Character of Jesus forbidding his Possible Classification with Men.

Horace Bushnell (1802-1876), minister and theologian, is sometimes called “the father of American religious liberalism.” Influenced by Emerson, Coleridge, and Schleiermacher, the controversial Bushnell thoroughly critiqued the emphasis on the conversion experience so popular among the Christian revivalists of his time. Unlike some of the liberal theologians popular in Continental Europe, however, Bushnell firmly believed in Christ’s divinity. He fiercely defends this conviction in The Character of Jesus, arguing that no mere human could do what Christ had done. While Bushnell does not read the Gospels as entirely historical, he nevertheless affirms that no such account of Jesus’ life could exist if not for his divinity.

Kathleen O’Bannon
CCEL Staff