Robert Lewis Dabney (1820–1898) was a Southern Presbyterian pastor, Confederate soldier, and seminary theology professor. He was also a venomous white-supremacist. Though he died over a century ago, in the 1960s his reputation was rehabilitated when Iain Murray and the Banner of Truth republished his writings and commended him to a new generation of Reformed Evangelicals in America. As a result, a number of leading evangelical figures began to read, cite, and commend Dabney to their followers. Only recently has the problematic elements of his thought, including his white-supremacy, been acknowledged. This page is an index of a number of articles and compilations of sources I’ve written on Dabney and his legacy.
In 1875 and ’76, Bennet Puryear wrote several articles opposing Black education, using some of the most vile white-supremacy I’ve ever seen. Dabney endorsed these articles, and used them as a springboard for his own article “The Negro and the Common School” published in 1876.
Warfield has been praised for his courageous stance on racial issues; considering his treatment of Dabney, and contrasting him with contemporary Francis Grimké complicates the picture.
Chester was one of Dabney’s students, and is the source for an interesting anecdote about Dabney as a professor. Chester himself is a fascinating study of white-supremacy and Presbyterian leadership.
Banner of Truth claimed that Bavinck endorsed Dabney as a “leading theologian.” That turned out to be an embellished claim, due to their partnership with Mississippi segregationists.
Douglas Wilson describes Dabney as one of “the men I am most indebted to philosophically.” Others have loved Dabney for his Reformed Theology, but Wilson loves him for his views on slavery, too.
Shows how Dabney has been commended to educators interested in Christian Classical education.
John Piper and Desiring God
John Piper first cited Dabney in his dissertation, and then recommended him for decades in his books and on Desiring God’s website. This series of posts documents and wrestles with this.
In 2018, Zachary Garris reprinted four of Dabney’s “greatest essays” on “biblical hierarchy.” Several of the essays are filled with white-supremacy and pro-Confederacy. I do not recommend the book.
The role of Robert Lewis Dabney in the Christian Reconstruction movement has been documented by a number of scholars in recent years. In their 2002 article, “The US Civil War as a Theological War: Confederate Christian Nationalism and the League of the South,” Edward Sebesta and Euan Hague showed how Rousas J. Rushdoony helped to “revive interest” in Dabney and other Southern Presbyterians (and Confederates) (this article is included in their Neo-Confederacy: A Critical Introduction). Sebesta and Hague note how in addition to reprinting Dabney’s works through his publishing house, Rushdoony also “applauded Dabney’s defense of slavery” in the pages of his Chalcedon Report. The entry for Rushdoony in American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia (2014) notes that among the “major influences on Rushdoony” were “Southern Presbyterianism (especially Robert Dabney).” Drawing on Sebesta and Hague, Julie Ingersoll’s Building God’s Kingdom: Inside the World of Christian Reconstruction(2015), 16–19, also highlights Rushdoony’s role in rehabilitating Dabney:
By most accounts, Dabney’s influence had waned when C. Peter Singer and Rushdoony resurrected his work in the middle of the twentieth century. Yet Dabney has been called prophetic by Reconstructionists from Rushdoony to Doug Phillips. While much of Dabney’s work was republished by Lloyd Sprinkle, Rushdoony’s Ross House Books also republished some of it. Rushdoony publicized those books through Chalcedon Foundation newsletters, public lectures, and his very early “podcasts” sent to subscribers on audiotape. According to Edward Sebesta and Euan Hague, “Rushdoony’s promotion of Sprinkle’s reprints brought them to the attention of the wider Christian Reconstructionist movement in the United States [leading] to their discussion and review in magazine articles, books, audio cassettes, videotape sets, and other pro-Confederate theological and political venues.”
However, one source that has been largely unexplored thus far is the Journal of Christian Reconstruction. Nearly every issue from 1974 to 1999 is available online and text-searchable (see Gary North’s repository here, as well as Chalcedon’s site–search “JCR”), and so affords a convenient avenue for sounding out the recurring appearance of Robert Lewis Dabney over the years.
Indeed, the contributors to JCR refer to Dabney on a wide variety of subjects including many of the core themes of the Christian Reconstruction movement: “biblical creationism,” postmillennialism, critiques of “secular education,” theonomy, the atonement, and even textual criticism. But the JCR did not restrict itself to Dabney’s “theological” or social commentary, they self-consciously promoted Dabney the Confederate—both as an officer in the Confederate army, and as an author defending and glorifying the Confederacy in his Defense of Virginia and his Life and Campaigns of Lieut.-Gen. Thomas J. Jackson, (Stonewall Jackson). The use of Dabney was not merely circumstantial—Rushdoony had made it a point to republish Dabney’s works in his Ross House Publishers, and you can see these reprints cited in the pages of the Journal. This growing restoration of Dabney’s reputation throughout the 1970s and 1980s was highlighted in the Journal as an encouraging sign for the movement. Many in the Christian Reconstruction movement viewed the ante-bellum south as a model “Christian nation,” and Dabney as a proto-typical Christian Reconstruction patriarch.
Douglas F. Kelly
Of interest is the role that Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi played in the pages of the Journal. While the brief tenure of Greg Bahnsen at RTS is a well-defined chapter in the story of Christian Reconstruction (see, for example, Michael McVicar, Christian Reconstruction: R. J. Rushdoony and American Religious Conservatism), the pages of the Journal flesh this out even further. In addition to Bahnsen, a number of students from the seminary also appear in the pages of the Journal, including James B. Jordan, David Chilton, Richard Flinn, and Jack Sawyer. In addition to students (and then alumni), the Journal also included contributions from RTS professors Simon Kistemaker and Douglas Kelly and Kelly would at one point take over as chief editor when Rushdoony fired Gary North from the position in 1981.
Given the role of RTS founding professors Morton H. Smith and Albert Freundt, Jr. in the effort to republish Dabney in the 1960s (see ““A Leading Theologian”?: Herman Bavinck on Robert Lewis Dabney”), and the ongoing work of RTS professor Douglas Kelly to continue promoting Dabney in the 1980s (for example “Robert Lewis Dabney,” in Reformed Theology in America), it shouldn’t be surprising that a movement with significant overlap with RTS (Christian Reconstruction) would also share this enthusiasm for Robert Lewis Dabney.
This post merely documents the numerous times Dabney was cited in the Journalof Christian Reconstruction. Further work could still be done to trace Dabney’s influence through the voluminous writings of Rushdoony, North, Bahnsen, Chilton, and others, as well as its further development in Christian Reconstruction-ish and neo-Confederate-ish figures like Douglas Wilson.
1.1 Symposium on Creation (1974 Summer)
The very first issue of the Journal of Christian Reconstruction was devoted a “Symposium on Creation.” Contributors included Greg Bahnsen, Gary North, Vern Poythress, Rousas J. Rushdoony, and Cornelius Van Til (pdf available here).
Greg Bahnsen’s “Worshipping the Creature Rather than the Creator” (81–127) cites Dabney’s Systematic Theology in support of the idea that there can be no synthesis between Darwinian evolution and biblical creationism:
Robert L. Dabney’s words should ever be kept in mind in this regard:
“Other pretended theologians have been seen advancing, and then as easily retracting, novel schemes of exegesis, to suit new geologic hypotheses. The Bible has often had cause here to cry, ‘Save me from my friends.’ . . . As remarked in a previous lecture, unless the Bible has its own ascertainable and certain law of exposition, it cannot be a rule of faith; our religion is but rationalism. I repeat, if any part of the Bible must wait to have its real mean ing imposed upon it by another, and a human science, that part is at least meaningless and worthless to our souls. It must expound itself independently; making other sciences ancillary, and not dominant over it” [Lectures in Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, [1878] 1972), p. 257]. (99 n. 68)
The next page, Bahnsen cites Dabney again in the body of his article:
The Presbyterian theologian, Robert L. Dabney, made a similar observation, saying, “If you persist in recognizing nothing but natural forces . . . it will land you, if you are consistent, no where short of absolute atheism.” (100).
And again:
“Almost a century ago, Robert L. Dabney concluded that “ ‘Darwinism’ happens just now to be the current manifestation, which the fashion of the day gives to the permanent anti-theistic tendency in sinful man.” (101).
Thus, it is Dabney the “biblical creationist” that is the first version of Dabney cited in the pages of the JCR.
1976–77 Winter
The Winter 1976–77 issue of JCR, a “Symposium on the Millennium,”includes contributions from Reformed Theological Seminary professors Greg Bahnsen and Simon Kistemaker, as well as then student James B. Jordan. The issue also features a heavy dose of Robert Lewis Dabney, by Bahnsen, Jordan, and Kelly (pdf available here).
Greg Bahnsen’s article “The Prima Facie Acceptability of Postmillennialism” (48–105) cites Dabney. In a concluding section of his article, he gives a historical survey to show that “It is recognized on virtually all sides that postmillennialism was a strong position in the nineteenth century” (97). He surveys England, Scotland, the European continent, and then Princeton, before turning to the Southern Presbyterians: “Such was certainly the conviction of the greatest theologians of the Southern Presbyterian Church (P.C.U.S.), J. H. Thornwell and Robert L. Dabney” (102). Here he cites Dabney’s Systematic Theology in support of postmillennialism (102–103, citing Dabney, ST, 838–40)
The next is James B. Jordan, then a student at Reformed Theological Seminary, “A Survey of Southern Presbyterian Millennial Views Before 1930” (106–122). Jordan gives a brief historical survey of the denomination, and describes the formation of the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America this way, conveniently ignoring the explicit role that slavery played in their withdrawal from their Northern brethren:
The Southern Presbyterian church came into existence in 1861 when the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. passed a resolution declaring its “obligation to promote and perpetuate, so far as in us lies, the integrity of these United States. . . .” The Southern men had hoped to keep war politics out of the church; having failed, they with drew (107).
After a few pages, his survey reaches the “Positions of the Theologians.” The first of the theologians up for review is Dabney, and Jordan describes him thus:
Doubtless the greatest theologian to serve at Union was Robert Louis Dabney (1820-1898)… Dabney was one of the most brilliant men that American Christianity has ever produced. His Defence of Virginia was called by Richard Weaver “at once the bitterest and the most eloquent” defense of the Southern cause. Dabney’s devastating critique of Northern industrial capitalism has also been assessed recently as remarkable. It is as a theologian of the first rank, however, that Dabney is best known (112, 113).
Jordan gives considerable space to Dabney:
We shall cite Dabney’s views in larger measure than others, both out of respect for his stature and influence (His Lectures in Systematic Theology was reprinted six times from 1878 to 1927) and because Dabney in his writings locked horns with the innovative premillennialism of his day (113).
Jordan then cites two of Dabney’s arguments against pre-millennialism:
Dabney declares that premillennialism is “directly against our standards.” As he saw it, the Westminster Confession and Catechisms ruled out premillennialism by teaching that there is only one physical resurrection at the end of history, not two separated by the millennium. Second, Dabney issued a devastating critique of one of the most common and recurring fallacies of eschatological belief. It is often argued that the New Testament teaches that Christ may return to the earth at any time, and that belief in an “any moment coming” is a great incentive to holiness.
Throughout, Jordan interacts with Dabney’s Systematic Theology, as well as ““The Theology of the Plymouth Brethren,” reprinted in Discussions, Vol. 1, by Banner of Truth (1967), and a scholarly article: David H. Overy, “When the Wicked Beareth Rule: A Southern Critique of Industrial America,” Journal of Presbyterian History 48 (1970): 130-142.
Stonewall Jackson
The final article that references Dabney is in the section of the JCR entitled “Defenders of the Faith” (166–77). This issue’s featured “defender” was the Confederate general Stonewall Jackson, written by Douglas Kelly, pastor of First Presbyterian Church (U.S.), in Dillon, South Carolina, but soon to become professor at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi in 1983. Kelly’s portrayal of Jackson is standard Lost Cause hagiography:
Few American leaders, if any, either Southern or Northern, have ever stood so close to the throne of God as Thomas J. Jackson. The humility, purity, tender love of a crucified Saviour, and glorious splendor of a risen Lord are reflected in the attributes of this man (166).
In addition to his “Christian piety,” Jackson was a “military genius”:
he was a military genius of the highest order, who has been considered by experts in the science of war as equal to Napoleon on the European scene, and possibly superior to such American herpes as Generals George Washington, John Pershing, and Douglas MacArthur (166).
Kelly recounts the “Confederate Revival” plank in the story, too:
Jackson’s prayers and active efforts to promulgate the gospel among his troops were answered when a major revival broke out in the Con federate Army, with particular fervency in the regiments under his command. His “unsung” victorious leadership in the spiritual realm has counted for more than the military conquests that made him famous (167).
Throughout the short piece, Dabney relies heavily (almost, but not quite, exclusively) on Dabney’s Life of General Jackson, specifically, the 1976 Sprinkle Publications reprint of the 1865 edition. Kelly, relying on Dabney, white-washes Jackson’s life as a slave-owner:
Family worship was near and dear to him. Twice daily he kept the flame of devotion high on the family altar, requiring black servants as well as family to be present. Though he was part of a slaveholding society, the constraining love of Christ in him knew no social or racial bounds. “He was indeed the black man’s friend,” writes Dabney. “His prayers were so attractive to them, that a number of those living in his quarter of the town petitioned to be admitted on Sabbath nights, along with his own servants, to his evening domestic worship.” Later he established a sabbath school for the black people, which he personally organized, taught, disciplined, and prayed over. Manifold and lovely were the fruits of this endeavor in the black community. Many were converted, and characters were morally (171).
Kelly, again relying on Dabney, paints Jackson in literally glowing terms (“beams of divine light”):
To make a long story short, soon after the onslaught of this ghastly war (the first war in which truly modern weaponry was widely used), Jackson’s merits as an exceptionally brilliant, courageous leader— an officer’s officer—were recognized on every hand, and he rapidly rose to power. Here was a man God could trust with authority. The higher he rose, the humbler he became. Dabney notes how his pre-regenerate ambition had been transmuted into the sincerest, burning desire that Christ should have all the glory. “In place of harbouring Cromwell’s selfish ambition . . . Jackson crucified the not ignoble thirst for glory which animated his youth, until his abnegation of self became as pure and magnanimous as that of Washington. . . . The piety of Jackson continually repaired its benignant beams at the fountain of divine light and purity, becoming brighter and brighter unto the perfect day. His nature grew more unselfish, his aims more noble, his spirit more heavenly. . .” (172–73).
Kelly praises Jackson’s “heaven sent piety”:
The heaven-sent piety of Jackson made him one of finest generals of both armies, and caused him to consecrate all the efforts he legitimately could for the reformation of society and glorifying of God in political life (175).
Appropriate for the Journal of Christian Reconstruction, Kelly finds in Jackson a proto-model of reconstructionism:
Beyond that, he had a vision for Constitutional reformation, or at least reinterpretation. Jackson felt that the popular American doctrine of separation of church and state had gone too far by the mid-nineteenth century. He astutely foresaw that this “separation” was coming to mean not a friendly independence of church and state, but a practical disestablishment of orthodox Christianity, and in its place a grow ing establishment of secular materialism and humanism. Jackson hoped that after a Southern victory he would see congressional action that would clearly establish biblical Christianity (though of course non-sectarian) as the officially encouraged religion of the land (175).
Kelly adds his own historical interpretation to the events of the Civil War, an interpretation deeply influenced by the Lost Cause. First, the “Christian Army” component:
One wonders if, with the exception of the Scottish covenanter regiments and Cromwell’s English army, there has ever been such an evangelical Christian army as that of the Confederacy after this revival (176).
Second, the “infidel North” versus the “Christian South” framing:
Secondly, through the influence of those who survived—a great company of converted veterans, who returned home after the war—the Southern States became more evangelical than ever. A defeated land became known as the “Bible belt.” The victorious Northern States (whose army was often manned with Unitarian chaplains alongside true believers) experienced no revival, and with all their material prosperity and power were increasingly deluged with soulless secular humanism (Footnote 23: This is not to obscure the fact that there have always been large numbers of the finest evangelicals in the North. Nevertheless, as a generalized historical tendency, it is true that the North has tended to secularism, while the South has held on to a Christian world and life view.) (177).
Thus, Dabney is established in the pages of the Journal as “the greatest theologian to serve at Union,” “one of the most brilliant men that American Christianity has ever produced,” and a reliable source on the Confederate general Stonewall Jackson. Southern Presbyterianism and Christian Reconstruction overlap in their love for the Confederacy and the Southern Presbyterians of a former era.
1977
Albert N. Martin
the 1977 issue was a “Symposium on Education” (pdf available here). It was not just Southern Presbyterians in the PCA who loved Dabney and worked for Christian Reconstruction. Reformed Baptists were also involved (consider also how Banner of Truth and Iain Murray were connected both with the Reformed Baptists in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and the Southern Presbyterians in Jackson, Mississippi). Trinity Baptist Church was pastored by Albert Martin, and they were starting a new training program, the “Trinity Ministerial Academy.” They announced this in the pages of the Journal of Christian Reconstruction in “Trinity Ministerial Academy: Prospectus” (100–107). The Prospectus begins with “The Nature of the Ministry”:
One’s understanding of the nature of the Christian ministry, both as to its origin and its function, will pervasively influence his attitude to the matter of training men for that ministry.
An understanding of the “ministry” will affect the understanding of the “minister”:
Furthermore, we believe that God has designated the essential function of the ministerial office (wherever that office is exercised, whether at home or abroad) as shepherding “the flock of God” (Acts 20:28; I Pet. 5:2). This work of shepherding (“feeding,” “tending”) is accomplished by means of the authoritative preaching and teaching of “the whole counsel of God,” together with loving guidance, encouragement, and admonition of the people of God, and wise rule in the house of God. Moreover, these activi ties must be given credibility and acceptance by the consistent godly ex ample of the minister himself (I Tim. 4:12; Titus 2:7).
And here, these Reformed Baptists appeal to Robert Lewis Dabney:
Thus we believe that the only sure indication that a man is being formed by Christ into an able minister of the New Covenant is his growing con formity to the clear standard of graces and gifts set forth in I Timothy 3:1-7 and Titus 1:5-9. This truth was excellently set forth by R. L. Dabney more than a century ago in his essay entitled, “What Is a Call to the Ministry?” Dabney wrote:
“This leads us to add another important class of texts by which the Holy Spirit will inform the judgment, both of the candidate and his brethren, as to his call. It is that class in which God defines the qualifications of a minister of the Gospel. Let every reader consult, as the fullest specimens, 1 Timothy 3:1-7; Titus 1:6-9. The inquirer is to study these passages, seeking the light of God’s Spirit to purge his mind from all clouds of vanity, self-love, prejudice, in order to see whether he has or can possibly acquire the qualifications here set down. And his brethren, under the influence of the same Spirit, must candidly decide by the same standard whether they shall call him to preach or not” (in Discussions, Vol. 1, reprinted by Banner of Truth, 1967).
Obviously, our hearty acceptance of this view of the Christian ministry so ably set forth by Dabney means that we have been guided by it in all the planning of Trinity Ministerial Academy, both as to the subject matter and the method of instruction (101–102).
Summer 1978
The Summer 1978 issue was a “Symposium on Politics” (pdf available here). Gary North, in his introductory “Editorial,” made a passing reference to Dabney and the other southern leaders:
(It should be understood that the majority of the pre-war leaders had been pro-Union, not secessionists, especially the military men like Lee, Jackson, and Jackson’s chaplain, Robert L. Dabney. The radical secessionists of South Carolina forced them into the Confederacy, once Lincoln took the calculated risk of reinforcing Fort Sumter.) (2).
Winter 1978–79
Winter 1978–79 was a “Symposium on Puritanism and Law” (pdf available here). Reformed Theological Seminary is still heavily represented in terms of professors, graduates, and students (Bahnsen, Chilton, Flint, Jordan, Sawyer). James Jordan contributed an article titled “Calvinism and the ‘Judicial Law of Moses’” (17–48). He begins by addressing some “Criticisms of Theonomic Ethics,” and then considers “John Calvin and Martin Bucer,” “The Sixteenth Century,” “The Rise of Puritanism,” “The Era of the Westminster Assembly,” and “The Later Colonial Period in America,” before arriving at “The Southern Presbyterian Writers.” Here, as in his previous article, Jordan again appeals to “the thought of the two most excellent theologians of Southern Presbyterianism: James H. Thornwell and Robert L. Dabney” (46). Jordan paints the Confederacy as a “Christian nation”:
When the Confederate States of America were formed, in response to a perceived economic and atheistic threat from the Northern States, it was widely hoped that the new nation would be explicitly Christian. A petition was sent to the Congress of the CSA from the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the CSA, authored by Thornwell, to that end. The proposed amendment to the CSA Constitution, to be added to the section providing for liberty of conscience, read:
Nevertheless we, the people of these Confederate States, directly ac knowledge our responsibility to God, and the supremacy of His Son, Jesus Christ, as King of kings and Lord of lords; and hereby ordain that no law shall be passed by the Congress of these Confederate States inconsistent with the will of God, as revealed in the Holy Scriptures.
Thornwell argued that though “the will of God, as revealed in the Scriptures, is not a positive Constitution for the State,” yet the State must believe the Scriptures “to be true, and regulate its own conduct and legislation in conformity with their teachings.” (Note that this is the position of Bahnsen and Rushdoony.) (46).
Jordan then turns to Dabney, and these two pages are worth reproducing in full, as an example of how and why the Christian Reconstruction movement looked to Dabney as a theological source for their views:
Robert L. Dabney, like Ridgeley, nowhere in his works explicitly states that the judicial law of God is binding, yet seems to assume it as a principle in his writings. In his Lectures in Systematic Theology he cites the Older Testament capital punishments for murder, striking parents, adultery, and religious imposture, without any hint that he thought these had ceased to bind nations (Dabney, Lectures in Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, [1898] 1972), pp. 402f.). With respect to adultery, his statement is explicit:
The law of Moses, therefore, very properly made adultery a capital crime; nor does our Saviour, in the incident of the woman taken in adultery, repeal that statute, or disallow its justice. The legislation of modern, nominally Christian nations, is drawn rather from the gross ness of Pagan sources than from Bible principles (Ibid., pp. 407f. See also his The Practical Philosophy (Mexico, Mo.: Crescent Book House, 1896), pp. 362f.)
This statement, especially its reference to “nominally Christian nations,” makes it evident that, in Dabney’s view, a genuinely Christian nation would draw its legislation from the law of God, including the penal particulars, rather than from pagan sources. Dabney here explicitly disagrees with Calvin’s notion of a “common law of nations.” Pagan sources are contrasted with Biblical law.
Dabney’s view is further elaborated and brought into sharper focus in his discussion of the lex talionis.
The application of the lex talionis made by Moses against false wit nesses was the most appropriate and equitable ever invented. What ever pain or penalty the false swearing would have brought on the innocent man maligned had the law followed the false witness un protected, that penalty must be visited on the perjurer maligning him.
Let the student compare the admirable symmetry of Moses’ provision with the bungling operation of our statute against perjury. He discriminates the different grades of guilt with exact justice. We punish the perjurer who swears away his neighbor’s cow with imprisonment, and the perjurer who swears away his neighbor’s honor and life, still with imprisonment (The Practical Philosophy, p. 513f.) (Jordan, “Calvinism,” 46–47).
Winter 1980–81
Winter 1980–81 was devoted to a “Symposium on Evangelism” (pdf available here). Herbert Bowsher, pastor of a Presbyterian church in Birmingham, Alabama, submitted “Will Christ Return ‘At Any Moment’ ?” (48–60), and near the end of the article, Bowsher appeals to Dabney to support one of his points:
The church is very important to Christ. Scripture teaches that He loves it and gave Himself for it. He desires that it not have spot or wrinkle or any such thing (Eph. 5:25, 27). To this end, Christ gives officers for edification of the body (Eph. 4:11-12). Teaching is to be carried out and discipline maintained. But an “ any-moment” scheme has implications that seriously undermine this Scriptural view. Dabney has seen this problem clearly:
If no visible church, however orthodox, is to be Christ’s instrument for overthrowing Satan’s kingdom here; if Christ is to sweep the best of them away as so much rubbish, along with all “world powers” at his advent; if it is our duty to expect and desire this catastrophe daily, who does not see that we shall feel very slight value for ecclesiastical ties and duties? And should we differ unpleasantly from our church courts, we shall be tempted to feel that it is pious to spurn them. Are we not daily praying for an event which will render them useless lumber? (Robert L. Dabney, Discussions: Evangelical and Theological (2 vols.; London: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1967), I, 208.)
Regardless of one’s ecclesiology, none would deny that an inadequately low view of the church prevails today among Christians. Could this emphasis on an “ any-moment” return be a contributing factor? (59).
1981
1981 featured a “Symposium on Social Action” (pdf available here). Gary North could now speak of a “revival of interest” in men like Dabney:
“The 1980’s have brought a revival of interest in the older conservative tradition of the nineteenth century within fundamentalist circles. Ideas and political programs somewhat reminiscent of the older Presbyterianism- the Hodges and Alexanders in the North, and men like Dabney in the South have begun to gain attention” (17).
In the same issue, Archie Jones wrote about “The Imperative of Christian Action: Getting Involved as a Biblical Duty” (86–131). He starts off by framing all of life as war:
It should be manifest to Bible-believing Christians that we are involved in a war. It is a spiritual war between the forces of Satan and the forces of Christ, a war fought within man as well as between men. It is a multi- faceted war, involving every dimension o f life and thought, every sphere o f human activity (86).
Jones describes the “Attack on the Family” and then the “attack on Christian Education.” Here, he says
The humanistic attack on the family extends beyond the family to the attack ·on Christianity in education, for humanism is a religion, and a militantly anti-Christian and intolerant religion at that, and as such aims to extinguish God’s truth in every sphere of thought and life (98–99).
Jones goes all the way back to the 19th century and contrasts Horace Mann with Robert Lewis Dabney:
The whole concept and motivation of “free public education” since Horace Mann and James G. Carter has been fundamentally humanistic and radically anti-Christian. The movement for “free” government-controlled education in Massachusetts and New England was led by Mann and other Unitarians who sought to eliminate the previously dominant Christian influence on society and to eliminate all social problems via education. The movement to impose state-controlled education on the states of the South after the “Civil War” was motivated by a similar philosophy, and was seen by perceptive Christian theologians as a continuation of the same ”practical atheism” which had motivated abolitionism (Note 22: See the perceptive essays on government education by Robert L. Dabney, in his Discussions, Vol. IV (Ross House Books, P.O. Box 67, Vallecito, Calif. 95251: 1979 reprint of 1897 ed.). In fact, the philosophy of “public” (read: government-controlled) education in America has always been humanistic, messianic, and anti-Christian (99).
Notice the reference to the “atheism which had motivated abolitionism” and the appeal to Dabney’s views on education, in an edition of Dabney’s Discussions that Rushdoony had recently issued. Jones goes on:
The deliberate divorce of Christianity from education in the government schools inherent in the philosophy of “public school” education has proceeded from government control in an increasingly humanistic society, organizational humanism in the bureaucracies and the teachers’ unions, and ever present humanistic judicial fiats. As R. L. Dabney noted long ago, the combination of the (misunderstood) doctrine of “separation of church and state” in America and the religious and anti-Christian views among our population results in “a practical atheism” taught, of practical necessity (non-Christians often resent the preaching of Christianity) in government schools. (Note 26: Dabney, Discussions, pp. 176-247 [“The Negro and the Common School,” “The State Free School System Imposed upon Virginia by the Underwood Constitution,” and “Secularized Education”], provides a tremendously insightful discussion of this phenomenon, and of the historic and philosophical inner dynamic of government-controlled, secularized education. His essays, though penned a century ago,·are so timely that they deserve a separate reprinting) (100).
Winter 1982
Winter 1982 was a “Symposium on the Atonement” (available here). This is the first issue edited by soon-to-be Reformed Theological Seminary (Jackson) professor Douglas Kelly, and contained contributions from RTS graduate Kenneth Gentry, as well as R. J. Rushdoony, and Cornelius Van Til. Rushdoony kicks off the Symposium with an article titled “The Atonement Analyzed and Applied.” In his section on “4. Imputation” Rushdoony says this:
In the atonement by Jesus Christ, this fallen man dies in Christ and is made a new creation in Him. His actual sins are atoned for, and his old life and nature are sentenced to death and then made a new creation (Footnote 12: See Robert L. Dabney, Christ our Penal Substitute (Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle Publications, reprint, 1978).
Summer 1986–87
The Summer 1986–87 issue was a “Symposium on the Education of the Core Group” (available here). In his “Introduction,” Rushdoony explained the “central duty” of Christian education for children:
“We cannot turn our children over to the humanistic state schools without serious consequences. If it is wrong for a Christian to join ungodly churches, or to become a worshipper in pagan cults and religions, is it not at least equally wrong to turn our children over to schools which refuse to acknowledge Christ as Lord or Sovereign over all men and nations?
It is a grim and ugly fact that most pastors do NOT have their children in Christian schools, or in home schooling.”
Rushdoony also contributed a full article, titled “Education: Today’s Crisis and Dilemma.” The article is focused on the “crisis” in “statist education.” In the brief (6 page) article, Rushdoony cites Dabney several times in articulating his position:
The early promoters of state control of education had a slogan, “It costs less money to build school-houses than jails.” To this Robert L. Dabney in 1876 responded, “But what if it turns out that the state’s expenditure in school-houses is one of the things which necessitates the expenditure in jails?” (Footnote 3: Robert L. Dabney, Discussions (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, [1897], 1979), 195.)
This was Rushdoony’s own reprint (Ross House Books) of Dabney. A little further, Rushdoony returns to Dabney:
Who should control education? Historically, we have seen church and state contend for that power. Dabney held that the Christian position should be parental control, the family as the determining power. The mistake in control by the church is that education becomes ecclesiastical and institutional. State control means politicization and secularization. Dabney rejected the concept of secularized education as both impossible and inadmissible, since education is inescapably a religious discipline. (Footnote 5: Dabney, [“Secularized Education,” in] Discussions [Vol. 4], 225-47). All education is the transmission of the values and skills of a culture to its children, and this is a religious task.
Rushdoony cites Dabney to the effect that public schools are a form of communism:
Dabney saw also the premise of communism in taxing all people to provide schools for some. This was a radical innovation which did not exist under the previous common-school system (Footnote 6: Dabney, [“Review of ‘Wilson’s Slave Power in America,” and “State Free Schools,” in] Discussions [Vol. 4], 248–80).
And finally, Rushdoony cites the Sprinkle Publications reprint of Dabney’s Practical Philosophy:
But this is not all. As Dabney wrote in 1897, “A state religion [is] logically involved in state education” (Footnote 7: Robert L. Dabney, The Practical Philosophy (Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle Publications, [1897] 1987), 339). Because education is the importation of values, it is inescapably religious, because values are religiously determined.
1988
1988 saw a “Symposium on the Constitution and Political Theology” (available here). Jean-Marc Berthoud was now on “Chalcedon’s European staff,” and contributed an article titled “Historical Reality of the Christian Cultural Consensus in Europe and America.” Berthoud opens his article lamenting historical suppression:
The impact of the liberal humanist historiography on the schools and the universities of our nations has been so thorough that our whole culture suffers from historical amnesia. In communist countries this transformation of history is undertaken by blatantly suppressing all witness of the past which is contrary to the ideological interpretation in favor amongst the ruling party elite. In the West, the change in our historical self-consciousness has been more gradual, but no less thorough.
However, Berthoud saw some encouraging signs, including the reprinting of some specific works of Robert Lewis Dabney:
From a distance it would seem that this state of affairs is changing for the better in the United States. For many years work has quietly been going on to restore to the Church and nation the memory of their past. Amongst other works, the historical writing of Dr. R.J. Rushdoony, those of Frederik Nymeyer, the re-editions of the exceptional historical writings of Southern scholars such as Robert L Dabney — of the d’Aubigne family — (Defense of Virginia and Life of Stonewall Jackson, Sprinkle, (1977)) and the pioneering volumes by Verna M. Hall and Rosalie J. Slater have certainly contributed much to the revival of awareness of America’s Christian past.
It is interesting that these reprinting were seen as part of the overall work of Christian Reconstruction, by Rushdoony (who reprinted Dabney with his Ross House Books), and by others in the movement.
1989
Theodore P. Letis
1989 was devoted to a “Symposium on the Biblical Text and Literature” (available here). It was, in part, a defense of the traditional King James Version and the Greek text (the Textus Receptus) underlying it. The bulk of this Journal was devoted to reprinting Theodore P. Letis’s Master’s Thesis from Emory University, “Edward Freer Hills’s Contribution to the Revival of the Ecclesiastical Text” (1987). In the thesis, Letis claims that there was once a unified view of textual criticism (“The Reformed View”), as seen in the Westminster Confession of Faith, John Owen, Francis Turretin, and the Helvetic Consensus Formula (a claim that does not hold up to scrutiny; see my “‘Kept Pure in All Ages’: Textual Criticism and the Seventeenth-Century Protestant Orthodox”). From this faulty premise, Letis then claims that B. B. Warfield introduced enlightenment rationalism into the handling of the Biblical text, and puts forth Robert Lewis Dabney as a counter-example of someone who “more generally reflected the scholastic confessional stance” (81). Letis devotes a whole 4 page section to Dabney and interacts with several of his articles (“The Doctrinal Various Readings of the New Testament Greek” (1872); “The Revised Version of the New Testament” (1881); “The Influence of the German University System on Theological Literature” (1881); “The Doctrinal Contents of the [Westminster] Confession—Its Fundamental and Regulative Ideas and the Necessity and Value of Creed” (1897)). He sums up like this:
So with the passing of A. Alexander and Charles Hodge, the view of Scripture held by the Reformed scholastics no longer played any role at Princeton. Dabney kept it alive for a time in the south—but in the person of Warfield, the Enlightenment had arrived at Princeton (89).
An in-depth critique of Letis’s thesis, in particular his treatment of Dabney and the Southern Presbyterians, is beyond the scope of this survey. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that even when the Christian Reconstruction movement addressed textual criticism, Robert Lewis Dabney was promoted as a faithful model.
1994
1994 featured a “Symposium on the Decline and Fall of the West and the Return of Christendom” (available here). Richard Bostan contributed an article titled “Religion, Abolition, and Proslavery Arguments in Pre-Civil War America.” The thesis of the somewhat florid article isn’t exactly clear, but along the way he references “Dabney, illustrious theologian and pastor,” and cites two articles of his (“Wilson’s Slave Power in America,” and “Liberty and Slavery”).
The real highlight, though, was that this issue’s featured “Man of Faith and Courage” was Robert Lewis Dabney. F. W. Schnitzler wrote the short (5 page) profile, and started off with a reference to “The War for Southern Independence” (i.e., the Civil War). “Many of those who participated,” Schnitzler said, “became very famous…,” but “Most participants remain virtually unknown, however, lost in the pages of history. While the men were very brave, very gallant, very determined and fearless, some deserve wider recognition as well as a second look.” Dabney, apparently, was one who deserved wider recognition. Schnitzler spends a significant portion of the article highlighting Dabney’s participation in the Confederacy as chief-of-staff (briefly) to Stonewall Jackson. After the war, Schnitzler recounts what has become a common description of Dabney amongst his admirers:
Dabney’s perception and foresight were remarkably prophetic (so much so that he considered himself “predestined to prophesy truth and never to be believed until too late”). Dabney commented on developments that were then only in their infancy, but we now know that Dabney accurately assessed those developments and the consequences they were likely to produce. Darwinism, labor unions, strikes, secular education, the abandonment of the gold standard and modernism were all accurately assessed by Dabney while they were yet fledgling movements. So as not to think such praise is undeserved, consider Dabney’s comments on communism. “Communism is slavery! Moreover, all history teaches us, that the more paternalistic any government becomes, be its form either impersonal, monarchical, aristocratic or democratic, the more will its officials engross the powers of the State, and the earnings of the citizens to themselves.” It reads like something from yesterday’s editorial page, but was written well over one hundred years ago!
Schnitzler closes by recommending some of Dabney’s works for further study. Interestingly, none of them are specifically theological, but his most stringent pro-Confederate material is endorsed:
Robert Lewis Dabney was truly a remarkable man and is worthy of greater recognition. For those interested in reading more of his work, the following books are recommended: A Defense of Virginia and the South, The Practical Philosophy, Selected Discussions, and the Life and Campaigns of Lt. Gen. T. J. “Stonewall” Jackson.
1997
1997 featured a “Symposium on the Reformation” (available here), and this final reference to Robert Lewis Dabney brings us full circle. Jean-Marc Berthoud, listed as “editor of the review Résister et Construire [“Resist and Build”], President of the Association vaudoise de Parents chretiens in Switzerland,” contributed an article titled “Why Is the Biblical Doctrine of Creation So Important?” the topic of the very first Journal of Christian Reconstruction (1974). Berthoud takes aim at any compromise with evolution:
Theistic evolution, which accepts a form of evolution, directed by God, diminishes the Creator’s power and wisdom in order to attribute a portion of his power and wisdom to the laws of evolution supposedly contained in nature. It is a lack of faith that leads one to uphold such a position.
And here, he cites Dabney in support:
Robert Lewis Dabney, an American theologian of the latter half of the nineteenth century, wrote on the subject of Christian thinkers who adhered to a theistic vision of evolution:
Why are theistic philosophers so eager to push God’s creative act as far back in time as possible and reduce His action as much as possible, as they are constantly doing in their speculations?… What is the use, unless one is aspiring towards atheism? (R. L. Dabney: Lectures in Systematic Theology, 261)
βιβλιοσκώληξ 