1998 Issue 3 - Southern Presbyterian Distinctives - Counsel of Chalcedon

8/12/2019 1998 Issue 3 - Southern Presbyterian Distinctives - Counsel of Chalcedon

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The ,root of our English word

culture

is

the'Latin ' ~ c u l t u s .

which

to

the

Romans signified

worship of the divine. This reminds

us of the foundauoti of culture'

which is so

often forgotten

in

our

day.

As

Russell Kirk and

others

have noted, culture arises from the

cult;

that

is, people are joined

t o g t h ~ r in

worship, and out of

theirreligious association grows the

organized human'community,,

(America's British Culture,

p.l

Culture implies far more than a

common food, dress, or accent. It

implies a common way of life,

common standards, a common

wiirldview if you will. But

thiS commonality

s

founded

ultimately

not

upon

e onomi status race or

nationality, but, as our word

indicates, a common faith.

Christopher ~ w s o n puts it

this way, It is clear that a

cOlflmon way of lifeinvolves a

ommon

view of life commoQ.

standards of behavior, and common

standards of value, and

consequendy a culture is a spiritual

community which owes its unity to

common beliefs and common ways

of

thought

far more than to any

unanimity

of

physical

type ...Therefore from the

beginning the social way of life

which

is

culture

has

been,

deliberately ordered

and

directed

in

accordance with the higher la. vs of

life which are religion.': (Ibid., p.2)

AbrahainKuyper, prime

minister

of

the

Netherlands,

newspaperman, educator; and

theolOgian of the early part of this

century,pui

its Similarly though far

more

succincdy, Culture is religion

externalized. The most important

factor in the formation of a culture

is the predominant faith of the

people. The foundation of Western

culture is Christianity and

in

this

country, Protestant Christianity of

the

Reformation type. This is the

central issue in the preservation and

restoration of a culture.

The religion of the South which

must be credited preeminendy for

the production of the Southern

culture, was not of the modem,

saccharoid, idiocy that is based on

the latest chill or'

hot

flash

reverend prophet receives, Rather,

it was robust, substantial, bradng ,

full of the realities of earth and

heaven, as set forth in God's holy

and inspired Word.

It

was imbued

with a stoutness, a Weightiness and

true manliness that only eternal

truth can produce. Its noble goal

was to promote truth, justice,

and

mercy not to produce nice people

who endure treachety and tolerate

ungodly tyranny with a smiley

face.

This faith reared a generation of

men

and women who knew what it

was to suffer without complaining

and to gain victory without

gloating, They understood the

difference between sacrifice and

self-serving indulgence. They knew

by experience what it meant to

maintain their integrity at the price

of their popularity. They knew that

true nobility was founded upon

righteousness

not

success.

[As R.L.

Dabney once said, It is only the

atheistwho adopts success

as

the

criterion of right. ] Most of all, they

learned to fear God and

consequendy feared nothing else.

All lessons, which

I

fear, that have

been long forgotten by many of

their descendants,

This foundation has never been

totally deStroyed. It has always

been

present to a greater or lesser degree

66

~ T H COUNSEL

of

Cbalcedon Jnile{July 1998'

in the South, though it has waxed

and waned The high level of

faithfulness in the early 17th

century was lost sometime in the

latter part of that century

but

was

revived during the Great

Awakening of the 18th, under the

majestic preaching of George

Whitefield.

By

the 1790's however,

the faith had waned again. So much

so that at the beginning of the 19th

century the South could

be

called

one of the most unchurched

sections of the country, only one

southerner in ten was a church

member. Religious apathy and

spiritual declension characterized

the region,

But this all changed as

the 19th century

progressed. God revived

the true faith again and by

the 1830's the South had

become the most strongly

evangelical section of the

country. The Second Great

Awakening was not especially noted

for its orthodoxy

in

the Midwest

and Northeast (and even some

sections orthe upper South), but it

took

on

a different character

in

the

South as a whole.

Charles Finney's humariistic

revivalism which dominated the

Midwest and the Northeast never

found ready reception in the South

at large. The Southern Christian

leaders were of a different sort

altogether thanMr Finney and his

Ohio brethren. Daniel Baker,James

HenleyThornwell, Benjamin

Morgan Palmer, Robert Louis

Dabney, John Holt Rice, Thomas

Peck, Moses Drury Hoge;

and

many, many other great and faithful

men

held reins of the Southern

revival and by their sound

instruction and expository

preaching prevented the movement

from being corrupted by the

unscriptural practices and

fanaticism that dominated the

Northern revivals. True revivals,


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they said,

were

God-sent

not man

produced

as Finney and his

followers insisted. Revivals could

not

be

planned

or scheduled,

nor

could they be

prolonged

by

artificial means. They could only be

gratefully received

and

rejoiced

over.

These

two

contrasting views

ought

not to be dismissed as

insignificant or irrelevant. The one

focused upon man's ability to

manipulate God and

thus produce

reform

by his own

efforts. The

other insisted upon man's utter

dependence upon

God and

produced men

who

trusted in God

to bring about reformation in the

world.

The

Southern

men

advocated faithful adherence

to the Word of God,

recognizing that nothing

could

be accomplished apart

from His blessing. These two

contrasting perspectives

would

bare quite different

fruit for each region. Dependence

upon God and strict adherence to

God's

means

as set forth in His

Word, became

characteristic of

Southern

Christianity. Political

coercion in

the

name of

God

became

the

hallmark of the North.

The orthodoxy

of the

South

contrasted in quite a few other ways

from

the

prevailing spirit of the

North.

The

rationalism o f the

Northern

Unitarianism

with

its

detached, Stoic propriety

and

the

polite, lecture-like quality of the

sermons was

quite different from

the

warm-blooded

preaching

and

affection for

the

Savior that this

preaching produced across the

South.

The contrast

was manifest

to

travelers in both regions. A writer

in

the

Presbyterian Advocate

in

1830

gave this comparison

between

the

preaching in

New England

and

that

of the Southern

states:

There

[Le., in New England]

the preachers write their sermons

and read them to their

audience; .. [the style] is chaste,

argumentative

but

wanting in

animation.

The

style [in the South]

is unequal, often incorrect,

but

animated vehement and

powerful...Which

on

the whole are

the

most useful

it

is difficult

to

decide. For

instruction

the former

excel; for delight

we would

listen

to

the latter. (Ernest T. Thompson,

Presbyterians in

the

South, va . I, p.

221)

William Plummer, pastor for

many years at the First Presbyterian

Church

at Richmond, was replaced

after his departure

by

a northerner.

The northern replacement, we are

told,

had

a

good and

highly

cultivated

mind

and his sermons

instructed and pleased, but says

Moses Hoge (who

was

a student in

Richmond

at

the time

and

faithful

attendant at First Presbyterian),

they were not

Southern

sermons.

There

were

no bursts of passion

no involuntary emotion no sudden

and splendid inspiration, bearing a

man

away from

his

manuscript and

from his commonplaces as in a

chariot of fire. Yankees, said

Hoge, seem

to

say

good

things

because they have

studied

them.

Southern

men

say

good

things as if

they could

not

help

it.

(Quoted

by

Anne C. Loveland,

Southern

Evangelicals and

the

Social Order,

p.41

There was a reason for this

animation of

Southern

preachers.

They believed themselves to

be

dying men speaking to dying men.

They

were setting forth matters of

life and death. Who

can

be

. detached

and

professional

when

dealing

with

truths which

have to

do with

life

and

death? The passion

of these men often made

Northerners feel out of place.

William Henry

Foote

wrote

of

George Baxter, who

was President

of

Washington

College at the time,

I have never known any minister

of

the

gospel who so

often shed

tears in

the pulpit. t was very

common

for

his

voice

to

falter, and

become

tremulous from the

swelling

tide of his strong emotions,

especially

when

speaking

of the

suffering

of

Christ,

or when

warning sinners to flee from the

wrath to

come.

(Thompson,

Presbyterians in

the South, p. 220)

The

truth

of God so could not be

spoken

as if

it

were bare

statistics or a report

of some

business that had been

carried out in a foreign land.

Moses Hoge having

listened

to

a number of

Northern sermons, longed

for the good

old

fire of Southern

preachers. In

the same letter

previously

quoted,

he went

on

to

say the he

longed to

hear Dr.

Plummer

preach

again, I

am

hungry to hear him

roar once

more.

I

wasn t

to see

his eyes

glare and his

hair

stand

up on end.

It

will

refresh

me to

see him foam

at the mouth

again. (Ibid.) I

dare

say,

this would

have

been something

rarely

seen

in

New

England.

Sermons in

the South were

not

dry, abstract disquisitions on

the

latest philosophical

speculations

that

might

have

cropped

up in

the

fevered

brains of corrupt

and self

important men as you might have

heard

at

the North. Northern

sermons were

calculated

to

platter

the

intellect. Southern sermons

sought

to

change the heart. Not that

Southerners

ignored the

intellect,

they didn't,

but

they realized that

unless a man s heart is

changed, he

will ignore

even

what

his mind is

convinced is true. One

historian has

J u n ~ u y

998

TIlE COUNSEL

of Chalcedon

67


3/4

noted, "Every sermon, whether

Presbyterian, Methodist, or Baptist,

preached

both

doctrines and duties

and

was addressed not only to the

underStandings

but

to the hearts

and consciertces of the

congregation.' (Ibid., p 42

William Hill, long time pastor

in

Wincheste r, VA, "stormed the soul

through the passions, and overawed

the judgment by the force of his

appeals.,.His views

of

things were

vivid. .his

gush

of feeling

overwhelming . n public bodies

and in

private circles,

by

his

powerful appeals

to

the strong

passions, by his wit and humor, by

his confident and yielding manner,

Mr. Hill

would

make his hearers

feel

that what

was uttered by

him

was

the voice of their own heart

and

judgment, perhaps in sweeter

terms

than

they

had

ever before

heard

.. (Ibid.)

The preaching of the Word was

viewed

as

the "chief means

by

which

men

were changed.

Not

legislation

and

social movements

but

the Truths

of

God proclaimed

faithfully to the consciences of men

were the instruments of reform.

Arid reform always began from

within man by

grace, not outside

of

him by

force.

The

South

believed

the

Bible to

be the very

Word

of God written. t

was infallible, inspired,inerrant, and

authoritative

in

all area.s

of

life and

thought. Benjamin Morgan Palmer

(long

time

pastor

of the First

Presbyterian

Church of New

Orleans) echoed the widely

acceptednotion that the minister is

a "messenger from God whose

duty,

said

Palmer, was "to speak

only

the word that is

put

into his

mouth. That

is, the

job of

the

minister is not to tell

us

of his latest

dreams and imaginations, or of his

opinions of

world events

nor

is

it

to

display

his

grasp of current

piobleIIlS. He has

but

one job --.: to

expound and apply the Word God

has

giv n

to us. His sole care, said

Palmer, "must

be

tb inquire

what

God the Lord will say." He is "to

study God's Book; to expound its

doctrines, to enforce its precepts, to

urge its motives, to present its

promises to

reCite

its warnings, to

declare its

judgments.

(Ibid., p.

42)

Southern ministers spent their

energies

in

explaining

and

applying

the great truths

of

Scriptures, the

sovereignty of God, the depravity of

man, the divine election of grace,

the atoning death

of

Christ, the call

to repentance and justification by

faith.

The doctrines palatable in the

North, however, were quite

different

than

those received

in

the

South; The old Calvinism which

proclaimed a sovereign, majestic

God who ruled over all and gave

mercy to whom He pleased was

anathema

in

the

North

where the

sovereign God had been replaced

with the sovereign, sinless man.

Harriet Beecher Stowe once

remarked that

in

Boston, "the only

thing worse than

an

atheist was a

Calvinist.' The biblical teaching of

human

depravity which Uiuminates

the lie of humanism old and new,

was equally offensive to themodern

Northern

sensibilitIes. Man was

basically good, they believed. "Sin'

so called, was the consequence of

inadequate education and unseemly

surrourtdings, not some defect in

man

himself. Thus,

you

see, man's

problem was

not

seen

as

located

inside of him

but

outside,

in

society. Man was not saved by grace

but

by social and political reform.

These views, as we now know,

produced quite different political

sentiments

in

the two regions. The

South, influenced more and more

by

the old orthodoxy, believed that

God was sovereign. He alone

possessed unlimited authority

and

68 THE COUNSEL of Chalcedon

Juue/july 1998

He alone

could be

trusted with such

authority since He was spotlessly

holy, just, and good. They believed

therefore that God had ordained all

human institutions with strictly

limited authOrity and that if society

was to prosper each institution

(family, Church,

and

State)

must

abide

within

the limitations set

forth by God..

Further, the South believed that

man was basically sinful. Thus, his

need was the grace of God not

political

and

social reform.

Salvation w,," achieved yman's

efforts but mercifu,lly and freely

given by God

on

the basis of

Christ's work

in

the place of

sinners.

The North, rejecting

the

doctrine of man's depravity,

believed that the chief need of

man

was social and political reform -

precisely the sort of reform the

South opposed. Reform

beC mJ.e

the

"religion' of the North. Prison

reform, the abplition of capital

punishment, socialistic

experiments, the feminist

movement, the government school

movemel,lt,_

the temperance

movement, the movement to reform

working conditions and of course,

the abolition movement. The North

was movement

mad. -

And,

i

persuasion didn 't work(and it

seldom did) they freely resorted to

political and governmental force -

salvation would come whether men

liked it or not.

The fact that the ConStitution

forbade the Federal government to

act

in

these ways made little

difference to tnese "promoters of

progress.' lfthe literal language of .

the Constitution does

not

allow it,

the "spirit'

of

the Constitu,tion does

allow it. These men who

had

for

some time refused

to

interpret the

Bible faithfully in accordance with

its original intent, saw nothing at

all

wrong

in

interpreting the .

Constitution the same way.


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The growth of Unitarianism in

the North would also have

an

impact in the political sphere.

Clearly the departure from historic

Christianity would cause the

growth of a faith in man and his

goodness which gave much favor to

a radically democratic form of

government. But here I want to

focus upon the rejection of the

doctrine of the Trinity.

It is only within God Himself

tha t we find the solution to the

ancient question of the one and the

many. God is both one and three.

Both unity and diversity are equalJy

ultimate in Him. In Christian

cultures therefore, there

has

always

been a place for oneness (unity,

structure, form) and a place for

manyness (individualism and

diversity). Only in the Triune God

can we have find unity that does

not

annihilate legitimate diversity

and

vice verse. Only

in

Him and

His covenant can there be real unity

which preserves legitimate

diversity. Thus, only

in

a Christian

culture can you have unity AND

diversity, unity and freedom. In

imitation of the Triune God, there

is a unity of faith and purpose and

yet there is no demand for

uniformity of personality. There is a

unity without the assimilation of

the individual into the whole.

In unitarian and atheistic

cultures, you find just the opposite.

There

is

usually a demand for a

stifling egalitarian conformity

in

order to preserve unity.

Unitarianism views

od

not

as

a

Person,

but

as an impersonal force.

There

is

and can be no selfless

love within God (since His

monism makes such love

impossible) and thus, the culture,

reflecting this view of God,

becomes cruel and heartless. A

culture that refuses to recognize the

loving Trinity, seeks unity by force

(totalitarianism and statist

egalitarianism) and thus tends to be

characterized by harshness,

bitterness, and cruelty (as Islamic

and

communistic cultures

are

and

ever have been).

This gives us some additional

insight as to why the Unitarians of

the North, hated and sought by

overwhelming force to destroy

and

remake the old South (where this

Trinitarian principle of unity and

diversity was honored). Unbelievers

demand uniformity in faith. They

are threatened and frightened by

divergent beliefs and thus sooner or

later resort to force to bring about a

pseudo-unity.

True unity

is

founded not upon

impersonal or bureaucratic force

but

upon

the love and grace (the

personableness) ofthe Triune God.

Where this is lacking, there can

never be freedom, peace, or

prosperity.

This orthodoxy which pervaded

the South prior to the war was the

reason

for

the political views which

dominated the region as well. The

concepts of limited constitutional

government, a union made of free

and independent states, a hearty

distrust of democracy, strict

adherence to the Constitution, the

doctrine of the separation of

powers, the rules of justice, all these

distinctives

and many more which

distingUished our nation

in

its

founding are rooted

in

Christianity.

But even more important than

Christianity's influence

upon

our

political theory is the fact that it

molded a citizenry that was wilJing

and able to preserve this system of

liberty. The people who sat under

the preaching of such noble men as

Dabney, Hoge, Palmer, Thornwell,

Peck, and others were molded by

the Truths of God's Word. The

South became not just a

conservative region but a

distinctively Christian region. There

was reverence for God and the

Scriptures; marriage and family

were held in high esteem. The

region was characterized by

Christian generosity

and

hospitality;

honesty and integrity; and

resp

Documents

1998 Issue 3 - Southern Presbyterian Distinctives - Counsel of Chalcedon