The Decline of Welsh Nonconformity 5: Doctrine

As had happened on the continent, some theologians, faced by the twin challenges of 'Higher Critical' scholarship and Darwinism, tried to take refuge in the belief that while the existence of God could not be objectively proved, His existence could still be maintained as the necessary foundation of moral life. The Bible could best be defended, in their view, as a book cointaining moral and religious truths, while erring in matters of science and history.[1] This position, modern evangelical historians such as R. Tudur Jones have argued, was not sufficient. Soon, even this foundation came under attack by men who backed up their arguments with scientific (or pseudo-scientific) ideas, such as Karl Marx and Ernst Haeckel.[2] For Bob Sheehan, the astonishing thing about these new ideas of uncertainty, which treated the Bible as just another book, to be questioned, criticized and reconstructed is that they were accepted by almost all leaders of nonconformity (in Wales this included Lewis Edwards and his son, Thomas Charles Edwards). By 1900, these ‘liberal’ and ‘higher critical’ ideas were taught in the Universities and most of the theological colleges in Wales.[3]

Thomas Charles Edwards, in his 1895 Davies Lecture 'The God-Man' attempted to reconcile orthodox Christian teaching on the person of Christ. While enthusastically endorsing the Virgin Birth and the deity of Christ, he introduced the idea of the incarnation as the pinnacle of human evolution (albeit an evolution issuing from the mind of God).[4] In Edwards' view, the incarnation would have occured without the Fall.[5] Most worrying to more conservative theologians was Edwards' apparent endorsement of a fairly radical kenoticism, in which Christ divested Himself of the form and many of the attributes of God, retaining little more than His divine personality. While Christ remained to him God, that great and good man had helped ease Welsh Nonconformity onto the Down-Grade.


[1] R. Tudur Jones, Congregationalism in Wales (Cardiff, 2004), pp.193-4.
[2] Jones: Faith, pp.196-198.
[3] R.J Sheehan: ‘The Decline of Evangelicalism in Nineteenth-Century England’, in The Banner of Truth (278) (Edinburgh, 1986) pp.15-17. See also W.B Glover: Evangelical Nonconformists and Higher Criticism in the 19th Century (London, 1954) and Davies: Light, pp.95 (Profile of Lewis Edwards).
[4] Thomas Charles Edwards, The God-Man: Being the “Davies Lecture” for 1895 (London, 1895).
[5] Thomas Charles Edwards, The God-Man: Being the “Davies Lecture” for 1895 (London, 1895), p.104.