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Reason and Society: An Approach to F. D. Maurice*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 June 2011
Extract
1972 is the centennial of the death of Frederick Denison Maurice, most famous for his leadership in the short-lived, though influential, Christian Socialist Movement of 1848–1854. Maurice's theological works have always been widely respected, but even among professional theologians and historians of thought there is little really precise knowledge of his views, because his writings — prodigious both as to number and length — are often discouragingly chaotic and, taken separately, fragmentary and inconclusive. Several short books on Maurice have given helpful, though usually somewhat impressionistic, expositions of his thought, but as yet no one has published in English a full-dress analysis of his theology and its philosophical foundations.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1972
References
1 This book was published in America as Witness to the Light: F. D. Maurice's Message for Today (New York: Scribner's 1948)Google Scholar. In 1966 it was enlarged and reissued as F. D. Maurice and Company: Nineteenth Century Studies (London: S.C.M. Press)Google Scholar.
2 See especially Ramsey, Arthur M., F. D. Maurice and the Conflicts of Modern Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951)Google Scholar, which is perhaps the best discussion of Maurice's theology. Davies', W. MerlinAn Introduction to F. D. Maurice's Theology (London: S.P.C.K., 1964)Google Scholar is primarily an exposition of two of Maurice's little-known works: the 1838 edition of The Kingdom of Christ (drastically revised and enlarged in the 1842 edition and now represented by only a few extant copies) and The Faith of the Liturgy and the Doctrine of the Thirty-Nine Articles. Wood, H. G.'s Frederick Denison Maurice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950)Google Scholar is commendable for its effort to approach Maurice in relation to the issues of his own day, but it does not pretend to be a thoroughgoing analysis. The only full-scale study of his thought is in Danish: Logos og Inkarnation: en studie i F. D. Maurice's teologi, by Christensen, Torben (Copenhagen: Bethesdas Boghandel, 1954)Google Scholar. Christensen makes a clean distinction between “Platonic” and “Biblical” elements in Maurice, and argues that the latter are forced into the totally alien framework of the former. Christensen has also produced, in English, a superb account of the Christian Socialist Movement: Origin and History of the Christian Socialist Movement, 1848–54 (Copenhagen: Universitetsforlaget I Aarhus, 1954)Google Scholar. Other good, earlier, studies of Maurice's social thought are found in Gloyn, Cyril K., The Church in the Social Order: A Study of Anglican Social Theory from Coleridge to Maurice (Forest Groves, Oregon: News-Times Publishing Co., 1942)Google Scholar, and Reckitt, Maurice B., Maurice to Temple: A Century of the Social Movement in the Church of England (London: Faber and Faber, 1947)Google Scholar. Also from the pre-Vidler period is Sanders', Charles R. quite useful Coleridge and the Broad Church Movement (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1942)Google Scholar, which brings together much material from Maurice's works showing his dependence upon Coleridge.
3 The Kingdom of Christ (hereafter referred to as KC), 14. All KC references are to this Second Edition, as published in New York, 1843.
4 Tracts on Christian Socialism, I, 8.
5 Cf. KC, 108, 124, 167; The Life of Frederick Denison Maurice, Chiefly Told in His Letters, ed. by his son Frederick Maurice (hereafter referred to as Life), II, 358.
6 KC, 167.
7 The Epistle to the Hebrews (hereafter referred to as Hebrews), Ixxxiv.
8 KC, 166.
9 Theological Essays (edited by Carpenter, Edward F., New York: Harper and Brothers, 1957), 56Google Scholar.
10 Sermons Preached in Lincoln's Inn Chapel, 1891 Edition (hereafter referred to as LIS), II, 51. Cf. Patriarchs and Lawgivers of the Old Testament, 1886 Edition (hereafter referred to as Patriarchs), 34–37.
11 The Doctrine of Sacrifice, 102.
12 Ibid., 234f. Cf. Patriarchs, xiif.
13 Theological Essays, 73. Cf. Life, II, 567.
14 Life, I, 262. Cf. LIS, II, 9; ibid., VI, 18f.
15 Life, I, 263.
17 Introduction to William Law's Remarks on the Fable of the Bees, xix.
18 Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy (hereafter referred to as MM), xliiif.
19 The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, edited by Shedd, W. G. T. (N.Y.: Harper and Brothers, 1853), V, 557ffGoogle Scholar.
20 Kant, Immanuel, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (New York: Library of Liberal Arts, 1959), 51fGoogle Scholar.
21 KC, 50.
22 Ibid., 51.
23 Ibid., 51.
24 Ibid., 51.
25 Ibid., 178.
26 Ibid., 186.
27 Ibid., 181.
28 See Hebert, A. G., Translator's Preface to Aulen's Christus Victor (London: S.P.C.K., 1931)Google Scholar, vii: “… in spite of the prominence of the idea of the Incarnation in English theology, we have so far had only hesitating approaches towards the ‘classic’ idea of the Atonement. To this generalization, however, there is at least one exception to be made: the great name of F. D. Maurice.”
29 Life, II, 347.
30 LIS, I, 269.
31 Life, I, 376.
32 KC, 147. Cf. Dialogues between a Clergyman and a Layman on Family Worship, 32ff.
33 KC, 98f. Italics added.
34 MM, II, 135.
35 Cf., e.g., KC, 124; Social Morality, 204, 324; What Is Revelation?, 103, 155.
36 Cf. The Conscience, 185; Hebrews, lxxxviif.
37 What Is Revelation?, 148.
38 See his letter to Thomas Erskine, Life, II, 562.
39 The Conscience, 45ff., 64ff., 72.
40 Ibid., 56.
41 Ibid., 72ff.
42 Ibid., 157, 165.
43 Life, II, 148.
44 The Doctrine of Sacrifice, 197.
45 The Conscience, 54f.
46 This in fact is what Maurice himself meant by “Platonism.” Nowhere is the basis of his own philosophical attitude better indicated than in his long discussion of the neo-Socratics, Socrates, and Plato, in MM, I, 86ff.
47 Social Morality, 119ff.
48 Ibid., 121.
49 Ibid., 122.
50 Ibid., 107.
51 Ibid., 154.
52 Cf. The Church a Family, 2: “Each family has some founder; some person to whom it refers its origin, or of whom it boasts as the great builder up of its fortunes. … The existence of this family feeling has been the ground of national life, and the preservation of it.”
53 KC, 213.
54 Ibid., 213.
55 Social Morality, 22.
56 Ibid., 90f.; KC, 215.
57 Cf. KC, 226f.
58 KC, 221f.
59 Social Morality, 195.
60 Ibid., 197.
61 KC, 223.
62 Ecclesiastical History, 385; cf. LIS, II, 221.
63 Cf. LIS, IV, 4, 6, 8f.
64 The Gospel of St. John, 189.
65 Hebrews, 76f.
66 Social Morality, 247f.; What Is Revelation?, 463f.
67 Ecclesiastical History, 346f.
68 Three Letters to the Rev. W. Palmer …, 8.
69 In contrast to the argument advanced here, see Vidler, op. cit., 162: “It was first through a family, then through a nation, and finally through a universal society, that God had made himself manifest, and the earlier manifestations were intended to be continued within the last.” Cf. also ibid., 71, 74, 167.
70 Life, II, 138.
71 LIS, II, 149.
72 Introduction to William Law's Remarks on the Fable of the Bees, li.