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Ends and Means in Church History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 August 2022

Henry Warner Bowden
Henry Warner Bowden*
Affiliation:
Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey
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Extract

Presidents of our Society have usually delivered annual addresses based on some aspect of their research interests. Few of these customary presentations (13 of 80) have self-consciously grappled with questions of method, definition, or interpretation in the larger context of historiographical concerns. My effort tries to honor both precedents, reporting on my current studies of twentieth-century American church historians while making some normative observations on perennially difficult philosophical problems, particularly those dealing with sacred references in a secular framework. Some of you might think that speaking to historians about historical procedures comes close to violating the injunction in Exodus 23:19 against boiling a kid in its mother's milk. But I suggest that such an exercise is beneficial because all of us can derive greater professional awareness from surveying the options found in scholarly practices past and present.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , March 1985 , pp. 74 - 88
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1985

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Footnotes

This is his presidential address delivered at the annual meeting of the American Society of Church History, 28 December 1984.

References

1. James H. Nichols, “The Art of Church History, Churcli History 20 (1951): 9.

2. For other twentieth-century examples of the motif that stretched from Philip Schaff to James Nichols, see Peter K. Guitday, “The American Catholic Historical Association,“ Catholic Historical Review 6 (1920); 13-14; Robert H. Nichols, “Aims and Methods or Teaching Church History,” Papers of the American Society of Church History 7, 2d ser. (1923): 40-41, 47; and Edward P. Lilly, “A Major Problem for Catholic American Historians,” Catholic Historical Review 24 (1939): 434.

3. Most humanities-minded historians are detected by their definition of subject matter and their mode of study, but one scholar who stated his secular purpose explicitly was William A. Clcbsch, “Toward a History of Christianity,” Church History 43 (1974): 9.

4. See William W. Rockwell, “Rival Presuppositions in the Writing of Church History: A Study of Intellectual Bias,” Papers of the American Society of Ckttrch History 9, 2d ser. (1934): 32-34; Joseph Schrembs, “The Catholic Philosophy of History,” in The Catholic Philosophy of History, ed. Peter Ouilday (New York, 1036), pp. 3-4; Cyril C. Richardson, 77«r Church Tlirough the Centuries (New York, 1938), pp. 225-226; William J. Grace, “Jacques Mariiain and Modern Catholic Historical Scholarship,” Journal of the History of Ideas 5 (1944): 437-438; James H. Nichols, “History in (he Theological Curriculum,“ Journal of Religion 26 (1946): 186-189; James H. Nichols, “The History of Christianity,“ in Religion, ed. Paul Ramsey (Englcwood Cliffs, N.J., 1965), pp. 210-211; Leonard J. Trinterud, “The Task of the American Church Historian,” Church History 25 (1956): 3-4; and Lewis W. Spiu, “History: Sacred and Secular,” Church History 47 (1978): 17.

7. Cyril C. Richardson, “Church History Past and Present,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 5 (1949): 13.

8. James L. Ash, Jr., “American Religion and the Academy in the Early Twentieth Century: The Chicago Years of William Warren Sweet,” Church History 50 (1981): 65.

9. Carl L. Becker, “Detachment and ihc Writing of History,” Atlantic Monthly 10$ (October, 1910): 24, reprinted in Detachment and the Writing of History: Essays and Letters of Carl L. Becker, cd. Phil L. Snydcr (Ithaca, N.Y., 1958); Rockwell, “Rivat Presuppositions,” pp. 13-14, where Rockwell pointed out the European counterpart to this American debate. In this article Theodore Mommsen and Albert Koeniger took opposite sides on the question of “eine voraussetzungslose Geschichtswissenschaft.“

10. George H. Williams, “Church History,” in Protestant Thought in the Twentieth Century: Whence and Whither?, ed. Arnold S. Nash (New York, 1951), pp. 148, 172-173; and Trinlcrud, “Task of the American Church Historian,” pp. 6-7,9, U-12.

11. Robert F. Bcrkhoter, Jr., A Behavioral Approach lo Historical Analysis (New York, 1969), pp. 4-5,26; Rush Welter, “The History of Idea* in America: An Essay in Redefinition,“ Journal of American History 51 (1965): 603; Emerion, “A Definition of Church History,“ pp. 58-59; Rockwell, “Rival Presuppositions,” p. 51;and Clebsch, “History and Salvation,“ pp. 41,44,60-63.

12. Sec Albert C Outlcr, “Theodosius’ Horse: Reflections on the Predicament of the Church Historian,” Church History 34 (1965)-. 253; John T. Ellis, “The Ecclesiastical Historian in the Service of Clio,” Church History 38 (1969): 109; Edwin S. Gaustad, Religion in America: History and Historiography (Washington, D.C., 1973), pp. 58-59; John Lukacs, “The Historiographical Problem of Belief and Believers: Religious History in the Democratic Age,” Catholic Historical Review 64 (1978); 164-165; Emerton, “A Definition of Church History,” pp. 57, 62-63; Trinlcrud, ‘The Task of the American Church Historian,” pp. 11 -12; Berkhofer, Behavioral Approach, p. 12; Clebsch, “Toward a History of Christianity,” pp. 9,16; and Clebsch, “History and Salvation,” pp. 55,70-71.

13. Sec Carl L. Becker, “Some Aspects of the Influence or Social Problems and Ideas upon the Study and Writing of History,” American Journal of Sociology 18 (1913): 641, 664-665; Charles W. Cole, “The Relativity of History,” Political Science Quarterly 48 (1933): 169-170; E. Harris Harbison, “The Problem of the Christian Historian: A Critique of Arnold J. Toynbtc,” Theology Today 5 (1948): 402; Chester M. Destlcr, “Some Observations on Contemporary Historical Theory,” American Historical Review 55 (1950): 511, 519; Louis Gottschalk, “A Professor of History in a Quaiidry,” American Historical Reuiew 59 (1954): 280; David M. Potter, “Explicit Data and Implicit Assumptions in Historical Study,” in Generalization in the Writing of History, cd. Louts Gottschalk (Chicago, 1963), pp. 186-187,190; Page Smith, The Historian and History (New York, 1964), p. 156; John Higham, with Leonard Kriegcrand Felix Gilbert, History (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1965), pp. 136, 143-144; Sydney E. Ahlstrom, ‘The Problem of the History of Religion in America,” Church History 39 (1970): 233-234; Timothy P. Donavan, Historical Thought in America: Postwar Patterns (Norman, Ok., 1973), pp. 120-122; John T. Ellis, “Fragments of My Autobiography,” Review of Politics 36 (1974): 571; Trintcrud, “The Task of the American Church Historian,” p. 13; Outler, “Thcodosius’ Horse,” pp. 254-256; and Berkhofcr, Behavioral Approach, pp. 23-24, 320-321.

14. Few scholars have made this point as cogently as has John F. Wilson, “Jonathan Edwards as Historian,” Church History 46 (1977); 16-17. For another realistic depiction of difficulties and duly see Bruce Calton, Prefaces to History (Garden Gity, N,J., 1970), p, 93.