Nathaniel William Taylor and Thomas Reid: Scottish common-sense philosophy's impact upon the formation of New Haven theology in Antebellum America

This paper will examine the relationship between Scottish common-sense philosophy and the formation of New Haven Theology. It will be illustrated that Nathaniel William Taylor's adaptations of orthodox Calvinism (particularly the doctrines of election and predestination and total depravity) relied heavily upon the principles of common-sense philosophy found in the work of Thomas Reid. Furthermore, it will be argued that Taylor's adaptation of Calvinism was a necessary accommodation to the phenomenon of mass conversion and evangelism during the Second Great Awakening.

Benevolent Calvinism and the Moral Government of God: The Influence of Nathaniel W. Taylor on Revivalism in the Second Great Awakening

In the early nineteenth century, when theological disputes centered on suggestions of a kinder, gentler God, Yale's Nathaniel William Taylor brought to fruition America's “one great contribution to the theological thinking of Christendom,” the New Haven theology. Taylor's theology combined elements of Calvinist and Newtonian worldviews and centered on three critical assumptions: the benevolence of God, his moral government, and human free agency. Thus, Taylor held that God was both a wise and powerful creator and a good and just ruler, whose concern for and involvement with his creation extended into contemporary human affairs. Moreover, he believed that men and women were moral agents whose sinfulness was worthy of divine condemnation as well as empirically inevitable, but that human sin was in no way preordained or necessary to the prevailing System of moral government.