Historians such as Michael Legaspi—in his 2011 book, The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies—have drawn attention to the changing nature of biblical studies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In this period, the Bible came to be seen more as a historical object of study as opposed to a sacred book. Similarly, other historians such as Annette Aubert have drawn attention to The German Roots of Nineteenth Century American Theology (Oxford, 2013). The congregational theologian Moses Stuart (1780–1852) is key in these histories because he introduced German critical studies of the Bible and German theological method to many American seminaries. Because of what Stuart introduced in the first half of the nineteenth century, he is described as the “father of biblical science in America.” He is the pivotal figure representing a particular strand of German-inspired biblicism, that argued the Bible be read like any other book.
This essay will consider two key Baptist seminary figures influenced by Stuart—Irah Chase (1793–1864) and Barnas Sears (1802–1880)—who both taught at the first American Baptist seminary: Newton Theological Institute (founded 1825). These two figures not only helped begin the tradition of graduate-level theological education among Baptists, but also explicitly built their theological method on Stuart’s foundations. Throughout the nineteenth century Newton became known both for their influence among northern Baptists and for the uniqueness of their theological method.
The question can thus be asked: because Stuart is known for a particular type of biblicism, and was influential among certain Baptists, how did these Baptists utilize and modify Stuart? What sort of biblicism and theological method did these Baptists adopt? The contributions of this essay are not only (1) to show the reach of Moses Stuart but (2) to give precision to the theological method (and its German roots) among these early Baptist seminarians, which then (3) illuminates their theological trajectory. This essay will argue key Baptist seminary professors utilized Stuart’s German-influenced methods but took them in a more thoroughly biblicist direction than Stuart did due to their non-confessional contexts. Further, it will be demonstrated that this method was explicitly acknowledged throughout the remainder of the century as a key distinctive and theological starting point. The “Newton way” of doing theology not only built on Stuart’s German-inspired biblicism, but also drove a century of theological development.