The Virtue of Victorian Theologians
A reader sends along this comment, which I wanted to share and applaud.
As for the Anglicans, I think you’d like some of the “liberal” Anglicans of the Victorian era, such as the academics-turned-bishops Westcott and Lightfoot. When the excesses of German higher criticism were raging across continental Europe applying their universal acid of skepticism to virtually every historical and authorship claim of the church in relation to scripture, these Anglicans stood up to the critical theories and in my opinion really exposed them for the piles of straw that they were. Westcott in his commentary on John defended John bar-Zebedee’s authorship of the fourth gospel, and Lightfoot worked towards establishing authenticity of the Ignatian epistles and collating a lot of patristic works. As far as I understand things, their arguments were never refuted, only bypassed and now dismissed as “dated” or “Victorian”. They knew how to formulate an argument, put forth evidence, and weigh competing claims.
They also are for me models of how devotion, scholarship, fidelity to scripture, being open-minded (hence “liberal”) but not so much that you’ll believe any stupid fad or theory, carefulness, precision, etc can all be melded to form the perfect synthesis of faith and reason. You can compare their writings and thinking with what comes out of mainstream seminaries today, and if you’re like me you’ll find many of our moderns frivolous by comparison. The Victorians wrote simply and clearly, yet confidently conveyed powerful evidence-driven arguments. They had hair on their chests, so speaking. They were not worried about virtue-signalling to other theologians how with-the-times they were, but they were simply worried about where the evidence leads, and they stood up against a tidal wave of liberal theology and out-of-control “scientific literary criticism” and held off the dragon for a few decades. Unfortunately, in the end, the liberals won anyway, but this seems to me to be a function more of the changing intellectual culture than in any deficiencies in conservative argumentation.
My Comment: In my youth, the Victorians, because they had high standards for sexual continence, were regarded as lesser devils, filth, and hypocrites, and always compared unfavorably to such paragons of sexual liberty as various pot-smoking pornographers, polygamists, sodomites, and perverse purveyors of incest. It is easy forgotten that the stalwart young men of Britain, with their elaborate sense of honor and iron self control, conquered the world, erecting an empire larger than Rome’s.
Hence it was shocking for me, when first reading the APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA of Newman, to read the opening passages where, because dueling is forbidden to clergy, he regards the slurs against his honor voiced by those hating the Church to which his intellectual integrity required he transfer his allegiance as sufficient provocation to pen an autobiography, laying out his inner thoughts to a hostile public. He speaks in terms of manly honor such as only exist in parody in these degraded days.
Oh, for men such as he was, whose word was a sacred thing.
The Victorians wrote simply and clearly, yet confidently conveyed powerful evidence-driven arguments.
Let us pray heaven we see the return of such men among us.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
