World Christianity
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 61, No. 2 – Spring 2019
Managing Editor: W. Madison Grace II
By Robert W. Caldwell. III. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2017. 246 pages. $35.00
Over the past decade or so, Robert Caldwell has established himself as a leading authority on Jonathan Edwards’s thought, having written two significant monographs and a number of helpful essays. In Theologies of the American Revivalists: From Whitefield to Finney, Caldwell expands his focus to cover the period lasting roughly 1730 to 1830, a century that included both the First and Second Great Awakenings.
For the sake of his study, Caldwell focuses on the interplay of three related themes as central to one’s revival theology: “their theologies of salvation, the ways they practically preached the gospel, and the conversion experiences they expected from those experiencing salvation” (6). He then devotes eight chapters to both well-known figures and influential movements, as well as more obscure revivalists and less-familiar movements, resulting in a “theological history of what it meant to ‘become a Christian’ during the age of America’s Great Awakenings” (10).
The first chapter establishes Caldwell’s benchmark as moderate evangelical revival theology, which was a pietistic form of Calvinism that emphasized personal conversion. Moderate revival theology included: conviction of sin, typically through confrontation with one’s failure to obey God’s moral law and attempts to attend to the “means of grace”; conversion, a process that included regeneration, repentance, and faith, and which could last an extended period of time; and consolation, or assurance of salvation, which normally came after one’s conversion and was sought through rigorous self-examination and the pursuit of personal holiness. Curiously, Caldwell seems to imply Whitefield was a moderate evangelical in his first chapter, though in this second chapter Whitefield is noted as a key shaper of Croswell’s revivalism. Most scholars would identify Whitefield as a radical rather than a moderate.
Jonathan Edwards emerged as the leading defender of moderate revivalism, though as the second chapter recounts, his constructive reflections on original sin, imputation, and human free will, as well as his “spirituality of disinterestedness,” which minimized focus upon one’s own self-interests, opened the door to later Edwardseans revising and even abandoning traditional Reformed categories in their respective revival theologies. Furthermore, the views of radicals such as Andrew Croswell emphasized immediate conversion and collapsed assurance into conversion, paving the way for a transition from traditionally Reformed to modern evangelical accounts of how one becomes a Christian.
Chapter three discusses the New Divinity theologians, second-generation Edwardseans who further developed Edwards’s thought to make it friendlier to immediate conversion and less focused on the means of grace as prerequisite to regeneration. They offered a robust understanding of human sinfulness and maintained belief in predestination, but rejected imputation and argued that merit is specific to individuals. The latter ideas led to revisionist understandings of original sin, the atonement, and justification. The following three chapters offer various denominational responses to these revival theologies during the Second Great Awakening. Pro-revival Congregationalists and Presbyterians tended to embrace the New Divinity, with progressives such as Nathaniel Taylor further developing these ideas into the New Haven Theology, which denied predestination and original sin, while affirming an unbound will capable of responding to God in faith. Methodists were uniformly pro-revival, adopting the Arminianism and holiness views pioneered by John Wesley. Whereas various forms of Calvinism thrived on the Eastern Seaboard, Arminianism took root on the frontier, where it was spread through camp meetings and itinerancy.
Most readers of this journal will be especially interested in Caldwell’s treatment of the Baptists. Not surprisingly, the Baptists were less defined by their soteriology than their ecclesiology, and traditional Calvinism, the New Divinity, and Arminianism each found Baptist proponents. While most of the Arminians identified with the Free Will Baptist tradition, the spectrum from Jesse Mercer’s conservative Calvinism to the New Divinity of Jonathan Maxcy and William B. Johnson transcended the divide between Regular Baptists and Separate Baptists. Caldwell’s identification of this spectrum, coupled with Thomas Kidd’s arguments that Regulars were moderate evangelicals and Separates were radical evangelicals, offer a more fruitful way of interpreting Baptists of this era than the tired dichotomies between pro-revival and anti-revival and/or Calvinist and non-Calvinist. The older interpretations often serve polemical ends, but they do not reflect careful historical investigation.
In chapter seven, Caldwell turns his attention to Charles Finney, the most controversial revival theologian. Caldwell demonstrates that Finney was not a heretic who abandoned traditional Calvinism, but rather was a New School Presbyterian who embraced New Haven Theology. When it came to the application of that theology in his “new measures,” Finney did not invent new practices, but rather popularized heretofore frontier Methodist strategies, such as the anxious bench and protracted meetings, to historically Calvinist congregations on the East Coast. Finney’s New Haven revival theology thus offered a bridge between Reformed denominations and Arminian practices.
In the final chapter, Caldwell discusses two responses to modern revival theology. The theologians of Princeton seminary exhibited hesitancy toward revivalism that was rooted in their confessional Calvinism. The Princeton theologians were in favor of revival, but they were suspicious of Edwards because of the role he played as a bridge to innovations in Reformed theology that, to them, represented a theological downgrade. The Campbellite movement represented a more rationalistic response to revivalism. The Campbellites affirmed an intellectualist view of saving faith, immediate conversion, and a view of regeneration that combined belief and baptism. Campbellism thrived in the nineteenth century, especially in frontier contexts where their restorationist message appealed to evangelicals skeptical of inter-denominational competition for converts.
Theologies of the American Revivalists is a landmark study that summarizes and synthesizes the best of recent scholarship about the history of revival theology. Caldwell treats each figure and movement with empathy, avoiding a narrative about good guys and bad guys. The book is scholarly without being stolid, edifying without being preachy, and accessible to non-experts. It is ideal for classroom use, though interested pastors will also find much to learn. Caldwell’s work will help to reframe how historians (and pastors!) think about revival history. Highly recommended.
