Nathaniel William
Taylor (1786-1858) ***
Founder
of the New Haven Theology, he contributed to the rise of evangelical theology
by modifying or taking some of the errors out of Calvinism, and thus rendering
it compatible with revival in the opening decades of the nineteenth century. He
was born in 1786 in New Milford, Connecticut, into a family rich in both
material things and religious heritage. Taylor entered Yale in 1800, but an eye
ailment deferred his graduation until 1807.
Taylor
was profoundly influenced while a student by revivalist Timothy Dwight, the
president of Yale. Taylor lived with the Dwight family for two years after his
graduation, serving as the president's secretary and studying theology. In 1812
Taylor was ordained and installed at First Church in New Haven, the most
prestigious pulpit in the state, where he commanded admiration for ten years as
a preacher and defender of revivalism.
Taylor contributed by publishing his sermons as doctrinal tracts against
Old Calvinists, Episcopalians, and the growing Unitarian movement, all opposed
to the revival.
In
1822 Taylor was appointed Dwight Professor of Didactic Theology at Yale, where
he taught until his death in 1858. Taylor was prompted to revise Calvinism by
the increasing charges from Unitarians that Calvinistic determinism actually
promoted immorality by denying human freedom. In response to these attacks he
corrected the Reformed doctrines of revelation, human depravity, God's
sovereignty, Christ's atonement, and regeneration in order to harmonize
"flawed Calvinist theology" with actual revival practices (in other
words Calvinistic teachings in their purest form, stops revival, because
Calvinistic teaching is of men not God!) He accepted the realism that reason
provides not only proof of God's existence but also the first principles of
morality that make man a free, moral agent. He insisted that men are lost, but
denied that Adam's sin was imputed to all men and that everyone inherits a
sinful nature which causes one to sin. Even though a person sins, he has power
to do otherwise, thus remaining morally responsible. God made man with a proper
self-love, a natural desire for happiness, which motivates all choices.
Taylor
also corrected Calvin's teaching on God's sovereignty by calling God a moral
governor who rules, not by determining the destiny of all men through election,
but rather by establishing a moral universe and judging its inhabitants. God
promotes moral action by a system of means and ends in which man can respond to
ethical appeals for repentance. He opposed the legal view of the atonement that
stressed Christ's substitutionary death on the cross in the place of sinners to
satisfy God's justice. Instead, God as benevolent moral governor sent Christ to
die so that his death could be preached as a means to urge sinners to turn
freely from their sin out of self-love and be converted. Taylor altered the
distinction between the Holy Spirit's sovereign work of regeneration and human
repentance that Jonathan Edwards maintained in his defense of the First Great
Awakening in the 1740s. Taylor's
changes to Calvinism turns it into something that I think James Arminius might
agree with.
Taylor's
theology was popularized by revivalist
Charles G. Finney, who demonstrated wide appeal to New School Presbyterians and
Congregationalists anxious for revivals in their parishes. However, Old School
opponents such as Charles Hodge at Princeton Theological Seminary accused
Taylor of Pelagianism and defended
traditional Calvinism. (Hodge must not
of liked or wanted revival )
See
also NEW HAVEN THEOLOGY, Arminianism .