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CHAPTER ONE
The Historical and Theological Settings of the Laos Mission
Chapter Outline
1. Introduction
2.The
Historical Context
2.1 The
Laos Mission
2.2 The
North
2.3 The
Presbyterians
3.The
Theological Context
3.1 Reformed
Confessionalism
3.2 Common
Sense Philosophy
3.3 Evangelicalism
4.Conclusion
Introduction
 The
question before us in this dissertation concerns the Laos Mission's
practice of missions during its pioneer period, 1867-1880. Why,
most particularly, did it use strategies and methods that proved
ineffective evangelistically? The question itself is relatively
simple, but the answer involves a complex set of historical
and ideological-theological contexts that require some description
before it can be addressed directly. The immediate historical
context included the pre-history of the Laos Mission, the history
of northern Siam, and the history of the Presbyterian Church
U. S. A. (PCUSA). The larger theological and ideological context
also comprised three key elements: Reformed confessionalism,
Scottish Common Sense Philosophy, and American evangelicalism.
It was from within this complex, interlocking set of contexts
that the Laos Mission created its early mission program.
The Historical Context
The
Laos Mission, when founded in April 1867, stood at the confluence
of three historical streams. The first of these included both
the early history of Protestant missions in Siam and the particular
sequence of events that led to the founding of the Laos Mission
itself. The second historical stream comprised the rich and
varied history of the northern Thai principalities, including
most especially Chiang Mai—a history that has still received
less scholarly attention than it deserves. The final historical
stream, the history of American Presbyterianism, flowed into
the North from halfway around the globe and, for that reason,
is not usually understood to be relevant to the world of central
and northern Siam. It was.
1
The Founding of the Laos Mission
Three dates
stand out as defining moments in the pre-history of the Laos Mission.
In 1567, the first two Christian missionaries, Catholic Dominicans,
reached the city of Ayutthaya and thereby initiated formal Christian
missions in what is now modern-day Thailand. 
In 1828, two representatives of the London Missionary Society
(LMS) arrived in Bangkok, marking the advent of the Protestant
missionary movement in Siam. 
Just twelve years later, in 1840, the American Presbyterians landed
their first missionary couple, the Rev. William and Seignoria
Buell, in Bangkok. By the 1860s, the Presbyterians had established
themselves as the dominant Protestant missionary presence in Siam,
a role they continued to play until after the Second World War.
Of these
three dates, the first is the least relevant to this study. Missionary
Protestantism and Catholicism in Siam evinced highly antagonistic
attitudes towards each other and went their separate ways with
a minimum of contact. 
The arrival of the first Protestant missionaries in 1828 was much
more significant. Although the LMS remained for only a brief period,
representatives of two other mission agencies, the American Board
of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) and the American
Baptist Foreign Missionary Union (ABFMU), arrived in the 1830s
and put Protestant missions in Siam on a permanent footing. Bertha
McFarland points out that the early Presbyterians depended on
the assistance and support of these other two missions to the
point that the Presbyterian Siam Mission could be seen as a branch
grafted onto their efforts. 
All three of these early Protestant missions, including the Presbyterians,
worked under serious disadvantages, particularly climate, travel,
and official opposition to their stated goal of evangelizing the
Thai people. Eventually, both the American Board and the Baptists
withdrew from Siam to pursue work in China. The Presbyterians
also nearly left, but the accession of King Mongkut to the throne
in 1851 brought a beneficial reversal of government policy towards
Christian missions. 
By the 1860s, the Presbyterians were firmly established in Bangkok
and had begun their expansion into the hinterlands.
From the
very beginning, the Protestant missionaries hoped to establish
mission stations beyond the confines of Bangkok itself, but Thai
government policies and the reali-
For
the history of early Catholic missions, see, Surachai Chumsirphan,
"The Great Role of Jean-Louise Vey, Apostolic Vicar of Siam
(1875-1909), in the Church History of Thailand During the Reformation
Period of King Rama V, The Great (1868-1910), " (Ph.D. diss.,
Pontificate Universitatis Gregorianae, 1990), 69-96.
Standard introductions
to Protestant church and missionary history in Thailand include:
McFarland, Historical Sketch; and Wells, History
of Protestant Work. For the history of the London Missionary
Society's brief efforts in Siam, see Kennon Breazeale, "English
Missionaries Among the Thai," in Anuson Walter Vella,
ed. Ronald D. Renard (Honolulu: University of Hawaii at Manoa,
1986), 208-28.
For a contemporary
description of the tensions between Catholic and Protestant missionaries,
see John Bowring, The Kingdom and People of Siam. vol.
1 (1857; reprint, Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1977),
335.
Bertha McFarland,
"The Work of the Presbyterian Mission 1840-1860," in
McFarland, Historical Sketch, 38.
McFarland, "Work
of the Presbyterian Mission," 44. For Mongkut's relationship
to the missionaries see Donald C. Lord, Mo Bradley and Thailand
(Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1969), 165ff.
2
ties of working in Siam prevented them from doing so until
after 1860. They focused most of these early hopes for expansion
on Siam's northern interior.
Dr. Dan Beach Bradley, the leading Protestant missionary in
Siam during the nineteenth century, took the first concrete
steps towards founding a northern Siam mission. He developed
contacts with northern princes visiting Bangkok,
including the Prince of Chiang Mai, Chao Kawilorot, and he also
visited resettled Laotians from northeastern Siam, who were
living near Phet Buri, south of Bangkok. These experiences led
him in 1860 and 1861 to propose to his sending board, the American
Missionary Association (AMA), that they fund the establishment
of a "Laos Mission." The AMA responded sympathetically,
but it did not have the financial resources to undertake such
a project and turned down his request.
Although
Bradley himself did not found a mission among the northern Thai,
his daughter, Sophia, and her Presbyterian missionary husband,
the Rev. Daniel McGilvary, caught his vision and made it a reality.
Through the good offices of Dr. Bradley, McGilvary established
his own contacts both with the northern princes, again particularly
Chao Kawilorot of Chiang Mai, and the Laotian war captives of
Phet Buri.
Repeated invitations from a government official in Phet Buri
eventually led the McGilvarys and another missionary couple
to found the Phet Buri Station in June 1861.
McGilvary later stated that his most pleasant memories of Phet
Buri "cluster about scenes in Lao villages." He affirmed
that, "My labours among them increased the desire, already
awakened in me, to reach the home of the race."
He took another important step in that direction when his classmate
at Princeton Seminary, the Rev. Jonathan Wilson, joined him
on an exploratory trip of northern Siam, reaching Chiang Mai
on 7 January 1864. The city impressed McGilvary as being neat
and regular, progressive, and law-abiding, and the people seemed
to him more sincerely religious than the central Thai. He assessed
Chao Kawilorot's rule as firm but not tyrannical, and he felt
well satisfied with what he saw in Chiang Mai. The prospect
of a Laos Mission excited him more than ever. He believed that
the Presbyterian missionaries had received a special, providential
"call" to occupy Chiang Mai, and he all
See
Breazeale, "English Missionaries," 220; Buell to Lowrie,
10 September 1840 and 5 December 1840, v. 1, Records of the Board
of Foreign Missions, Presbyterian Church USA, microfilm copy at
the Payap University Archives (Here after cited as BFM); and House
to Lowrie, 6 October 1854, v. 2, BFM.
The northern
Thai patron class was known by the general term of chao.
The chief ruler of each of the northern states was termed chao
luang (primary lord or, possibly, lord of the capitol) or
chao muang (lord of the city and state). These terms
are frequently translated as "prince," in acknowledgment
of the dependency status of the northern states.
Whipple to Bradley,
2 July 1861, Papers of Dan Beach Bradley, at the Oberlin College
Archives, microfilm copy at the Payap College Archives; and McGilvary
to Executive Committee, 10 February 1864, v. 2, BFM. For Bradley's
contacts with the northern princes, see the Journal of Dan Beach
Bradley, at the Oberlin College Archives, microfilm copy at the
Payap College Archives, 20 October 1859, 21 October 1859, and
4 December 1859. For his visits to Phet Buri, see Bradley Journal,
27 November 1859; 29 November 1859; and 30 November 1859; and
Bradley to Whipple, 6 December 1859, Records of the American Missionary
Association, at the Amistad Research Center, Dillard University,
New Orleans, USA, microfilm copy at the Payap University Archives.
Daniel McGilvary,
Half Century Among the Siamese and Lao: An Autobiography
(New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1912), 57.
McGilvary,
Half Century, 50-3.
McGilvary,
Half Century, 58
3
but begged the church in America to see that the present moment,
1864, was "God's time" and God's time was the best
time for action. A whole nation, a race depended on that action.
Mission
time proved to be slower than God's time. Sophia McGilvary fell
ill. The Siam Mission found itself shorthanded, a common experience
in its early years. Financial resources were slim. It even appeared
that the McGilvarys would not be involved in the opening of
a station in Chiang Mai because of the shortage of personnel
in the Siam Mission. All of this caused McGilvary some discouragement,
but by July 1866 prospects for the proposed northern mission
improved. It was clear that the McGilvarys were the only ones
available for the North, McGilvary's spirits lifted, and, as
Sophia put it, the "old desire has returned and taken possession
of Daniel."
After
years of waiting, when the opportunity came at the end of August
1866 to open the new mission in Chiang Mai, it came with a rush.
Chao Kawilorot, the Prince of Chiang Mai, was in Bangkok at
that time on what appeared to be an extended visit, and McGilvary
had planned to go up to Bangkok one day to get Kawilorot's official
permission for a mission to Chiang Mai. He saw no need to hurry.
The matter that brought Kawilorot to Bangkok, however, was settled
more quickly than expected, and he planned to return to Chiang
Mai much sooner than anticipated.
When that news reached Phet Buri at the end of August, it set
McGilvary in motion. He rushed to Bangkok, a two-day trip, where
he arrived on Tuesday evening, 28 August 1866, and lodged with
his in-laws, the Bradleys.
They agreed that evening that the McGilvarys should go to Chiang
Mai, and Dr. Bradley accompanied McGilvary when he went to see
Chao Kawilorot the next morning. The Prince stated he felt quite
willing to have the McGilvarys move to Chiang Mai and offered
them both land and timber for a house. That same Wednesday,
in the evening, McGilvary met with a hastily called session
of the Siam Mission and received formal permission to withdraw
from Phet Buri and establish a new station in Chiang Mai. He
next consulted with the U.S. Consul in Bangkok, who consented
to write a formal letter requesting the Bangkok government's
permission for the McGilvary family to take up residence in
Chiang Mai.
Obtaining that permission proved to be the most difficult hurdle
McGilvary,
Half Century, 63-4; McGilvary, "Chieng Mai Trip,"
North Carolina Presbyterian (hereafter cited as NCP)
9 (24 October 1866): 1; McGilvary, "Chieng Mai Trip,"
NCP 9 (31 October 1866): 1; McGilvary to Executive Committee,
10 February 1864, v. 2, BFM; and McGilvary to Lowrie, 13 February
1864, v. 2, BFM.
McGilvary
to Irving, 28 July 1866, v. 3, BFM; and Sophia McGilvary to Evander
McGilvary, extracts, 10 August 1866, NCP 10 (25 September
1867): 1.
McGilvary,
"The New Mission among the Laos," excerpts of a letter,
Foreign Missionary (Hereafter cited as FM) 25,
8 (January 1867): 215-16.
Journal of
Dan Beach Bradley, 28 August 1866.
Bradley's journal
does not entirely confirm this "official" chronology
taken from McGilvary's own writings. Bradley makes no mention
of going to visit Chao Kawilorot on Wednesday, 29 August 1866,
which he almost certainly would have done. He also recorded two
visits to the American Consul, Mr. Hood, one on August 30th and
the second on the 31st. On both occasions, Hood flew into a great
rage over petty matters directly related to McGilvary's request.
He refused to give assistance to McGilvary both times. Journal
of Dan Beach Bradley, 29-31 August 1866. Bradley's journal does
not reveal how
4
of all. A high government representative first visited Chao
Kawilorot on Saturday, 8 September 1866—with McGilvary
and others in tow—to ascertain his feelings officially,
and then the government had to process the paperwork before
everything was official. Finally, however, the Bangkok government
gave permission for the McGilvarys to move to Chiang Mai.
All that remained was the trip upriver to Chiang Mai. The McGilvarys
left Bangkok on 3 January 1867. Plans called for the Wilsons
to leave the following dry season.
Bradley's vision and McGilvary's "old desire" for
a northern mission was about to become a reality.
The North
Northern
Siam in 1867, when the McGilvarys first arrived, was divided
into five tributary states, each known by the name of its chief
city and separated from its sister states by mountains and forest.
The mountainous geography of the region allowed each of the
states—Chiang Mai, Lamphun, Lampang, Phrae, and Nan—to
enjoy considerable independence from the Bangkok government
and each other. The people were mostly rural peasants, who cultivated
rice, engaged in some trade, and enjoyed a degree of personal
freedom because of a scarcity of labor.
Although
something of a backwater in the 1860s, Chiang Mai and the other
cities of the North had a proud tradition that dated back some
six hundred years. Recorded history began in the region in the
eighth century when the Mon first introduced "higher"
civilization, their capital and cultural center being Haripunjaya,
the modern Lamphun. The northern Thai appeared in the region
at some time in about the twelfth century.
They belonged to the great family of Tai peoples that has since
spread itself from Ahom in northeast India through parts of
Burma and southern China to modern day Thailand, Laos, and northern
Vietnam. Little is known about the early history of the Tai,
including the northern Thai, before the thirteenth century.
They seem to have been an upland people living in small city-states
(muang) on the fringes of the great Southeast Asian
empires of their day. They were already Theravada Buddhists
who had religious links with Singhalese Buddhism. During the
thirteenth century, a group of Tai states emerged including,
prominently, the Kingdom of Lan Na (lan na meaning
"a million rice fields"), founded by King Mangrai
beginning in 1259 when he became king of Chiang Saen. Mangrai
created a
the matter was resolved, but it does help explain
why McGilvary felt that securing permission from all parties involved
was due to the providential intervention of God.
Journal of
Dan Beach Bradley, 8 September 1866.
N. A. McDonald
to Irving, 10 September 1866, v. 3, BFM; and Wilson to Irving,
20 October 1866, v. 3, BFM.
Ratanaphorn
Sethakul, "Political, Social, and Economic Changes in the
Northern States of Thailand Resulting from the Chiang Mai Treaties
of 1874 and 1883" (Ph.D. diss. Northern Illinois University,
1989), 12-3; and, McGilvary, "The New Mission among the Laos,"
excerpts of a letter, FM 25 (January 1867): 215-16
Hans Penth,
"khwambenma khonglannathai" ["The Lan
Na Thai Past"], in lannathai [Lan Na Thai], ed.
Thiu Wichaikhatakha (Chiang Mai: Chiang Mai Province, n.d.), 4-11.
5
large unified state through the conquest of his neighbors,
culminating in the capture of Haripunjaya in 1281. In 1296,
he began construction of his chiang mai, his
"New City," which became the capital of the Lan Na
Kingdom.
Later generations revered him as a great lawgiver and the author
of the mangraisat, the laws of Mangrai.
After
Mangrai died in 1317, the Lan Na Kingdom experienced dizzying
rounds of advance and decline, at times reaching the heights
of cultural renaissance while at other times succumbing to political
turmoil.
The kingdom went into permanent decline after King Müang
Kao's death in 1526, partly because of the failings of the rulers
who followed him and partly because of the rising power of Burma.
The Burmese successfully captured Chiang Mai in 1558, ending
Lan Na independence. The region entered into more than two centuries
of chaos as increasingly harsh Burmese rule led to numerous
revolts, to the point that by the early eighteenth century political,
social, and economic dislocation rendered the Lan Na cultural
heritage a shadow of its former greatness.
For much of the eighteenth century a reduced Chiang Mai state
retained a semblance of independence, although the rest of the
northern Thai states remained firmly under Burmese control.
Chiang Mai and Lampang finally won permanent freedom from Burma
in 1776 with the aid of King Taksin of Siam; but it was not
until 1804 that northern Thai forces finally evicted the Burmese
permanently from all five northern states.
With the
defeat of the Burmese by the combined forces of the North and
Bangkok, the five states became semi-independent tributaries
(prathetsarat) of Siam, and one man, Chao Kawila of
Lampang, emerged as the dominant political power in the North.
He became the Prince of Chiang Mai and with his six brothers,
known collectively as the "Seven Princes," directly
ruled Chiang Mai, Lamphun, and Lampang. The Seven Princes initiated
a period of restoration under Kawila's leadership that included,
notably, raids on and wars with neighboring peoples with the
aim of "importing" captive populations into the North
to re-populate its depleted countryside. In this new era, family
and personal rather than bureaucratic relationships ruled northern
Thai life, and local leaders and the common people enjoyed a
large measure of independence and security. For the next century
the clan of the Seven Princes dominated northern Thai politics
and provided the region with badly needed stability.
David
K. Wyatt, Thailand: A Short History (Bangkok: Thai Watana
Panich, 1984), 31, 36-9, 44-50.
See The
Laws of King Mangrai (Mangrayathammasart), ed. and trans.
Aroonrut Wichienkeeo and Gehan Wijeyewardene (Canberra: Australian
National University, 1986).
Wyatt, Thailand,
74-81.
Sarasawadee
Ongsakun, prawatisat lanna [Lan Na History], (Chiang
Mai: Chiang Mai University, B.E. 2529 [1986]), 39-46; and Wyatt,
Thailand, 118-20.
Wyatt, Thailand,
123-24, 133ff.
Ratanaphorn,
"Chiang Mai Treaties," 24; Sarasawadee, Lan Na History,
53ff.; and Rujaya Abhakorn, "Changes in the Administrative
System of Northern Siam, 1884-1933," in Changes in Northern
Thailand and the Shan States 1886-1940, ed. Prakai
Nontawasee (Singapore: Southeast Asian Studies Program, 1988),
66-7.
6
Nineteenth-century
northern Thai society was a hierarchical society based on patron-client
relationships and divided into four large classes: rulers (chao),
peasants (phrai), slaves and subject peoples, and the
monkhood. These classes, other than the monks, appear to have
also been somewhat loosely defined. Every phrai, in
any event, owed allegiance and free labor, corvée, to
one chao or another on a regular basis. Members of
the families of the Seven Princes occupied the higher ranks
of the chao in several of the states.
By the 1860s, the five northern Thai tributary states had for
some fifty years or more enjoyed a measure of peace, cultural
resurgence, and economic growth.
They maintained extensive relations with other regions, and
northern Thai traders evidently ranged far and wide across that
larger region. They had also begun to experience the first tremors
of the even greater economic, political, and social changes
to come, and the Bangkok government was beginning to take a
more active hand in the appointing of the northern princes—even
for Chiang Mai. British lumbermen began to move into the North
more aggressively, bringing with them important economic changes.
The Presbyterian missionaries in the 1860s and 1870s were themselves
heralds of and participants in these great changes that have
been variously labeled by historians as the "modernization,"
"Westernization," "centralization," "Siamese-ization,"
or even "bureaucratization" of northern Siam.
When the
McGilvary family arrived in Chiang Mai in April 1867, then,
they found the city in a stable, perhaps even prosperous condition.
The relatively benign political system of interlocking personal
relationships dominated by the extended families of the Seven
Princes was still in effect, and Chao Kawilorot, the son of
Chao Kawila, ruled the city with a strong hand.
On hindsight, it is clear that the city had already entered
a new period in its history, one that would see it fully incorporated
into the Siamese nation-state. The combination of local stability
and the increasing influence of Bangkok allowed them to surf
the waves of repression they sometimes experienced from the
Chiang Mai government and to establish themselves, by 1880,
as permanent fixtures.
The Presbyterians
The Laos
Mission was an American Presbyterian mission, representing a
theological and institutional tradition that historians trace
back to the Protestant Reformation in Switzerland, particularly
but not exclusively to the work and thought of John Calvin (1509-1564).
The "Reformed" tradition of Calvin and others soon
spread into several other parts of Europe, most notably France,
Germany, the Netherlands, and Britain, and in the course of
things it flowed through these nations into colonial America.
English Puritanism,
Nigel J. Brailey,
"The Origins of the Siamese Forward Movement in Western Laos,
1850-92" (Ph.D. diss., University of London, 1968), 26ff;
and Ratanaphorn, "Chiang Mai Treaties," 30-2.
Brailey, "Siamese
Forward Movement," 24.
Brailey, "Siamese
Forward Movement," 118-19; and Sarasawadee, Lan Na History,
56.
7
Scottish Presbyterianism, and Scotch-Irish Presbyterianism
formed the dominant sources of the colonial American Presbyterian
Church. Churches
of a Presbyterian persuasion began to appear on Long Island
in the 1640s, and by 1700, a growing number of such congregations,
made up of New England as well as British immigrants, were scattered
across the Middle Colonies and into the upper South. Under the
leadership of the Rev. Francis Makemie, these churches formed
the Presbytery in 1706 and then in 1716 reorganized themselves
as the General Synod, comprising three presbyteries.
During
the 1720s, the Presbyterians entered a period of increasing
tension that found its clergy divided into several factions
over a number of related issues. Those issues included whether
or not clergy had to "subscribe" formally to the Westminster
Confession of Faith, the rights of the Synod to control who
preached in the local churches, the educational and spiritual
qualifications for the clergy, and the role of the laity in
church life. By the 1730s, these disputes were taking place
in the context of a controversial colonial revivalist movement
in which certain Presbyterian clergy played a key role in the
Middle Colonies. Matters came to a head in the early 1740s when
a faction of revivalist, or "New Side," Presbyterians
withdrew from the Synod to be joined in 1745 by another group
of churches to form the Synod of New York. The "Old Side"
retained control of what became known as the Synod of Philadelphia.
The two Synods reunited in 1758 as the Synod of New York and
Philadelphia.
In the midst of these events, New Side leaders founded the College
of New Jersey (Princeton University) in 1746; the college struggled
under a succession of presidents until it finally achieved stability
under the Rev. John Witherspoon (1723-1794), a widely known
and respected Scottish pastor who became the college's president
in 1768. Witherspoon proved to be a moderating influence among
American Presbyterians and became the most singly prominent
Presbyterian leader in the later colonial era.
In spite
of the many difficulties colonial Presbyterians experienced
in the last three decades of the eighteenth century due to the
American Revolution (1776-1781) and its aftermath, the Presbyterian
Church emerged from that century as the largest and most influential
American religious body outside of New England. In 1789, it
reconstituted the
See
Leonard J. Trinterud, The Forming of an American Tradition:
A Re-examination of Colonial Presbyterianism (Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1949), 15. The term "Scotch-Irish" refers
to the Ulster Scots.
Until recently
Trinterud, American Tradition, 38ff. has been the standard
treatment of these events. Over the last twenty years, however,
revisionist historians have questioned many aspects of his interpretation.
See Elizabeth A. Ingersoll, "Francis Alison: American 'Philosophe,'
1705-1779" (Ph.D. diss., University of Delaware, 1974), Elizabeth
I. Nybakken, "New Light on the Old Side: Irish Influences
on Colonial Presbyterianism," Journal of American History
(Hereafter cited as JAH) 68, 4 (March 1982): 813-32;
Marilyn J. Westerkamp, Triumph of the Laity: Scots-Irish Piety
and the Great Awakening, 1625-1760 (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1988); and Janet Fishburn, "Gilbert Tennent, Established
'Dissenter'" CH 63, 1 (March 1994): 31-49. See also
Milton J. Coalter, Gilbert Tennent, Son of Thunder: A
Case Study of Continental Pietism's Impact on the First
Great Awakening in the Middle Colonies (New York: Greenwood
Press, 1986) and Bryan F. Le Beau, Jonathan Dickinson and
the Formative Years of American Presbyterianism
(Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1997), 106.
Randall Balmer,
and John R. Fitzmier, The Presbyterians (Westport, Connecticut:
Greenwood Press, 1993), 33. For a brief biography of Witherspoon,
see Martha Lou Lemmon Stohlman, John Witherspoon: Parson,
Politician, Patriot (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976).
8
Synod as the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in
the United States of America (PCUSA), comprising four synods
and 16 presbyteries. The Presbyterians lost their numerical
preeminence in the early decades of the nineteenth century for
a number of reasons including PCUSA's general coolness toward
"hot" revivalism and its failure to provide adequate
pastoral oversight for frontier churches. Even so, the denomination
did grow rapidly,
strengthened its institutional structures, and in 1812 took
an important step towards increasing the number of trained clergy
by founding Princeton Theological Seminary.
The nineteenth
century brought new tensions, ones that would fundamentally
influence the Laos Mission itself. Early in the century, the
PCUSA had developed an alliance in frontier regions with the
New England Congregationalists, a relationship that threatened
to shift the theological demographics of the denomination away
from the traditionalist "Old School" toward the theologically
somewhat more innovative "New School." The PCUSA's
reliance on a set of national, non-denominational voluntary
associations controlled by the Congregationalist-New School
"alliance" to carry out various ecclesiastical outreach
and educational functions reinforced Old School fears of a growing
trend in theological laxity. Those associations included the
ABCFM, the American Sunday School Union, the American Education
Society, the American Home Missionary Society, and numerous
other national, state, and local associations. By the 1830s,
the Old School was up in arms over these perceived dangers to
the theological orthodoxy and purity of the PCUSA; and after
some years of theological tension and agitation it obtained
a majority in the 1837 General Assembly, abrogated cooperation
with the Congregationalists, and voted to excise four New School-dominated
synods. Other presbyteries and local churches joined with the
exiled synods to form a New School General Assembly, which claimed
to be the legitimate PCUSA. After 1837, thus, there were two
Presbyterian denominations each using the name of PCUSA.
Among the most important acts of the 1837 Old School General
Assembly, after it expelled the New School, was the formation
of a new Board of Foreign Missions as one of several major agencies
of the church.
The Siam Mission and Laos Mission were both agencies of the
Old School church and board.
Finke
and Stark point out that of the three major churches in the colonial
era—Congregational, Presbyterian, and Anglican—only
the Presbyterians continued to grow significantly in the post-Revolutionary
era, actually keeping pace with population growth although not
with the overall increase in church membership. In the period
1776-1850, Presbyterian membership dwindled from 19% to 11.6%
of total American church membership. Roger Finke and Rodney Stark,
The Churching of America, 1776-1990: Winners and Losers in
Our Religious Economy (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers
University Press, 1992), 55, 56.
See Lefferts
A. Loetscher, A Brief History of the Presbyterians. 4th
ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1978), 92ff; and Raleigh
Don Scovel, "Orthodoxy in Princeton: A Social and Intellectual
History of Princeton Theological Seminary, 1812-1860" (Ph.D.
diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1970), 216ff
Earl R. MacCormac,
"The Transition from Voluntary Missionary Society to the
Church as a Missionary Organization among the American Congregationalists,
Presbyterians, and Methodists" (Ph.D. diss., Yale University,
1961), 172ff; Earl R. MacCormac, "Mission and the Presbyterian
Schism of 1837," CH 32 (March 1963): 32-45; and
Marjorie Barnhart, "From Elisha Swift to Walter Lowrie: The
Background of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions,"
Journal of Presbyterian History (Hereafter cited as JPH)
65 (Summer 1987): 85-96.
9
For the
next quarter of a century the Old and New School churches went
their separate ways while the vast, sad crisis over slavery increasingly
dominated the United States' national agenda. The issue split
most of the major Protestant denominations as well as the whole
of society, but the Old School General Assembly preserved its
unity until the Civil War broke out in 1861, at which time its
southern synods and presbyteries left to form the Presbyterian
Church in the Confederate States of America. 
That split would last for more than a century. Even as the American
Civil War drove Northern and Southern Presbyterians apart, however,
the passage of time slowly brought the northern Old School and
New School churches closer together. The theological issues that
so concerned the Old School proved to be of no lasting consequence,
and as the New School Church developed its own structures it became
increasingly similar to the Old School in form. In 1862, the two
denominations opened talks on their future relations, which discussions
culminated in their reunion in 1869. 
The founding
of the Laos Mission in 1867, then, took place in a brief period
of calm when the denominational storms of the past were dying
away in irrelevancy while the later nineteenth-century controversies
over the nature of Scripture and Darwinian evolution had yet to
break out in full force. It is well to recall, however, that all
nine of the mission's pioneer members were products of that earlier
era when being "Old School" was filled with deep, potent
meaning. Even though the Old School reunited with the New School
just two years after the McGilvarys reached Chiang Mai, in important
measure the Laos Mission remained a child of that earlier era.
It was Old School.
The Theological Context
The
Princeton Theology was also Old School Presbyterian. It was
somewhat more moderate and even broadminded than Old School
"radicals" might have wished, but by the time McGilvary
and Wilson had graduated from Princeton Seminary in 1856, their
mentors' theology had gained wide currency throughout the Old
School, including its seminaries, colleges, and churches. It
had become, indeed, one of the most influential American theologies.
As its
name suggests, the Princeton Theology was created by a succession
of professors at Princeton Seminary. Noll identifies three men
as standing in the first rank of the Princetonians, namely Archibald
Alexander (1772-1851), Charles Hodge (1797-1878), and Benjamin
B. Warfield (1851-1921). In the second rank, he places A. A.
Hodge (1823-1886) as preeminent, along with James W. Alexander
(1804-1859), Joseph A. Alexander (1809-
Thompson,
Presbyterian Churches, 150ff.
Lewis G. Vander
Velde, The Presbyterian Churches and the Federal Union 1861-1869
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1932), 479ff.
Jack B. Rogers,
and Donald K. McKim, The Authority and Interpretation of the
Bible: An Historical Approach (New York: Harper and Row,
1979), 275-78.
10
1860), Lyman Atwater (1813-1883), William H. Green (1825-1900),
and J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937). 
Noll's list could well be augmented with a third rank by adding
the names of a large number of others, many of them Princeton
Seminary graduates, who taught the Princeton orthodoxy in Presbyterian
seminaries and colleges throughout the United States. Emerging
with the founding of Princeton Seminary in 1812, the Princeton
Theology can be said to have come to its end in 1929 with the
reorganization of the seminary and the consequent withdrawal of
a number of orthodox professors and students under the leadership
of Machen. 
The Princeton
theologians taught an eclectic theological system pieced together
from a diverse range of intellectual sources, the mere enumeration
of which reads like a who's who of Western philosophical and theological
thought. Bouwsma's warning that any attempt to identify the sources
of Calvin's thought would be all but fruitless applies with equal
force to the Princetonians as well. 
Still, it is possible to identify three major strands in their
thought, these being: first, Reformed confessional theology, also
known as Reformed orthodoxy or scholasticism; second, Scottish
Enlightenment Common Sense Philosophy; and, finally, American
evangelicalism. Some commentators add a fourth strand, a commitment
to the Bible, but the biblical emphasis was itself a key element
in both the Reformed and evangelical traditions. 
Princeton, in sum, was confessional, commonsensical, and
evangelical.
Reformed Confessionalism
If there
was a dominant strand in Princeton's theology, it was what has
until recently been known almost universally as "Calvinism."
Scholars of the history of theology have come to realize that
John Calvin (1509-1564) was only one of several important architects
of the Reformed theological tradition and prefer thus to use
broader, perhaps less tainted terms.
In his survey of Reformed history, González has identified
several
Mark
A. Noll, "The Princeton Theology," in Reformed Theology
in America: A History of Its Modern Development, ed.
David F. Wells (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1997), 16-7.
For the history
of the theological controversy that led to the reorganization
of Princeton Seminary, see Bradley J. Longfield, The Presbyterian
Controversy: Fundamentalists, Modernists, and Moderates (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1991).
W. J. Bouwsma,
John Calvin: A Sixteenth Century Portrait (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1988), 2. Compare McCoy and Baker's comments
on the origins of Reformed federalism. Charles S. McCoy and J.
Wayne Baker Fountainhead of Federalism: Heinrich Bullinger
and the Covenantal Tradition (Louisville: Westminster/John
Knox Press, 1991), 11
See Raleigh
Don Scovel, "Orthodoxy in Princeton: A Social and Intellectual
History of Princeton Theological Seminary, 1812-1860" (Ph.D.
diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1970), 58-9; and Noll,
"Princeton Theology," 18-24.
Alister E.
McGrath, Reformed Thought: An Introduction (2d ed. Oxford:
Blackwell, 1993), 8-9. See also Alister E. McGrath, A Life
of John Calvin: A Study in the Shaping of Western Culture
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 202ff; and McCoy and Baker, Fountainhead
of Federalism, 17. Princeton itself was aware of the problems
involved in the term "Calvinism." Lyman Atwater once
noted that Charles Hodge seldom used the term. Atwater himself
preferred the term "catholic Calvinism" as a way to
show that the tradition drew on many more theological sources
than just Calvin. See Lyman Atwater, "Calvinism in Doctrine
and Life," PQPR 4, 1 (January 1875): 73-106. The
question of labels for "Calvinism" is complicated by
the fact that the terms "scholasticism" and "orthodoxy"
are tainted with a sense of irrelevance, rationalism, and even
lifelessness. The term "Reformed confessionalism" seems
the most value-free one
11
predecessors to Calvin, notably Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531),
and a succession of key theologians after Calvin who transformed
the thinking of the earlier Reformers into Reformed confessionalism,
including Peter Martyr Vergmili (1499-1562), Jerome Zanchi (1516-1590),
Theodore Beza (1519-1605), and Zacharias Ursinus (1534-1583).
Central to the process of giving birth to this new movement
was the amalgamation of the federal theology of Heinrich Bullinger
(1504-1575) with that of Calvin.
Donnelly points to the importance of Martyr and Zanchi, Italian
Reformed converts trained in Thomistic scholasticism, who contributed
significantly to shifting Reformed thought away from Calvin
and Luther's more christocentric and biblical theologies towards
"a revival of philosophical theology for apologetic ends."
To this mix of thinkers and thoughts, Bullinger, meanwhile,
contributed an emphasis on "federal" or "covenantal"
theology, which provided further impetus to the emergence of
a distinctive Reformed confessionalism that affirmed that God
makes covenants with humanity and is faithful in keeping those
covenants.
Since
the Princetonians, especially Hodge, are frequently described
as being the last of the Reformed "scholastic" theologians,
we would do well here to pause long enough to flesh out what
it meant to be Reformed and scholastic, or confessional, in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Drawing most especially
on Thomas Aquinas' medieval scholasticism, Reformed confessionalism
shared with him a deep concern with theological method and the
construction of logically consistent, coherent theological systems.
Reformed theologians understood theology to be a scientific
enterprise that relied upon fundamental principles as the building
blocks of its system while placing a great deal of trust in
the human mind's ability to achieve a rational knowledge of
God through intense speculative inquiry into metaphysical questions
having to do with divine nature and will. Reformed confessionalism,
thus, gave a large place to reason that tended to emphasize
formal doctrine, sometimes at the expense of personal piety.
Reformed confessionalism also tended, consequently, to divest
the Bible of its historical moorings and turn it into a body
of unchanging divine truths necessary to the construction of
a rational, methodical, and scientific explanation and defense
of the Christian faith. Its practitioners feared ignorance as
being the real cause of sin and put forward education as the
best way to inculcate faith. Reformed confessionalism paid particular
attention to the question of predesti-
available and is generally used in this dissertation.
See, Peter J. Wallace, "The Foundations of Reformed Biblical
Theology: The Development of Old Testament Theology at Old Princeton,
1812-1932" (On-line article at: http://www.nd.edu/~pwallace);
and Mark A. Noll, "The Princeton Theology."
Justo L. González,
A History of Christian Thought, vol. 3 (rev. ed., Nashville:
Abingdon, 1987), 168-74.
Donnelly, John
Patrick. "Italian Influences on the Development of Calvinist
Scholasticism," Sixteenth Century Journal
(Hereafter cited as SCJ 7), 1 (April 1976): 101. See also Christopher
J. Burchill, "Girolamo Zanchi: Portrait of A Reformed Theologian
and His Work," SCJ 15, 2 (1984): 186.
McCoy and Baker,
Fountainhead of Federalism, 12.
Concerning
Reformed and Puritan views on the primacy of reasonable religion,
see John von Rohr, The Covenant of Grace in Puritan
Thought (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986), 68-71; McGrath,
Reformation Thought, 120; and Martin I. Klauber,
"Reason, Revelation, and Cartesianism: Louis Tronchin and
Enlightened Orthodoxy in Late Seventeenth-Century Geneva"
CH 59, 3 (September 1990): 338.
12
nation.
Phillips makes it clear that Reformed confessionalism majored,
as it were, in epistemological issues—in questions of
knowledge—and especially sought to discover not only what
is known about God and reality but also the sources or causes
of that knowledge. Phillips writes, "Indeed among the Reformed
scholastics there is a new emphasis upon a formal analysis of
theological knowledge. The whole sphere of theological knowledge
was subjected to a new and sustained examination of its ontological
and epistemological principles."
The Reformed
search for a clear, defensible, and exclusive theology proved
to be an intensely controversial enterprise as various theological
school's argued over how best to express the Reformed faith.
These conflicts generated repeated formal confessional statements
prepared by councils seeking to define the content and limits
of acceptable Reformed doctrine. Among those confessions, the
brief statement of Reformed confessional beliefs issued by the
Synod of Dort (1619), in the white heat of debate with the followers
of Jacob Arminius (1560-1609), proved to be a classic reformulation
of Reformed confessionalism. The Arminians advocated a more
moderate form of Reformed faith that seemed to make salvation
dependent in part on human faith, and the Synod of Dort intended
to correct their dangerous theological tendencies with a clear
orthodox statement of acceptable Reformed doctrine. That statement
described five tenets of the faith as central, incontrovertible
Christian truth. They included: first, God's free,
unconditional election of the saved; second, the efficacy
of Christ's atonement was limited only to the elect; third,
because of Adam's fall from grace (Genesis 3) humanity is totally
depraved, that is corrupt and helpless; fourth, God
alone graciously regenerates humanity, which cannot resist or
reject divine grace; and fifth, once elected to salvation,
the elect cannot fall away from grace.
McGrath cautions, however, that it is impossible to summarize
the broad range of Reformed thought in one confession; it is
the "scholastic approach" to theology as especially
employed by the later generations of Reformed thinkers that
most aptly defines Reformed confessionalism.
While McGrath is correct, Reformed theologians from Calvin down
to the Princetonians did share a number of theological concerns
and concentrated on several common issues. They all emphasized
divine sovereignty. They held that humanity is completely depraved
and unable to work out its own salvation. The origin of human
sin in Adam concerned them mightily, and they labored endlessly
over the
See Ian Breward, "Introduction," in The Work of
William Perkins, ed. Ian Breward (Appleford, Abingdon, Berkshire,
England: Sutton Courtenay Press, 1970), 19; Donnelly, "Italian
Influences," 82-3; David A. Weir, The Origins of the
Federal Theology in Sixteenth-Century Reformation Thought
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 69-70; and Rogers and McKim,
Authority and Interpretation, 185-86.
Timothy Ross
Phillips, "Francis Turretin's Idea of Theology and its Bearing
Upon His doctrine of Scripture" (Ph.D. diss., Vanderbilt
University, 1986), 72.
William C.
Placher, A History of Christian Theology: An Introduction
(Philadelphia: Westminster, 1983), 226-27. These five points are
often summarized with the mnemonic, TULIP: Total depravity, Unconditional
election, Limited atonement, Irresistible grace, Perseverance
of the saints. See McGrath, Calvin, 217.
McGrath, Calvin,
207.
13
mechanics of God's grace, particularly the absolute division
between those God chose for eternal life and those left to their
deserved fate of eternal punishment—the infamous question
of predestination. Approaches, emphases, and conclusions could
and did differ radically, but these core concerns persisted.
The Princeton
theologians were Reformed scholastics in their methodology:
they had a clearly apologetical agenda; they approached theology
rationally, methodologically, and systematically; they focused
on epistemological issues; they affirmed that theology is a
scientific, academic enterprise; and they usually had a limited
sense of history. Some two hundred years, however, stood between
them and the classical era of Reformed confessionalism, which
lasted until nearly the end of the seventeenth century. Princeton
had direct recourse to that era through the writings of the
key figures in Reformed theology, most especially Francis Turretin
(1623-1687), whose ponderous tome, Institutio theologiae
electicae, was the seminary's basic theological text until
the 1870s. Equally important sources of influence were the two
main channels of British Reformed thought by which later generations
of Presbyterians brought the Reformed faith to North America,
English Puritanism and Scottish Presbyterianism. Although widely
influenced by the larger Reformed confessional movement, many
of the Scottish and English sources of American Reformed thought
drew on the federal conception of theology, mentioned above.
They also made greater room for the more affective side
of Reformed piety, allowing them a warmer piety than seemed
to be generally the case among the European Reformed scholastics.
If the
Princetonians were Reformed scholastics, it remains also true
that they shared in the Reformed genius for re-inventing ample
portions of its theological systems in new contexts. Kennedy
insists, consequently, that Hodge was not an "Old Calvinist"
in the seventeenth century sense of that term. Eighteenth-century
Enlightenment rationalism, nineteenth-century American evangelicalism,
and the democratic "spirit of America" all played
their parts in transforming the old confessionalism into Hodge's
nineteenth-century American version of it.
There was, that is, more than one piece to Princeton's pie.
Common Sense Philosophy
Princeton
stood heir, on the one hand, to a Reformed confessional and
medieval scholastic past, and, on the other hand, it was born
out of the intellectual and religious ferment of the scientific
revolution and the Enlightenment. An illustrious succession
of
González, Christian Thought, 291ff.
Breward, Perkins,
29; and von Rohr, The Covenant of Grace in Puritan Thought,
88. For an excellent description of the sources and impact of
Scottish evangelical piety on American Presbyterianism, see Leigh
Eric Schmidt, Holy Fairs: Scottish Communions and American
Revivals in the Early Modern Period (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1989).
Earl William
Kennedy, "An Historical Analysis of Charles Hodge's Doctrines
of Sin and Particular Grace" (Th.D. diss., Princeton Theological
Seminary, 1968), 355.
14
thinkers and experimenters, from Copernicus (1473-1543) to
Newton (1642-1727), gave birth to modern Western science and,
in the process, gradually removed the Earth from the center
of the universe, humanity from the apex of creation, and ghostly
beings from a meaningful place in daily life. Although the early
scientists were mostly Christians engaged in the exploration
of God's created order, their discoveries posed new issues for
theology and philosophy; one of the most important of those
issues was epistemology, the problem of the origins and nature
of human knowledge.
The particular
chain of thinkers that eventually led to Princeton began with
Rene Descartes (1596-1650), who typified the issues facing Christian
philosophers in adjusting traditional Western understanding
to scientific learning. Descartes sought to integrate the older,
"idealistic" worldview with its belief in God and
the human soul into the emerging "realist" scientific
understanding of the physical world. His desired an absolutely
certain knowledge of reality based on the model of mathematics
with its precise demonstrations, definition of terms, and axioms,
and he employed radical doubt to reach his goal. Descartes doubted
everything, and out of that skepticism discovered, first, that
he himself, the doubter, must be thinking since doubt is a form
of thought, which implies that there must be a doubter. He,
therefore, must exist (his famous cogito ergo sum).
He also reasoned that he could not himself have conceived of
a perfect Deity unless God had first planted the idea in his
thinking. God, therefore, must also exist. This much was not
difficult because Descartes held that true reality is spiritual,
interior reality. What proved difficult was to cross over the
vast chasm he perceived between his mind and his body with the
same math-like certainty and precision. His radical mind-body
dualism eventually left him no recourse but to affirm that he
could be sure that the physical world is real only because of
his faith that the good Creator of all reality would not mislead
us on this point. Our divinely given "innate knowledge"
of exterior realities is for that reason trustworthy.
Thilly
and Wood conclude their discussion of Descartes by pinning on
him two hefty labels. He was, they argue, a dogmatist who
believed that we can obtain sure knowledge through the exercise
of reason. He was also a realist. He believed in the
real existence of the physical world precisely because of his
dogmatic trust in human reason.
Descartes
foreshadowed important themes that quietly, almost imperceptibly
suffused Princeton Seminary's instruction of students like McGilvary
and Wilson: faith in and defense of an absolutely secure knowledge
of reality; emphasis on exploring and trust-
The
following discussion of Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume is
based upon Diogenes Allen, Philosophy for Understanding Theology
(Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1985), 171ff; and Frank Thilly
and Ledger Wood, A History of Philosophy, 3d ed. (New
York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1957), 302ff. See also W. Andrew
Hoffecker and Gary Scott Smith, eds., Building a Christian
World View, vol. 1, God, Man, and Knowledge
(Philipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing
Company, 1986). For the impact of scientific thought directly
on colonial American philosophy, see Elizabeth Flower and Murray
G. Murphey, A History of Philosophy in America, vol.
I (New York: Capricorn Books, 1977), 61ff.
Thilly and
Wood, History of Philosophy, 314
15
ing human consciousness; mind-body dualism; and even the concept
of "innate knowledge." In some ways, the most important
of these themes is the paradigm shift that gave final consideration
not to inherited sources of authority but to interior human
consciousness. That paradigm shift became standard fare for
those who followed Descartes, beginning with Locke.
John Locke
(1632-1704) rejected Descartes' innate ideas but retained the
vast Cartesian gulf between mind and body. Across that gulf
he threw a frail bridge of "intuitive knowledge,"
knowledge that cannot be proven and yet is the irresistible
and self-evident ground of all certain human knowledge. Intuitive
knowledge alone, Locke argued, assures us of our own self-existence,
and reason based on intuition is the source of our secure knowledge
of God. As for the physical world, Locke affirmed its existence
as more of a matter of faith than anything else; it seems real,
feels real, involves pain, and so, he reasoned, it must be real.
We know the world through sensation and reflection. Knowledge
of the physical world is indirect and only probable, however,
since it and all of our knowledge is composed of "ideas"
about reality rather than direct contact with
reality. Because of the limitations on human knowing, we can
never be sure if our ideas of external objects are a true analog
of those objects or not, although Locke did insist that the
physical world is real. All we can be sure of is the existence
of ourselves and of God, and Locke shared Descartes' sense that
the cognitive and spiritual is more immediately real to us than
the physical. Allen states of Locke's contribution to the epistemological
debates of early modern Europe that, "Locke's work, with
its stress on probability, was a balanced position between scepticism
and certainty."
Events proved it a precarious balance at best.
Locke
made important adjustments to Descartes that reappeared in the
Princeton Theology. He especially replaced innate ideas with
intuitive knowledge, bringing philosophy one step closer to
Princeton's Enlightenment concept of "first principles."
Both Princeton and Locke also treated metaphysical and physical
realities as being analogous to each other. Our consciousness,
that is, is the ultimate source of our knowledge, and what we
discover within that consciousness parallels the world that
exists outside of us; inner and outer realities can be described
and discussed in a similar fashion. Locke presaged Princeton's
belief that we can obtain a working, if limited, knowledge of
God by enlarging to an infinite degree certain characteristics
of human experience, such as power to omnipotence and knowledge
to omniscience. The analogy between human consciousness and
other realities would prove to be a potent weapon in Princeton's
arsenal of divinity.
George
Berkeley (1685-1753) built on Locke's assertions that all we
know are ideas and that secure knowledge is found only in human
consciousness. He concluded that we cannot be sure that there
is a physical world; indeed, in a crusade against materialism
and
Allen, Philosophy
for Understanding Theology, 184.
16
atheism, Berkeley proposed to do away with the existence of matter
entirely. To speak of an object as existing when there is no mind
to perceive it is to speak in meaningless abstractions; qualities
such as color, sound, and weight only reside in the mind of the
person perceiving them. Berkeley went on, however, to account
for the apparent solidity, coherence, and orderliness of physical
reality by arguing that God has benevolently placed all of this
in us as ideas to the end that we might lead orderly lives. All
that is securely left to humanity is the divine gift of ideas.
Locke surveyed
the Cartesian canyon between mind and body with God above and
avowed the reality of all three—mind, body, and God. Berkeley
stood at the same precipice and claimed that there is no canyon
at all, only mind and God. David Hume (1711-1776) took his own
look and decided that while it is common sense to think that God
exists and the body is real there is no way of proving either
because all we can know is our own ideas, not any realities beyond
them. Thilly and Wood state,
Hume's view is empirical: our knowledge
has its source in experience; it is positivistic: our
knowledge is limited to the world of phenomena; it is
agnostic: we know nothing of ultimates, substances, causes,
soul, ego, external world, universe; it is humanistic:
the human mental world is the only legitimate sphere of
science and inquiry. 
|
Hume denied that humans can know whether what we perceive
as cause and effect is real; all we know with certainty is that
two events are normally, in our experience or way of thinking,
associated with each other. We have no means to prove that they
are necessarily associated or will continue to be associated
with each other in the future. Hume denied that humanity could
know anything of the nature of God, even if God exists; human
knowing is too frail and uncertain to attain knowledge of things
divine. He scornfully rejected arguments from an imperfect "creation"
to a perfect "Creator".
Hume put
the Christian theological enterprise at incredible risk. Howe
observes that, "Since patristic times, Western thinkers
had engaged in metaphysical speculation. With Hume, the enterprise
had led to bankruptcy. Men could know nothing about ultimate
reality."
The consequences for modern science were equally dire. Bozeman
states of Hume's philosophy, "Thus the manifest premise
of the scientific movement, that there is an actual 'system
of bodies' governed by causal relations and accessible to the
inquiring mind, had ceased to be philosophically intelligible."
One must emphasize that what was at stake in Hume, to use the
language of philosophy, was epistemology not ontology. Hume
simply wanted to demonstrate that it is untenable to think we
can gain knowledge of
Thilly
and Wood, History of Philosophy, 368.
Daniel Walker
Howe, The Unitarian Conscience: Harvard Moral Philosophy,
1805-1861 (Middle-town, Connecticut: Wesleyan University
Press, 1988), 28-9. See also Flower and Murphey, Philosophy
in America, 243-44.
Theodore Dwight
Bozeman, Protestants in an Age of Science: The Baconian Ideal
and Antebellum American Religious Thought (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), 8.
17
the existence of God and physical reality by the exercise of
human reason. Grave points out that, "Hume's scepticism
was provisional; it is where reason would leave us, but where
reason leaves us, Nature takes over imperatively."
Hume, in any event, represented an incalculable threat to the
alliance of faith and science, one that had to be answered.
The Scottish philosophers of Common Sense stepped forward to
take up that challenge and provide that answer.
A Scottish
cleric and professor, Thomas Reid (1710-1796), is frequently
credited with founding Common Sense Philosophy and, in any event,
stands as a chief architect in the development of the moderate,
Scottish Enlightenment answer to Hume. As convinced of the grand
gap between mental and physical realities as any of those who
went before, Reid and his compatriots came to a different conclusion
about it.
First, Reid denied that all we can know are ideas or
that we even have "ideas" in the sense meant by Locke.
He studied his own mind and found nothing in it that stood between
his consciousness of other realities and those realities themselves;
he failed to discover, that is, a third entity called "ideas".
Second, he affirmed the every day common sense of common
people; what they know to be true is so immediate and so entirely
convincing to them that they do not stop to consider the possibility
of denying that reality. Causes have effects. The physical world
is real. No one questions these and many other "first principles"
of human knowing. It is absurd to do so. Reid ridiculed Hume
for doubting the existence of physical reality while continuing
to write on tables rather than thin air and to walk through
doors rather than walls. All human languages, furthermore, reflect
these first principles, which shows that they are truly inherent
in universal human consciousness and, thus, gives further proof
of their divine origin.
Reid did
not think he could prove that the physical world is
real in a philosophical sense, but he did think that the very
construction of human consciousness affirmed its reality as
being commonsensical. Agreeing with his predecessors that God
exists, Reid argued that God would not have created senses in
us that lied about reality; the very fact of our unquestioning,
immediate, and overwhelming belief in what we sense shows that
God has given us the ability to know the world as it actually
exists. We, thus, truly know external objects and their qualities
because they simply "arise from innate principles of
S. A. Grave,
The Scottish Philosophy of Common Sense (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1960), 64.
Cumins attributes
Reid's mind-body dualism to the influence of Descartes and notes
the important impact this division had on his epistemology. Reid,
he contends, argued that humans obtain theirknowledge in two distinct
ways, physically through perception and mentally through consciousness.
Philip D. Cumins, "Reid's Realism" Journal of the
History of Philosophy 12, 3 (July 1974): 321-22.
Reid's attack
on the "theory of ideas" was more sophisticated and
complex than this brief summary suggests. Beanblossom has summarized
a number of Reid's objections to that theory in four key points:
First, Reid claimed that he could think thoughts that were unlike
the philosophical meaning of "ideas". Second, the theory
claims we can only have ideas of things that exist; but according
to commonsense thinking that is not true. Third, the theory of
ideas leads only to skepticism concerning human perception and
memory. Fourth, Reid claims he can account for perception and
mistakes in memory without having recourse to the theory of ideas.
Ronald E. Beanblossom, "Introduction," in Thomas
Reid's Inquiry and Essays, ed. Ronald E. Beanblossom and
Keith Lehrer (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1983),
xix.
18
mind." Our assurance that our knowledge of those objects
is reliable requires "no justification because they are evident
in themselves without the use of reasoning." 
Still, humanity does not have an innate knowledge of the principles
by which it acquires knowledge and must carefully study human
consciousness for them, according to the "inductive method"
of research that Reid believed was first proposed by Francis Bacon
(1561-1626). The Baconian approach to knowledge was a circumspect
one that proceeded from a comprehensive gathering of facts through
a discrete arrangement of the facts to a considered estimation
of their lessons. The result was a philosophy that gave enthusiastic
support to the study of the natural sciences, trusted the senses,
affirmed the reality of the physical world, and yet kept a tight
reign on the scientific method and shunned abstraction. It celebrated
facts and took the Newtonian world to be God's world. 
At the last,
Reid departed from Hume over the epistemological question of whether
humanity can know God or not. Hume felt skeptical that we can
know God or the existence of anything supposedly created by God;
we have to live by common sense as if the unknowable
God does exist and as if our senses are reliable regarding
an otherwise unknowable world. Reid disagreed profoundly on what
can only be termed metaphysical and theological grounds. He affirmed,
beyond any possibility of empirical verification, that all of
reality, even that which is unobserved, is what we judge it to
be by the principles of common sense because he believed in a
Divine Creator who, as we have noted already, created it "the
way it is." The result is what some philosophers term Reid's
"providential naturalism." 
Common Sense
Philosophy had an immense impact on the United States. It dominated
academic instruction, particularly in higher education, to the
extent that Hoveler concludes, "the Scottish thinkers were
familiar to five generations of American college students. Indeed
they dominated American academic thought for almost a century."
On a larger scale, Hovenkamp finds that "the Scottish Realist
method of understanding the world became practically identified
with the evangelical point of view." 
Since the publication in 1955 of Ahlstrom's groundbreaking article
on Common Sense Philosophy's impact on American theology, the
particular impact of Scotland on Princeton has become one of the
grand, commonplace facts of the study of the Princeton Theology.
The evidence for that relationship was always in plain view in
the Princeton circle's theological
Keith Lehrer,
Thomas Reid (1989, reprint. London: Routledge, 1999),
8.
Bozeman,
Protestants in an Age of Science, 21. For a concise description
of the Baconian inductive method by a member of the "Princeton
circle," see Samuel Tyler, "The Baconian Philosophy,"
Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review (Hereafter
cited as BRPR) 12, 3 (July 1840): 362-63; and Samuel Tyler, "Baconian
Philosophy," BRPR 15, 4 (October 1843): 479-506.
Grave, Scottish
Philosophy, 100-04; and Knud Haakonssen, "Reid's Philosophy,"
in Thomas Reid, Practical Ethics, ed. Knud Haakonssen
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 38.
J. David Hoveler,
Jr, James McCosh and the Scottish Intellectual Tradition:
From Glasgow to Princeton (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1981), 4; and Herbert Hovenkamp, Science and Religion
in America, 1800-1860 (Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 1978), 10.
19
literature—at times exquisitely and overtly so, such
as in a series of articles written for the Princeton Review
by Samuel Tyler, an amateur Baconian philosopher and widely
appreciated Princeton fellow-traveler.
The Princeton professors and their students were counted in
the first rank of those who most enthusiastically and systematically
embraced this Scottish Enlightenment import.
Evangelicalism
Antebellum
American Protestant evangelicalism emerged as a dominant force
in nineteenth-century American religious life; the word "evangelical"
itself, however, designates a creature of such grand diversity
and plurality as almost to defy definition. If one seeks to
understand what it meant to be an American evangelical before
1860, however, at least three broad themes commend themselves
as central to the evangelical experience. First, theologically,
evangelicals were moving away from America's colonial Reformed
heritage with its emphasis on predestination and election towards
a more Arminian understanding of conversion and salvation. God's
wrath and awful majesty remained, but individual sinners could
do more toward their own salvation. Second, in terms of personal
faith, evangelicalism encouraged a warm-hearted, personal piety
based on a simple acceptance of the Bible as God's perfect Word.
Finally, logistically, evangelicals looked to revivalism as
their chief engine for winning the unconverted to faith and
renewing the flagging spirits of the faithful. Antebellum evangelicals
were, thus, religious activists immersed in the democratic temper
of their age.
Although not always listed as a key attribute of evangelicalism,
most evangelical Protestants displayed a sharp antipathy to
Catholicism to the extent that Wolffe concludes that, "anti-Catholicism
was very deeply rooted in evangelical identity and ideology.
It was not a mere negative prejudice but an impulse at the heart
of the movement's spiritual aspirations and religious activity."
Filling
in the details of this broadly drawn definition leads one into
all manner of difficulties, because it was in the details, the
implications, and the nuances that American evangelicals differed
from each other—sometimes bitterly. There were three large
camps
See
Tyler, "The Baconian Philosophy"; Tyler, "Baconian
Philosophy"; Samuel Tyler, "Psychology," BRPR 15,
2 (April 1843): 227-50; and Samuel Tyler, "Sir William Hamilton
and his Philosophy," BRPR 27, 4 (October 1855): 553-600.
Sydney E. Ahlstrom,
"The Scottish Philosophy and American Theology" CH
24(1955): 257-72. For a detailed theological explication of that
relationship immediately following Ahlstrom, see James L. McAllister,
Jr., "The Nature of Religious Knowledge in the Thought of
Charles Hodge" (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1957); and,
more recently, Loetscher, Facing the Enlightenment. The
Scottish link was largely ignored by early studies of Princeton
in particular and American Calvinism generally. See especially,
William Adams Brown, "Changes in the Theology of American
Presbyterians," American Journal of Theology 10,
3 (July 1906): 387-411; William Adams Brown, "The Old Theology
and the New," Harvard Theological Review 4, 1 (January
1911): 1-24; and Ralph John Danhof, Charles Hodge as a Dogmatician
(Goes, Netherlands: Oosterbaan & Le Cointre, 1929).
Based on Donald
W. Dayton, Discovering an Evangelical Heritage (1976;
reprint. Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1988),
138; and Hoveler, James McCosh, 95.
John Wolffe,
"Anti-Catholicism and Evangelical Identity in Britain and
the United States, 1830-1860," in Evangelicalism: Comparative
Studies of Popular Protestantism in North America, the British
Isles, and Beyond, 1700-1900, ed. Mark A. Noll,
David W. Bebbington, and George A. Rawlyk (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1994), 184.
20
or ways of filling in those details, which we might typify as
being respectively orthodox, radical, and black evangelicalism. 
Princeton was a stalwart member of evangelicalism's orthodox wing,
which, according to Johnson, accounted for roughly one-fifth of
all antebellum evangelicals and included Congregationalists, Presbyterians,
Low Church Episcopalians, and English-speaking Reformed groups.
Orthodox evangelicals tended to be middle and upper class people
socially, normally residing in towns and cities; their locus of
economic and political power was in the Northeast. They exercised
considerable social influence and often sought to extend their
conception of religious and social order into American society
generally by using voluntary associations. Orthodox evangelicals
held education in high regard and demanded a well-trained clergy.
Johnson writes,
Worship
was dignified, restrained, and controlled. By nineteenth-century
standards, local formalist [orthodox] congregations were
complex institutions with a host of organizations ranging
from missionary societies to Sunday Schools and choirs,
each emphasizing its own version of self-discipline and
self-improvement.  |
Orthodox
evangelicalism, in sum, was marked by an emphasis on revivalism,
commitment to moral reform, reliance on interdenominational
agencies, and a deep concern for missions.
Over the
course of the antebellum era there was also a gradual blending
and convergence of the radical and orthodox wings of evangelicalism
so that by 1850 the orthodox had taken over many of the radicals'
revivalist techniques and put them to use in ways acceptable
to the middle class. The radicals, meanwhile, had become less
radical and more concerned about such things as a learned clergy,
education, decorous worship, theological complexities, grand
edifices, and propriety in behavior and dress.
If Cross is correct, the more extreme tendencies of the radical
party to engage in a misguided, judgmental, and irresponsible
"ultraism" contained the seeds of its own destruction
and could not be sustained over the long run.
Which is to say that by the time that the future members of
the Laos Mission were coming of age, entering school, and attending
seminary a milder revivalist evangelicalism had become standard
fare for most of the nation's Protestants. The strength of that
evangelicalism's impact on Princeton and the Old School was
augmented by the fact that Common Sense Philosophy itself had
a wide influence among
Taken
from Curtis D. Johnson, Evangelicals and the Road to Civil
War (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1993), 7-8. Johnson uses the terms
"formalist," "anti-formalist," and "African-American."
He notes that this is an idealized classification, the boundaries
between classes being often unclear and showing considerable overlap.
Johnson, Road
to Civil War, 7, 13.
George M. Marsden,
The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), x-xi, 13-5.
Nathan O. Hatch,
The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1989), 193ff.
Whitney R.
Cross, The Burned-Over District: The Social and Intellectual
History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western
New York, 1800-1850 (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University
Press, 1950), 355-56.
21
evangelicals of many stripes and sizes, an influence unique
among the English-speaking nations of the North Atlantic for
its breadth and depth.
It is
hardly startling, then, to insist that the Princeton professors
and their entourage of students and sympathizers were evangelical;
nearly all American Protestants of their day fit that description.
The fact remains an important one, however, because it serves
to distinguish the Princetonians from earlier forms of Reformed
confessionalism and to highlight the importance of non-confessional
influences on the Princeton Theology. In spite of the undeniable
influence of Reformed confessionalism, that is, the Princeton
Theology was an indigenous American theology, responsive to
the cultural and religious forces of its national context. Princeton's
views on revivalism, predestination, and voluntary agencies
provide important examples.
Some twenty
years ago, Hoffecker wrote a book that corrected, in his estimation,
a long-standing misunderstanding of Princeton, namely that it
was against revivalism and warm-hearted evangelical
piety. He cites substantial evidence demonstrating that the
key Princetonians held revivals in considerable esteem and emphasized
the importance of deeply felt religious experiences to the Christian
life, particularly in conversion. They discouraged only the
emotional excesses of radical evangelical revivalism, fearing
that such excesses were the result of manipulation by evangelists
rather than the work of the Holy Spirit. Emotional revivalism,
furthermore, often violated the Pauline injunction that all
things be conducted in a decent, orderly manner.
Although it appears at times that the evidence he cites
disproves Hoffecker's argument almost as much as it proves it
and that strong strains of rationality undeniably suffuse much
of Princeton's literature, the scholarly consensus remains that
in the main he is correct. The Princetonians did allow an important
place for piety. One recalls, for example, Hodge's well-known
little book, The Way of Life, published by the American
Sunday School Union as an articulate rendering of a broadly
evangelical piety.
Princetonian sermons could often ring with the warm syllables
of that piety, reminding us that colonial Presbyterians played
a key role in the introduction and spread of revivalist practices
and in the post-Revolutionary era continued
Mark A. Noll, "Common Sense Traditions and American Evangelical
Thought" American Quarterly (Hereafter cited as
AQ) 37(Summer 1985): 217, 226; and Michael Gauvreau, "The
Empire of Evangelicalism: Varieties of Common Sense in Scotland,
Canada, and the United States," in Evangelicalism: Comparative
Studies of Popular Protestantism in North America, the British
Isles, and Beyond, 1700-1900, ed. Mark A. Noll, David W.
Bebbington, and George A. Rawlyk (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1994), 236. Hirrel argues that their shared commitment
to common sense provided an important bridge specifically between
New School and Old School Presbyterians and concludes, "New
School and Old School Calvinists had more in common than they
may have realized." Leo P. Hirrel, Children of Wrath:
New School Calvinism and Antebellum Reform (Lexington,
Kentucky: University of Kentucky Press, 1998), 44.
Andrew W. Hoffecker,
Piety and the Princeton Theologians: Archibald Alexander,
Charles Hodge, and Benjamin Warfield (Phillipsburg,
New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1981), 20-4,
72.
Charles Hodge,
The Way of Life, ed. Mark Noll (New York: Paulist Press,
1987). First published in 1841.
22
to avail themselves of those methods.
Still, even Princeton's sermons and pious tracts give vent to
the subtle, orthodox counterpoint of reason and intellect; the
heart was important to Princeton but it never dominated the
mind. Sixteenth-century continental theology was at least as
much home to the professors as was nineteenth-century American
piety—and almost certainly more so. Thus, for example,
Hodge structured his exposition of the The Way of Life
according to a traditional rendering of the Reformed understanding
of the "order of salvation," the ordo salutis—namely
as call, justification and adoption, sanctification, and glorification.
Hodge's
views on predestination, the grand dame of Reformed orthodox
theology, highlight the intricate interplay of confessionalism
and pietism contained in the Princeton literature. Kennedy argues
that unlike his orthodox ancestors or even other Old School
theologians, Hodge concerned himself more with the human role
in salvation and with the kindly role of divine providence in
human affairs than he did with the stern orthodox doctrines
of predestination, election, and reprobation. He seemed inclined
towards a greater role for natural theology; Kennedy labels
Hodge's discussion of predestination in his Systematic Theology
as being "commonplace" and lacking in details. He
claims that the good doctor had little fondness for the harsher
doctrines of his Reformed heritage.
Kennedy writes, "[Hodge] lived in the great day
of American revivalism and foreign missions, and he shared the
concern that sinners come to salvation. His theology is anthropocentric
and soteriocentric; his teaching on man and sin is mostly aimed
at providing a context for salvation."
Hodge, it should be added, further softened the grim image of
Calvinism by arguing that the vast majority of humanity would
face the last days and final judgment as saved Christians and
that even the unbaptized will receive the rewards of eternal
life if they die in their infancy.
While later scholars frequently point to the transforming power
Common Sense Philosophy had over Princeton's confessionalism,
it is apparent that the more diffuse but still powerful influence
of evangelicalism could also cut close to the core of that great
tradition.
Briefly,
it should be noted that the Princetonians and their larger Old
School constituency fully involved themselves in the campaigns
for social and religious control waged by orthodox evangelicalism's
battery of antebellum voluntary societies. As we have seen,
in 1837 the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. split over participation
in the ecumenical voluntary agencies that had become the primary
mission arm of orthodox evangelical-
See, as one example, James W. Alexander, Discourses on Common
Topics of Christian Faith and Practice, 2nd. ed. (New York:
Scribner, 1858), esp. 245-61, "The Inwardness of True Religion,"
a sermon delivered 9 April 1854.
See von Rohr,
Covenant of Grace, 87.
Kennedy, "Hodge's
Doctrines of Sin and Particular Grace," 229-38.
Kennedy, "Hodge's
Doctrines of Sin and Particular Grace," 233-34.
Kennedy, "Hodge's
Doctrines of Sin and Particular Grace," 248, 261; and Charles
Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 3 (New York:
Charles Scribner and Company, 1872), 557-58.
23
ism. The reasons given then were largely theological, having
to do with the New School's supposedly close association to
New England's Arminian tendencies. The Old School, however,
did not abstain from channeling evangelical activism through
voluntary agencies; it simply wanted to control any agencies
that had influence in the Presbyterian Church.
To one
degree or another, Princeton shared thus in the piety, theology,
and folkways of American evangelicalism, particularly of the
orthodox strain. This evangelical mix was not without its subtleties
as well, for sprinkled in amongst it all was a happy, zestful
dash of romanticism, the aesthetic and intellectual movement
that supposedly rejected reason for emotion and intuition and
valued self-expression and discovery over traditional authority.
Romantics majored in inspiration; they loved creativity. They
rejected the Enlightenment and above all, again, they held no
truck with reason—or so the scholars describe them.
All of this romantic enthusiasm and emotionalism does sound,
as Hoveler suggests, like the radical evangelicals and their
rejection of old systems of authority, activist enthusiasm for
all manner of reforms, and emphasis on religious experience
over reason.
The general drift of scholarly treatment of Princeton and romanticism
has been to emphasize the distance and differences between them
as if the professors' apparently rigid orthodoxy was a medium
poisonous to romanticism's free spirit. Moorhead's handling
of J. A. Alexander, for example, contrasts the "early"
Alexander—a creative, almost playful thinker of romantic
inclinations before he became a full-time professor at Princeton
Seminary—with the repressive scholasticism of his later
years. The
actual situation was more complex, however, than Moorhead's
simplistic scenario allows. In the vast, bubbling cauldron of
antebellum religious thought, it was impossible to separate
the various schools so neatly. Romanticism itself was diffuse
and certain varieties could be as conservative as Princeton,
if in a romantic rather than confessional manner. At the same
time, the movement shared in other key elements of its day including
most especially a great deal of influence from Common Sense
Philosophy.
It would have been more surprising than not if a hint
of evangelical romanticism had failed to find its way
See Elwyn A. Smith, "The Forming of a Modern American Denomination"
CH 31, 1 (March 1962): 90.
See The
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York: Macmillan, 1967) s.
v. "Romanticism"; The Dictionary of Philosophy,
ed. Dagobert D. Runes (New York: Philosophical Library, n.d.),
s. v. "Romanticism"; and esp. Terry Tastard, "Theology
and Spirituality in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,"
in Companion Encyclopedia of Theology, ed. Peter
Byrne and Leslie Houlden, (London: Routledge, 1995), 597. For
a fuller description of romanticism in the American context, see
Walter H. Conser, Jr. God and the Natural World: Religion
and Science in Antebellum America (Columbia: University of
South Carolina Press, 1993), 25ff; and Merle Curti, Human
Nature in American Thought (Madison, Wisconsin: University
of Wisconsin Press, 1980), 147-85.
Hoveler, James
McCosh, 67-8.
James H. Moorhead,
"Joseph Addison Alexander: Common Sense, Romanticism and
Biblical Criticism at Princeton," JPH 53, 1 (Spring
1975): 51-65. See also, James Hastings Nichols' chapter on Hodge,
in Romanticism in American Theology (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1961).
See Lawrence Buell, New England Literary Culture: From Revolution
Through Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1986), 44; Lawrence Buell, Literary Transcendentalism: Style
and Vision in the American Renaissance (Ithaca,
New York: Cornell University Press, 1973), 64-5; and Henry F.
May, The Enlightenment in America (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1976), 345.
24
into the Princeton Theology, which it did—in the way
natural beauty could touch the Princetonians, in the way they
sometimes discussed role of the heart in understanding God,
in their concept of beauty, in the role they thought intuition
played in perceiving heavenly themes, in their tendency to hold
an optimistic appraisal of the mind's ability to grasp the divine,
and in their trust of the common sense of the common people.
One of
the other "markers" of nineteenth-century American
evangelicalism was a profound emphasis on the authority of the
Bible that sometimes verged on bibliolatry. It is so entirely
obvious that the Princetonians cherished the Bible and gave
it a central place in all of their works that the matter hardly
needs elaboration; one example will suffice. In his 1851 inaugural
discourse to the assembled Princeton Seminary community, William
H. Green sounded the clarion call for defense of the Bible against
the looming clouds of German scholarship's skeptical mistreatment
of the Scriptures. Green, in the course of his lecture, described
the Bible as being "the tower of our defense," and
avowed that a thousand previous cases demonstrated how it is
always finally, triumphantly, and fully vindicated.
The Bible, he wrote, is "the only source of saving
knowledge; the only guide to the favour of God, and holiness
and heaven; which alone speaks of the atonement by the blood
of the cross, and whose faithful proclamation is accompanied
by the renewing energy of the Holy Ghost." Green avowed
that, "We wish nothing to remain among our tenets which
the word of God, honestly expounded, will not sanction."
Some scholars have argued that such sentiments were still expressions
of an "arid scholasticism" quite out of keeping with
antebellum evangelicalism's view of the Scriptures, but Balmer's
survey of contemporary conservative Protestant discussions of
the meaning of the Bible suggests otherwise. He concludes that
Princeton's doctrine of the Bible was neither "unique nor
innovative" and that "a broad range of nineteenth-century
theologians in many different denominational groupings did in
fact share similar views on the subject."
As conservative,
or orthodox evangelicals, Old School Presbyterians largely expressed
their evangelicalism in muted tones. They were moderately revivalist
instead of blatantly so. They favored a warm-hearted rather
than hot-hearted piety. They spiced their faith with only a
light sprinkling of romanticism in place of the shakers' full
of romantic enthusiasm favored by the more radical evangelical
denominations. By the
Hoffecker,
Piety and the Princeton Theologians, 16-7; and Kennedy, "Hodge's
Doctrines of Sin and Particular Grace," 165ff. For a fascinating
and ingenious synthesis of Princeton rationality and the romantic
spirit see Samuel Tyler, "Cosmos, by A. Von Humboldt,"
BRPR 24, 3 (July 1852): 382-97. Tyler argues that God has created
the world to be both beautiful and useful so that it can sustain
and speak to the whole of human nature. The unspoken message to
the Princeton faithful was that within the compass of the one
divine Creation a person can be both a rational and a
romantic inductive, orthodox Baconian evangelical.
William Henry
Green, "Inaugural Discourse," in Discourses at the
Inauguration of the Rev. William Henry Green as Professor
of Biblical and Oriental Literature in The Theological Seminary
at Princeton, N.J., (Philadelphia: C. Sherman, Printer,
1851), 41, 42.
Green, "Inaugural
Discourse," 46, 62.
Randall H.
Balmer, "The Princetonians and Scripture: A Reconsideration"
WJT 44, 2 (Fall 1982): 364.
25
time the Laos Mission was established in 1867, however, evangelicalism
in the United States had found a common level, one that Old
School Presbyterians shared in and felt comfortable with.
Conclusion
Finding
discrepancies and illogical contradictions in the great theological
house that Princeton built has become something of a cottage
industry among scholars. Ahlstrom supposes that Princeton destroyed
the dynamic vitality of its Reformed orthodox faith by subjecting
it to the enervating, naive humanism of Common Sense thought.
Sandeen agrees. Princeton's attempt to bend the mystical and
the spiritual on the rack of "the methodology of Newton"
produced, he claims, "a wooden, mechanical discipline as
well as a rigorously logical one." Princeton dealt primarily
with externals rather than the inner life. Loetscher, writing
in the train of Hoffecker's primal dissent against the idea
that Princeton rejected evangelical piety, still discerns a
gap between Princeton's pietism and Common Sense rationalism.
Although he assures us that the two did not contradict one other,
he feels that Princetonians such as Alexander never found a
way to blend the two into a workable synthesis.
Meyer, taking a different tack across the same breeze, suggests
that Alexander's Enlightenment orientation encouraged him to
expect humans to be able to live moral lives while his Reformed
heritage assured him it was impossible for them to do so. Alexander,
he claims, failed to solve this dilemma. Taylor, coming in from
still another angle, finds in Princeton's biblical scholarship
an inherent tension between its commitment to "Reformed
confessionalism" and its admiration of objective scientific
and historical research.
Giving
due weight to these and other inconsistencies, paradoxes, and
contradictions within Princeton's great synthesis, one is still
left feeling something akin to awe at the persistent way in
which Princeton wove the strands of Reformed confessionalism,
Common Sense Philosophy, evangelical piety, and that hint of
romanticism into a single tapestry. Say what the critics will,
it was a theological system that a not inconsequential number
of nineteenth-century Americans accepted as their own, among
them some of the nation's most well educated and theologically
articulate professors, college presidents, preachers, and local
lay leaders and members. Daniel McGilvary, as one minor example,
chose Princeton Seminary because of the quality of its faculty.
Standing within the culture and the ethos of its time
and place, the Princeton synthesis made sense and had a
Ahlstrom, "Scottish Philosophy," 268-69; Ernest R. Sandeen,
"The Princeton Theology: One Source of Biblical Literalism
in American Protestantism." CH 31 (September 1962): 310;
and Loetscher, Facing the Enlightenment, 68,
98, 168-69.
D. H. Meyer,
The Instructed Conscience: The Shaping of the American National
Ethic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972),
55-6; and Marion Ann Taylor, The Old Testament in the Old
Princeton School (1812-1929) (San Francisco: Mellen Research
University Press, 1992), 9, 45, 107, 142-44.
McGilvary,
Half Century, 33.
26
great influence, particularly among more conservative and middle
class evangelicals. It was orthodox and reasonable, reasonable
and pious, and, finally, pious and orthodox.
Wherever one turns in the literature of Princeton, one is struck
by how all three strands weave in and around each other to form
one Reformed, commonsensical, and evangelical theological system,
so that, whatever its logical inconsistencies, a great number
of nineteenth-century American Protestants found in it the terms
and ideas they needed to express their own personal faith.
Conclusion
These
six historical and theological contexts, then, comprise the
setting within which the Laos Mission conducted its work. They
include, historically, the events leading up to the founding
of the mission itself, northern Thai history, and the history
of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. The key components of the
theological context are Reformed confessionalism, Common Sense
Philosophy, and evangelicalism. The stage, in sum, is now well
set, and it is time to introduce the actresses and actors, whose
lives and thinking we will pursue throughout the rest of the
course of this dissertation, namely the nine pioneer members
of the Laos Mission.
27
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