To continue this blog’s
view of colonial America, the story to date has established the prevailing
religious basis of the New England settlement.
And that religion was based on Calvinist beliefs. But despite this prominence of Puritans,
there developed a serious split within that community. That was between Congregationalists, who
already put distance between themselves and mainline Puritans back in England,
and Separatists who further emphasized their rejection of any Roman influence
via the Church of England.
And that separation was
hinted at in a few postings ago where the point was made that the reliance on
biblical writings and any derived lessons as applied to everyday life should
rely on logic. A problem with that,
among some Puritans, was that such reliance, in turn, depended on pagan sources,
the classical thinkers such as Aristotle and Cicero.
To modern ears this might
sound as much ado about very little. But
to the purists that engaged in these concerns and who also enjoyed significant
influence on leadership of that time, this linkage apparently had effects about
how they defined legitimate power. As
such, given the linkage these colonial governments placed on spiritual factors,
these debates could and did play a role on what constitutional ideals
germinated among these early Americans.
Many of these discussions
were held within the walls of Harvard, which was established in 1630 just ten
years after the Plymouth colony was formed.
There a certain train of thought seemed to have taken hold. To begin, those arguments accepted the realistic
claim that people attained knowledge or beliefs from what they perceived. Insight was attained in how one structured
the information, the data, one viewed, felt, or heard. The trick to that intake was to logically
order that information. This order, the
belief was, reflected what God imposed on reality.
This “orderly” sense of
reality and how people relate to it – as sensible as it might sound to some –
was critiqued by a set of religious thinkers.
They expressed their concerns in published works, for example, William
Ames’ Medulla Theologica.
Collectively, these thinkers offered an alternative way to view this
basic mode of knowing. Allen Guelzo
states,
… Ames believed that ethics
should not stand as an independent study on its own, with its teachings
hammered out by logical connections between moral axioms. Ames believed that ethics should be studied
only as a department of theology, which was a shorthand way of saying that
there was no moral truth or theory of moral truths worth studying apart from
Calvinistic Protestant Christianity. “The
highest kind of life for a human being,” wrote Ames, “is that which approaches
most closely the living and life-giving God.”[1]
Ergo, why any reliance on
Aristotle or Cicero? He saw no reason to
do so. The Bible is good enough on its
own.
Ames’ rejection was not so much against logic, but on a
logic originating with classical thinkers or natural philosophy of which five
branches can be derived: metaphysics,
epistemology, ethics, politics, and esthetics.[2] Of course of key concern here was with
ethics. How does one establish the good
from evil or the right from wrong?
Within the tradition of
Thomas Aquinas, a philosopher and saint within Roman Catholicism, one relies on
his/her intellect and that relies heavily on logic. Ames, utilizing responsible philosophic
reasoning, argues that one should rely on will and he used the older ideation
of Augustine, who is another saint but of a much earlier time.
In this tradition, Ames claimed that religious thought
should be based more on love (a motivated source of the will) than on objectified
logic. Belief, religiosity, and in turn
Christian living ultimately depended on turning one’s will toward God. In effect, this goes beyond understanding and
might even circumvent it.
On the other hand, the
intellect, according to the Aquinas approach, can be called upon to reason out
why one should remain loyal to a purified version of the Church of England if
the ultimate aim was to reinforce that linkage through a reasoned set of
beliefs.
But if the aim was to strive toward a sincere and complete
conscious embrace of the Calvinist beliefs concerning God’s grace and all that that
entailed, it depended on a true love.
And one was capable of that commitment if one was chosen to receive
God’s grace. This was designated as
Voluntarism and by accepting this view one was giving up on any hope or effort
to rehabilitate the Church of England.
On a political plain, this initiated and, once started, fed a growing
notion of separation from the mother country.
Guelzo warns his readers, these concerns were mostly held
by the first generation of settlers as they made their way across the Atlantic,
settled on the American continent, and began organizing themselves into
congregations and political arrangements.
While the above arguments had their place and influence, the day-to-day
experiences were taken up by the demands of the wilderness.
Despite that, Harvard was
not giving up on the classical based education.
There reason and logic ruled. In
addition, between 1630 and 1660 a new generation was introduced and socialized into
another cultural world than what their parents had experienced. Besides the natural tendency to entertain these
younger members’ own set of beliefs, the intellectual world was moving in other
directions and while delayed, due to distance and an ocean, would have its
effects on how the younger colonists would see these questions.
But before moving on, one
can detect the origins of independence beginning to take hold. Probably an initial point or area of
contention – one described in this posting – would be spiritual in nature. And beyond the eastern horizon a new mode of
thinking and a new way to appraise authority was brewing. Would the winds of change challenge the basic
federal model the settlers had established on the shores of North America?
[1]
Allen C. Guelzo, The American Mind, Part I
– transcript books – (Chantilly, VA: The
Teaching Company/The Great Courses, 2005), 29.
The factual information of this posting is derived from this source.
[2] For quick reference, see “Introduction to the Five
Branches of Philosophy,” Objectivism 101:
Tools for Living (n.d.), accessed April 1, 2021.
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