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Horace Bushnell (April 14, 1802 – February 17,
1876) was an American Congregational clergyman and theologian.
Life
Bushnell was a Yankee born
in the village of Bantam, township of Litchfield, Connecticut. He
attended Yale
College where he roomed with future magazinist Nathaniel Parker Willis.[1] Willis
credited Bushnell with teaching him the proper technique for
sharpening a razor.[2] After
graduating in 1827, he was literary editor of the New York
Journal of Commerce from 1828–1829, and in 1829 became a tutor
at Yale. Here he initially studied law, but in 1831 he entered the
theology department of Yale College. In May, 1833 Bushnell was
ordained pastor of the North Congregational church in Hartford, Connecticut. He married
Mary Apthorp in 1833 and the couple had three children.[3]
Bushnell remained in Hartford until 1859 when, due to extended poor
health he resigned his pastorate. Thereafter he held no appointed
office, but, until his death at Hartford in 1876, he was a prolific
author and occasionally preached.
Career
A younger Horace Bushnell
While in California
in 1856, for the restoration of his health, he took an active
interest in the organization, at Oakland, of the College of
California (chartered in 1855 and merged with the University of California in
1869), the presidency of which he declined. As a preacher, Dr
Bushnell was very effective. Though not a dramatic orator, he was
original, thoughtful and impressive in the pulpit. His theological
position may be said to have been one of qualified revolt against
the Calvinistic
orthodoxy of his day. He criticized prevailing conceptions of the
Trinity, the atonement, conversion, and
the relations of the natural and the supernatural. Above all, he
broke with the prevalent view which regarded theology as
essentially intellectual in its appeal and demonstrable by
processes of exact logical deduction. To his thinking its proper
basis is to be found in the feelings and intuitions of humankind's
spiritual nature. He had a marked influence upon theology in
America, an influence not so much, possibly, in the direction of
the modification of specific doctrines as in the impulse and
tendency and general spirit which he imparted to theological
thought. Dr Munger's estimate was that "He was a theologian as Copernicus was an astronomer; he changed
the point of view, and thus not only changed everything, but
pointed the way toward unity in theological thought." He was not
exact, but he put God and humanity and the world into a relation
that thought can accept while it goes on to state it more fully
with ever growing knowledge. Other thinkers were moving in the same
direction; he led the movement in New England, and wrought out a great
deliverance. It was a work of superb courage. Hardly a theologian
in his denomination stood by him, and nearly all pronounced against
him. Four of his books were of particular importance:
Christian Nurture (1847), in which he virtually opposed
revivalism and effectively turned the current of Christian thought
toward the young ; Nature and the Supernatural
(1858), in which he discussed miracles and endeavoured to lift the natural into
the supernatural
by emphasizing the supernatural nature of man; The Vicarious
Sacrifice (1866), in which he contended for what has come to
be known as the moral view of the atonement in distinction from the
governmental and the penal or satisfaction theories; and God in
Christ (1849) (with an introductory Dissertation on Language
as related to Thought and Spirit), in which he expressed, it was
charged, heretical views as to
the Trinity, holding, among other things, that the Godhead is
instrumentally three simply as related to our finite apprehension,
and the communication of God's incommunicable nature. Attempts were
made to bring him to trial, but they were unsuccessful, and in 1852
his church unanimously withdrew from the local consociation, thus removing any possibility
of further action against him. To his critics Bushnell formally
replied by writing Christ in Theology (1851), in which he
employs the important argument that spiritual truth can be
expressed only in approximate and poetical language, and concludes
that an adequate dogmatic
theology cannot exist. That he did not deny the divinity of Christ
he proved in The Character of Jesus, forbidding his possible
Classification within Men (1861). He also published
Sermons for the New Life (1858); Christ and his
Salvation (1864); Work and Play (1864); Moral
Uses of Dark Things (1868); Women's Suffrage, the Reform
against Nature (1869); Sermons on Living Subjects
(1872); and Forgiveness and Law (1874).
An edition of his works, in eleven volumes, appeared in 1876;
and a further volume, gathered from his unpublished papers, as
The Spirit in Man: Sermons and Selections, in 1903. New
editions of his Nature and the Supernatural, Sermons for this
New Life, and Work and Play, were published the same year.
Civic
interests
Bushnell was greatly interested in the civic interests of
Hartford, and was the chief agent in procuring the establishment of
the first public park in the
United States. It was named Bushnell Park in his honor by that
city.
Books
By
Bushnell
- Views of Christian Nurture, and of Subjects Adjacent
Thereto (1847), Facsimile ed., 1876 ed., 1975, Scholars
Facsimilies & Reprints, ISBN 9780820111476: text online
- God in Christ: Three Discourses Delivered at New Haven,
Cambridge, & Andover (1849), University of Michigan
Library, 2005, ISBN 1-4255-3727-8, 1876 edition: text online, includes a
preliminary dissertation arguing that language is inadequate to
express things of the spirit.
- Sermons for the New Life (1858), New York: Charles
Scribner, text online
- Nature and the Supernatural: As Together Constituting the
One System of God (1858), University of Michigan Library,
2006, ISBN 1-4255-5865-8, 1860 edition: text online
- Parting Words: A Discourse Delivered in the North Church,
Hartford (1859), Hartford: L.E. Hunt, text online
- Christ and His Salvation (1864), New York: Charles
Scribner, text online
- The Vicarious Sacrifice, Grounded in Principles of
Universal Obligation (1866), University of Michigan Library,
2001, ISBN 1-4181-5431-8, 1871 edition: text online
- Sermons on Living Subjects (1872), New York: Scribner,
Armstrong, and Co., text online
- Forgiveness and Law: Grounded in Principles Interpreted by
Human Analogies (1874), New York: Scribner, Armstrong, and
Co., text online
- Horace Bushnell, Selected Writings on Language, Religion,
and American Culture, David L. Smith, ed., Scholars Press,
1984, ISBN 0-89130-636-6
- Horace Bushnell: Sermons, Conrad Cherry, ed., Paulist
Press, 1985. ISBN 0-8091-0362-1
About
Bushnell
- David L. Smith, Symbolism and Growth: Religious Thought of
Horace Bushnell (1981), Scholar's Press, ISBN
0-89130410-X
- Howard A. Barnes, Horace Bushnell and the Virtuous
Republic (1991), Scarecrow Press, ISBN 0-81082438-8
- Robert L. Edwards, Of Singular Genius, of Singular Grace: A
Biography of Horace Bushnell (1992), Pilgrim Press, ISBN
0-82980937-6
- Robert Bruce Mullin, The Puritan As Yankee: A Life of
Horace Bushnell (2002), Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, ISBN
0-8028-4252-6
- Michiyo Morita, Horace Bushnell on Women in
Nineteenth-Century America (2004), University Press of
America, ISBN 0-76182888-5
- Andrew Jackson Davis, The Approaching Crisis: Being a
Review of Dr. Bushnell's Course of Lectures, on the Bible, Nature,
Religion, Skepticism, and the Supernatural (1870), Boston: W.
White & Co., text online; a response to
lectures by Bushnell during December 1851 and January 1852 on
rationalism vs. supernaturalism.
References
- ^
Pattee, Fred Lewis. The First Century of American Literature:
1770–1870. New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1966: 500.
- ^
Lewis, R. W. B. The American Adam: Innocence, Tragedy, and
Tradition in the Nineteenth Century. Chicago: The University
of Chicago Press, 1955: 68.
- ^
Douglas, Ann. The Feminization of American Culture. New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977: 342. ISBN 0-394-40532-3
External
links
- Biography by Bushnell Park
Foundation
- Congregational sermon
from 1993 honoring Bushnell
- "Two American Divines", in
Appletons' Journal: a Magazine of General Literature, New
York: D. Appleton and Company, Volume 9, Issue: 51, Sept 1880, p.
277–280
- Review of "God in Christ"
in The Princeton Review, Vol. 21, Issue 2, Apr 1849, pp.
259-298
- "Recent Doctrinal and
Ecclesiastical Conflicts in Connecticut" in The Princeton
Review, Vol. 25, Issue 4, Oct 1853, pp. 598-637
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