William and Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Problem of the Lord's Supper: The Influence of German ‘Historical Speculators’
The studies by Julie Ellison, Barbara Packer, and Wesley T. Mott demonstrate that Emerson's exposure to German biblical criticism worked steadily on his religious mind. While the former studies focus on the problem of the relation of faith to history and the more inclusive problem of the shift...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
1993
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| In: |
Church history
Year: 1993, Volume: 62, Issue: 2, Pages: 190-206 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | The studies by Julie Ellison, Barbara Packer, and Wesley T. Mott demonstrate that Emerson's exposure to German biblical criticism worked steadily on his religious mind. While the former studies focus on the problem of the relation of faith to history and the more inclusive problem of the shift away from an evidentialist christology, the present study wants to show that the confrontation with German biblical criticism issued in the case of William and Ralph Waldo Emerson in a decisive change of profession and a break with the ministerial office. Moreover, this study also sets out to demonstrate that Ralph Waldo Emerson's appropriation of German biblical criticism presented an important anticipation of the intuitional doctrines of Transcendentalism. When William Emerson, following the example of such American Göttingen students as George Ticknor and Edward Everett, journeyed to Göttingen in 1824 he experienced a professional crisis triggered by the critical methods of the Göttingen exegetes J. G. Eichhorn and J. D. Michaelis. The biblical criticism which prevailed in Göttingen posed a threat for Unitarians not so much because of the depreciation of supernatural revelation as because of the very method with which this disparagement was brought about. The questioning of the historicity of the biblical narratives characteristic of the so-called “higher criticism” practiced at Göttingen cut against the grain of the Unitarian biblical tradition which regarded the biblical narratives as a factually reliable repository of “the history of Christ.” “There is no other theory,” Andrews Norton observed with regard to higher criticism, “in which propositions ready to weaken man's faith in the genuineness of the Gospels, are so elaborately and plausibly introduced.” |
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| ISSN: | 1755-2613 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Church history
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.2307/3168143 |