Bushnell, Horace
BUSHNELL, HORACE (1802–1876), Congregational minister and theologian. Born in Bantam, Connecticut, and reared in nearby New Preston, Bushnell attended Yale College and the Law School in New Haven. Stirred by a revival that swept the college in 1831, he decided to enter Yale Divinity School. In 1833 he was ordained pastor of the North Church of Hartford. He experienced an extraordinary spiritual illumination in 1848, a year in which he was also invited to lecture at Harvard, Andover, and Yale. The books resulting from these lectures and from Bushnell's attempts to clarify and refine their content in the face of criticism (God in Christ, 1849, and Christ in Theology, 1851) stirred up a hornet's nest of controversy and brought charges of heresy from conservative churchmen. In 1858 Bushnell's Nature and the Supernatural was published, and Christian Nurture, probably his best-known work, appeared in 1861 (an earlier version had been published in 1847). Persistent health problems forced him to resign his North Church pastorate in April 1861, but he continued to be active during the last fifteen years of his life, preaching, lecturing, and producing such additional books as Work and Play (1864), Christ and His Salvation (1864), The Vicarious Sacrifice (1866), Moral Uses of Dark Things (1868), Forgiveness and Law (1874), and Building Eras in Religion (published posthumously in 1881).
Four traits of Bushnell's theological thought suggest something of the distinctive contribution he made to his times. The first is its high degree of originality. Bushnell did not prize originality for its own sake; he saw it as necessary for penetrating to the enduring heart of Christian teaching and rediscovering its relevance to the needs and concerns of human beings in a time of rapid change. Second, his theology was intended to be a mediating theology, one seeking grounds of consensus that could allay the spirit of divisiveness and contumely that marked so much of the theological debate of his day. Third, Bushnell held that religious doctrines are not meant to satisfy speculative curiosity. The decisive test of any doctrine is an experiential one, that is, the contributions it can make to the transformation of life and character. He insisted that divine revelation itself has this "instrumental" function (as he termed it), and that its import can be grasped only when it is approached with its practical end clearly in mind. Fourth, Bushnell tried to put theological discourse and method on a new footing by arguing that the language of religion, including that of the Bible, is the language of analogy, metaphor, and symbol, and that its function is to suggest and evoke truths and modes of awareness that cannot be literally expressed. Hence, its proper use and interpretation requires the imaginative skill of the poet or orator, not that of the abstract speculative reasoner. These ideas about theological language and method went much against the grain of the prevailing concept of theology in Bushnell's time, which was that theology should be an exact rational science, with precise definitions, finely drawn distinctions, and strict logical deductions.
Bushnell was one of the two most creative Protestant theologians in America prior to the twentieth century; the other was Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758). Bushnell's book on Christian nurture has exerted more influence on theories of Christian education among Protestants than any other work of recent times. His ideas on religious language anticipated much that is now being said about the crucial role of myth, symbol, story, and paradox in the discourse of the religions of the world. His fresh approaches sounded the death knell of the Edwardian Calvinism that was dominant in his day and had been so since the time of Jonathan Edwards, and they provided the point of departure for what came to be called the "new theology" of American Protestant liberalism. His critique of biblical literalism helped to pave the way for theological acceptance of the results of biblical criticism and for easier rapprochement between religion and science.
Bibliography
Cherry, Conrad. Nature and Religious Imagination: From Edwards to Bushnell. Philadelphia, 1980. Explores Jonathan Edwards's symbolic vision of nature and its religious meanings, shows how this vision suffered sharp decline among religious thinkers in New England after Edwards's death, and then exhibits the resurgence of a similar vision in the thought of Bushnell.
Crosby, Donald A. Horace Bushnell's Theory of Language. The Hague, 1975. Investigates Bushnell's theory of language and religious language in the context of other philosophies of language in nineteenth-century America, discussing its implications for theological content and method. Examines and evaluates reactions to Bushnell's language theory from his theological peers.
Dorrien, Gary. The Making of American Tribal Theology: Imagining Progressive Religion, 1805–1900. Louisville, Ky., 2001. Makes a detailed case for the singular historical importance of Bushnell's contributions to the emergence of American Protestant liberalism and argues that he should be recognized as America's greatest nineteenth-century theologian.
Edwards, Robert L. Of Singular Genius, of Singular Grace: A Biography of Horace Bushnell. Cleveland, Ohio, 1992. Engagingly written, thoroughly researched account of Bushnell's controversial life.
Smith, David L. Symbolism and Growth: The Religious Thought of Horace Bushnell. Chico, Calif., 1981. Argues that the principal focus of Bushnell's thought is his theory of how human beings influence each other through their social and linguistic interactions. Seeks to show how Bushnell used this theory to explain God's communications of himself for the purpose of nurturing and redeeming human character.
Smith, H. Shelton, ed. Horace Bushnell. New York, 1965. Valuable collection of some of Bushnell's most important writings, with informative general introduction and introductions to each selection. Includes an extensive bibliography of works by and about Bushnell.
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