An Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant   By: Edward Caldwell Moore (1857-1943)

BY

EDWARD CALDWELL MOORE

PARKMAN PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY

NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1912

TO ADOLF HARNACK ON HIS SIXTIETH BIRTHDAY BY HIS FIRST AMERICAN PUPIL

PREFATORY NOTE

It is hoped that this book may serve as an outline for a larger work, in which the Judgments here expressed may be supported in detail. Especially, the author desires to treat the literature of the social question and of the modernist movement with a fulness which has not been possible within the limits of this sketch. The philosophy of religion and the history of religions should have place, as also that estimate of the essence of Christianity which is suggested by the contact of Christianity with the living religions of the Orient.

PASQUE ISLAND, MASS., July 28, 1911.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

A. INTRODUCTION. 1. B. THE BACKGROUND. 23. DEISM. 23. RATIONALISM. 25. PIETISM. 30. ÆSTHETIC IDEALISM. 33.

CHAPTER II

IDEALISTIC PHILOSOPHY. 39. KANT. 39. FICHTE. 55. SCHELLING. 60. HEGEL. 66.

CHAPTER III

THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION. 74. SCHLEIERMACHER. 74. RITSCHL AND THE RITSCHLIANS. 89

CHAPTER IV

THE CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL MOVEMENT. 110. STRAUSS. 114. BAUR. 118. THE CANON. 123. THE LIFE OF JESUS. 127. THE OLD TESTAMENT. 130. THE HISTORY OF DOCTRINE. 136. HARNACK. 140.

CHAPTER V

THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE SCIENCES. 151. POSITIVISM. 156. NATURALISM AND AGNOSTICISM. 162. EVOLUTION. 170. MIRACLES. 175. THE SOCIAL SCIENCES. 176.

CHAPTER VI

THE ENGLISH SPEAKING PEOPLES; ACTION AND REACTION. 191. THE POETS. 195. COLERIDGE. 197. THE ORIEL SCHOOL. 199. ERSINE AND CAMPBELL. 201. MAURICE. 204. CHANNING. 205. BUSHNELL. 207. THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL. 211. THE OXFORD MOVEMENT. 212. NEWMAN. 214. MODERNISM. 221. ROBERTSON. 223. PHILLIPS BROOKS. 224. THE BROAD CHURCH. 224. CARLYLE. 228. EMERSON. 230. ARNOLD. 232. MARTINEAU. 234. JAMES. 238.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. 243.

CHAPTER I

A. INTRODUCTION

The Protestant Reformation marked an era both in life and thought for the modern world. It ushered in a revolution in Europe. It established distinctions and initiated tendencies which are still significant. These distinctions have been significant not for Europe alone. They have had influence also upon those continents which since the Reformation have come under the dominion of Europeans. Yet few would now regard the Reformation as epoch making in the sense in which that pre eminence has been claimed. No one now esteems that it separates the modern from the mediæval and ancient world in the manner once supposed. The perspective of history makes it evident that large areas of life and thought remained then untouched by the new spirit. Assumptions which had their origin in feudal or even in classical culture continued unquestioned. More than this, impulses in rational life and in the interpretation of religion, which showed themselves with clearness in one and another of the reformers themselves, were lost sight of, if not actually repudiated, by their successors. It is possible to view many things in the intellectual and religious life of the nineteenth century, even some which Protestants have passionately reprobated, as but the taking up again of clues which the reformers had let fall, the carrying out of purposes of their movement which were partly hidden from themselves.