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The Revolt against Creeds and Confessions of Faith

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

R. G. Crawford
Affiliation:
College of Education, Falmer, Brighton

Extract

Our present century has seen an increasing opposition to creeds and doctrinal statements of faith. Perhaps the most significant was that of Dr W. R. Matthews, Dean of St. Paul's in his little book The Thirty-Nine Articles (1961). There he summarised his arguments for setting aside the Articles, which he had previously put forward in the columns of The Times, and which had led to much correspondence. Many feared such a proposal could lead to the disruption and disestablishment of the Church of England, and thought it better to let sleeping Articles lie. In America an attempt at a compromise was reached by the publication in 1965 of a booklet containing creeds and confessions of historic worth together with a new confession of faith.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1976

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References

page 13 note 1 See my article in the Hibbert Journal, Autumn 1965, pp. 1 ff. A similar attempt was made by another Church in 1972.

page 13 note 2 Attributed to Chillingworth, W. (1602–44) See his Religion of Protestants, Vol. II. (London: H. G. Boan, 1846), p. 410.Google Scholar

page 14 note 1 English History in Contemporary Poetry, IV (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1913), pp. 40 ff.Google Scholar

page 14 note 2 This was discovered in 1823 and published in 1825. Milton's anti-trinitarianism was unknown until the publishing of this work. See Milton, J., Prose Works (London, 1853).Google Scholar

page 14 note 3 Alexander Gordon speaks of him as the ‘Socinus of his age’. Gordon, A., Heads of English Unitarian History (London, 1895) p. 21.Google Scholar

page 15 note 1 See Essay concerning the Human Understanding (London: W. Baynes & Son, 1823).Google Scholar

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page 15 note 3 Birch, L. C., Nature and God (London: S.C.M. 1965), p. 15.Google Scholar

page 15 note 4 ibid., p. 15.

page 15 note 5 ibid., p. 24.

page 15 note 6 Barbour, I. G., Issues in Science and Religion (London: S.C.M., 1966), p. 70.Google Scholar

page 16 note 1 L. C. Birch, op. cit., p. 16. Concerning Locke, Birch writes (p. 21): ‘Probably no philosophical writings gave more reinforcement to deism than Locke's two works, An Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690) and The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695).’

page 17 note 1 The Reasonableness of Christianity as Delivered in the Scriptures (London, 1810) pp. 224225. Cf. Chapter xi on the doctrine of scripture.Google Scholar

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page 17 note 3 Essay concerning the Human Understanding, 1823 ed., Bk. IV, pp. 10ff.

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page 18 note 1 ibid., p. 274.

page 18 note 2 An authentic account of several things done and agreed upon by the Dissenting Ministers lately assembled at Salters' Hall (1719). It should be noted, however, that the issue was subscription rather than the denial of the Trinity. Published in the Christian Moderator magazine (London, 1826–8, 2 vols.), Vol. I, pp. 193–6.

page 18 note 3 Heads of English Unitarian History (London, 1895), p. 37Google Scholar; Taylor, John, The Scripture Doctrine of Original Sin, 3rd Edn. (Belfast, 1746)Google Scholar; Taylor, J., Atonement (Belfast, 1751).Google Scholar

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page 20 note 1 Burleigh, op. cit., p. 295.

page 20 note 2 Op. cit., p. 296. The friendship of Leechman and Hutcheson lasted. It was Leechman who edited Hutcheson's lectures which were published by his son under the title: A System of Moral Philosophy, 2 vols. (Glasgow and London, 1755). See McCosh, James, The Scottish Philosophy (London, 1875).Google Scholar

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page 21 note 1 ‘Divinity’ is used here in the Arian sense.

page 21 note 2 MacLellan, R. E. B., Discourse on the Death of William Ellery Channing (Belfast, 1842), pp. 12ff.Google Scholar

page 22 note 1 Address at Ordination Service (Dublin, 1829), p. 27.

page 22 note 2 Martineau, James, Endeavours after the Christian Life (London: British & Foreign Unitarian Association, 1907), passim.Google Scholar

page 22 note 3 Carpenter, J. E., James Martineau (London, 1905), p. 587Google Scholar; cf. Martineau's, Study of Religion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888)Google Scholar; Types of Ethical Theory (Oxford: Clarendon, 1885), 2 vols.

page 23 note 1 Harris, Horton, David Friedrich Strauss and His Theology (London, 1973), p. 45.Google Scholar

page 23 note 2 ibid., p. 277.

page 24 note 1 ibid., p. 281.

page 24 note 2 ibid., p. 283. If we hold the existence of a personal God, then, as Harris says, we must seek to provide a better and more convincing explanation than Strauss (ibid., p. 284).

page 24 note 3 Theism, Atheism, and the Popular Theology, Centenary Edition (Boston); Discourse of Matters Pertaining to Religion, 3rd Ed., (Boston, 1847).Google Scholar

page 25 note 1 Discourse, p. 241.

page 25 note 2 ibid., pp. 245ff.

page 25 note 3 See my article in Biblical Theology (Vol. 17, No. 1, Jan. 1967), pp. 1ffGoogle Scholar, which shows its effect on the Church in Ireland.

page 25 note 4 The publication of Honest to God was seen by some to indicate such a position; and the Death of God theology in America was viewed as an even stronger extreme position. But certainly we can say of the latter that it was outside the main stream of thinking there, and appears to have faded considerably after the first shock of its impact.