The Cimmerians and Scythians (p2)

For the Philosopher’s Clearinghouse

A reading of the Wikipedia articles, about the ancient Cimmerian, and Scythian peoples; Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; Our thanks to the contributors and authors at Wikipedia, for the use of this article

The Scythians

The Scythians, also known as Scyth, Saka, Sakae, Iskuzai, or Askuzai, were a nomadic people who dominated the Pontic steppe from about the 7th century BC up until the 3rd century BC. They were part of the wider Scythian cultures, stretching across the Eurasian Steppe, which included many peoples that are distinguished from the Scythians. Because of this, a broad concept referring to all early Eurasian nomads as “Scythians” has sometimes been used. Within this concept, the actual Scythians are variously referred to as Classical Scythians, European Scythians, Pontic Scythians, or Western Scythians. Use of the term “Scythians” for all early Eurasian nomads has however led to much confusion in literature, and the validity of such terminology is controversial. Other names for that concept are therefore preferable.

The Scythians are generally believed to have been of Iranian origin. They spoke a language of the Scythian branch of the Eastern Iranian languages, and practiced a variant of ancient Iranian religion. Among the earliest peoples to master mounted warfare, the Scythians replaced the Cimmerians as the dominant power on the Pontic Steppe in the 8th century BC. During this time they and related peoples came to dominate the entire Eurasian Steppe from the Carpathian Mountains in the west to Ordos Plateau in the east, creating what has been called the first Central Asian nomadic empire. Based in what is modern-day Ukraine and southern Russia, the Scythians were led by a nomadic warrior aristocracy known as the Royal Scythians, who called themselves Scoloti.

In the 7th century BC, the Scythians crossed the Caucasus and frequently raided the Middle East along with the Cimmerians, playing an important role in the political developments of the region. Around 650–630 BC, Scythians briefly dominated the Medes of the western Iranian Plateau, stretching their power to the borders of Egypt. After losing control over Media, the Scythians continued intervening in Middle Eastern affairs, playing a leading role in the destruction of the Assyrian Empire in the Sack of Nineveh in 612 BC. The Scythians subsequently engaged in frequent conflicts with the Achaemenid Empire. The Scythians suffered a major defeat against Macedonia in the 4th century BC and were subsequently gradually conquered by the Sarmatians, a related Iranian people living to their east. In the late 2nd century BC, their capital at Scythian Neapolis in the Crimea was captured by Mithradates VI and their territories incorporated into the Bosporan Kingdom. By this time they had been largely Hellenized. By the 3rd century AD, the Sarmatians and last remnants of the Scythians were dominated by the Alans, and were being overwhelmed by the Goths. By the early Middle Ages, the Scythians and the Sarmatians had been largely assimilated and absorbed by early Slavs. The Scythians were instrumental in the ethnogenesis of the Ossetians, who are believed to be descended from the Alans.

The Scythians played an important part in the Silk Road, a vast trade network connecting ancient Greece, Persia, India, and China, perhaps contributing to the contemporary flourishing of those civilisations. Settled metalworkers made portable decorative objects for the Scythians. These objects survive mainly in metal, forming a distinctive Scythian art. The name of the Scythians survived in the region of Scythia. Early authors continued to use the term “Scythian”, applying it to many groups unrelated to the original Scythians, such as Huns, Goths, Turks, Avars, Khazars, and other unnamed nomads. The scientific study of the Scythians is called Scythology.

The Scythians share several cultural similarities with other populations living to their east, in particular similar weapons, horse gear, and Scythian art, which has been referred to as the Scythian triad. Cultures sharing these characteristics have often been referred to as Scythian cultures, and its peoples called Scythians. Peoples associated with Scythian cultures include not only the Scythians themselves, who were a distinct ethnic group, but also Cimmerians, Massagetae, Saka, Sarmatians, and various obscure peoples of the forest steppe, such as early Slavs, Balts, and Finno-Ugric peoples. Within this broad definition of the term Scythian, the actual Scythians have often been distinguished from other groups through the terms Classical Scythians, Western Scythians, European Scythians or Pontic Scythians.

Origins

Herodotus presented four different versions of Scythian origins:

Firstly, the Scythians’ legend about themselves, which portrays the first Scythian king, Targitaus, as the child of the sky-god and of a daughter of the Dnieper. Targitaus allegedly lived a thousand years before the failed Persian invasion of Scythia, or around 1500 BC. He had three sons, before whom fell from the sky a set of four golden implements – a plough, a yoke, a cup, and a battle-axe. Only the youngest son succeeded in touching the golden implements without them bursting with fire, and this son’s descendants, called by Herodotus the “Royal Scythians”, continued to guard them. Secondly, a legend told by the Pontic Greeks featuring Scythes, the first king of the Scythians, as a child of Hercules and Echidna. Thirdly, in the version which Herodotus said he believed most, the Scythians came from a more southern part of Central Asia, until a war with the Massagetae (a powerful tribe of steppe nomads who lived just northeast of Persia) forced them westward. Finally, a legend which Herodotus attributed to the Greek bard Aristeas, who claimed to have got himself into such a Bacchanalian fury that he ran all the way northeast across Scythia and further. According to this, the Scythians originally lived south of the Rhipaean mountains, until they got into a conflict with a tribe called the Issedones, pressed in their turn by the “one-eyed Arimaspians”; and so the Scythians decided to migrate westwards. Accounts by Herodotus of Scythian origins has been discounted recently; although his accounts of Scythian raiding activities contemporary to his writings have been deemed more reliable.

Modern interpretation of historical, archaeological, and anthropological evidence has proposed two broad hypotheses on Scythian origins. The first hypothesis, formerly more espoused by Soviet and then Russian researchers, roughly followed Herodotus’ (third) account, holding that the Scythians were an Eastern Iranian-speaking group who arrived from Inner Asia, i.e. from the area of Turkestan and western Siberia. The second hypothesis, according to Roman Ghirshman and others, proposes that the Scythian cultural complex emerged from local groups of the Srubna culture at the Black Sea coast, although this is also associated with the Cimmerians. According to Pavel Dolukhanov this proposal is supported by anthropological evidence which has found that Scythian skulls are similar to preceding findings from the Srubna culture, and distinct from those of the Central Asian Saka. Yet, according to J. P. Mallory, the archaeological evidence is poor, and the Andronovo culture and “at least the eastern outliers of the Timber-grave culture” may be identified as Indo-Iranian.

In 2017, a genetic study of the Scythians suggested that the Scythians were ultimately descended from the Yamna culture, and emerged on the Pontic steppe independently of peoples belonging to Scythian cultures further east. Based on the analysis of mithocondrial lineages, another later 2017 study suggested that the Scythians were directly descended from the Srubnaya culture. A later analysis of paternal lineages, published in 2018, found significant genetic differences between the Srubnaya and the Scythians, suggesting that the Srubnaya and the Scythians instead traced a common origin in the Yamnaya culture, with the Scythians and related peoples such as the Sarmatians perhaps tracing their origin to the eastern Pontic-Caspian steppes and the southern Urals. Another 2019 study also concluded that migrations must have played a part in the emergence of the Scythians as the dominant power of the Pontic steppe.

History

In the early 7th century BC, the Scythians and Cimmerians are recorded in Assyrian texts as having conquered Urartu. In the 670s, the Scythians under their king Bartatua raided the territories of the Assyrian Empire. The Assyrian king Esarhaddon managed to make peace with the Scythians by paying a large amount of tribute. Bartatua was succeeded by his son Madius ca. 645 BC, after which they launched a great raid on Palestine and Egypt. Madius subsequently subjugated the Median Empire. During this time, Herodotus notes that the Scythians raided and exacted tribute from “the whole of Asia”. In the 620s, Cyaxares, leader of the Medes, treacherously killed a large number of Scythian chieftains at a feast; the Scythians were subsequently driven back to the steppe. In 612 BC, the Medes and Scythians participated in the destruction of the Assyrian Empire with the Battle of Nineveh. During this period of influence in the Middle East, the Scythians became heavily influenced by the local civilizations.

In the 6th century BC, the Greeks had begun establishing settlements along the coasts and rivers of th Pontic steppe, coming in contact with the Scythians. Relations between the Greeks and the Scythians appear to have been peaceful, with the Scythians being substantially influenced by the Greeks, although the city of the Panticapaeum might have been destroyed by the Scythians in the mid century BC. During this time, the Scythian philosopher Anacharsis traveled to Athens, where he made a great impression on the local people with his “barbarian wisdom”.

References

Bellowhead678, and Khestwol, et. al. “Scythians.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, March 20, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scythians.

The Cimmerians and Scythians (p1)

For the Philosopher’s Clearinghouse

A reading of the Wikipedia articles, about the ancient Cimmerian, and Scythian peoples; Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; Our thanks to the contributors and authors at Wikipedia, for the use of this article

Cimmerians and Scythians

The Cimmerians were a nomadic Indo-European people, who appeared about 1000 BC and are mentioned later in 8th century BC in Assyrian records. While the Cimmerians were often described by contemporaries as culturally Scythian, they evidently differed ethnically from the Scythians proper, who also displaced and replaced the Cimmerians. Probably originating in the Pontic steppe, the Cimmerians subsequently migrated both into Western Europe and to the south, by way of the Caucasus. The mystery associated with them has led to their use as a prototypical form of adventuresome nomads, stylized in the fantasy treatment of the Conan the Barbarian character, who was conceived of as a Cimmerian tribal leader. They were also loosely associated with the Kurgan culture, and one wonders of the greek concept of a “gorgon” relates to this people who are so often romanticized as rough and tumble seekers of adventure and quest.

Some of them likely comprised a force that, around 714 BC, invaded Urartu, a state subject to the Neo-Assyrian Empire. This foray was defeated by Assyrian forces under Sargon II in 705, after which the same, southern branch of Cimmerians turned west towards Anatolia and conquered Phrygia in 696/5. They reached the height of their power in 652 after taking Sardis, the capital of Lydia; however an invasion of Assyrian-controlled Anshan was thwarted. Soon after 619, Alyattes of Lydia defeated them. There are no further mentions of them in historical sources, but it is likely that they settled in Cappadocia.

The origin of the Cimmerians is unclear. They are mostly supposed to have been related to either Iranian or Thracian speaking groups which migrated under pressure of the Scythian expansion of the 9th to 8th century BC. According to Herodotus, the Cimmerians inhabited the region north of the Caucasus and the Black Sea during the 8th and 7th centuries BC (i.e. what is now Ukraine and Russia), although they have not been identified with any specific archaeological culture in the region. The supposed origin of the Cimmerians north of the Caucasus at the end of the Bronze Age loosely corresponds with the early Koban culture (of the Northern Caucasus, from the 12th to 4th centuries BC), but there is no compelling reason to associate this culture with the Cimmerians specifically.

There is a tradition in archaeology of applying Cimmerian to the archaeological record associated with the earliest transmission of Iron Age culture along the Danube to Central and Western Europe, associated with the Cernogorovka (9th to 8th centuries) and Novocerkassk (8th to 7th centuries) between the Danube and the Volga. This association is controversial, or at best conventional, and is not to be taken as a literal claim that specific artifacts are to be associated with the Cimmerians of the Greek or Assyrian record.

The use of the name “Cimmerian” in this context is due to Paul Reinecke, who in 1925 postulated a “North-Thracian-Cimmerian cultural sphere” overlapping with the younger Hallstatt culture of the Eastern Alps. The term Thraco-Cimmerian was first introduced by I. Nestor in the 1930s. Nestor intended to suggest that there was a historical migration of Cimmerians into Eastern Europe from the area of the former Srubna culture, perhaps triggered by the Scythian expansion, at the beginning of the European Iron Age. In the 1980s and 1990s, more systematic studies of the artifacts revealed a more gradual development over the period covering the 9th to 7th centuries, so that the term “Thraco-Cimmerian” is now rather used by convention and does not necessarily imply a direct connection with either the Thracians or the Cimmerians.

Archaeologically, Thraco-Cimmerian artifacts consist of grave goods and hoards. The artifacts labelled Thraco-Cimmerian all belong to a category of upper class, luxury objects, like weapons, horse tacks and jewelry, and they are recovered only from a small percentage of graves of the period. They are metal (usually bronze) items, particularly parts of horse tacks, found in a late Urnfield context, but without local Urnfield predecessors for their type. They appear rather to spread from the Koban culture of the Caucasus and northern Georgia, which together with the Srubna culture, blends into the 9th to 7th centuries pre-Scythian Chernogorovka and Novocherkassk cultures. By the 7th century, Thraco-Cimmerian objects are spread further west over most of Eastern and Central Europe, locations of finds reaching to Denmark and eastern Prussia in the north and to Lake Zürich in the west. Together with these bronze artifacts, earliest Iron items appear, ushering in the European Iron Age, corresponding to the Proto-Celtic expansion from the Hallstatt culture.

Pushed out of the Steppes

According to Herodotus, the Cimmerians had been expelled from their homeland between the Dniester and Don rivers by the Scythians. Unreconciled to Scythian advances, to ensure burial in their ancestral homeland, the men of the Cimmerian royal family divided into groups and fought each other to the death. The Cimmerian commoners buried the bodies along the river Tyras and fled across the Caucasus and into Anatolia. Herodotus also names a number of Cimmerian kings, including Tugdamme (mid-7th century BC), and Sandakhshatra (late-7th century).

In 654 BC or 652 BC – the exact date is unclear – the Cimmerians attacked the kingdom of Lydia, killing the Lydian king Gyges and causing great destruction to the Lydian capital of Sardis. They returned ten years later during the reign of Gyges’ son Ardys; this time they captured the city, with the exception of the citadel. The fall of Sardis was a major shock to the powers of the region; the Greek poets Callinus and Archilochus recorded the fear that it inspired in the Greek colonies of Ionia, some of which were attacked by Cimmerian and Treres raiders.

The Cimmerian occupation of Lydia was brief, however, possibly due to an outbreak of disease. They were beaten back by Alyattes. This defeat marked the effective end of Cimmerian power. The term Gimirri was used about a century later in the Behistun inscription (515 BC) as an Assyro-Babylonian equivalent of Iranian Scythians. Otherwise, the Cimmerians disappeared from the historical record.

References

LouisAragon, and KolbertBot, et. al. “Cimmerians.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, March 8, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cimmerians.

Victor Cousin (p4)

For the Philosopher’s Clearinghouse

A reading of the Wikipedia article: “Victor Cousin”; Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; Our thanks to the contributors and authors at Wikipedia for the use of this article

The Absolute or Infinite

The absolute or infinite, that is, the unconditioned ground and source of all reality, is yet apprehended by us as an immediate datum or reality; and it is apprehended in consciousness; under its condition of distinguishing subject and object, knower and known. The doctrine of Cousin was criticized by Sir W Hamilton in the Edinburgh Review of 1829, and also about the same time by Schelling. Hamilton’s objections are as follows. The correlation of the ideas of infinite and finite does not necessarily imply their correality, as Cousin supposes; on the contrary, it is a presumption that finite is simply positive and infinite negative of the same, that the finite and infinite are simply contradictory relatives. Of these “the positive alone is real, the negative is only an abstraction of the other, and in the highest generality even an abstraction of thought itself.” 

A study of the few sentences under this head might have obviated the trifling criticism of Hamilton’s objection which has been set afloat recently, that the denial of a knowledge of the absolute or infinite implies a foregone knowledge of it: How can you deny the reality of that which you do not know? The answer to this is that in the case of contradictory statements, A and not A, the latter is a mere negation of the former, and posits nothing; and the negation of a notion with positive attributes, as the finite, does not extend beyond abolishing the given attributes as an object of thought. The infinite or non-finite is not necessarily known, ere the finite is negated, or in order to negate it; all that needs be known is the finite itself; and the contradictory negation of it implies no positive. Non-organized may or may not correspond to a positive, i.e. an object or notion with qualities contradictory of the organized; but the mere sublation of the organized does not posit it, or suppose that it is known beforehand, or that anything exists corresponding to it. This is one among many flaws in the Hegelian dialectic, and it paralyzes the whole of the Logic. 

Secondly, the conditions of intelligence, which Cousin allows, necessarily exclude the possibility of knowledge of the absolute, they are held to be incompatible with its unity. Here Schelling and Hamilton argue that Cousin’s absolute is a mere relative. Thirdly, it is objected that in order to deduce the conditioned, Cousin makes his absolute a relative; for he makes it an absolute cause, i.e. a cause existing absolutely under relation. As such it is necessarily inferior to the sum total of its effects, and dependent for reality on these, in a word, a mere potence or becoming. Further, as a theory of creation, it makes creation a necessity, and destroys the notion of the divine. Cousin made no reply to Hamilton’s criticism beyond alleging that Hamilton’s doctrine necessarily restricted human knowledge and certainty to psychology and logic, and destroyed metaphysics by introducing nescience and uncertainty into its highest sphere, theodicy.

Victor Cousin

The attempt to render the laws of reason or thought impersonal by professing to find them in the sphere of spontaneous apperception, and above reflective necessity, is unsuccessful. Cause, substance, time, space, are given us as realized in a particular form. In no single act of affirmation of cause or substance, much less in such a primitive act, do we affirm the universality of their application. There may be particular instances or cases of these laws, but we could never get the laws themselves in their universality, far less absolute impersonality. No amount of individual instances of the application of any of them by us would give it a true universality. The only sure test we have of their universality in our experience is the test of their reflective necessity. We thus after all fall back on reflection as our ground for their universal application; mere spontaneity of apprehension is futile; their universality is grounded in their necessity, not their necessity in their universality. How far and in what sense this ground of necessity renders them personal are of course questions still to be solved.

But if these three correlative facts are immediately given, it seems to be thought possible by Cousin to vindicate them in reflective consciousness. He seeks to trace the steps which the reason has spontaneously and consciously, but irreflectively, followed. And here the question arises, Can we vindicate in a reflective or mediate process this spontaneous apprehension of reality?

The Self

The self is found to be a cause of force, free in its action, on the ground that we are obliged to relate the volition of consciousness to the self as its cause, and its ultimate cause. It is not clear from the analysis whether the self is immediately observed as an acting or originating cause, or whether reflection working on the principle of causality is compelled to infer its existence and character. If self is actually so given, we do not need the principle of causality to infer it; if it is not so given, causality could never give us either the notion or the fact of self as a cause or force, far less as an ultimate one. All that it could do would be to warrant a cause of some sort, but not this or that reality as the cause. And further, the principle of causality, if fairly carried out, as universal and necessary, would not allow us to stop at personality or will as the ultimate cause of its effect, volition. Once applied to the facts at all, it would drive us beyond the first antecedent or term of antecedents of volition to a still further cause or ground, in fact, land us in an infinite regress of causes.

The same criticism is even more emphatically applicable to the influence of a not-self, or world of forces, corresponding to our sensations, and the cause of them. Starting from sensation as our basis, causality could never give us this, even though it be allowed that sensation is impersonal to the extent of being independent of our volition. Causality might tell us that a cause there is of sensation somewhere and of some sort; but that this cause is a force or sum of forces, existing in space, independently of us, and corresponding to our sensations, it could never tell us, for the simple reason that such a notion is not supposed to exist in our consciousness. Causality cannot add to the number of our notions, and cannot add to the number of realities we know. All it can do is to necessitate us to think that a cause there is of a given change, but what that cause is it cannot of itself inform us, or even suggest to us, beyond implying that it must be to the effect. Sensation might arise, for aught we know, so far as causality leads us, not from a world of forces at all, but from a will like our own, though infinitely more powerful, acting upon us, partly furthering and partly thwarting us. And indeed such a supposition is, with the principle of causality at work, within the limits of probability, as we are already supposed to know such a reality, a will, in our own consciousness. When Cousin thus set himself to vindicate those points by reflection, he gave up the obvious advantage of his other position that the realities in question are given us in immediate and spontaneous apprehension. The same criticism applies equally to the inference of an absolute cause from the two limited forces which he names self and not-self. Immediate spontaneous apperception may seize this supreme reality; but to vindicate it by reflection as an inference on the principle of causality is impossible. This is a mere paralogism; we can never infer either absolute or infinite from relative or finite.

The truth is that Cousin’s doctrine of the spontaneous apperception of impersonal truth amounts to little more than a presentment in philosophical language of the ordinary convictions and beliefs of mankind. This is important as a preliminary stage, but philosophy properly begins when it attempts to coordinate or systematize those convictions in harmony, to conciliate apparent contradiction and opposition, as between the correlative notions of finite and infinite, the apparently conflicting notions of personality and infinitude, self and not-self; in a word, to reconcile the various sides of consciousness with each other. And whether the laws of our reason are the laws of all intelligence and being, whether and how we are to relate our fundamental, intellectual and moral conceptions to what is beyond our experience, or to an infinite being, are problems which Cousin cannot be regarded as having solved. These are in truth the outstanding problems of modern philosophy.

Cousin’s doctrine of spontaneity in volition can hardly be said to be more successful than his impersonality of the reason through Volition spontaneous apperception. Sudden, unpremeditated volition may be the earliest and the most artistic, but it is not the best. Volition is essentially a free choice between alternatives, and that is best which is most deliberate, because it is most rational. Aristotle touched this point in his distinction: The sudden and unpremeditated wish represented by the former is wholly inferior in character to the free choice of the latter, guided and illumined by intelligence. In this we can deliberately resolve upon what is in our power; in that we are subject to the vain impulse of wishing the impossible. Spontaneity is pleasing, sometimes beautiful, but it is not in this instance the highest quality of the thing to be obtained. That is to be found in a guiding and illumining reflective activity.

Eclecticism is not open to the superficial objection of proceeding without a system or test in determining the complete or incomplete. But it is open to objection, assuming that a particular analysis of consciousness has reached all the possible elements in humanity and in history, and all their combinations. It may be asked, Can history have that which is not in the individual consciousness? In a sense not; but our analysis may not give all that is there, and we ought not at once to impose that analysis or any formula on history. History is as likely to reveal to us in the first place true and original elements, and combinations of elements in man, as a study of consciousness. Besides, the tendency of applying a formula of this sort to history is to assume that the elements are developed in a certain regular or necessary order, whereas this may not at all be the case; but we may find at any epoch the whole mixed, either crossing or co-operative, as in the consciousness of the individual himself. Further, the question as to how these elements may possibly have grown up in the general consciousness of mankind is assumed to be nonexistent or impossible.

It was the tendency of the philosophy of Cousin to outline things and to fill up the details in an artistic and imaginative interest. He was observational and generalizing rather than analytic and discriminating. His search into principles was not profound, and his power of rigorous consecutive development was limited. He left no distinctive permanent principle of philosophy, but he left very interesting psychological analyses, and several new, just, and true expositions of philosophical systems, especially that of Locke and the philosophers of Scotland. He was at the same time a man of impressive power, of rare and wide culture, and of lofty aim, far above priestly conception and Philistine narrowness. He was familiar with the broad lines of most systems of philosophy. His eclecticism was proof of a reverential sympathy with the struggles of human thought to attain to certainty in the highest problems of speculation. It was a doctrine of comprehension and toleration, forming a marked and valuable contrast to the arrogance of absolutism, to the dogmatism of sensationalism, and to the doctrine of church authority, preached by the theological school of his day. His spirit saved the youth of France from these other influences. As an educational reformer and a man of learning, who greatly influenced others, Cousin stands out among the memorable Frenchmen of the 19th century.

Sir W. Hamilton, one of his most resolute opponents, described Cousin as “a profound and original thinker, a lucid and eloquent writer, a scholar equally at home in ancient and in modern learning, a philosopher superior to all prejudices of age or country, party or profession, and whose lofty eclecticism, seeking truth under every form of opinion, traces its unity even through the most hostile systems”.

Influence

Among those influenced by Cousin were Edgar Allan Poe, Théodore Simon Jouffroy, Jean Philibert Damiron, Adolphe Garnier, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Jules Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, Felix Ravaisson-Mollien, Charles de Rémusat, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Jules Simon, Paul Janet, Adolphe Franck and Patrick Edward Dove, who dedicated his “The Theory of Human Progression” to him, Jouffroy and Damiron were first fellow-followers, then students and then disciples. Jouffroy always kept firm to the early, the French and Scottish, impulses of Cousin’s teaching. Cousin continued to lecture for two and a half years after his return to the chair. Sympathizing with the revolution of July, he was at once recognized by the new government as a friend of national liberty. Writing in June 1833 he explains both his philosophical and his political position: “For many years I was opposed by both the sensational and the theological school. In 1830 they descended into politics. The sensational school organically developed into the party of demagogy, and the theological school were absolutists, and borrowed demagogy, from time to time, in order the better to reach its ends; with its philosophy it uses skepticism for other positions as a fuel to restore theocracy. On the other hand, one who combated any exclusive principle in science would similarly reject also any exclusive principle in the state, and to defend representative government”.

His most important work was in organizing teaching in France’s primary schools and universities. Cousin followed the models of Prussia and Saxony, adopted the examples of universities of Austerlitz and Jena, overlooked the issues associated with recent national calamities to make a series of influential reports that were readily accepted by the French, and led to laws defining public instruction at the universities. After adoption in France, the documents he wrote made it into the English speaking world, and was widely reflected in schools in the United States, notably New Jersey and Massachusetts. His stand on a “middle ground” between absolutist and theocratic excesses of religion, and the libertine approach of the secularists while promoting a national pride were a revitalizing standard.

References

Cluebot, and Frosty, et. al. “Victor Cousin.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, February 11, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Cousin.

Victor Cousin (p3)

For the Philosopher’s Clearinghouse

A reading of the Wikipedia article: “Victor Cousin”; Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; Our thanks to the contributors and authors at Wikipedia for the use of this article

Doctrine of the Reason (part 2)

These principles of reason, cause and substance, given thus psychologically, enable us to pass beyond the limits of the relative and subjective to objective and absolute reality; they enable us, in a word, to pass from psychology, or the science of knowledge, to ontology or the science of being. These laws are inextricably mixed in consciousness with the data of volition and sensation, with free activity and fatal action or impression, and they guide us in rising to a personal being, a self or free cause, and to an impersonal reality, a not-me, nature, the world of force, lying out of us, and modifying us. As I refer to myself the act of attention and volition, so I cannot but refer the sensation to some cause, necessarily other than myself, that is, to an external cause, whose existence is as certain for me as my own existence, since the phenomenon which suggests it to me is as certain as the phenomenon which had suggested my reality, and both are given in each other. I thus reach an objective impersonal world of forces which corresponds to the variety of my sensations. The relation of these forces or causes to each other is the order of the universe.

But these two forces, the me and the not-me, are reciprocally limitative. As reason has apprehended these two simultaneous phenomena, attention and sensation, and led us immediately to conceive the two sorts of distinct absolute, causes, correlative and reciprocally finite, to which they are related, so, from the notion of this limitation, we find it impossible under the same guide not to conceive a supreme cause, absolute and infinite, itself the first and last cause of all. This is relatively to self and not-self what these are to their proper effects. This cause is self-sufficient, and is sufficient for the reason. This is God; he must be conceived under the notion of cause, related to humanity and the world. He is absolute substance only insofar as he is absolute cause, of philosophy and his essence lies precisely in his creative power. He thus creates, and he creates necessarily.

This theodicy of Cousin laid him open obviously enough to the charge of pantheism. This he repels, and his answer may be summed up as follows. “Pantheism makes the universe God, and God, the universe. But I distinguish the two finite causes self and not-self from each other and from the infinite cause. They are not mere modifications of this cause or properties, as with Spinoza, they are free forces having” their power or spring of action in themselves, and this is sufficient for our idea of independent finite reality. I hold this, and I hold the relation of these as effects to the one supreme cause. The God I plead for is neither the deity of Pantheism, nor the absolute unity of the Eleatics, a being divorced from all possibility of creation or plurality, a mere metaphysical abstraction. The deity I maintain is creative, and necessarily creative. The deity of Spinoza and the Eleatics is a mere substance, not a cause in any sense. As to the necessity under which Deity exists of acting or creating, this is the highest form of liberty, it is the freedom of spontaneity, activity without deliberation. His action is not the result of a struggle between passion and virtue. He is free in an unlimited manner the purest spontaneity in man is but the shadow of the freedom of God. He acts freely but not arbitrarily, and with the consciousness of being able to choose the opposite part. He cannot deliberate or will as we do. His spontaneous action excludes at once the efforts and the miseries of will and the mechanical operation of necessity”.

The elements found in consciousness are also to be found in the history of humanity and in the history of philosophy. In external nature there are expansion and contraction which correspond to spontaneity and reflection. External nature again in contrast with humanity expresses spontaneity; humanity expresses reflection. In human history the East represents the spontaneous stage; the Pagan and Christian world represent stages of reflection. This was afterwards modified, expanded and more fully expressed by saying that humanity in its universal development has three principal moments. 

Victor Cousin

First, in the spontaneous stage, where reflection is not yet developed, and art is imperfect, humanity has thought only of the immensity around it. It is preoccupied by the infinite. Secondly, in the reflective stage, mind has become an object to itself. It thus knows itself explicitly or reflectively. Its own individuality is now the only or at least the supreme thing. This is the moment of the finite. Thirdly, there comes an epoch in which the self or me is subordinated. Mind realizes another power in the universe. The finite and the infinite become two real correlatives in the relation of cause and product. This is the third and highest stage of development, the relation of the finite and the infinite. As philosophy is but the highest expression of humanity, these three moments will be represented in its history. 

The East typifies the infinite, Greece the finite or reflective epoch, the modern era the stage of relation or correlation of infinite and finite. In theology, the dominant philosophical idea of each of these epochs results in pantheism, polytheism, theism. In politics we have a correspondence also with the ideas of monarchy, democracy, and constitutional polity. Eclecticism thus means the application of the psychological method to the history of philosophy. Confronting the various systems co-ordinated as sensualism, idealism, skepticism, mysticism, with the facts of consciousness, the chasm result was reached ” that each system expresses an order of phenomena and ideas, which is in truth very real, but which is not alone in consciousness, and which at the same time holds an almost exclusive place in the system; whence it follows that each system is not false but incomplete, and that in re-uniting all incomplete systems, we should have a complete philosophy, adequate to the totality of consciousness.” Philosophy, as thus perfected, would not be a mere aggregation of systems, as is ignorantly supposed, but an integration of the truth in each system after the false or incomplete is discarded.

Comparison to Kant, Schelling and Hegel

Cousin’s historical position relates to Kant, Schelling and Hegel. Cousin was opposed to Kant in asserting that the unconditioned in the form of infinite or absolute cause is but a mere unrealizable tentative or effort on the part of and something different from a mere negation, yet not equivalent to a positive thought. With Cousin, the absolute as the ground of being is grasped positively by the intelligence, and it renders all else intelligible; it is not as with Kant a certain hypothetical or regulative need. With Schelling, again Cousin agrees, in regarding this supreme ground of all, as positively apprehended, and as a source of development, but he rejects Schelling’s method. The intellectual intuition either falls under the eye of consciousness, or it does not. If not, how do you know it and its object which are identical? If it does, it comes within the sphere of psychology; and the objections to it as thus a relative, made by Schelling himself, are to be dealt with. Cousin concludes that Schelling’s intellectual intuition is the mere negation of knowledge.

To restate, the pure being of Hegel is a mere abstraction, a hypothesis illegitimately assumed, which he has nowhere sought to vindicate. The very point to be established is the possibility of reaching being per se or pure being; yet in the Hegelian system this is the very thing assumed as a starting-point. Besides this, of course, objections might be made to the method of development, as not only subverting the principle of contradiction, but as galvanizing negation into a means of advancing or developing the whole body of human knowledge and reality. The intellectual intuition of Schelling, as above consciousness, the pure being of Hegel, as an empty abstraction, unvindicated, illegitimately assumed, and arbitrarily developed, are equally useless as bases of metaphysics. This led Cousin, still holding by essential knowledge of being, to ground it in an analysis of consciousness, in psychology.

References

Cluebot, and Frosty, et. al. “Victor Cousin.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, February 11, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Cousin.

Victor Cousin (p2)

For the Philosopher’s Clearinghouse

A reading of the Wikipedia article: “Victor Cousin”; Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; Our thanks to the contributors and authors at Wikipedia for the use of this article

Cousin’s Philosophy

There are three distinctive points in Cousin’s philosophy. These are his method, the results of his method, and the application of the method and its results to history, especially to the history of philosophy. It is usual to speak of his philosophy as eclecticism, though it is eclectic only in a secondary, and subordinate, sense. All eclecticism that is not self-condemned and inoperative implies a system of doctrine as its basis, in fact, a criterion of truth. Otherwise, as Cousin himself remarks, it is simply a blind and useless syncretism. And Cousin saw and proclaimed from an early period in his philosophical teaching, the necessity of a system on which to base his eclecticism. The necessity of system was confirmed by the facts of history, which corresponded to his analysis of human consciousness. And so the three points of method, results, and the philosophy of history, are intimately connected as developments, in a natural order of sequence. They become in practice Psychology, Ontology and Eclecticism in history.

Cousin emphasized the importance of method in philosophy. He uses the non-controversial starting points of observation, analysis and induction. This observational method Cousin regards as that of the 18th century, the method which Descartes began and abandoned, and which Locke and Condillac applied, though imperfectly, and which Thomas Reid and Kant used with more success. He insists that this is the true method of philosophy as applied to consciousness, in which alone the facts of experience appear. But the proper condition, of the application of the method, is that it shall not, through prejudice of system, omit a single fact of consciousness. If the authority of consciousness is good in one instance, it is good in all. If not to be trusted in one, it is not to be trusted in any. Previous systems have erred in not presenting the facts of consciousness.

Observational Method

The science of psychology results from observations about consciousness, and is the only proper basis of ontology or metaphysics, the science of being, and of the philosophy of history. To complement the observation of consciousness, Cousin adds induction, by which he means inference about reality that follows the data of consciousness, and regulated by reason. By his method of observation, and induction, his philosophy is clearly distinguished from, on the one hand, the deductive construction of notions of an absolute system, as by Schelling or Hegel. Cousin regards this a nothing more than abstract hypothesis, not a legitimate way of obtaining data about reality. On the other hand his view differs from Kant and Sir W. Hamilton, who are limited to knowledge of the phenomenal, with the acids of skepticism corrosively removing the great realities of ontology. The psychology of Cousin is expressed in a common sense, or “universal experience” of humanity. Philosophy exists to explain universal convictions or beliefs, but common sense is (for him) the material upon which philosophy works, and its conclusions must be in harmony with said common sense.

Three Results of Psychological Observation

The three great results of Cousin’s psychological observation are Sensibility, Activity or Liberty, and Reason. These three facts are different in character, but are not separately found apart in consciousness. First, sensations, or the facts of the sensibility, are necessary. The facts of reason are also necessary, and reason is no less independent of the will than the sensibility. Second, voluntary facts alone have the characters of imputability and personality: The will alone is the person or Me. The me is the centre of the intellectual sphere without which consciousness is impossible. We find ourselves in a strange world, between two orders of phenomena which do not belong to us, which we apprehend only on the condition of our distinguishing ourselves from them. Further, we apprehend by means of a light which does not come from ourselves. All light comes from the reason, and it is the reason which apprehends both itself and the sensibility which envelops it, and the will which it obliges but does not constrain. Consciousness, then, is composed of these three integrant and inseparable elements. But reason is the immediate ground of knowledge and of consciousness itself.

But there is a peculiarity in Cousin’s doctrine of activity or freedom, and in his doctrine of reason, which enters deeply into his system. This is the element of spontaneity in volition and in reason. This is the heart of what is new alike in his doctrine of knowledge and being. Liberty or freedom is a generic term which means a cause or being endowed with self-activity. This is to itself and its own development its own ultimate cause. Free-will is so, although it is preceded by deliberation and determination, i.e. reflection, for we are always conscious that even after determination we are free to will or not to will. But there is a primary kind of volition which has not reflection for its condition, which is yet free and spontaneous. We must have willed thus spontaneously first, otherwise we could not know, before our reflective volition, that we could will and act. Spontaneous volition is free as reflective, but it is the prior act of the two. This view of liberty of will is the only one in accordance with the facts of humanity; it excludes reflective volition, and explains the enthusiasm of the poet and the artist in the act of creation; it explains also the ordinary actions of mankind, which are done as a rule spontaneously and not after reflective deliberation.

Doctrine of the Reason

Cousin’s doctrine of reason is distinctive. Reason as given by observation is impersonal in its nature, it is not personally generated or at the whim of the subjective, but our conscious reason is an objective faculty that is a universal and necessary part of our being. Recognizing that while the subjective conditions human knowledge in some sense, and to some degree, the primary and first emphasis for the reality of human knowledge is the objective reality our reason contemplates. Cousin thinks Kant missed this point with his analysis.

But how does the integrity of this become established? Cousin thinks Kant went wrong by putting necessity as a subordinate part of reason, and limited what was necessary by the subjective perspective of the thinking mind. This restriction to the phenomenal made the conclusions of reason unable to reveal substantial reality (or “things in themselves”) and made the absolute idea of logic and chain of reasoning subjective. But in making the objective nature of logical necessity subjective, the application of the laws of logic cannot reach past the subjective and into the objective.  Further, what one person reasons with their own internal phenomenal logic might be different from what another person reasons.  Person A sums two numbers in their mind “5 + 7” and gets “13”, while person B sums “5 + 7” and gets “12”, and just how could the truth of either proposition be distinguished?

Cousin’s assertion is that reason is objective, not subjective, and that our reason can therefore be trusted to supply to our consciousness, in an act of spontaneous apperception or apprehension, immediately, instantaneously, in a sphere above the reflective consciousness, yet within the reach of knowledge. And all subjectivity with all reflection expires in the spontaneity of a mental process that adds something new to the body of ideas a person already has. The reason becomes subjective by relation to the voluntary and free self; but in itself it is impersonal; it belongs not to this or to that self inhumanity; it belongs not even to humanity. We may say with truth that nature and humanity belong to it, for without its laws both would perish.

But how can one enumerate such objective laws of logic? Kant, in reviewing the enterprise of Aristotle in modern times gave a complete list of the laws of thought, but it is arbitrary in classification and may be legitimately reduced. According to Cousin, there are but two primary laws of thought, that of causality and that of substance. From these flow naturally all the others. In the order of nature, that of substance is the first and causality second. In the order of acquisition of our knowledge, causality precedes substance, or rather both are given us in each other, and both exist at the same time in consciousness.

References

Cluebot, and Frosty, et. al. “Victor Cousin.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, February 11, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Cousin.

Victor Cousin (p1)

For the Philosopher’s Clearinghouse

A reading of the Wikipedia article: “Victor Cousin”; Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; Our thanks to the contributors and authors at Wikipedia for the use of this article

Victor Cousin lived from 1792 to 1867, and was a French philosopher. He was the founder of “eclecticism”, a briefly influential school of French philosophy, that combined elements of German idealism and Scottish Common Sense Realism. As the administrator of public instruction for over a decade, Cousin also had an important influence on French educational policy. He is noted for stating that the “two principles of reason, cause and substance, enable humans to pass from psychology, or the science of knowledge, to ontology, the science of being”.

Life Events

In the second preface to the “Fragments Philosophiques”, in which he candidly states the varied philosophical influences of his life, Cousin fondly remembers the day when he heard Laromiguière for the first time: “That day decided my whole life”. Laromiguière taught the philosophy of John Locke, and Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, happily modified on some points, with a clearness and grace which in appearance at least removed difficulties, and with a charm of spiritual bonhomie which “penetrated and subdued”. That school has remained ever since the living heart of French philosophy; Henri Bergson, Jean-Paul Sartre and Jacques Derrida are among its past students.

Cousin wanted to lecture on philosophy and quickly obtained the position of master of conferences in the school. The second great philosophical impulse of his life was the teaching of Pierre Paul Royer-Collard. This teacher, he tells us, “by the severity of his logic, the gravity and weight of his words, turned me by degrees, and not without resistance, from the beaten path of Condillac into the way which has since become so easy, but which was then painful and unfrequented, that of the Scottish philosophy.” By the “Scottish Philosophy”, he meant the “Common Sense” Philosophy of Thomas Reid and others, which taught that both the external world, and the human mind had an objective existence. In 1815 Cousin attained the position of assistant to Royer-Collard, in the history of modern philosophy chair, of the faculty of letters. Another thinker who influenced him at this early period was Maine de Biran, whom Cousin regarded as the unequalled psychological observer of his time in France.

These men strongly influenced Cousin’s philosophical thought. To Laromiguière he attributes the lesson of decomposing thought, even though the reduction of it to sensation was inadequate. Royer-Collard taught him that even sensation is subject to certain internal laws, and principles, which it does not itself explain, which are superior to analysis, and the natural patrimony of the mind. De Biran made a special study of the phenomena of the will. He taught him to distinguish in all cognitions, and especially in the simplest facts of consciousness, the voluntary activity in which our personality is truly revealed. It was through this “triple discipline” that Cousin’s philosophical thought was first developed, and that in 1815, he began the public teaching of philosophy in the Normal School, and in the faculty of letters.

He then took up the study of German, worked to understand Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, and sought to master the “Philosophy of Nature” of Schelling, which at first greatly attracted him. The influence of Schelling may be observed very markedly, in the earlier form of his philosophy. He sympathized with the principle of faith of Jacobi, but regarded it as arbitrary, so long as it was not grounded in reason. In 1817 he went to Germany, and met Hegel at Heidelberg. Hegel’s “Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences” appeared the same year, and Cousin had one of the earliest copies. He thought Hegel wasn’t overly friendly, but the two became friends. The following year Cousin went to Munich, where he met Schelling for the first time, and spent a month with him and Jacobi, obtaining a deeper insight into the “Philosophy of Nature”.

Political Troubles

France’s political troubles interfered for a time with his career. In 1814, he took the royalist side. He adopted the views of the party known as doctrinaire, of which Royer-Collard was the philosophical leader. He seems to have gone further, and to have approached the extreme Left. Then came a reaction against liberalism, and in 1821, Cousin was deprived of his offices. This “Normal School” that he was a member of was swept away, and Cousin shared the fate of Guizot, who was ejected from the chair of history. This enforced abandonment of public teaching was a mixed blessing: he set out for Germany, with a view to further philosophical study. While at Berlin in 1824, he was thrown into prison, either on some ill-defined political charge, at the instance of the French police, or as a result of an indiscreet conversation. Freed after six months, he remained under the suspicion of the French government for three years. It was during this period that he developed what is distinctive in his philosophical doctrine: His eclecticism, his ontology, and his philosophy of history were declared in principle, and in most of their salient details in the “Fragments Philosophiques” of 1826. The preface to the second, and third editions, aimed at a vindication of his principles against contemporary criticism. Even the best of his later books were simply matured revisions of his lectures during the period from 1815 to 1820. His lectures on Locke were first sketched in 1819, and fully developed in the course of 1829.

During the seven years when he was prevented from teaching, he produced the edition of the works of Proclus, and the works of René Descartes. He also commenced his Translation of Plato, which occupied his leisure time from 1825, to 1840. One sees in the Fragments very distinctly the fusion of the different philosophical influences by which his opinions were finally matured. For Cousin was as eclectic in thought, and habit of mind, as he was in philosophical principle, and system. It is with the publication of the Fragments of 1826, that the first great widening of his reputation is associated. In 1827 followed his “History of Philosophy”.

Reinstatement

In 1828, France’s minister of public instruction in Martignac’s ministry, recalled Cousin, and Guizot, to their professorial positions in the university. The three years which followed were the period of Cousin’s greatest triumph as a lecturer. His return to the chair was the symbol of the triumph of constitutional ideas, and was greeted with enthusiasm. The hall of the Sorbonne was crowded as the hall of no philosophical teacher in Paris had been, since the days of Pierre Abélard. The lecturer’s eloquence mingled with speculative exposition, and he possessed a singular power of rhetorical climax. His philosophy strikingly showed the generalizing tendency of the French intellect, and its logical need of grouping details round central principles.

There was a moral elevation in Cousin’s spiritual philosophy, which touched the hearts of his listeners, and seemed to be the basis for higher development in national literature, and art, and even in politics, which was often seemed to be lacking in the traditional philosophy of France. His lectures produced more ardent disciples than those of any other contemporary professor of philosophy. Judged on his teaching influence, Cousin occupies a foremost place in the rank of professors of philosophy, who like Jacobi, Schelling and Stewart have united the gifts of speculative, expository and imaginative power. The taste for philosophy, especially its history, was revived in France to an extent unknown since the 17th century.

References

Cluebot, and Frosty, et. al. “Victor Cousin.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, February 11, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Cousin.

The Modernist/Fundamentalist Controversy (p4)

For Gordon Clark Discussions

A reading of the Wikipedia article: “Fundamentalist–Modernist controversy”; Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; Our thanks to the contributors and authors at Wikipedia for the use of this article

The Fall of Old Princeton

Following the reunion of the Old School and New School in 1870, Princeton Theological Seminary remained the bulwark of Old School thought within the Presbyterian Church. Indeed, by 1920, it was arguably the only remaining Old School institution in the Presbyterian Church. The majority of the faculty in 1920 remained convinced Old Schoolers, including J. Gresham Machen and Geerhardus Vos. However, to combat a perceived lack of training in practical divinity, a number of more moderate New Schoolers were brought in, including Charles Erdman and J. Ross Stevenson, who by 1920 was the president of the seminary. As we saw above, the tension between the old school, and moderates revealed itself in debates about the proposed Church Union of 1920; Machen’s anti-liberal preaching which resulted in the public fall-out with Harry van Dyke; the controversy about Erdman’s approach to the League of Evangelical Students; and splits about how to deal with the splits in the wider church.

By 1925, the Old School’s majority on the faculty was threatened, but the selection of Clarence Macartney to replace outgoing Professor of Apologetics William Greene seemed to solidify the Old School majority on the faculty. However, when Macartney turned the job down, Machen was offered the job. Before he could accept or refuse, however, General Assembly intervened, and in the 1926 General Assembly, moderates succeeded in securing a committee to study how to reconcile the two parties at Princeton. The seminary was governed by a board of directors subject to the supervision of General Assembly. On a sidenote, some members of the General Assembly seem to have been wary of Machen because of his opposition to Prohibition. The committee reported back at the General Assembly of 1927, where the moderate Robert E. Speer was elected as moderator. Their report concluded that the source of the difficulties at Princeton was that some of the Princeton faculty (such as Machen) were trying to keep Princeton in the service of a certain party in the church rather than doing what was in the best interest of the denomination as a whole. They recommended re-organization of the seminary. The General Assembly renewed the committee’s mandate and ordered them to study how to re-organize the seminary.

J Gresham Machen

This led Machen to declare that the 1927 General Assembly was “probably the most disastrous meeting, from the point of view of evangelical Christianity, that has been held in the whole history of our Church.” Machen composed and had circulated in the denomination a document entitled “The Attack Upon Princeton Seminary: A Plea for Fair Play.” He argued that Princeton was the only seminary continuing to defend orthodoxy among the older theological institutions in the English-speaking world. The loss of the seminary would be a major blow for orthodoxy. The moderates and liberals already had control of pretty much every seminary in the denomination: why couldn’t the conservatives be left with one? The committee reported to the 1928 General Assembly, held in Tulsa, Oklahoma, recommending re-organizing the seminary to give more powers to the president of the seminary and to replace the two ruling boards with one unified board. In response, Clarence Macartney responded that his party were prepared to take legal action to stop this from happening. Wary, the General Assembly appointed a committee to continue studying the matter. This committee reported to the 1929 General Assembly. Machen gave a fiery speech on the floor of General Assembly, but he could not prevent General Assembly from voting to re-organize the seminary.

Rather than contesting this decision in the courts as had been threatened, Machen now decided to set up a new seminary to be a bastion of conservative thought. This institution would become Westminster Theological Seminary (named to stress its fidelity to the Westminster Confession of Faith) and several conservatives on the Princeton faculty, including Machen, Cornelius Van Til, Robert Dick Wilson, and Oswald Thompson Allis, would leave Princeton to teach at Westminster. Clarence Macartney initially opposed setting up Westminster, arguing that conservatives should stay at Princeton where they could continue to provide an orthodox voice. Machen responded that Princeton was in a state of apostasy and that he couldn’t serve alongside apostates. Macartney was eventually won over to Machen’s side.

Aftermath

As a result of the departure of Machen and the denominational conservatives, especially of the Old School, the shape of the Presbyterian Church in the USA as a modernist, liberal denomination was secured. The PCUSA would eventually merge with the United Presbyterian Church of North America in 1958 to form the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America and in 1983, the UPCUSA would merge with the Presbyterian Church in the United States (the “Southern Presbyterians” who had split with the PCUSA in 1861 due to the Civil War) to form the current Presbyterian Church (USA).

The dispute between the fundamentalists and modernists would be played out in nearly every Christian denomination in the United States. By the 1920s, it was clear that every mainstream Protestant denomination was going to be willing to accommodate modernism, with the exception of the Presbyterians, Southern Baptists, and the Missouri synod Lutherans, where the situation was still unclear. The departure of Machen and other conservatives brought the Presbyterians into the camp willing to accommodate modernism, this left the Southern Baptists and the Missouri Synod as the only large, national denominations where orthodox Christians were still active within the denomination. Conflict would continue to roil both churches for most of the 20th century and the triumph of orthodox Christianity in those denominations would not be secure until the Seminex schism in the Lutheran church, and the later Southern Baptist Convention conservative resurgence.

The Modernist/Fundamentalist Controversy (p3)

For Gordon Clark Discussions

A reading of the Wikipedia article: “Fundamentalist–Modernist controversy”; Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; Our thanks to the contributors and authors at Wikipedia for the use of this article

The Auburn Affirmation

Even earlier, Robert Hastings Nichols, a history professor at Auburn Theological Seminary was circulating a paper in which he argued that the Old School-New School reunion and the merger with the Cumberland Presbyterian Church had created a church specifically designed to accommodate doctrinal diversity. Two weeks after the General Assembly, some clergymen met and, using Nichols’ paper as a base, issued a declaration ultimately known to history as the Auburn Affirmation.

The Auburn Affirmation opened by affirming the Westminster Confession of Faith, but argued that within American Presbyterianism, there had been a long tradition of freedom of interpretation of the Scriptures, and the Confession. The General Assembly’s issuance of the Five Fundamentals not only eroded this tradition, but it flew in the face of the Presbyterian Church’s constitution, which required all doctrinal changes to be approved by the presbyteries. While some members of the church could regard the Five Fundamentals as a satisfactory explanation of Scriptures and the Confession, there were others who could not, and therefore, the Presbyteries should be free to hold to whatever theories they saw fit in interpreting Scripture and the Confession. The Auburn Affirmation was circulated and in January 1924, it was released to the public.

The Conflict Engaged

At the following General Assembly, the denomination seemed to want to put the Fosdick controversy behind them. Charles R. Erdman was elected as moderator, which was widely seen as a blow against the fundamentalists. Erdman, a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, had been engaged in a series of debates with J. Gresham Machen and Clarence Macartney throughout the year, and was ousted as Princeton Seminary’s student advisor for being insufficiently enthusiastic about the League of Evangelical Students, set up as a counterweight to more liberal intervarsity organizations. Erdman was himself theologically conservative, but was more concerned with pursuing “purity and peace and progress” (his slogan during the election for moderator) than he was with combatting liberalism. Machen felt that men like Erdman would ultimately be responsible for agnostic Modernism triumphing in the Presbyterian Church.

It seemed to many observers that the licensing of Van Dusen and Lehman was likely to cause a split in the church. General Assembly required all candidates to the ministry to affirm the virgin birth and returned the matter to New York Presbytery for proper proceedings. In response, the New York commissioners protested that General Assembly had no right to change or add to the conditions for entrance to the ministry beyond those affirmed in the earlier reunions. Coffin and the liberals were prepared to walk out of the Assembly and take their churches out of the denomination rather than submit to the further “influence of Bryan in the Presbyterian Church.” A special commission of fifteen was appointed to study the constitutional issues involved. Erdman was able to convince Coffin not to leave the denomination, arguing that, as his interpretation of the constitution was the correct one, he would prevail when the Special Commission issued its report.

The Scopes Trial

At the same time he had been campaigning against Darwinism within the Presbyterian Church, William Jennings Bryan had also been encouraging state lawmakers to pass laws banning the teaching of evolution in public schools. Several states had responded to Bryan’s call, including Tennessee, which passed such a law in March 1925. The ACLU was seeking a test case to challenge these anti-evolutionary laws. This led to the famous trial of John Scopes for teaching evolution in a public school in Dayton, Tennessee. The ACLU sent in renowned lawyer John Randolph Neal, Jr. to defend Scopes.

Baptist pastor William Bell Riley,  persuaded William Jennings Bryan to act as its counsel. Bryan invited his major allies in the Presbyterian General Assembly to attend the trial with him, but J. Gresham Machen refused to testify, saying he had not studied biology in enough detail to testify at trial, while Clarence Macartney had a previous engagement. In response to the announcement that Bryan would be attending the trial, renowned lawyer and committed agnostic Clarence Darrow volunteered to serve on Scopes’ defense team. The stage was thus set for a trial which would prove to be a media circus, with reporters from across the country descending on the small town of 1,900 people. Although the prosecution of Scopes was successful, the trial is widely seen as a crucial moment in discrediting the fundamentalist movement in America, particularly after Darrow called Bryan to the stand and he appeared little able to defend his view of the Bible. Among the media, Bryan’s loudest and ultimately most influential critic was H. L. Mencken, who reported on the trial in his columns and denounced fundamentalism as irrational, backwards and intolerant. As noted earlier, opposition to Darwinism was always much more important to Bryan than it was to other conservative Presbyterian Church leaders. Thus, following Bryan’s death in 1925, the debate about evolution, while it remained an issue within church politics, never again assumed the prominence to the debate that it had while Bryan was alive. 

The Controversy Fought in General Assemblies

The Special Committee appointed at the General Assembly of 1925 consisted mainly of moderates. The committee solicited testimony from both sides, and received statements from Machen, Macartney, and Coffin. At the 1926 General Assembly, another moderate, W.O. Thompson, was elected as moderator. The Special Committee delivered its report and argued that there were five major causes of unrest in the Presbyterian Church: 1) general intellectual movements, including “the so-called conflict between science and religion”, naturalistic worldviews, different understandings of the nature of God, and changes in language; 2) historical differences going back to the Old School-New School split; 3) disagreements about church polity, particularly the role of General Assembly, and lack of representation of women in the church; 4) theological changes; and 5) misunderstanding. The report went on to conclude that the Presbyterian system had traditionally allowed a diversity of views when the core of truth was identical; and that the church flourished when it focused on its unity of spirit. Toleration of doctrinal diversity, including in how to interpret the Westminster Confession, was to be encouraged. In short, the report essentially affirmed the views of the Auburn Affirmation. The committee affirmed that General Assembly could not amend the Westminster Confession without the permission of the presbyteries, though it could issue judicial rulings consistent with the Confession that were binding on the presbyteries. The Five Fundamentals, though, had no binding authority. In spite of Clarence Macartney’s opposition on the floor of General Assembly, the committee’s report was adopted.

The Modernist/Fundamentalist Controversy (p2)

For Gordon Clark Discussions

A reading of the Wikipedia article: “Fundamentalist–Modernist controversy”; Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; Our thanks to the contributors and authors at Wikipedia for the use of this article

Heresy Trials

There was no subsequent attempt to ferret out followers of Higher Criticism in the years following the Portland Deliverance and the de-frocking of Briggs. Most followers of Higher Criticism were like the clergymen who had signed the Plea for Peace and Work manifesto drafted by Henry van Dyke, which argued that all these heresy trials were bad for the church, and that the church should be less concerned with theories about inerrancy, and more concerned with getting on with its spiritual work. Indeed, most clergymen in the period took the moderate view, being willing to tolerate Higher Criticism within the church because they were open to the points Higher Criticism was making, or they wanted to avoid the distraction, and dissension, of heresy trials. For many, that came out of the traditional New School resistance to heresy trials, and the rigid imposition of the Confession.

There were two further heresy trials in subsequent years, which would be the last major heresy trials in the conflict. In late 1892, Henry Preserved Smith, Professor of Old Testament at Lane Theological Seminary, was convicted of heresy by the Presbytery of Cincinnati for teaching that there were errors in the Bible, and his conviction was later upheld by the General Assembly. In 1898, Union Theological Seminary Professor of Church History Arthur Cushman McGiffert was tried by New York Presbytery, which condemned certain portions of his book A History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age, but declined to apply sanctions. This decision was appealed to General Assembly, but McGiffert resigned from the denomination and the charges were withdrawn.

Revising the Westminster Confession of Faith

Henry van Dyke, a modernist who had been a major supporter of Briggs, now headed a movement of modernists and New Schoolers to revise the Westminster Confession of Faith. Van Dyke had been calling for credal revision to affirm that all dying infants, and not just elect dying infants, go to heaven, to say that God loved the whole world, and not just the elect, and to affirm that Christ atoned for all mankind, not just the elect. He eventually chaired a committee (with a New School majority) and drew up a non-binding summary of the church’s faith. It mentioned neither biblical inerrancy nor reprobation, affirmed God’s love of all mankind, and denied that the Pope was the Antichrist. It was adopted by General Assembly and ratified by the presbyteries.

As a result of the changes, the Arminian-leaning Cumberland Presbyterian Church petitioned for reunification, and soon, over 1000 Cumberland Presbyterian ministers joined the Presbyterian Church in the USA. The arrival of so many liberal ministers strengthened the New School’s position in the denomination.

The Five Fundamentals

In 1909, there was heated debate in the New York Presbytery about whether or not to ordain three men who refused to assent to the doctrine of the virgin birth of Jesus. (They did not deny the doctrine outright but said that they were not prepared to affirm it.) The majority eventually ordained the men; the minority complained to the General Assembly, and it was that complaint that would form the basis of the subsequent controversy. Under the order of the Presbyterian Church in the USA, the General Assembly was not authorized to accept or dismiss the complaint. It should handled the complaint differently, and could have done so with instructions that the presbytery hold a heresy trial: The result could then be appealed to the Synod of New York and to the General Assembly. However, the General Assembly, acting outside its scope of authority, dismissed the complaint against the three men, and at the same time instructed a committee to prepare a statement for governing future ordinations. The committee reported, and the General Assembly passed a Doctrinal Deliverance, which declared that five doctrines were “necessary and essential” to the Christian faith:

  • The inspiration of the Bible by the Holy Spirit and the inerrancy of Scripture as a result of this.
  • The virgin birth of Christ.
  • The belief that Christ’s death was an atonement for sin.
  • The bodily resurrection of Christ.
  • The historical reality of Christ’s miracles.

The five propositions would become known to history as the “Five Fundamentals” and soon, theological conservatives rallying around the Five Fundamentals came to be known as “fundamentalists.”

The Liberal Response

The split between fundamentalists and modernists had built for some time. The event which brought the issue to a head was Harry Emerson Fosdick’s sermon of May 21, 1922, ““Shall the Fundamentalists Win?”” Fosdick was ordained as a Baptist, but had been given special permission to preach in First Presbyterian Church in New York City.

In this sermon, Fosdick presented the liberals in the Presbyterian and Baptist denominations as sincere evangelical Christians who were struggling to reconcile new discoveries in history, science, and religion with the Christian faith. Fundamentalists, on the other hand, were cast as intolerant conservatives who refused to deal with these new discoveries and had arbitrarily drawn the line as to what was off limits in religious discussion. Many people, Fosdick argued, simply found it impossible to accept the virgin birth of Christ, the doctrine of substitutionary atonement, or the literal Second Coming of Christ in the light of modern science. Given the different points of view within the church, only tolerance, and liberty, could allow for these different perspectives to co-exist in the church.

Fosdick’s sermon was published as “The New Knowledge and the Christian Faith” in three religious journals, and widely distributed in the country. Conservative Clarence E. Macartney, pastor of Arch Street Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, responded to Fosdick with a sermon of his own, entitled “Shall Unbelief Win?” which was also published. He argued that liberalism had been progressively “secularizing” the church and, if left unchecked, would lead to “a Christianity of opinions and principles and good purposes, but a Christianity without worship, without God, and without Jesus Christ.” Led by Macartney, the Presbytery of Philadelphia requested that the General Assembly take such actions as to ensure that the ministers in the First Presbyterian Church of New York City subscribed to the Westminster Confession of Faith. This request would lead to over a decade of bitter fighting in the Presbyterian Church. Throughout the proceedings, Fosdick’s defense was led by lay elder John Foster Dulles.

The Modernist/Fundamentalist Controversy (p1)

For Gordon Clark Discussions

A reading of the Wikipedia article: “Fundamentalist–Modernist controversy”; Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; Our thanks to the contributors and authors at Wikipedia for the use of this article

The Fundamentalist–Modernist controversy is a major schism that started in the early 20th century within the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. At issue were foundational disputes about the role of Christianity, the authority of Scripture, the death, Resurrection, and atoning sacrifice of Jesus. Two broad factions within Protestantism emerged: Fundamentalists, who insisted upon the timeless validity of each doctrine of Christian Orthodoxy, and Modernists, who advocated a conscious adaptation of religion in response to the new scientific discoveries and the moral pressures of the age. At first, the schism was limited to Reformed Christianity and centered about Princeton Theological Seminary, but soon spread, affecting every denomination of Christianity in the United States. Denominations that were not initially affected, such as the Lutheran Church, eventually were embroiled in the controversy leading to a schism in the Lutheran Church.

By the end of this period, proponents of Theological Liberalism had, at the time, effectively won the debate, with the Modernists in control of all Mainline Protestant seminaries, publishing houses and denominational hierarchies in the United States. More conservative Christians withdrew from the mainstream, founding their own publishing houses such as Zondervan, universities (such as Biola University) and seminaries (such as Dallas Theological Seminary and Fuller Theological Seminary). This would remain the state of affairs until the 1970s, when conservative Protestantism reemerged, resulting in the resurgence of traditional Christianity among the Southern Baptists, Presbyterians and others.

Background

American Presbyterianism had gone into schism twice in the past, and these divisions were important precursors to the Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy. The first was the Old Side–New Side Controversy, which occurred during the First Great Awakening, and resulted in the Presbyterian Church of that day being divided into an Old Side and New Side. The two churches reunified later. The second was the Old School–New School Controversy, which occurred in the wake of the Second Great Awakening and which saw the Presbyterian Church split into two denominations. At the time of the American Civil War, the “new school” Presbyterians divided over slavery, with the southern New School Presbyterians forming the United Synod of the Presbyterian Church. From this, the Old School Presbyterians split, with the Southern Presbyterians taking on the name the Presbyterian Church of the Confederate States of America (which would be renamed the Presbyterian Church in the United States). Later, the United Synod merged with PCCSA, with the Southern New School Presbyterians ultimately being absorbed into an Old School Denomination, and finally, the Northern New School Presbyterians returned to the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America.

Although the controversies involved many other issues, the overarching issue had to do with the nature of church authority, and the authority of the Westminster Confession of Faith. The New School opposed a rigid interpretation of the Westminster Confession. Their stance was based on spiritual renewal through an experience with the Holy Spirit based on scripture. Therefore, they placed less emphasis on receiving a Seminary education and subscription to the Westminster Confession, ( at least to the degree the Old School required). Their emphasis was more on the liberal understanding of the scripture, and a conversion experience, rather than on the doctrinal content of the Westminster Confession. They argued the importance of an encounter with God mediated by the Holy Spirit. They saw the other side as being formalists who had an unhealthy fetish toward the Westminster Confession, and Calvinism.

The Old School responded that the Westminster Confession was the foundational constitutional document of the Presbyterian Church and that since the Confession was simply a summary of the Bible’s teachings, the church had a responsibility to ensure that the belief of its ministers was in line with the Confession. They accused the New School of being lax about the purity of the church, and willing to allow Arminianism, unitarianism, and other errors to be taught in the Presbyterian Church. They criticized the New School revivals as being emotionally manipulative and shallow. Another major division had to do with their attitude towards other denominations: People in the New School were willing to set up para-church ministries to conduct evangelism and missions and were willing to cooperate with non-Presbyterians in doing so. The Old School felt that evangelism and missions should be conducted through agencies managed by the denomination, and not involving outsiders, since it would involve a watering down of the church’s theological distinctives. The two sides also had different attitudes towards their seminary professors: Princeton Theological Seminary, the leading institution of the Old School, demanded credal subscription and dedicated a large part of its academic efforts to the defense of Calvinist Orthodoxy; while the New School’s Union Theological Seminary was more willing to allow non-Presbyterians to teach at the school, and was more broadminded in its academic output.

The Higher Criticism

American Presbyterians first became aware of Higher Criticism as a development of the German academy. In the 19th century, the Princeton Review, the leading Old School theological journal under the editorship of Charles Hodge, published 70 articles against higher criticism, and the number increased in the years after 1850. However, it was not until the years after 1880 that Higher Criticism really had any advocates within American seminaries. When Higher Criticism arrived, it arrived in force.

The first major proponent of Higher Criticism within the Presbyterian Church was Charles Augustus Briggs, who had studied Higher Criticism in Germany. His inaugural address upon being made Professor of Hebrew at Union Theological Seminary was the first salvo of Higher Criticism within American Presbyterianism. Briggs was active in founding The Presbyterian Review, with Archibald Alexander Hodge, president of Princeton Theological Seminary, initially serving as Briggs’ co-editor. Briggs published an article in defense of William Robertson Smith which led to a series of responses and counter-responses between Briggs and the Princeton theologians in the pages of The Presbyterian Review. Later, B. B. Warfield became co-editor and refused to publish one of Briggs’ articles, a key turning point.

Charles Augustus Briggs

After a time, Briggs was appointed as Union’s first-ever Professor of Biblical Theology. His inaugural address, entitled “The Authority of Holy Scripture”, proved to be highly controversial. Whereas previously, Higher Criticism had seemed a fairly technical, scholarly issue, Briggs now spelt out its full implications. In the address, he announced that Higher Criticism had now definitively proven that Moses did not write the Pentateuch; that Ezra did not write Ezra, Chronicles or Nehemiah; Jeremiah did not write the books of Kings or the Lamentations; David did not write most of the Psalms; Solomon wrote not the Song of Solomon or Ecclesiastes but only a few Proverbs; and Isaiah did not write half of the book of Isaiah. The Old Testament was merely a historical record that showed man in a lower state of moral development, with modern man having progressed morally far beyond Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Judah, David, and Solomon. At any rate, the Scriptures as a whole are riddled with errors and the doctrine of scriptural inerrancy taught at Princeton Theological Seminary “is a ghost of modern evangelicalism to frighten children.” Not only the Westminster Confession is wrong but also the very foundation of the Confession, the Bible, could not be used to create theological absolutes. He now called on other rationalists in the denomination to join him in sweeping away the dead orthodoxy of the past and work for the unity of the entire church.

The inaugural address provoked widespread outrage in the denomination and led the Old School members in the denomination to move against him, with Francis Landey Patton taking the lead. Under the terms of the reunion of 1869, General Assembly had the right to veto all appointments to seminary professorships so at the 1891 General Assembly, held in Detroit, Old Schoolers successfully got through a motion to veto Briggs’ appointment, which passed by a vote of 449–60. The faculty of Union Theological Seminary, however, refused to remove Briggs, saying that it would be a violation of scholarly freedom. Later, the faculty would vote to withdraw from the denomination.

In the meantime, New York Presbytery brought heresy charges against Briggs, but these were defeated. The committee that had brought the charges then appealed to the General Assembly of that year, held in Portland, Oregon. The General Assembly responded with its famous Portland Deliverance, affirming that the Presbyterian Church holds that the Bible is without error and that ministers who believe otherwise should withdraw from the ministry. Briggs’ case was remanded to New York Presbytery, which conducted a second heresy trial for Briggs, which again found Briggs not guilty of heresy. In response, the opponents of Briggs appealed to General Assembly. The General Assembly now voted to overturn the New York decision and declared Briggs guilty of heresy. He was defrocked as a result in that denomination, remained as a minister as he had also been ordained as an Episcopal priest.)