Reality, then, shows these
formally opposite ideas united in actual existence, and reflection shows that both are
necessary to rational existence.45
In the light of such terminological revision we may begin to see how it was possible
for Bowne to claim that Calvinists do not deny freedom, as Daniel Whedon asserted that
they did.46
Operating from the vantage point of what we have termed "epistemic idolatry," Bordon Parker Bowne thus came to view the traditional Christian distinction between the
natural and the supranatural as arbitrary and misleading 47 and that
between freedom and determinism as abstract and false to experience. The consequent
relation between personalism and orthodox Christianity is epitomized in Curtis Jones's
statement that "there seems to be a ravelling out of distinctively Christian
theological concepts when the attempt is made to recast them in personalist
categories."48
The case is similar with respect to Wesleyan Arminianism. Whereas
Scottish realism had provided a context in which Wesleyan theology could express itself
and develop, personal idealism tended to supplant traditional Methodist doctrine. Bowne's
influence at this point is poignantly stated in Chiles's remark concerning A System of
Christian Doctrine, by Henry C. Sheldon, Bowne's colleague at Boston. Says Chiles, "Though Sheldon frequently refers to Bowne in this work, he does not mention John
Wesley."49
REFERENCE NOTES
1. Mortimer J. Adler, "Little Errors in the Beginning," Thomist 38 (January, 1974): 41-2.
2. Ibid., p. 42.
3. Abraham J. Heschel, Man's Quest for God (New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1954), p. 130.
4. Ibid., p. 128.
5. Ibid.
6. The Works of Thomas Reid (Edinburgh: James Thin, 1845), 2:618.
7. Ibid., p. 620.
8. Keith Lehrer, "Can We Know That We Have Free Will by
Introspection?" Journal of Philosophy, vol. 57 (March, 1960).
9. See Yehezkel Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel (Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1960), pp. 21-24, 60.
10. We use the term supranaturalism rather than supernaturalism here
because the prefix super may be interpreted to mean merely "more than," while
supra emphasizes God's essential distinctness from the world.
11. Leland H. Scott, "Methodist Theology in America in the
Nineteenth Century," unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Yale, 1954, fn. 68, p. 94.
12. The Works of the Reverend John Wesley (New York: Emory and Waugh,
1831), 4:414.
13. See Daniel Whedon, "Wesleyanism and Taylorism-Second Reply to
the New Englander," Methodist Quarterly Review 44 (January, 1862): 145f.
14. Quoted in Leland H. Scott, "The Message of Early American
Methodism, The History of American Methodism (New York: Abingdon Press, 1964), 1:353.
15. Ibid.
16. Leland H. Scott, "Methodist Theology in America in the
Nineteenth Century," Religion in Life 25 (winter, 1955-56): 89, fn. 4.
17. Abel Stevens, Life and Times of Nathan Bangs, D.D. (New York:
Carlton and Porter, 1863), p. 223.
18. Nathan Bangs, "Importance of Study to a Minister of the
Gospel," Methodist Quarterly Review 6 (March, 1823):104.
19. Ibid.
20. See Douglas Sloan, The Scottish Enlightenment and the American
College Ideal (Columbia University: Teachers College Press, 1971).
21. Wilbur Fisk, Calvinistic Controversy (New York: Waugh and Mason,
1835), pp. 160f.
22. Scott, "Methodist Theology," unpublished dissertation,
p. 73.
23. George Prentice, Wilbur Fisk (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and
Company, 1890), p. 257.
24. Scott, "Methodist Theology," Religion in Life, p. 90.
25. Whedon claimed to have learned more of his theology from Fisk than
from "the living utterances of any other man." See Scott, "Methodist
Theology," unpublished dissertation, p. 75.
26. Ibid., p. 189.
27. See, for example, Whedon's Public Addresses, Collegiate and
Popular (Boston: John P. ,Jewett, 1852), pp. 78-80; Statements: Theological and Critical
(New York: Phillips and Hunt, 1887), pp. 51-55; and Freedom of the Will (New York: Carlton
and Porter, 1864), pp. 107-10.
28. Scott, "Methodist Theology," unpublished dissertation,
pp. 169-70.
29. Ibid., p. 75.
30. Ibid., p. 170.
31. Ibid., p. 664.
32. Robert E. Chiles, Theological Transition in American Methodism:
1790-l935 (New York: Abingdon Press, 1965), p. 94.
33. Scott, "Methodist Theology," unpublished dissertation,
p. 315.
34. The term "democratic intellect" comes from George Elder
Davie, The Democratic Intellect (Edinburgh: University Press, 1961). See also in this
connection Davie's Dow Lecture at the University of Dundee, The Social Significance of the
Scottish Philosophy of Common Sense (Edinburgh: T. A. Constable, Ltd., 1973)
35. Daniel Whedon, Methodist Quarterly Review 62 (October, 1880): 788.
36. See Sydney E. Ahlstrom, "Theology in America: A Historical
Survey," James Ward Smith and A. Leland Jamison, eds., The Shaping of American
Religion (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961), pp. 288-90; and Chiles,
Theological Transition, pp. 64-65.
37. Quoted in Scott, "Methodist Theology," unpublished
dissertation, p. 492
38. Albert C. Knudson, "Bowne in American Theological
Education," Personalist 28 (July, summer, 1947):255.
39. Francis John McConnell, Bordon Parker Bowne (New York: The
Abingdon Press, 1929), pp. 92-93.
40. Charles Bertram Pyle, Bowne's Philosophy (Columbus: S. T.
Harriman, 1910), pp. 47-48. A similar statement in Bowne's own words may be found in
Bordon i; Parker Bowne, Personalism (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1908), pp. 150-51.
41. Pyle, Bowne's Philosophy, p. 96.
42. Bordon P. Bowne, Theism (New York: American Book Company, 1902), P
245.
43. Knudson, "Bowne in American Theological Education," p.
248.
44. Bowne, Personalism, p. 199.
45. Bowne, Theism, pp. 196-98.
46. See Whedon's review of Bowne's Studies in Theism in Methodist
Quarterly Review 61 (October, 1879): 775-78.
47. See also in this connection Scott, "Methodist Theology," unpublished dissertation, p. 493.
48. Quoted in Chiles, Theological Transition, fn. 66, p. 74.
49. Ibid, fn. 53, p. 67.
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