by Matthew Gaetano

I was talking with a student a couple of days ago, and we discussed two fascinating moments where figures across the Christians confessions were being linked together in rather unusual ways.

The first is John Adams’s letter to Thomas Jefferson on 16 July 1814. He expresses his belief that “the Christian Religion as I understand it … should maintain its ground.” But he nonetheless predicts that “Catholic Christianity,” which “has prevailed for 1500 years,” has received a “mortal wound of which the Monster must finally day.” It appears that Adams was referring to Nicene Christianity – the Council of Nicaea happened in 325 just about 1500 years before the writing of this letter – and its affirmation of the Trinity. There is almost certainly some reference back to the rule of Constantine as well. Yet the key issue was clearly doctrinal; he linked “Catholic Christianity” with Platonism, Pythagoreanism, Hinduism, and Jewish Kabbalah.

Later in the letter, Adams gave advice about education. After defending classical languages from the attacks of Benjamin Rush (see also the third paragraph here), Adams suggested that theology should be left “to Ray, Derham, Nieuwenteyt and Payley” – defenders of the design arguments for God’s existence and other theological approaches connected with eighteenth-century versions of “natural theology.” William Paley is perhaps the most famous of this group for his watchmaker analogy.

These clergymen, natural theologians, etc., are not all that well-known today. Adams’s list of those who should be set aside in favor of these theologians like Paley are quite a bit more famous, including Martin Luther, John Wesley, George Whitefield, Johannes Wollebius (d. 1629), and Thomas Aquinas. So, we have a lovely “ecumenical” moment where the great Magisterial Protestant theologian, an early Methodist, a First Great Awakening preacher, a Reformed scholastic, and a medieval Dominican are all associated by the great American Founder. So, we have Lutherans, confessional Calvinists, evangelical Calvinists, Arminians, and Roman Catholics all basically being rejected by Adams in his plan for theological education.

In this list of those theologians who should be less favored than Paley and others, Adams also was rather dismissive of the Swedish mystic, Emanuel Swedenborg. And he also named Nikolaus von Zinzendorf (d. 1760), an irenic Pietist and promoter of “heart religion,” Moravian, critic of slavery, and missionary, as less fruitful for the future of American theology.

Zinzendorf the Pietist and Moravian (a Protestant movement going back to Jan Hus in some ways) leads me to the second “ecumenical” moment. The Moravians, explaining elements of their movement in the eighteenth century, associated groups across the confessional spectrum for their zealous service of God:

The difference between those zealous servants of God, who, in Germany, by some were called Pietists, in England Methodists, in France Jansenists, in Italy and Spain Quietists, in the Romish Church in general known by the character of preachers of repentance and ascetics, but in the Protestant Church generally thought Mystics, on the one side, and our Oeconomy on the other is this: The former strive either for an alteration of the behavior, or of the thoughts, or both; or for an alteration in the religious worship; or are for abolishing all the external part. We preach nothing but the crucified Christ for the heart; and think that, when any one gets hold of Him, all that is idle vanishes away from such a person, and all necessary good comes, together with the living and abiding impression of the loving and faithful Lamb of God, who was once a moral man in reality. (83)

There are significant differences noted between these different spiritual visions, and that might actually be the point of this section of the work, but the Moravians are nonetheless associating the attention to the “religion of the heart” across the confessions: Pietists (who confronted mainstream Lutherans), Methodists (who confronted mainstream Anglicans), Jansenists (who confronted many Catholic theologians, especially the Jesuits), Quietists, and mystics. I’m thankful to my student and to this article for bringing my attention to this recognition of overlapping spiritual concerns in the eighteenth century.