God’s Moral Government of Love:
The Theology that Helped Shape the Movement for Abolition and Civil Rights
Nicholas Miller, J.D., Ph.D
Associate Professor of Church History
Director, International Religious Liberty Institute
Andrews University
Rarely does a political leader invoke the virtue of love as a principle to guide public
action. It is even rarer when he calls his countryman to love their enemies; to do good to
those who have done them and their country harm. This is what makes Abraham Lincoln’s
second inaugural address, delivered near the end of the Civil War, so remarkable. “With
malice toward none,” he famously exhorted, “with charity for all, with firmness in the right as
God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in . . . .” 1
The older English word “charity” obscures for us today the radical call for principled
love that the word conveyed in Lincoln’s day. Today, charity is generally thought of as a kind
of public beneficence, a giving of excess funds for worthy causes. But in Lincoln’s time,
charity was considered to express the notion of principled, selfless love, known in the Greek
New Testament as agapay. This was the idea captured in the King James Version’s rendering
of the famous “love chapter” of 1 Corinthians 13: “thought I speak with the tongues of men
and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal . . . .”
For the King James’ translators, as it had been for Thomas Aquinas, love was mere
passion and feeling; whereas charity was the true virtue of principled love towards friends
and enemies. 2 This high standard of charity makes Lincoln’s call for “charity for all” radical
by political standards. This call for love also appears to stand in some contrast to the earlier
parts of Lincoln’s own speech, where he had underscored God’s justice and judgments on the
nation. In dire language, he had warned the nation that slavery was “one of those offenses”
that a just God would not only remove in time, but would also punish with “the woe due to
those by whom the offense came.”
Both sides wished the war ended, Lincoln acknowledged. But he reflected that even if
the blood spilt and the treasure stolen during slavery was matched by treasure destroyed
and blood shed on the fields of battle to end slavery, “as was said three thousand years ago,
so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’" 3 This
1
just, active, judging, even punishing God, sets the backdrop for Lincoln’s call for principled
love and care for not only the nation’s wounded friends, but also for its embittered enemies.
Such a speech today would likely be criticized as incoherent, schizophrenic, politically
naïve, and—almost certainly—inappropriately religious. But in Lincoln’s day, a particular
theological conception about God, his character, and his government held sway in most of the
major denominations of the day. Then it was known as the moral government of God. This is
the name that one of its chief proponents, Professor Nathanial Taylor of Yale Divinity School,
gave it in his class. His class lectures were gathered into a book by that name.
But it might better be described as God’s moral government of love. It mixed both
elements of moral judgment and God’s love in a manner that emphasized both human
freedom and accountability. It was a view of God and reality that lay at the core of the major
northern denominations, including the two largest in America, the Methodists and the
Baptists. It was also a key element in the growing reform of the New Haven Theology,
expressed by Professor Taylor, and the New School Presbyterianism, whose revivals were
spread far and wide and across denominational boundaries by Charles Finney.
This potent brew of moral accountability, human freedom, and active love was of
special interest—and was put to special use—by anti-slavery activists in all these churches.
It was arguably the theological temper that made the north as a whole amenable to a war
that sought not territory or treasure, but a moral good—freedom—for an unpopular and
politically marginal people. Given this popular theological backdrop, it is not surprising that
the theological combination of God’s judgment and love would play a central role in Lincoln’s
speech. It provided rich ideals to draw on as he sought to lead a nation through a difficult
valley of judgment into the peaceful uplands of cooperative, caring, and even charitable coexistence.
Some historians believe that the pathway to the Civil War was marked by an
increasing theological incoherence in American Protestantism. Indeed, one prominent
historian, Mark Noll, has proposed that the War should best be understood as the
outworking of a theological crisis within American Protestantism. As churches were
increasingly divided on how to read the Bible, it could no longer serve as an arbiter of moral
truths. Thus, the evil of slavery, the argument goes, had to be opposed by arms rather than a
united theological front. 4
2
But Lincoln’s speech seems to reflect an ongoing theological foundation that Lincoln
himself envisions as serving as the basis for rebuilding the divided nation. If this foundation
existed, where did it come from, what were its contents, and how did it become sufficiently
“American” for it to provide the framework for one of the most important presidential
speeches in American history? To answer these questions properly would require a book.
Here, we will seek to trace the broad outlines of the growth of this idea of God’s moral
government of love, and how it came to play a prominent role in pre-Civil War America.
Jacob Arminius, God’s Nature of Love, & the Roots of Free Will Theology
The story begins, at least in its early modern version, near the dawn of the Protestant
Reformation. It was in the late 16th century that Jacob Arminius, the great Dutch theologian,
launched a modification of Calvinist theology that set the stage for the Great Controversy
theme. Arminius provided a fresh reading of the Calvinist tradition to allow for genuine
human free will and the possibility of salvation for all who might believe. Since then,
Arminian theology has become synonymous with a rejection of human pre-destination,
limited atonement, and God’s arbitrary sovereignty.
This identification of Arminius with free will theology is in one respect somewhat
unfortunate, as it makes it seem as though conceptions of human freedom are a third or
fourth generation addition to Protestant thought. Some claim that a free will view is thus a
corruption of true, original Protestantism. But this position overlooks the earlier Protestants
that held to versions of human freedom in salvation, including Lutheran theologian Philip
Melanchthon and the entire evangelical Anabaptist movement.
The leading early magisterial reformers Luther and, especially, Calvin, reacted against
a tendency in medieval scholasticism to underplay the severity humanity’s fall into sin and to
overplay human ability to both know and do the good and the right. Both men were
struggling to move the church from a Pelagian position, where humans could choose to make
themselves better, to one that understood the absolute necessity of God’s grace to allow any
real improvement. In avoiding the ditch of human righteousness, though, they ran into the
opposite ditch of human helplessness and God’s arbitrariness. 5
Neither Luther nor Calvin, however, made pre-destination the central concern of their
theologies. Luther was quick to say that pre-destination only had to do with the hidden God,
3
the Deus Absconditus, and that Christians should focus on the choices and grace that the
revealed God has promised to all. Likewise, Calvin did not advocate “double predestination,”
where God creates some men to save them, and creates others with the intention of damning
them. This stern doctrine was a later addition by his successors in Geneva, Theodore Beza
and others.
Lutheranism is not known for its strict doctrines of election and sovereignty, largely
because of the influence of Melanchthon. Also a first generation reformer, Melanchthon was
willing to allow the puzzle of divine foreknowledge and human freedom to go unsolved,
rather than insist that there was no free will. Due to Melanchthon’s influence, Lutheranism
took a more moderate path in relation to pre-destination, with a general rejection of notions
of double predestination and some openness to human choice. 6
But there were other first generation reformers who were even more intent than
Melanchthon to defend human choice in the matter of salvation, most notably, the
Anabaptists. In 1526, Anabaptist Hans Denck, no doubt provoked by the Luther/Erasmus
debate over the will that occurred the previous year, set out his own views on human
freedom. The title of Denck’s work reveals his true concern—Whether God is the Cause of Evil.
In this book, Denck dealt with the problem of evil and free will. He avoids Luther’s wholly
captive will and Erasmus’s humanist/Pelagian will. He argued that “salvation is in man but
not of man,” and that while man naturally could not choose to oppose evil, he did have the
capacity to submit to God. Thus, evil was a result of man’s chosen failure to submit to God,
and could not be attributed to God. 7
Anabaptist leader Balthasar Hubmaier was influenced by Denck in writing his own
works on human nature and salvation. 8 Hubmaier believed in a fall, and in sinful human
nature and soul. 9 But he asserted that “whomever denies the freedom of the human will,
denies and rejects more than half of the Holy Scriptures.” 10 Not only did all people have the
capacity to choose God, once this choice was made, they gained the ability through Christ’s
power to choose good. “Enlightened by the Holy Spirit, [the soul] now again comes to know
what is good and evil. It has recovered its lost freedom. It can now freely and willingly be
obedient to the spirit against the body and can will and choose the good . . . .” 11
The views of Hubmaier and Denck on human free will came to generally characterize
the views of the evangelical Anabaptists, including those in Austria and the Netherlands,
4
where Mennos Simons articulated similar views. These evangelical Anabaptists represent an
early Protestant free-will heritage that are as early as Luther’s teachings the topic, and predate Calvin’s writings by more than a decade. 12]
After the mid-16th century, Beza and others began to intensify the reformed churches’
teachings on predestination and God’s sovereignty. The intensification of the doctrine of
election sparked concerns about human free will and God’s relation to evil in theological
circles outside the Anabaptist community. One such concerned onlooker was Jacob
Arminius, reformed pastor and teacher, who began his ministry in Amsterdam in the late
1580s.
We know that Arminius had contact with Mennonite Anabaptists in Holland. His own
church commissioned him to publicly debate and refute some Mennonite “heretics,” and
Arminius reviewed their works. He never explicitly refused to refute the Mennonites, but he
continually delayed the project. Eventually the consistory realized that he would never do it.
Arminius differed with the Mennonites on baptism and the nature of the church. But it
seems that his views on the other Anabaptist “heresy,” that of grace, predestination, and free
will was sympathetic to theirs. Arminius also was also exposed to Melanchthon’s views on
“conditional predestination.” 13
It was in this context that Arminius developed a careful re-reading of Calvinism. He
affirmed the existing reformed creeds on sin and salvation, but did so in a way that allowed
for genuine human free choice in accepting salvation. His reason for doing so was not
primarily because of a concern for human dignity, importance, or freedom. Rather, his
primary concern was the same as that of the early Anabaptists—the glory of God as seen in
His character of love. He aimed to preserve God’s character from the infamy and slander that
He had created, ordained, or authored sin and evil.
As church historian Roger Olsen puts it, “Arminius’s strongest objection was that”
unconditional predestination is “’injurious to the glory of God’ because ‘from these premises
we deduce, as a further conclusion, that God really sins . . . that God is the only sinner . . . that
sin is not sin.’ Arminius never tired of arguing that the strong Calvinist doctrine of
predestination cannot help making God the author of sin, and if God is the author of sin, then
sin is not truly sin because whatever God authors is good.” 14
5
Both Luther and Calvin were voluntarists—the view that right and good, including both
what is just and loving, are, by definition, whatever God does or decrees. It is ultimately a
position that God’s might makes it right. 15 Both justice and love, then, are measured by God’s
will rather than conforming to some set of abstract principles. Arminius, on the other hand,
was an anti-voluntarist. He believed that God chose to do good and right, because it was
good and right. Not that He was measured by some external standard, but that good and
right existed as part of His very nature. In creating the world and humanity, he imbedded
these truths within the stuff of the creation. While fallen, these elements still contain traces
and tracks of this divine nature.
Arminius posited a clear connection between God’s being and those that He created. He
wrote that God “is the greatest Being and the only great One; for he is able to subdue to his
sway even nothing itself, that it may become capable of divine good by the communication of
himself.” 16 This communication would allow lesser beings to understand and have actual
knowledge of the essence of the divine Being. “In the first place he is called ‘Being itself,’” he
wrote, “because he offers himself to the understanding as an object of knowledge.” 17
Arminius recognized that the gap between the divine Being and the created being is
huge, even “infinite,” and that mere beings can never be raised to “divine equality with God.”
But despite this gap and distance, and that “the human mind is finite in nature,” Arminius
believed that it is “a partaker of infinity—because it apprehends Infinite Being and the Chief
Truth, although it is incapable of comprehending them.” 18
In other words, Arminius believed that humans were capable of knowing, at least in
part (apprehending, though not comprehending) God as He truly is. This must be true for
humans to make a meaningful choice about accepting and following God. If true knowledge
about God is not possible, then real choice about God is not possible either. Thus, when
Christ revealed God, He showed us true things about the actual, real, sole nature of God.
There are not further, contrary, hidden natures concealed behind this revealed nature.]
Of God’s nature, Arminius was very clear. “Concerning his nature; that it is worthy to
received adoration, on account of its justice; that it is qualified to form a right judgment of
that worship, on account of its wisdom.” 19 It is the revelation of this nature that makes
human choice meaningful, and thus even possible. While anti-voluntarists tended to focus on
the non-arbitrary nature of God’s justice, this concept had direct implications for ideas about
6
God’s love. If justice was not merely what God arbitrarily did, then love also was something
that had contours and substance beyond merely the expression of God’s will. Thus, both
God’s justice and His love could be apprehended, even if not comprehended, by finite human
minds. With this foundation, a meaningful theodicy of God’s judgments and actions could be
constructed by human minds.
Hugo Grotius and the Moral Government of God
It was in pursuit of this vindication of God’s “worthy” nature that the story of the
Dutch Remonstrants, supporters of Arminius, unfolded in Holland. The keepers of Calvinist
orthodoxy were anxious to squash these “progressive” ideas about God. Shortly after
Arminius died in 1609, his followers drafted a remonstrance, a petition, against the official
orthodoxy of the state church. The five points of the Remonstrance asserted conditional
election (God chose all conditioned on their exercise of faith), unlimited atonement (Christ
died for all), depravity (the image of God in fallen man is marred, but not obliterated),
prevenient grace (God’s freeing grace is available to all), and continued choice, (opposition to
once-saved, always saved.)
These points have obvious implications for theodicy. Especially the notions of
conditional election and unlimited atonement—the view that God has made a way for all to
be saved, and the choice is in their hands as to whether to respond to the grace he has
given—paint a different picture of God than the Calvinist view that Christ’s atonement was
made only for an arbitrarily chosen elect.
One of the Remonstrants, a talented thinker by the name of Hugo Grotius, wove the
ideas of the nature of God, the general atonement, and human freedom into a larger
conception known as the moral government of God. Grotius, a well-known name in legal
circles, is considered the father of international law, the law of war and peace, and Protestant
conceptions of natural law. In his day, he was equally famous for this theological writings. 20
Grotius was convicted and imprisoned by strict Calvinists for heresy in supporting
Arminius and his belief’s about freedom of the will and conditional predestination. He
escaped from a life of imprisonment by hiding in a trunk that was supposedly carrying his
books out of prison. But he did not escape until he had written a defense of Christianity
entitled The Truth of the Christian Religion. It is considered the first book of modern
7
apologetics, and explains and justifies the Bible and Christianity in comparison to other
world religions. 21
He also wrote another book entitled Concerning the Satisfaction of Christ, in which he
explored theories of Christ’s atonement in light of the moral government of God that
Arminius’ free-will theology brought to light. Grotius brought his legal background to bear,
constructing what came to be known as the moral government theory of the atonement,
which emphasized God’s fairness in government and human choice in response to Christ’s
atonement. (This is at times confused with the moral influence theory of the atonement, but
the two are very separate ideas as we will see below.) 22
The moral government atonement is best understood in relation to previous views. It did
not so much displace these, as it clarified, refined, and restated them. Anselm had famously
argued that Christ must die in our place to satisfy the impaired honor of God. Calvin had
modified this somewhat to make the necessity of Christ’s substitution come in response to
the offended law and holiness of God. The death of Christ provides satisfaction to the
offended holiness, law, or justice of God, as somehow, mysteriously, our guilt, sin, and
punishment are transferred to Christ. 23
Grotious did not deny God’s honor, or holiness, or justice or law were implicated in the
atonement. He accepted that these had indeed been breached and offended by sin. Rather,
he answered the question as to why God could not forgive this breach by merely accepting
the genuine sorrow and repentance of the sinner. Humans can extend forgiveness without
requiring sacrifice or suffering, why cannot God? This was the question that Faustus Socinius
was asking, and to which Grotius responded. 24
God could not merely freely forgive the sinner, Grotius pointed out, because it was
not his role merely as an individual offended Deity that was involved. Rather it involved His
role as Ruler of the universe—a universe that can only function in peace and safety according
to certain principles of fairness and justice.
This shift of God from offended Being, to offended Ruler, means that in enforcing
His law, He is not doing it out of some personal sense of pique, or pride, or impaired glory.
Rather, he is acting on behalf of the benefit of all the beings of the universe that depend on
the stability, fairness, and morality of His government. In defending His honor, His character,
8
He defends, as Ruler of the Universe, the very thing that allows the universe itself to have
order, stability, security, peace, and, of course, love. 25
Grotius applied these insights regarding God’s government to help explain some of the
mysteries surrounding the atonement. But the framework he created in doing so helped
provide a foundation and basis to deal with many other issues as well, such as the relation of
God to sin, evil, justice, and love. In the moral government of God, he articulated the basic
framework required for a larger understanding of the mutual and reciprocal relationship
between God’s justice and love in the eyes of an onlooking universe that had true moral
agency and obligation.
Why must God show that he is a fair, just, and loving, and not an arbitrary ruler?
Because he cares about the opinions and good will of the onlooking universe. He is willing to
have His government, His laws, which reflect His character, examined and evaluated by His
created beings. This understanding of God’s sovereignty and justice in relation to human
free will was the key that unlocked the door to the moral government of God; this conception
of God’s government provided the framework for evangelical Christians insisting that human
governments must act with morality and even love towards its citizens. But how did the
Arminian/Grotian framework make its way to America?
The Influence of Grotius in England and Early America
Grotius exerted meaningful influence in the theological arena for quite some time. John
Milton, who when he was on a tour of Europe as a young gentleman in 1638 stayed with
Hugo Grotius in Paris for a period. Milton had a strong Calvinist, Puritan background, and yet
emerged as a believer in freedom of the will, unlimited atonement, and very definitely the
moral government of God. His Paradise Lost, of course, was written with the specific purpose
to “Justify the ways of God in the eyes of men.” Milton’s defense of God’s ways and judgments
is not a Calvinist ideal, which would have emphasized God’s sovereignty. It is, though, a very
Arminian, Grotian, moral government of God view of the world.
Another well-known inheritor of Grotius’ teachings was John Wesley, the founder of
Methodism. Wesley’s parents, Samuel and Susanna, were supporters of Anglican
Arminianism. Samuel’s favorite biblical commentator was Hugo Grotius, and he
recommended him to John. The writings of Grotius came to be a great theological resource
for Wesley and his friends at Oxford University. 26
9
Through Wesley, Methodism came to inherit both Arminius’ views on prevenient grace
and freedom of the will, as well as Grotius’s views on the moral government of God. Richard
Watson, the Methodist theological systematizer, wrote in 1823 that “the existence of a Divine
Law, obligatory upon man, is not doubted by any who admit the existence and government of
God. . . . It is important to keep in view the fact of the extent and severity of the punishment
denounced against all transgressions of the law of God, because this is illustrative of the
character of God; both with reference to his essential holiness and to his proceedings as
Governor of the Universe.” 27
This introduction of the character of God, not original with Watson as we shall see, helps
answer one of the trickier conundrums of the, Arminian, anti-voluntarist position. If God’s
will and power does not define God, but God only does those things that are good, then is God
somehow obligated to a law or morality higher than Himself? Is there something greater
than God? The riddle is solved if the laws He is bound by are the actual principles of His own
character and nature.
It is of great interest to note that those that advocated freedom of human choice
and the fact of God’s moral government also began to seek civil freedoms and to expect
higher standards of morality from human governments. Methodists were against slavery
from near their beginnings. William Wilberforce, the great British parliamentarian who
ended the British slave trade, was raised a Methodist as a young man. Later in life, after his
adult conversion, he associated with non-conformist ministers, including Methodists, who
opposed slavery. In the middle of his fight against the slave trade, Wilberforce received what
may have been the last letter that John Wesley ever wrote, encouraging him to do all he could
to end the slave trade. 28
American Methodists voted in 1784 to expel members who bought and sold slaves. They
later yielded to political and economic pressure to accept slavery in the South. But under the
reviving influences of the Second Great Awakening, they once again renewed their
commitments to oppose slavery. In 1844, the American Methodist expelled those parts of the
church that continued to support slavery.
Interestingly, this anti-slavery stance came to be shared by the other branch of moral
government of God influence that came into America. This branch, ironically, developed
within the reformed churches, and became a renewal movement within American
10
Congregationalism and Presbyterianism. Grotius’s theology had deep roots in American
puritanism. Grotius’s works were read in New England as early as the 1650s, and a copy of
his Satisfaction was in the Harvard College Library by 1723. Grotius was also widely quoted
in writings of the Puritan Richard Baxter, who was widely read in New England. 29
It would be a separate story to trace the manner in which the New England divines
largely rejected Arminianism in terms of will and predestination, but were influenced and
eventually embraced notions of God’s moral government in relation to the atonement. 30 This
combination of predestination and God’s moral government was an unstable coalition of
thought. But while it lasted, its exponents introduced the importance of God’s character in
defining the laws of His universe.
New England minister Samuel Hopkins wrote that the law of God is “an eternal,
unalterable rule of righteousness which cannot be abrogated or altered . . . consistent with
His character, his perfect rectitude and righteousness.” To do so would “put an end to all
perfect moral government . . . and give full scope to the reign of rebellion, confusion, and
misery forever.” 31 In Hopkins writing, the need to maintain “the law is made more evident,
and grounded upon a deeper thought than Grotius reached, who neglected to state the
relation existing between the government and the character of God.” 32
It is notable that the New England theologians who embraced and developed the
moral government theology were, like their Arminian cousins, also involved in anti-slavery
advocacy. The previous generation of Puritans had not said much about slavery. Indeed,
Jonathan Edwards senior had owned slaves and written in defense of the practice. But the
moral government of God elevated the positions of all humans, making them all reasoned
participants in an examination of heavenly government. Thus, all were owed reasoned and
fair treatment on this earth. And if God’s government operated in a moral fashion, how could
human governments be excused from doing so? 33 Both Hopkins and his moral government
ally Jonathan Edwards, Jr., wrote major treatises opposing both slavery and the slave trade. 34
But the tension between a commitment to predestination, which elevated God’s
arbitrary aspects, and God’s moral government, which focused on his fairness, was pushing
reformed theology to a point of crisis. The first outbreak in an ongoing conflict between
reformed traditionalists and free-will oriented revivalists came in the early 1800s, in the
events surrounding the Cane Ridge and similar revivals. Out of this conflict emerged the
11
Restorationist denominations of the Christian Connection and the Disciples of Christ, led by
former Presbyterians like Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell. 35 (A point of interest: these
movements were the forebears of those that founded Pepperdine University.)
The next phase of the conflict came towards the end of the Second Great Awakening in
the rise of the New Haven theology and New School Presbyterianism in the 1820s and 30s.
These movements were the immediate theological context of the latter part of the Second
Great Awakening, the period that most directly influenced popular theology just prior to the
Civil War.
The New Haven Theology, New School Presbyterianism, and the Matrix of
Protestant Abolitionism
The theologian at center of the New School movement was Nathaniel Taylor, professor of
theology at Yale University from 1822 to 1858. Taylor was a biblically conservative and
devout Congregationalist teaching from within the reformed tradition. But he built on the
insights of Edwards Jr. and Hopkins, and followed the moral government of God theory to its
logical conclusions. That is, he believed and taught that a truly moral God would provide
opportunity for all to be saved.
Taylor’s listeners attested to both his piety and his passion for the Moral Government of
God. As one put it, “The Moral government of God was the great thought of Dr. Taylor’s
intellect, and the favorite them of his instructions in theology. It occupied his mind more
than any other subject . . . . This object directed all his studies. All his investigations had
their starting point from this central theme.” Another former student said, “while lecturing,
his voice often trembled, and at times the tears would start, especially when speaking of the
moral government of God.” 36
For Taylor, it was an understanding of the absolute morality and fairness of God’s
government that stood against the claims of high Calvinism that only an elect had an
opportunity for salvation. He came to embrace a general view of the atonement, that Christ
died for all. For Taylor, this was the good news of God’s moral government. As he put it: “Let
. . . the impression be made full, strong, unqualified on every guilty mind, that God in his law,
and God in the invitations of his mercy, means exactly what he says. Let the full-orbed
sincerity of a redeeming God, like the sun in mid-heaven, be made to pour its melting beams
on the dark and guilty mind of the sinner against God. . . .” 37
12
Taylor regularly taught a class entitled the Moral Government of God, and these lectures
were collected and placed into a volume bearing the same name. He impacted a generation
of Presbyterian pastors and theologians, including men like Charles Finney, the great
evangelist of the Second Great Awakening, and Albert Barnes, the biblical commentator. The
result of this influence was to create a temporary split in the leading reformed Presbyterian
and Congregational churches. The community divided into New Haven/New School
Presbyterianism versus the Old School churches that continue to toe the reformed, limited
atonement, predestinarian orthodoxies.
Barnes was the expositor/writer whose commentaries, which forcefully encapsulated the
moral government theory, had wide and long lasting popular impact. It is estimated that his
Notes on the New Testament had sold nearly a million copies by the end of the 19th century.
This is remarkable number for a commentary for that age or any age, and shows the breadth
of his influence, which went far beyond the walls of his Presbyterian denomination. 38 Early
in his career in 1836, Barnes was tried for heresy because of his embrace of New School
principles of unlimited atonement and freedom of the will, key aspects of the moral
government of God framework. He was acquitted, but the event hastened the split between
New School and Old School Presbyterianism.
The version of the moral government of God theology propounded by the New
School proponents led them to be generally more opposed to slavery then their theological
opponents. Barnes wrote two major works against slavery in the period leading up to the
Civil War. On the contrary, Barnes’ leading Old School opponent, professor Charles Hodge of
Princeton, opposed not only Hodge’s theological principles, but also wrote in defense of the
institution of slavery. While Hodge criticized what he viewed as the South’s abuse of slaves,
he in fact owned slaves himself.
Another important New School figure was Charles Finney, the evangelist of the
moral government movement. Finney was known for his emotional revival preaching, and
for his connecting the gospel with social reform movements, such as temperance,
prohibition, and abolition. He frequently denounced slavery from the pulpit, and was
instrumental in the founding of Oberlin College, which was formed in part to openly support
the abolition movement. Finney was first a professor at Oberlin, and then served as its
second president for fifteen years, before and during the Civil War.
13
The impact of the New School theology went far beyond Congregational and Presbyterian
boundaries. The revivals of the Awakening period were eclectic affairs, and the growth of
historically reformed churches, such as the particular Baptists, began to take on a New
School/moral government of God hue. 39 This can particularly be seen in the African
American Baptist churches, which despite their reformed roots, generally came to be
characterized by a free-will, moral government atonement outlook.
The Methodists, of course, had come to the general atonement/moral government
outlook many years earlier. The result was that by the mid 19th century, the religious
landscape, especially in the north, was dominated by churches that had embraced a free-will,
moral government outlook. This of course stood in contrast to a hundred years earlier where
reformed churches deeply committed to the particular atonement and the sovereignty of
God’s election held sway. In 1760 the Methodists did not exist (they did not organize in
America until 1784), the Baptists had about 250 churches (most of which were strongly
reformed, except for a few in Maine and New Hampshire), the Presbyterians had 350
churches, and the Congregationalists more than 600. The largest arguably free will group
were the Anglicans at about 300 churches, but these obviously declined dramatically with
the onset of the Revolutionary war. 40
A hundred years later, the situation had been turned on its head. The Methodists alone
had two million members, which was about three times as many as the Presbyterians,
Congregationalists, and other reformed churches combined. But because of the New
School/Old School split, nearly half of the Presbyterian/Congregationalist numbers could no
longer be viewed as in the traditional reformed camp, but had embraced a free-will, general
atonement orientation. The Baptists were closest to the Methodists, with about one million
members. Here again, while early American Baptists had been largely predestinarian and
reformed, by the mid-19th century, they too had been influenced by the New School
preaching. This was especially true of the black Baptist churches. 41 The free will Protestant
influence was rounded out by the growing Disciples, Christians, and Churches of Christ,
which were approaching half a million, and by the various Pietist and Anabaptists groups
dotting the nation. 42
This demographic and religious shift meant that, by the mid 19th century, the patron
reformers of the religion of most Americans, especially in the north, were Jacob Arminius and
14
Hugo Grotius, rather than John Calvin and Theodore Beza. In Puritan New England, Calvin
and Beza had had their day as the American theological muses. But during the years of the
early republic, it was the reformers from the Netherlands, especially as interpreted by John
Wesley, that held theological sway. This American Arminian synthesis was a religion that
emphasized God’s love and fairness, personal agency, moral accountability, and thus the
possibility of both personal and societal change. It is this that explains, at least in part, the
flood of social reform movements associate with the Second Great Awakening.
Of course, for those that refused to change and embrace new moral possibilities,
there was always the reality of judgment, both in this world, and the world to come. This
judgment, however, was far from being arbitrary and fore-ordained. Rather, it was
contingent and shaped by a justice that appealed to notions of reason and fairness. This
justice, and the resulting judgment, could thus co-exist with, and even flow from, conceptions
of a good and loving God.
And thus we return to the speech where Lincoln tried to shape America’s future. It
was the second of a pair of speeches—one looking back, the other looking forward. Gary
Wills has evocatively termed the Gettysburg Address the “words that re-made America.” 43
Wills argues that at Gettysburg, Lincoln took an ambiguous American past—including a
constitution built on the compromise of slavery—and re-shaped it in the light of the
Declaration of Independence which insisted that all men, and women, were created equal.
The North’s victory of arms in the Civil War allowed this vision to be slowly and
imperfectly implemented. But it was Lincoln’s speech that justified for posterity this
implementation. The sentiments of the speech are what has caused, at least in part, the Civil
War to stay a historic artifact, rather than an ongoing, live conflict. Nearly all of us recognize
that Lincoln was right: the fundamental truths of the Declaration mean that his vision of
America as a nation based on a commitment to human equality and freedom is correct.
But the nation did not readily grasp the truths of Lincoln’s second, forward-
looking speech. His hope for a charitable reconstruction basically died with him, as less well-
intentioned political forces shaped the post-war South. It was another hundred years before
America began to come to terms with Lincoln’s vision, as it was recast by a new civil rights
movement and its leaders. But I think we still fail to fully grasp Lincoln’s point that equality
15
needs to be implemented not merely with justice, but with love—the virtue, the agapay, not
the mere passion and passing feeling.
I think we would have to agree that it is certainly missing from our political
discourse today. There are any number of problems, including health care, immigration,
welfare reform, that would appear to be tractable, if people acted towards their opponents
out of a spirit of charity. But rather than attempting to take a disinterested view of how to
benefit and care for all, we are a society consumed with seeking justice, but primarily for
ourselves and our kin first. “No Justice, No Peace,” is the cry of the modern-day activist,
hurrying to man, and woman, the barricades at the latest battle lines. But the truth is, as
Lincoln understood, without “charity for all,” there will be no peaceful resolution to the
issues that divide us.
This is not a pollyanish call for resolving differences by holding hands, singing of
kumbya, and engaging in therapeutic group hugs. Rather, it is a call for the recognition that
justice and love are not in opposition. Rather, they are contours of the same transcendent
value. An attempt to care about the well-being of others, friends and foe alike, as both a
personal and political habit is the first step to actually getting justice right—which alone can
serve as the foundation for, as Lincoln put it, “a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves,
and with all nations.” 44
http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres32.html (viewed on 1/28/2014).
Compare Aquinas’s on love, http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2026.htm, with
his views on charity, http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3023.htm. (accessed on
1/28/2014).
3 http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres32.html (viewed on 1/28/2014).
4 Mark Noll, The Civil War as Theological Crisis (The University of North Carolina
Press, 2006).
5 Gerhard O. Forde, The Captivation of the Will: Luther v. Erasmus on Freedom and
Bondage (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2005), 37.
6 Timothy Wengert, “We Will Feast Together in Heaven Forever”: The Epistolary
Friendship of John Calvin and Philip Melanchthon,” in Melanchthon in Europe: His
Work and Influence Beyond Wittenberg, ed. Karin Maag (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker
Books, 1999), 26-29.
7 George Huntson Williams, The Radical Reformation, 3rd ed. (Kirksville, MO: Truman
State University Press, 2000), 257-258.
8 Ibid., 257, n. 28.
1
2
16
Hubmaier had an unusual view of the human’s spirit-will not participating in the
fall, but this meant nothing and could not operate until the fallen soul received
regeneration through Christ. Ibid., 335.
10 Henry Clay Vedder, Balthasar Hubmaier: The Leader of the Anabaptists (New York,
NY: G. Putnam’s Sons, the Knickerbocker Press, 1905), 197.
11 Williams, The Radical Reformation, 335.
12 Cornelius J. Dyck, An Introduction to Mennonite History, 3rd ed. (Scottdale, PA:
Herald Press, 1993), 142; C. Arnold Snyder, Anabaptist History and Theology: An
Introduction (Kitchener, Ontario: Pandora Press, 1995), 89-90.
13 Carl Bangs, Arminius: A Study in the Dutch Reformation (Eugene, OR: Wipf and
Stock Publishers, 1985), 169-171, 193-194.
14 Roger E. Olson, The Story of Christian Theology: Twenty Centuries of Tradition &
Reform (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999), 467.
15 Olsen, The Story of Christian Theology, 387-388 (Luther), 410-411 (Calvin).
16 Jacob Arminius, Works of Jacob Arminius, Vol. 1 (Montoursville, PA: Lamppost
Books, 2009), 12.
17 Ibid., 13
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid., 15.
20 J.B. Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy (New York, NY: Cambridge University
Press, 1998), 66-67.
21 Ibid., 68.
22 Hugo Grotius, A Defence of the Catholic Faith Concerning the Satisfaction of Christ
against Faustus Socinus, transl. and introduction, Frank Hugh Foster (Andover:
Warren F. Draper, 1889).
23 Foster, Frank H. “A Brief Introductory Sketch,” Ibid., xi-xiv.
24 Ibid., xv.
25 Ibid., xvi.
26 See Richard P. Heitzenrater, ed., Diary of an Oxford Methodist: Benjamin Ingham,
1733-34 (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 1985).
27 Richard Watson, Theological Institutes; or a View of the Evidences, Doctrines,
Morals, and Institutions of Christianity (New York, NY: J. Emory and B. Waugh, 1831),
254 (emphasis added).
28 In his letter, Wesley wrote: “Unless the divine power has raised you up to be as
Athanasius [against the world] in opposing that execrable villainy which is the
scandal of religion, of England, and of human nature. Unless God has raised you up
for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils. But if
God be for you, who can be against you? Are all of them together stronger than God?
O be not weary of well doing! Go on, in the name of God and in the power of his
might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away
before it.” John Wesley to William Wilberforce, February 24, 1791, quoted in Eric
Metaxas, Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End
Slavery (Toronto, ON: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007), 144.
9
17
Frank H. Foster, “Historical Introduction,” in Hugo Grotius, A Defense of the
Catholic Faith concerning the Satisfaction of Christ against Faustus Socinus, trans.
Frank H. Foster (Andover: Warren F. Draper, 1889), xliv.
30 Ibid., xliii-lvi.
31 Ibid., xlviii.
32 Ibid., xlix.
33 A good discussion of the arguments of Edwards Jr. and Hopkins can be found in a
presently unpublished paper submitted for my Seminar in History of American
Religious Thought at Andrews University by Andrew Blosser, entitled
“Edwardeanism, Govermental Atonement Theology, and Slavery,” April, 2013.
34 Jonathan Edwards, Jr., “The Injustice and Impolicy of the Slave Trade, and of
Slavery,” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, edited by Bruce Kuklick, 2 (New York,
NY: Garland, 1987); Hopkins, Samuel, “A Dialogue Concerning the Slavery of the
Africans,” in The Anti-Slavery Crusade in America, eds., J. Mcpherson and W. Katz.
(New York, NY: Arno Press 1969).
35 Gaustad, Edwin & Barlow, Philip, eds., New Historical Atlas of Religion in America
(New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2001), 178.
36 Douglas A. Sweeney, Nathaniel Taylor, New Haven Theology, and the Legacy of
Jonathan Edwards (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2003), 91.
37 Nathaniel Taylor, “The Peculiar Power of the Gospel on the Human Mind,” 23-24,
quoted in, Sweeney, Nathaniel Taylor, 91.
38 T.H. Olbricht, “Barnes, Albert (1798-1870),” in Historical Handbook of Major
Biblical Interpreters, ed. Donald K. McKim (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press,
1998), 281-284.
39 Gaustad, Edwin & Barlow, Philip, eds., New Historical Atlas of Religion in America
(New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2001), 79.
40 Gaustad, Edwin & Barlow, Philip, eds., New Historical Atlas of Religion in America
(New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2001), 9.
41 Ibid., 374.
42 Ibid., 179,
43 Garry Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America (New York,
NY: Simon & Schuster, 1992).
44 Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, quoted in, Ibid., 188.
29
18