Philosophy, History, and Theology

Selected Reviews 1975–2011

Alan P.F. Sell

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781610979689
  9781498263085
• eBook ISBN:
  9781630877903
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Alan Sell here presents a selection of his wide-ranging, informative, and entertaining reviews. Among philosophical themes discussed are Locke and the Enlightenment, Richard Price, John Stuart Mill, philosophical idealism, and analytical philosophy of education and of religion. Historical studies run from the Middle Ages onwards, and encompass English, Welsh, and Scottish Nonconformity, the Evangelical Revival, the Oxford Movement, theological education, American Reformed thinkers, the crisis of belief and the Social Gospel in Canada, and evangelical and liberal theology. Theological topics include Origen, Calvin, and Dutch Reformed thinkers, American Baptists, Mercersburg Theology, Scottish theology, liberation theology, assurance, the atonement, ecclesiology, ecumenism, art and theology, Christian ethics, worship and spirituality.

Part One

Philosophy

1

Seventeenth-Century British Philosophers

Andrew Pyle, ed. The Dictionary of Seventeenth-Century British Philosophers, 2 vols.Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 2000. Pp. xxi + 932.

With this handsome work Thoemmes Press further enhances its reputation as a publisher of eminently useful philosophical resources. The Press’s eighteenth-century Dictionary has been cordially received by scholars in a number of fields, and we may confidently predict similar success in the case of the present work. Andrew Pyle has assembled a team of more than seventy scholars to handle over 400 entries (of which, to declare an interest, a few short ones are mine). The calibre of the contributors is on the whole high, the list including Stuart Brown, Vere Chappell, Sarah Hutton, Ν. H. Keeble, James Moore, Margaret J. Osler, Richard H. Popkin, G. A. J. Rogers and M. A. Stewart.

As is entirely appropriate to the century concerned, ‘philosophy’ is construed widely to embrace those from many fields who, in one way or another, pondered the state of things: scientists, theologians, such influential writers as Addison, Bunyan, Defoe and Milton, even Commonwealth sectaries—there is room for most if not all, wanton polemicists being shunned. The result is that we are immersed in the intellectual context in which those who subsequently became entombed in philosophy syllabi lived and, hence, we understand them better. In any case, as the editor points out (p. viii), ‘it is usually the minor figures, not the luminaries, who are the typical representatives of the thought of the period.’ ‘British,’ too, is understood with sufficient elasticity to include a few prominent continentals such as Comenius and De Dominis.

While, as might be expected, bare details only are supplied in the case of many obscure figures, the Dictionary generally rises above mere ‘nuts and bolts.’ Not only is criticism offered in some of the lengthier pieces but, for example, the neglected question of David Abercromby’s status as a harbinger of the Scottish common-sense philosophy is addressed by Paul Tomassi in such a way as to turn one’s feet in the direction of the library. Again, J. A. I. Campbell judiciously eval­uates Charles Blount in such a way as to query the too easy labelling of him as a derivative plagiarist.

The decision to reprint the articles on Locke, Newton and some others from the eighteenth-century Dictionary is understandable and acceptable: indeed it exemplifies those inter-century intellectual continuities which our habit of carving up time into slabs of one hundred years can tempt us to overlook. Bacon, Cudworth, Hobbes and More are among major figures who receive ample treat­ment. Others who receive their due are William Ames, Isaac Barrow, Richard Baxter, Hugh Binning, Peter Browne, Gershom Carmichael, Walter Charleton, William Chillingworth, Samuel Clarke, Joseph Glanvill, Nehemiah Grew, John Hales, William Harvey, Richard Hooker, Bernard Mandeville, John Ray, Edward Stillingfleet, Thomas Tenison, John Tillotson, Matthew Tindal, John Toland, Isaac Watts and William Wollaston.

Articles on women include those on Mary Astell, whose ‘Malebranchian orien­tation underlines her antipathy to the philosophy of John Locke’ (p. 30); Margaret Cavendish, who used poetry and satire to convey her philosophical ideas, among them objections to Hobbes, More and others; Catharine Cockburn, defender of Locke and Clarke; and Damaris Masham, who evaluated the views of Norris, Locke and Leibniz.

Among numerous points noted in passing is the way in which Edward Bagshaw’s Calvinism accorded with some of the newer scientific thinking. Readers unim­pressed by this may be cheered to know that Bagshaw also fell foul of the appropriately named Busby for wearing a hat in church. That not all hastened to imbibe newer ideas is illustrated by Thomas Barlow, who advocated the use of Aristotelian logic as a weapon against the Jesuits. The article on Slingsby Bethel shows how, in revolutionary times, ideas coupled with rumbustious activities deter­mined domicile. It is pleasant to make the acquaintance of the country gentleman Thomas Blundeville who, in addition to writing books on horsemanship, geog­raphy, cartography and navigation, also published The Art of Logicke for the benefit of zealous but unschooled ministers who sought ammunition against ‘all subtill Sophisters, and cauelling Schismatikes.’ Thomas Cole’s anticipation of some of Locke’s epistemological views is noted, as is John Dee’s failed attempt to secure patronage by initiating Emperor Rudolph II into alchemical secrets. Henry Dodwell the Elder is interesting for the variety of responses to his eschatological opinions. R. W. Dyson does well to suggest that Robert Filmer was not as dim as has sometimes been alleged, while Ian Higgins brings out clearly the contempo­rary and longer-term significance of Charles Leslie’s views on patriarchal monarchy vis-à-vis the Church. The way in which Morgan Llwyd’s mysticism was expounded within the parameters of orthodox Calvinism, and with reference to the authority of Scripture, is clearly explained by R. M. Jones. The range of Joseph Mead’s writing boggles the mind: the classics, Hebrew, Egyptology, theology, mathematics, astrology, botany and anatomy all falling within his purview. Perhaps the most elegant verdict in the Dictionary is that passed upon William Whiston, quoted from the Encyclopaedia Britannica: ‘He was not only paradoxical to the verge of craziness, but intolerant to the verge of bigotry’ (p. 876).

It is possible to question some judgements made along the way. One could wish that John Owen’s part in the Savoy Declaration of Faith and Order (1658) had been noted; the bibliography for Jonas Proast might have been updated, while Beverley C. Southgate’s article on John Sergeant and M. A. Stewart’s on Stillingfleet appeared too late for inclusion as, perhaps, did G. A. J. Roger’s piece on Stillingfleet (whose Works have recently been reprinted by this publisher).

The Dictionary is furnished with an index of persons which greatly facilitates cross-referencing, and the standard of production is high. It is, however, ironic that that most meticulous of scholars, Geoffrey F. Nuttall, should have his name misspelled, and ominous that the slip should occur on p. 666!

The International Journal of Philosophical Studies 9 (2001) 553–55.

2

Locke’s Enlightenment

G. A. J. Rogers. Locke’s Enlightenment: Aspects of the Origin, Nature and Impact of his Philosophy. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1998. Pp. xiv + 194.

Time was when, in some notable seats of learning, ‘This is history, NOT philosophy!’ was the most damning verdict which could be appended to a novice philosopher’s essay. Contemporaneously, existentialists were, at best, deemed good for only novels and plays, while theologians (forsooth!) were irremediably blinkered and dogmatic exponents of nonsense. Such mentors were far removed in spirit from Whichcote: ‘because I may be Mistaken, I must not be dogmatical and confident, preemptory and imperious.’ Happily, during the last thirty years there has arisen a growing band of philosophers who are as well versed in the intellectual contexts of the arguments which interest them as in the argu­ments themselves. They understand that simply to abstract an argument from a philo­sophical work and to analyze its form may or may not yield an author’s meaning, still less (pace certain literary critics) his or her intention in writing. For this we need some knowl­edge of semantics, and some acquaintance with the intellectual milieu (antecedents, oppo­nents, historical context) of which the author was a part. Professor G.A.J. Rogers of the University of Keele understands this well. Indeed, he utters an implied rebuke to those modern commentators who tend to read Locke ‘as if he were some secular representative of twentieth-century philosophy’ (p. 157); and expresses his amazement that such a matter as the connection of Locke’s work with the seventeenth-century revolution in science ‘was so little highlighted in contemporary commentaries’ at the beginning of his own career (p. ix). Few have done as much as Rogers to redress the balance, and he now ranks as one of our leading authorities in his chosen field. In the volume under review he presents the fruit of his assiduous researches, and although most of the chapters have previously been pub­lished, they do, following slight editing, together comprise a book rather than a collection of disparate fragments and, moreover, a book in which there is relatively little repetition.

Chapter 1, the product of a good deal of careful detective work on the sources, con­cerns the gestation of Locke’s Essay. It also announces a running theme of the work, namely, that ‘Modern science, political theory and theology, as well as modern philosophy were largely to be set within the epistemological parameters that Locke identified’ (p. 1). But if Locke influenced others, he was himself a debtor—to Descartes (despite Locke’s rejec­tion of innate ideas, and his elevation of experience as the only source of knowledge), Boyle and, later, to Newton. Against any who may treat Locke almost exclusively as an epistemologist, Rogers reminds us of his commitment to an objective ethic grounded in theism. In chapter 2 the Locke-Descartes relation is pursued in greater detail, the author’s suggestion being that the links were closer—concerning clear and distinct ideas, for ex­ample—than Locke later granted when replying to Stillingfleet’s criticism of his views, and this despite the manifest distinction between Descartes’ and Locke’s theistic proofs.

Locke and scepticism is the next theme to occupy us, and here Rogers argues that al­though with the passage of time Locke became increasingly aware of the force of the scep­tical challenge, he never thought that his epistemology could thereby be undermined. He faults sceptics for seeking demonstration and certainty where none may properly be found, and he is content with probability where that is all we may reasonably expect.

In the fourth chapter the Descartes-Locke relations are further delineated, this time in connection with the concept of infinity, and Henry More is helpfully introduced as a philosophical stepping-stone between the two. Locke’s strategy is to argue that the concept of infinity can consort with his empiricism if we ‘appeal to simple ideas of extension and duration combined with the idea of repetition’ (p. 60). The Hobbes-Locke relationship is next reviewed, and Rogers illuminates this by enquiring how both viewed Boyle. He finds that whereas Hobbes remained with the classical sciences, with their tendency to dogma­tism, Boyle was a Baconian experimentalist. Locke was with the latter—hence his repudia­tion of Newton’s description of him as a Hobbesian—though at the same time Locke and Hobbes shared empiricism, a theory of perception, and similar anti-sceptical strategies. Locke’s Baconian approach in science is next applied to anthropology, in which connection Hobbes is shown to supply the theoretical basis for field work which the positions of Descartes and Locke could never have yielded.

In chapter 7 the empiricism of Locke and Newton is under review. They were both influenced by Descartes, their ontologies were similar, they were mind-matter dualists, and they were unimpressed by scholastic doctrines of substance and properties. While Locke’s focus was more theoretical and Newton’s more experimental, they both ‘placed the events of the world not in necessity, but in the will of God’ (p. 111).

In the next chapter the question of toleration is treated in relation to Latitudin­arianism. With reference to Chillingworth and to the Cambridge Platonists, Rogers shows how, since we have no right to require the commitment of others to claims of which we cannot be certain, ignorance became a ground for toleration. Not, indeed, that these writ­ers, or Glanville for that matter, envisaged many distinct churches within one kingdom, the breakdown of church-state relations, or the removal of the civil magistrate from reli­gious affairs. Locke’s argument for toleration on the ground of the limits of knowledge went further in these directions, and was misunderstood by ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part One: Philosophy
• Chapter 1: Seventeenth-Century British Philosophers
• Chapter 2: Locke’s Enlightenment
• Chapter 3: English Philosophy in the Age of Locke
• Chapter 4: Locke on Man, Person and Spirits
• Chapter 5: Locke on Thinking Matter
• Chapter 6: Locke and Burnet
• Chapter 7: Locke and Christianity
• Chapter 8: Locke on Depravity
• Chapter 9: Locke and Religion
• Chapter 10: Eighteenth-Century British Philosophers
• Chapter 11: Joseph Butler
• Chapter 12: Rational Dissent
• Chapter 13: Richard Price
• Chapter 14: Price’s Correspondence
• Chapter 15: William Godwin
• Chapter 16: John Stuart Mill and the Religion of Humanity
• Chapter 17: James McCosh
• Chapter 18: Anglican Idealism in the Nineteenth Century
• Chapter 19: Henry Jones
• Chapter 20: Oxford Idealism
• Chapter 21: R. G. Collingwood
• Chapter 22: Philosophy of Education
• Chapter 23: Philosophy of Religion
• Chapter 24: Analytic Philosophy of Religion
• Chapter 25: Theism Analyzed
• Chapter 26: God’s Nature and Existence
• Chapter 27: Faith, Scepticism, and Personal Identity
• Chapter 28: The Philosophical Frontiers of Christian Theology
• Chapter 29: Christian Theism and Moral Philosophy
• Chapter 30: Asian Philosophy
• Part Two: History
• Chapter 31: Medieval Thought
• Chapter 32: Aquinas, Calvin, and Protestant Thought
• Chapter 33: The Unity of Brethren
• Chapter 34: The Hutterian Brethren
• Chapter 35: The English Sabbath
• Chapter 36: The Enlightenment World
• Chapter 37: Heterodoxy 1660–1750
• Chapter 38: British Intellectual History 1750–1950
• Chapter 39: Congregationalism in Wales
• Chapter 40: American Congregationalism
• Chapter 41: Baptist Covenants
• Chapter 42: The Brethren
• Chapter 43: The Evangelical and Reformed Church
• Chapter 44: Evangelical Biography
• Chapter 45: Evangelicalism in Modern Britain
• Chapter 46: Methodism in Britain and Ireland
• Chapter 47: Reasonable Enthusiast
• Chapter 48: Locke, Wesley, and Romanticism
• Chapter 49: The Oxford Movement
• Chapter 50: Congregationalism in Scotland
• Chapter 51: English Dissent: Dissoluble or Dissolute?
• Chapter 52: Conflict and Reconciliation
• Chapter 53: English Baptists in the Nineteenth Century
• Chapter 54: Strict Communion Baptists in Victorian England
• Chapter 55: Cambridge Theology in the Nineteenth Century
• Chapter 56: A Unitarian Theological College
• Chapter 57: A Baptist Theological College
• Chapter 58: Religion in the West Midlands
• Chapter 59: Charles Grandison Finney
• Chapter 60: Philip Schaff
• Chapter 61: Revival in Wales
• Chapter 62: The Crisis of Belief in Canada 1850–1940
• Chapter 63: The Social Gospel in Canada 1875–1915
• Chapter 64: Evangelical and Liberal Theology in Victorian England
• Chapter 65: C. J. Cadoux
• Part Three: Theology
• Chapter 66: Origen
• Chapter 67: Calvin on the Law
• Chapter 68: Assurance
• Chapter 69: The Existence of God in Dutch Theology
• Chapter 70: Samuel Clarke and the Trinity
• Chapter 71: Fletcher of Madeley
• Chapter 72: Baptist Theologians
• Chapter 73: Charles Hodge
• Chapter 74: John Williamson Nevin
• Chapter 75: Mercersburg Theology and American Religion
• Chapter 76: Mercersburg Theology and Reformed Catholicity
• Chapter 77: Reformed Confessionalism in Nineteenth-Century America
• Chapter 78: Reformed Theology in America
• Chapter 79: Thomas Chalmers and Mission
• Chapter 80: God, Grace and the Bible in Scottish Reformed Theology: A Review Article
• Chapter 81: Theology through the Theologians
• Chapter 82: John and Donald Baillie
• Chapter 83: The Centenary of Lux Mundi
• Chapter 84: Donald MacKinnon as Theologian
• Chapter 85: Liberation Theology
• Chapter 86: The Atonement
• Chapter 87: Models of the Church
• Chapter 88: On Being the Church
• Chapter 89: Advancing Ecumenical Thinking
• Chapter 90: Methodists in Dialog
• Chapter 91: Art, Modernity, and Faith
• Chapter 92: On Christian Ethics
• Chapter 93: Confusions in Christian Social Ethics
• Chapter 94: Protestant Worship
• Chapter 95: Pulpit, Table, and Song
• Chapter 96: Theology for Pew and Pulpit
• Chapter 97: Reformed Spirituality