Alexander Viets Griswold Allen

Background

Alexander Viets Griswold Allen was born on June 4, 1841 at Otis, Massachussets, United States. He was the son of Ethan and Lydia Child (Burr) Allen. His father, who had been a teacher and had not been ordained until he was forty years old, was rector of a little Episcopal church there on a salary of $200 a year and free firewood. From here, when Alexander was about four years of age, he went to St. Paul's parish, Nantucket. There as elsewhere in this country at that time the Oxford movement was making trouble, and after ten rather unhappy years he took charge of a small church at Guilford, Vermont. Under these straitened and, from most points of view, unpromising conditions, young Alexander grew up. Both father and mother were strongly evangelical, and in the mother there was a deep vein of mystical piety, which perhaps left traces in her son, though he was of a more intellectual type.

Education

At the age of eighteen Allen entered the sophomore class of Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio. This was then a strongly evangelical or Low Church institution, with the consequent limitations and disadvantages which belonged to the later period of the evangelical movement. Here may be said to have been the real beginning of Allen's intellectual life. He graduated at the head of his class in 1862 and the same year entered Bexley Hall, the theological seminary at Gambier, where he spent two years. During this period of his life his reaction from the evangelical party, as it was then represented, began. So strong was it that in 1863 he seems to have been almost on the point of rejecting historical Christianity. But he found help and relief in the study of S. T. Coleridge, the guide of so many ardent spirits tormented by the hardness and unreality of popular theology. Partly to escape from the conditions at Gambier, and partly for other reasons, he went to the Andover Theological Seminary. Here he found a different and more stimulating atmosphere, in which his intellectual horizon broadened.

Career

On June 24, 1866, Allen was ordained priest in St. John's Church, Framingham, and became rector of St. John's, Lawrence. In 1867 he was called to be instructor in church history in the new theological school at Cambridge, Massachussets, and became full professor in 1869. Here he remained until his death.

His first real appeal to the thinking world was his Continuity of Christian Thought (1884). He approached the subject from a standpoint new to most modern writers, beginning with Clement of Alexandria, rejecting the entire Latin tradition, and following the Greek entirely. As a consequence, his treatment of the great Latin theologians was not only sometimes wanting in justice, but even in understanding. He is also widely known for his Life and Letters of Phillips Brooks (2 volumes, 1900). In addition to many contributions to magazines, he also published Jonathan Edwards (1889); Religious Progress (1894); and several other works.

Achievements

• Allen's most original and distinctive work is Continuity of Christian Thought, as well as Life and Letters of Phillips Brooks.

Works

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• book

  • Life and letters of Phillips Brooks Volume 2

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • Life and letters of Phillips Brooks Volume 3

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • Life And Letters Of Phillips Brooks; Volume 1

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Jonathan Edwards

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • The Continuity of Christian Thought : a Study of Modern Theology in the Light of Its History

    (HIGH QUALITY FACSIMILE REPRODUCTION: Allen, Alexander V. ...)

  • Religious Progress FACSIMILE

    (High Quality FACSIMILE REPRODUCTION: Allen, Alexander V. ...)

Views

Quotations: "I am always moving, as it seems to me, underground, beneath institutions and customs and formulas of thought, and trying to get at some deeper meaning. "

Personality

Allen was of medium size, rather inclined to stoutness, with soft light hair turning to gray in his later years, a sandy mustache, side whiskers, and a broad forehead over a pair of eyes almost hidden by glasses. His voice was peculiar in its softness, low and almost muffled, but flexible, expressive, and well adapted to the classroom. He was not a great scholar in the European sense of the word, but, judging by the almost unanimous testimony of his pupils, he was a great teacher.

Connections

In 1872 Allen married Elizabeth Kent Stone, who died in 1892. In 1907 he married Paulina Cony Smith.

Father:

Ethan Allen

Mother:

Lydia Child (Burr) Allen

Spouse:

Elizabeth Kent (Stone) Allen

Spouse:

Paulina Cony (Smith) Allen

Sister :

Adelaide Louisa Allen

Son:

John Stone Allen

References

• Alexander Viets Griswold Allen, 1841-1908