William Newton Clarke

Background

William Newton Clarke was born on December 02, 1841 in the Baptist parsonage in Cazenovia, New York, United States and spent his boyhood in that village except during the short pastorate of his father at Whitesboro, which intervened between two pastorates at Cazenovia. He was the son of the Reverend William and Urania (Miner) Clarke and was descended from Jeremiah Clarke, one of the founders of Newport, Rohd Island, and from Thomas Miner, who came with Winthrop to Massachusetts Bay.

Education

Clarke entered the Oneida Conference (Cazenovia) Seminary, graduating in 1858, the youngest of his class. He was admitted to sophomore standing in Madison University, received the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1861 and graduated two years later from the Theological Seminary.

Career

The spiritual and scholarly character of Clarke's first pastorate, at Keene, New Hampshire, led to his call to the First Baptist Church in Newton Center, Massachusetts, where the faculty and students of Newton Theological Institution formed a part of his congregation. He began his Newton pastorate in May 1869. From the beginning of his pastorate, he was making that independent study of the doctrine of the Atonement which was to lead him away from the traditional static view of theology and make him a recognized interpreter of a new day. He remained eleven years at Newton, but sensing some dissatisfaction among the older parishioners whose ideas were too fixed for change, he accepted a call to the Olivet Baptist Church, Montreal. Here was the most cosmopolitan environment of any place of his residence and his mind expanded with the broader outlook upon life.

The main scholarly task of his Montreal pastorate was a Commentary on Mark (1881), which he had been requested to write. Early in 1883, he fell on icy steps and injured a knee which treacherously caused several later falls in which his right elbow also suffered, producing handicaps of motion and considerable suffering, very real but to which he rarely alluded. A call to the chair of New Testament interpretation at the Baptist Theological School in Toronto seemed providential and he began teaching there in the autumn of 1883. These were quiet years spent largely in the intimate study of the New Testament; but his duties included the teaching of homiletics and he was in constant demand to preach in the churches.

In the spring of 1887, Clarke returned to the pastorate, going to the scene of his college days, Hamilton, New York. On the death of President Ebenezer Dodge, he undertook to carry on some of his work in theology in the Seminary and in June 1890 accepted the election to the J. J. Joslin Professorship of Christian Theology. On assuming full charge of the course in systematic theology, Clarke began at once to write out his own views, furnishing his students manifolded copies of the material as needed. During two periods of absence, chiefly in California, he was able to prepare his lecture manuscript for printing in 1894 for limited circulation; after careful revision, it was published as An Outline of Christian Theology (1898).

From August 1901 to June 1902 Clarke was in Europe. At Oxford he began his treatise on The Christian Doctrine of God (1909), but he made an entirely new start after returning home. Much of the next seven years was devoted to this work in addition to his regular teaching. In 1903 he gave a Dudleian lecture at Harvard and in 1905 the Taylor lectures at Yale. In 1908, he resigned his professorship, but a lectureship in Christian Ethics was provided that the Seminary might continue to have his services. On account of the frailty of his own and Mrs. Clarke’s health, they spent his last winters in Florida, where, at Deland, he died suddenly on the forty-eighth anniversary of his ordination.

Achievements

• William Newton Clarke 's fame rested on his writings. His most important work was "An Outline of Christian Theology" (1898). This was an epoch-making book, for it was the first broad survey of Christian theology which frankly accepted the modern view of the world, substituted vital, dynamic phraseology for the mechanical and static, and subordinated theology to the Christian religion itself, which was to be discerned both by a historical approach to the Scriptures and by the experiential evidence of all times.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Immortality, a study of belief, and earlier addresses

    (This book was digitized and reprinted from the collection...)

  • An Outline Of Christian Theology

    (This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

  • An Outline of Christian Theology: -1898

    (Originally published in 1898. This volume from the Cornel...)

  • The Christian Doctrine of God (Classic Reprint) by William Newton Clarke (2015-07-10)

Religion

Clarke was a member of the Baptist church.

Connections

On September 01, 1869 Clarke married Emily A. Smith at Waverly, Pennsylvania.

Father:

William Clarke

Mother:

Urania (Miner) Clarke

Spouse:

Emily A. Smith

References

• Baptist Theology: A Four-Century Study
• William Newton Clarke : A Biography, with Additional Sketches By His Friends and Colleagues