Essays and Reviews, published by John William Parker in March 1860, is a broad-church volume of seven essays on Christianity. The topics covered the biblical research of the German critics, the evidence for Christianity, religious thought in England, and the cosmology of Genesis. Despite lacking originality, The six church essayists were: Frederick Temple, who later became Archbishop of Canterbury; Rowland Williams, then tutor at Cambridge and later Professor and Vice-Principal of St David's University College, Lampeter; Baden Powell, clergyman and Professor of Geometry at Oxford; Henry Bristow Wilson, fellow of St John's College, Oxford; Mark Pattison, tutor at Lincoln College, Oxford; and Benjamin Jowett, Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford (later Master) and Regius Professor of Greek, Oxford University. The layman was Charles Wycliffe Goodwin, former fellow of St Catharine's College, Cambridge, Egyptologist, barrister and, later, Assistant Judge of the British Supreme Court for China and Japan.

Content

thumb|150px|Charles Goodwin

These are the titles and authors of the essays, with Altholz's one-sentence summary of each one.

  1. The Education of the World by Frederick Temple—"a warmed-over sermon urging the free study of the Bible"
  2. Bunsen's Biblical Researches by Rowland Williams—"denying the predictive character of Old Testament prophecies"
  3. On the Study of the Evidences of Christianity by Baden Powell—"flatly denied the possibility of miracles"
  4. Séances Historiques de Genève. The National Church by Henry Bristow Wilson—"gave the widest possible latitude to the Thirty-nine Articles and questioned the eternity of damnation"
  5. On the Mosaic Cosmogony by C. W. Goodwin—"a critique of the attempted 'Harmonies' between Genesis and geology"
  6. Tendencies of Religious Thought in England, 1688-1750 by Mark Pattison—"a learned and cold study of the evidential theologians of the eighteenth century"
  7. On the Interpretation of Scripture by Benjamin Jowett—"in which he urged that the Bible be read 'like any other book' and made an impassioned plea for freedom of scholarship"

Jowett on biblical interpretation

thumb|150px|right|Benjamin Jowett

The essay "On the Interpretation of Scripture", contributed by Benjamin Jowett, was "by far the most startling essay" in the book. essays was H.B. Wilson's, which denied the eternity of hell, affirming that there can be spiritual progress in the afterlife after the day of judgment.</blockquote>Wilson's views on hell were challenged by the church courts as being incompatible with the plain sense of the Athanasian Creed, to which all Anglican clergy were bound to subscribe.

Wilson appealed the judgment, and in 1864 the appeal was allowed; It "caused a firestorm of protest, especially from Evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics", Essays sold 22,000 copies in two years, more than Origin sold in its first twenty years. It sparked five years of increasingly polarized debate with books and pamphlets furiously contesting the issues.

The book summed up a three-quarter-century-long challenge to biblical history by the higher critics and to biblical prehistory by scientists working in the new fields of geology and biology. Baden Powell restated his argument that God is a lawgiver, miracles break the lawful edicts issued at the creation, therefore belief in miracles is atheistic, and wrote of "Mr Darwin's masterly volume" that the Origin of Species "must soon bring about an entire revolution in opinion in favour of the grand principle of the self-evolving powers of nature."

"Outwardly, the conflict ended inconclusively, with the acquittal of Williams and Wilson by the courts and the condemnation of

the volume by the clergy in Convocation. At a deeper level, it marked the exhaustion both of the Broad Church and of Anglican orthodoxy and the commencement of an era of religious doubt." defended "even more radical views"

Essays and Reviews helped spread the ideas of German higher criticism, in particular those of Ferdinand Christian Baur, to an English audience. In this, the book was succeeded by Lux Mundi (1890).

See also

  • Anglicanism
  • Church of England
  • Liberal Christianity

Notes

References

  • Published anonymously.
  • Published anonymously.

Further reading