Arthur Penrhyn Stanley

Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, (13 December 1815 – 18 July 1881) known as Dean Stanley, was an English Anglican priest and ecclesiastical historian. He was Dean of Westminster from 1864 to 1881. His position was that of a Broad Churchman and he was the author of a number of works on church history. He was a co-founder of the Palestine Exploration Fund.

Early life

Stanley was born in Alderley Edge, in Cheshire, where his father, Edward Stanley, later Bishop of Norwich, was then rector. A brother was Owen Stanley, and his sister was Mary Stanley. The middle-name 'Penrhyn' suggests Welsh lineage.

He was educated at Rugby School under Thomas Arnold and in 1834 went up to Balliol College, Oxford.

In June 1863, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society as The Author of – Life of Doctor Arnold – Historical Memorials of Canterbury – Syria and Palestine in connexion with their History – Lectures on the Eastern Churches – and Lectures on the Jewish Churches The collected Works of Dean Stanley take up 32 bound volumes.

Dean of Westminster

170px|thumb|A [[List of Vanity Fair caricatures|caricature of Stanley in Vanity Fair, 1872. The caption was "Philosophic Belief".]]

Stanley was a candidate to succeed as Archbishop of Dublin following the death of Richard Whately in October 1863, but was rejected by the Church of Ireland. Richard Chenevix Trench, the Dean of Westminster, was appointed instead, and towards the close of 1863, Stanley was appointed by the Crown to the newly vacated deanery. In December, he married Lady Augusta Bruce, sister of Lord Elgin, then governor-general of India. His tenure of the deanery of Westminster was memorable in many ways. He recognised from the first two important disqualifications: his indifference to music and his slight knowledge of architecture. On both subjects, he availed himself, largely of the aid of others, and threw himself with characteristic energy and entire success into the task of rescuing from neglect and preserving from decay the treasure of historic monuments in which Westminster Abbey is so rich. In 1865, he published his Memorials of Westminster Abbey, a work which, despite occasional inaccuracies, is a mine of information. He was a constant preacher and gave a great impulse to Trench's practice of inviting distinguished preachers to the abbey pulpit, especially to the evening services in the nave. His personal influence, already unique, was much increased by his removal to London. His circle of friends included men of every denomination, every class and almost of every nation.

Legacy

thumb|Dean Stanley

Stanley was the leading liberal theologian of his time in England. His writings reveal his special views, aims and aspirations. He regarded the age in which he lived as a period of transition, to be followed either by an "eclipse of faith" or by a "revival of Christianity in a wider aspect," a "catholic, comprehensive, all-embracing Christianity" that "might yet overcome the world". He believed that the Christian Church had not yet presented "its final or its most perfect aspect to the world"; that "the belief of each successive age of Christendom had as a matter of fact varied enormously from the belief of its predecessor"; that "all confessions and similar documents are, if taken as final expressions of absolute truth, misleading"; and that "there still remained, behind all the controversies of the past, a higher Christianity which neither assailants nor defenders had fully exhausted." "The first duty of a modern theologian" he held to be "to study the Bible, not for the sake of making or defending systems out of it, but for the sake of discovering what it actually contains." To this study he looked for the best hope of such a progressive development of Christian theology as should avert the danger arising from "the apparently increasing divergence between the intelligence and the faith of our time." He enforced the duty "of placing in the background whatever was accidental, temporary or secondary, and of bringing into due prominence what was primary and essential." In the former group Stanley would have placed all questions connected with Episcopal or Presbyterian orders, or that deal only with the outward forms or ceremonies of religion, or with the authorship or age of the books of the Old Testament.

Works

Life of Doctor Arnold (1844)
Sermons and Essays on the Apostolic Age (1847)
Memoir of his father (1851)
Commentary on the Epistles to the Corinthians (1855)
Historical Memorials of Canterbury (1855)
Sinai and Palestine in Connexion with their History. 1856. 2nd ed. London: John Murray, 1875.
History of the Eastern Church (1861)
History of the Jewish Church (3 vols, 1863, 1865, 1870)
Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey. London: John Murray, 1870.(Philadelphia, PA, 1899).
Essays on Church and State (1870)
The Church of Scotland (1870)
Addresses and Sermons preached in America (1870)
Essays Chiefly on Questions of Church and State from 1850 to 1870 (1870)
Christian Institutions: Essays on Ecclesiastical Subjects (1881)

The collected The Works of Arthur Penrhyn Stanley take up 32 bound volumes.

References

External links

Westminster Abbey tomb
Stanley, Arthur Penrhyn (1815–1881). Historical memorials of Westminster Abbey ; with illustrations, London : John Murray, 1886. Full text available from the Internet Archive Digital Library [https://archive.org/details/historicmemorial00staniala] Catalogue record, full text available from HathiTrust Digital Library [http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008437913]