Darwinism and Calvinism: The Belfast-Princeton Connection

ISBN:

00211753

URL:

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-1753%28199209%2983%3A3%3C408%3ADACTBC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-S

Keywords:

Darwinism; Calvinism

Abstract:

Strong personal and intellectual ties linked the Presbyterian theologians of late-19th-century Belfast, Ireland, and those of the Princeton Theological Seminary. The two groups differed sharply, however, in their responses to Darwin's theory of evolution during the 1870's. Princeton theologians worked to accommodate their theology to evolutionism, though not necessarily to Darwinism. Belfast theologians, on the other hand, rejected evolutionism theories as atheistic. Local events offer the key to understanding this dichotomy. Irish physicist John Tyndall's infamous Belfast Address of 1874 to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, a ringing defense of scientific materialism, galvanized local Calvinists and united them in opposition to what they saw as atheistic science. Their equation of evolutionism with materialism precluded any search for accommodation until later in the century, when memories of Tyndall's address had faded. Documentation: Based on the published works of Robert Watts, William Todd Martin, James McCosh, and others; 2 illus., 50 notes., Type: Article