Background
He was born in Springfield, Massachussets, the son of William and Mary Flagg (Miller) Foster.
He was born in Springfield, Massachussets, the son of William and Mary Flagg (Miller) Foster.
He received his early education in the high school of his native town and then entered Harvard College, graduating in 1873 at the head of his class.
The year following he was assistant professor of mathematics at the United States Naval Academy, Annapolis.
In 1874 he enrolled at Andover Theological Seminary, from which he graduated in 1877. His dissertation he published in English under the title The Doctrine of the Transcendent Use of the Principle of Causality in Kant, Herbart, and Lotze (1882).
He then went to Germany for further study and received the degree of Ph. D. from the University of Leipzig in 1882.
Since no professorship of theology was then open to Foster, he spent two years (1882 - 84) teaching philosophy and German at Middlebury College, Vermont.
Ordained to the Congregational ministry on September 12 of the same year at North Reading, Massachussets, he served as pastor there until 1879.
His subsequent career brought him no little disappointment. At Andover he had become closely associated with Prof. Edwards A. Park, and Park was disposed to recommend him for appointment as his successor in the chair of Christian theology. When Park resigned in 1881, however, a reaction against the conservatism which he represented had taken place and no candidate of his could hope for favorable consideration. Since no professorship of theology was then open to Foster, he spent two years (1882 - 84) teaching philosophy and German at Middlebury College, Vermont.
In 1884 he accepted a call to Oberlin College, Ohio, where for eight years he taught church history. He adopted some of the methods of instruction with which he had become familiar while abroad and in 1888 published The Seminary Method of Original Study in the Historical Sciences.
The following year he issued with a historical introduction A Defense of the Catholic Faith Concerning the Satisfaction of Christ, against Faustus Socinus, a trauslation of the work of Hugo Grotius.
Finally, in 1892, opportunity to work in his chosen field presented itself and he went to Pacific Seminary, Berkeley, California, as professor of systematic theology. Although he remained ten years, he was not altogether happy there; the students were comparatively few and he felt that his labors were unfruitful.
Accordingly, in 1902, with no other position in view, he resigned. During his term of service in California he published The Fundamental Ideas of the Roman Catholic Church Explained and Discussed (1899) and Christian Life & Theology (1900).
Two years after he severed his connection with Pacific Seminary he went to Olivet College, Michigan, as college pastor; later he was appointed professor of history and subsequently of philosophy.
Returning to Oberlin in 1925, he lived there for the remainder of his life, giving instruction until 1933 in Hebrew and Greek to students who elected those subjects.
In 1930 he published India's Religion of Grace and Christianity Compared and Contrasted, a translation from the German of Rudolf Otto's work of that same year.
At the age of seventy-five he learned Arabic and later wrote A Brief Doctrinal Commentary on the Arabic Koran (1932). He was a frequent contributor to religious periodicals and was associate editor of Samuel M. Jackson's Concise Dictionary of Religious Knowledge and Gazetteer (3d ed. , 1898).
Ordained to the Congregational ministry on Sept. 12 of the same year at North Reading, Massachussets, he served as pastor there until 1879.
The following year he issued with a historical introduction A Defense of the Catholic Faith Concerning the Satisfaction of Christ, against Faustus Socinus, a trauslation of the work of Hugo Grotius.
Quotations: In the former he endeavored "to state the Catholic case as strongly and as well as a Catholic could do it, " and then "to refute what he believed to be wrong with equal clearness and completeness"; the latter contained lectures originally given at Princeton Theological Seminary upon the Stone Foundation and repeated at other institutions, including Union College, Bradford, England.
He was twice married: first, August 30, 1877, to Eliza C. Grout, by whom he had three children, Frederick, Harold, and Katharine; she died in 1912 and on November 26, 1913, he married Margaret Tracy Algoe, who died in 1920.