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Theological Science THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG Theological Seminaries 342
tion of moral action. According to Timothy Dwight (q.v.) God permits but does not create sin. Leonard Woods (q.v.) in distinction from the Westminster Catechism (Letters, Boston, 1822) denies the imputation of any sinful disposition or act to man which is not strictly his own; this may, however, begin with the life of the soul (ib. p. 305). The other aspect of sin discussed was the divine permission of sin. Here the fundamental position was that sin is the necessary means of the greatest good. This is the position of Hopkins, Bellamy, Emmons, and Wood. Nathaniel William Taylor (q.v.) assumed divine decrees in the Calvinistic sense, and, on the other hand, natural ability to obey God as the basis of accountability, together with a propensity to sin which was in some sense sinful; he, however, denied imputation. According to him, there is no hereditary but only voluntary sin, arising in a disposition which becomes sinful only when the soul yields to it. Looking back over the course of this discussion, it is seen to issue in four great affirmations, all of which modified the strict Calvinism of an earlier day: (1) original sin is incompatible with the nature of infants, and with adult accountability. (2) Moral action is certain, but is coupled with " power to the contrary." (3) Concerning the divine permission of sin, or whether sin was the necessary means of the greatest good, the affirmation was that God could not wholly prevent sin in a moral world; and that sin was never either a good or necessary. (4) Sin may be forgiven by reason not of Christ's payment of a debt but of his maintenance of the divine government. Here are indeed great gains over the positions of Edwards, but in the reasonings by which they are reached one is reminded of the Judaic, medieval, and Lutheran scholasticism.
In the following presentation of more recent thought it is not assumed that contributions of the same nature and even of similar value have not been made by English and continental
Anthro- writers. Attention is, however, di- pology. rested to the American field. Taking up in order the subjects which have been enriched by American scholars, outside of those to which reference has been made in the first paragraph above, there is first the doctrine of man. Expansion has taken place in three directions, two of which are diametrically opposed to each other, while a third, although unpremeditated, has not been less effective. More than to any other source the conception of the inherent, immeasurable, and indefeasible worth of the soul has owed its initiative and defense to Unitarian thinkers, to W. E. Chan ning (q.v.) first (of. Works, " Sermon Preached at the Installation of Jared Sparks in Baltimore, 1819," Boston, 1875). On the other hand, Calvinism, even the moat extreme, tended to the same result by a wholly different path. It ostensibly robbed man of his essential glory and abased his pride in the dust; but since it made him the highest creature in the universe, subject of the divine decrees, in whose interest the entire machinery of redemption was set in operation, thus engrossing the whole conscious ness and purpose of God, he was inevitably exalted to a position of the highest significance (cf. J. Ed= wards, Freedom of the Will; also H. Bushnell, q.v.," Dignity of Human Nature seen in its Ruins " in Sermons for the New Life, New York, 1858). Moreover, the previous development of the doctrine of sin and the general advance in humanitarian spirit, quickened partly by the lofty ethical idealism of Kant (q.v-), partly by the spiritual philosophy of Coleridge (q.v.), and partly by the great moral reforms which agitated the first six decades of the nineteenth century, raised the entire conception of man to a higher level. From the point of view of evolution two contributions of great value have been made, neither by theologians, but both uniting in the religious interest, J. Le Conte, Evolution and its Relation to Religious Thought (New York, 1894), and J. Fiske, The Destiny of Man Viewed in the Light of his Origin (Boston, 1884). The works which deal with immortality, including conditional immortality, are among the most fruitful additions to American thought on this subject (see IMMORTALITY, VIII.). Outside of the writings of Universalism (see UNIVERSALIaTS) future probation was advocated in Progressive Orthodoxy by professors in Andover Theological Seminary (ib. 1886), who maintained that since the final judgment is Christian judgment, the opportunity to accept this must come consciously to every soul.
The person of Christ has received attention from two different interests-his character and his essen-
tial nature. Chief among the treatises Christology. on his character are, W. E. Charming,
Works, " The Imitableness of the Character of Christ " (ib. 1875), H. Bushnell, Nature and the Supernatural, " The Character of Jesus " (New York, 1858), J. A. Broadus (q.v.), Jesus of Nazareth (ib. 1890), C. E. Jefferson (q.v.), The Character of Jesus (ib. 1908), N. Schmidt, Prophet of Nazareth (ib. 1907). The principal attempts to reconstruct the doctrine of the inner nature of Christ have been made by H. Bushnell, God in Christ (ib. 1849), in which the content of Jesus's consciousness is declared to be divine, the form human, and by H. M. Goodwin, Christ and Humanity (ib. 1875), which finds the eternal humanity in God the principle of the incarnation-a view not unlike that presented by G. A. Gordon (q.v.) in The Christ of Today (Boston, 1895). The consubstantiality of God and man offers a clue to other presentations of the person of Christ: $. Van Dyke (q.v.), The Gospel for an Age of Doubt, lest. IV. (New York, 1896); T. De Witt Hyde (q.v.), Social Theology, p. 60 (1895); F. Palmer, Studies in Theologic Definition (1895).
Significant contributions have been made to the doctrine of the atonement. In addition to those referred to in the articles on atonement and satisfac-
tion which defend traditional positions, Atonement. five works require attention: H.
Bushnell, The Vicarious Sacrifice (ib. 1865), in which love is suggested as the secret of Christ's sacrifice; H. C. Trumbull (q.v.), The Blood Covenant (ib. 1885), which presents sacrifice as an original form of blood-covenanting, blood-brotherhood between God and man effected by transfusion of blood, and God and man united in the blood of Christ; professors in Andover Theological Seminary, Progressive Orthodoxy (Boston, 1886), in which God is seen to be propitiated by man's repentance, and
