The transformation of theology, 1830-1890 : positivism and Protestant thought in Britain and America / Charles D. Cashdollar.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cashdollar, Charles D., 1943- author.

Series:

Princeton Legacy Library

Princeton legacy library

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Protestant churches--Great Britain--Doctrines--History--19th century.

Protestant churches--United States--Doctrines--History--19th century.

Positivism--History--19th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (0 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, [1989]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Charles Cashdollar reinterprets nineteenth-century British and American Protestant thought by identifying positivism as the central intellectual issue of the era. Positivism meant, at first, the ideas of the French thinker Auguste Comte; later in the century, the term indicated a more general opposition to supernatural religion. Cashdollar shows that contemporary thinkers recognized positivism, at each of these stages, as the most fundamental of the proliferating challenges to religious belief. He further reveals how the encounter with positivism altered Protestant orthodoxy--in both subtle and radical ways.Positivists denied that humans could know anything other than physical phenomena. Declaring many orthodox beliefs archaic, they proposed a new, ethically based vision of service to humanity. After portraying the dissemination of these positions among British and American Protestants, the author explains how each of several groups reacted. A few theologians rejected positivism outright, but many more responded by recasting their own beliefs. The implications of this story of change extend to such topics as Darwinism, Biblical criticism, the rise of the social sciences, theological liberalism and the Social Gospel, the beginnings of fundamentalism, and the twentieth-century debate about "creationism" and science.Originally published in 1989.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Abbreviations

Acknowledgments

Introduction. "The Bugbear of the Modern Religious Mind"

Part I. The Transmission of Positivism

1. "Tolerably Familiar to Most": Comte and the British Clergy to 1853

2. "That Dilutedcomtism": Positivism and the British Clergy, 1853-1865

3. "Its Fertile Suggestion": Positivism and the American Clergy to 1865

4. "In The Mouth Of Every Man": Positivism and the Theologians, 1865-1890

5. "By The Company They Keep": Positivism's Association With Darwinism and Biblical Criticism

Part II. The Reconstruction of Theology

6. "Wholly And Finally Given": The Believing Positivists

7. "Scepticism Afraid of Itself ": Church Authority and Biblical Literalism

8. "We Who Have Broken Loose": Radical Unitarians and Theists

9. "Supplementing the Old Work": The Judicious Conservatives

10. "New Wine in New Bottles": The Liberals

Epilogue. "In Common With Ourselves

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

Description based on print version record.

Includes index.

Bibliography: pages 449-480.

ISBN:

9781400860104

1400860105

OCLC:

889253411