Life and Works of Horace Bushnell - Essay Example

He was not exact, but he put God and man and the world into a relation that thought can accept while it goes on to state it more fully with ever-growing knowledge. Other thinkers were moving in the same direction; he led the movement in New England and wrought out a great deliverance. It was a work of superb courage. Hardly a theologian in his denomination stood by him, and nearly all pronounced against him" (as cited in http://www.nndb.com/people/184/000102875).

An anti-Calvinist, he preached contrary to the theological notions of his time such as ideas relating to the Trinity, the atonement, conversion, and the relations of the natural and the supernatural. He also opposes the notion that theology can be explained logically and just like any intellectual activity. He believes that individual believers have a case-to-case and unique spiritual experience differing from each other based on their unique individual spiritual make-up (Sklansky, 2002).

Bushnell’s major ideas and convictions are explained and contained in his four books entitled: Christian Nurture (1847), Nature and the Supernatural (1858), The Vicarious Sacrifice (1866), and God in Christ (1849).

In Christian and Nature Bushnell discusses his opposition to revivalism and focuses the Christian thought on the youth. In this, he successfully influenced many minds. It explains the reasons why he does not agree with the emphasis the revivalists place on the conversion experience.

In Nature and the Supernatural, he discusses miracles and promotes the possibility of humans achieving supernatural qualities or the “supernaturalness of man”.

In addition, the book The Vicarious Sacrifice contains his so-called "moral view" of the atonement of Christ contrasting it with the "governmental" and the "penal" or "satisfaction" theories.

Moreover, in the book God in Christ, which contains an introductory entitled "Dissertation on Language as related to Thought," he is accused of being a heretic for he expresses a different view about the Trinity. He believes that the Godhead is not three but it is only a human interpretation of the unfathomable greatness of God. Human, in contrast to God, sees God differently because of his/her inferior comprehension of the supreme deity (Sklansky, 2002). It is said to have been published after his “mystical experience that illumined the gospel for him”.

Although there were times when he irked others so much, he was spared of trial because his church severed its links from the local group that may have power to press charges against him. In other words, his church stood autonomously of any association or the rules of any denominational group.

Furthermore, he was able to respond to his critics in his book Christ in Theology (1851). In it, he argues that spiritual facts cannot be discussed precisely by human language and logic. They can only be expressed in “approximate and poetical language”. He concludes by saying that “an adequate dogmatic theology cannot exist” (Sklansky, 2002).

It is in this book where Bushnell expounds and defends his position about language in theology, saying that much of it is metaphorical.

However, Horace Bushnell proves that he still adheres to and believes in the divinity of Christ as expressed in his writing entitled The Character of Jesus, forbidding his possible (Sklansky, 2002).

As a congregational minister and controversial theologian, he is sometimes called “the father of American religious liberalism.” Interestingly, he became a “major figure in US intellectual history” because “Bushnell stood between the orthodox tradition of Puritan New England and the new romantic impulses represented by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and especially Friedrich Schleiermacher” (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/86187/Horace-Bushnell).

Horace Bushnell can be seen as a man of great conviction and a person who is so driven and serious about his beliefs that he can stand boldly and go against the grain during his time. Although at present his theories can be easily understood and accepted, it must have taken him a lot of courage and strength to stand his ground in a time when he was the only one preaching such ideas.