Background
Smith, Henry Boynton was born on November 21, 1815 in Portland, Maine, United States. Son of Henry and Arixene (Southgate) Smith.
Smith, Henry Boynton was born on November 21, 1815 in Portland, Maine, United States. Son of Henry and Arixene (Southgate) Smith.
He graduated at Bowdoin College in 1834. Studied theology at Andover, where his health failed, at Bangor, and, after a year (1836-1837) as librarian and tutor in Greek at Bowdoin, in Germany at Halle, where he became personally intimate with Tholuck and Ulrici, and in Berlin, under Neander and Hengstenberg.
In 1847-1850 he was professor of moral philosophy and metaphysics at Amherst. And in 1850-1854 was Washburn professor of Church history, and in 1854-1874 Roosevelt professor of systematic theology, at Union Theological Seminary. His health failed in 1874 and he died in New York City on 7 February 1877.
His theology is most strikingly contained in the Andover address, "Relations of Faith and Philosophy," which was delivered before the Porter Rhetorical Society in 1849.
He always made it clear that the ideal philosophy was Christocentric: he said that Reformed theology must ""Christologize" predestination and decrees, regeneration and sanctification, the doctrine of the Church, and the whole of the Eschatology."
See EL (Mrs HB) Smith, Henry Boynton Smith, His Life and Works (New York, 1881), and Lewis F Stearns, Henry Boynton Smith (Boston, 1892), in the American Religious Leaders series.
Married Elizabeth Lee Allen, January 5, 1843 4 children.