An Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant

An Outline of the History of Christian
Thought Since Kant

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Title: Edward Caldwell Moore Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant
Author: Edward Moore
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AN OUTLINE OF THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT
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.
Men have asserted that the Renaissance inaugurated a period of paganism. They have
gloried that there supervened upon this paganism the religious revival which the
Reformation was. Even these men will, however, not deny that it was the intellectual
rejuvenation which made the religious reformation possible or, at all events, effective.
Nor can it be denied that after the Revolution, in the Protestant communities the
intellectual element was thrust into the background. The practical and devotional
prevailed. Humanism was for a time shut out. There was more room for it in the Roman
Church than among Protestants. Again, the Renaissance itself had been not so much an

era of discovery of a new intellectual and spiritual world. It had been, rather, the
rediscovery of valid principles of life in an ancient culture and civilisation. That
thorough-going review of the principles at the basis