Realities of Christian Theology: An Interpretation of Christian Experience
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The Idea of God: Historical, Critical Constructive (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from The Idea of God: Historical, Critical Constr...)
Excerpt from The Idea of God: Historical, Critical Constructive
Finally, the author would not extinguish the torch by which his path has been lighted, but would hand it on to others that they, guided by its flame, may discover fur ther and more precious meanings in him who is for us the Living God.
This foreword must not close without an expression of unmeasured indebtedness to President Ozora Steams Davis for his generous encouragement in the carrying out of this task, and then for the fact that he, together with 'mrs. Grace Tinker Davis, in their cottage at Sunapee Lake and afterward read the manuscript of this book and offered suggestions which led to the simplifying of some obscure and many difficult paragraphs. The author is.
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Clarence Augustine Beckwith was a professor at the United Church of Christ's Chicago Theological Seminary.
Background
Clarence Beckwith was born on July 21, 1849, at Charlemont in the Deerfield River Valley, Berkshire Hills, Massachussets, the first son and second child of the three children of Justin Williams and Sarah (Upton) Beckwith. In his fourteenth year the family moved to a farm in Victor Township, Clinton County, Michigan.
Education
After completing the high-school course at St. John's, Michigan, Clarence entered Olivet College, from which he was graduated with the degree of A. B. in 1874. He then spent two years (1874 - 1876) as a student at the Yale Divinity School, after which, a year at Bangor Theological Seminary. Besides his theological degree received from Bangor Seminary in 1877, he was granted the degree of A. M. by Olivet College. He pursued further studies at the University of Berlin (1897 - 1898).
Career
In 1877 Beckwith was ordained to the Congregational ministry at Brewer, Maine, where he remained as pastor until 1882, in which year he was called to what proved to be a ten-year pastorate of the West Roxbury (Boston) Congregational Church. From 1893 to 1905 he was professor of Christian theology in the Bangor Theological Seminary, and from 1905 until his retirement in December 1926 he held the Illinois Professorship of Systematic Theology in the Chicago Theological Seminary.
Beckwith was the author of two books, Realities of Christian Theology (1906) and The Idea of God, Historical, Critical, Constructive (1922). The former work, written during the Bangor professorship, undertakes a restatement of Christian theology on the basis of the Christian religious experience and in terms of modern thought, i. e. , Biblical criticism, the history of dogma, evolutionary biology, general psychology and the psychology of religion, philosophy, and ethics. Theology is viewed as a continuous attempt to interpret the Christian religious consciousness (created by the revelation of God in Jesus Christ) under the special historical conditions of each succeeding age.
The Idea of God Beckwith, after a critical examination of traditional Christian theism, defines God as Creative and Purposive Good Will, immanent and at work in the world, whether unconsciously, consciously (as in man), or superconsciously. He claims to find the divine immanence in a universal principle or activity, and the divine transcendence in the ideal meaning which is to be made actual. The theologian has the task of ascertaining what kind of a world the creative Good Will is actualizing here and now.
Beckwith's literary work included editorship of the department of systematic theology, in The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (12 vols. , 1908 - 12), and contributions to the Dictionary of the Apostolic Church (2 vols. , 1916 - 22) and A Dictionary of Religion and Ethics (1923), edited by Shailer Mathews and G. B. Smith. All his writings give evidence of scholarly care, with a tendency to understatement; at the same time there is an abiding confidence that the reconciliation of science and religion is not to be considered impossible. A great lover of nature, he repaired gladly when vacation came, to his island summer home, Eggemoggin, Maine. He died in Bangor, Maine; his body was cremated and his ashes finally interred, with those of his wife, in the Stilson Cemetery, Victor Township, Clinton County, Michigan.
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
Views
Quotations:
"The immanent God is the God of things as they are; the transcendent God is the God of things as they are to become. "
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
Beckwith was described by President Hyde of Bowdoin College--and the estimate is amply corroborated by colleagues and students--as "one of the world's few natural teachers, " making "most skilful use of the Socratic method, " and acquiring "a great personal hold upon his students" who looked to him "as a guide and friend. "
Connections
Clarence Beckwith was married in Boston on September 25, 1878, to Eugénie Loba, of Olivet, Michigan, who had been born in the Swiss Alps and had crossed the American continent in the "covered-wagon days" before the Civil War; they had one son, Paul Loba.