The Shaping of Moderation: William Robertson and Arminianism

The Shaping of Moderation: William Robertson and Arminianism JEFFREY SMITTEN 1 here are widely differing estimates of how Arminian thought affected the emergence and development of Moderatism during the Scottish Enlightenment. For some, it was a destroyer. Disruption historians like W. M. Hetherington claimed that the "considerable number of young men, who had imbibed the lax notions of a modified Arminianism" were an important cause of the total decline of the Church of Scotland during the eighteenth century. He deplored the pernicious tendency of that moderate management so highly recommended by William [III], so perseveringly followed by [William] Carstares, and so destructively successful in introducing into the Church of Scotland such a body of men, not more than half Presbyterian in their principles, doctrines, and practice, by whom she was early and deeply vitiated, ere long grievously enthralled, and from the baneful influence of whose long and dreary domination she is yet but striving painfully to recover.1 For others, it was a creator. Hugh Trevor-Roper sees this same train of events as an unqualified victory for the forces of secular enlightenment. Calvinist Scotland made "its contribution to the Enlightenment at a precise moment in its history, and . . . this moment was the moment when it repudiated ideological orthodoxy." Accordingly, "by the time when foreigners looked in admiration to the Enlightenment of the north, the 281 282 / SMITTEN Scottish Kirk had been de-Calvinized: it was governed, for thirty years, by the Arminian historian William Robertson, the friend of Hume, Gibbon and Adam Smith."2 Still others, like Henry Sefton, question the view that Scotland imported, along with William III, Dutch theology in the form of Arminianism . He endorses the statement of G. D. Henderson that " 'the Moderates were sometimes called Arminians but in fact they were not interested in taking sides in this controversy.' "3 He is a nominalist, arguing that the beginning of Moderatism lay within the individual positions staked out by such "neu lights" as William Hamilton, William Wishart, Robert Wallace, and Patrick Cuming, and concluding that Moderatism was not indebted to foreign thought but was a product of local institutions and traditions. My purpose is to argue to some extent against all of these positions in order to offer a more specific and complex representation of Moderatism as an ideology. That is, rather than ask what hell or heaven the Moderates' Arminianism led to, as did Hetherington and Trevor-Roper, I will ask what Arminianism meant and how it functioned in the thought of a single but highly influential individual, William Robertson (1721-1793), historian, Principal of the University of Edinburgh , and the acknowledged leader of the Moderates during the midcentury . In addition, I will disagree with Sefton and maintain that Continental Arminianism—at least in Robertson's case—did play a significant role in the articulation of Moderatism, though this role did not involve doctrinal controversy. Robertson drew from his Arminian sources two key concepts that helped him articulate Moderatism: a synergetic view of the relationship between human action and divine providence together with a skeptical epistemology. These concepts, however, have been shifted from the context of the doctrinal disputes of the seventeenth century to the more secular concerns of the mid-eighteenth century. This shift plus the heterodox character of Arminianism itself in the eyes of many orthodox Presbyterians meant that Robertson had to establish ties between these Arminian concepts and the mainstream development of the Church of Scotland. Therefore, besides considering the parallels between Robertson's Moderatism and Arminianism, it will be necessary to consider what color and nuance were given to these Arminian ideas in the Moderates' presentation of them. To understand how Robertson used Arminianism, it is important to establish what Arminianism meant during the seventeenth century. Arminianism has a complex history, and this definition will necessarily be incomplete.4 It can be formulated on two levels: the theological and the sociopolitical. On the theological level, controversy centered generally on the Arminians' opposition to the absolute predestination that William Robertson and Arminianism / 283 Calvin had argued, with the Arminians placing greater emphasis on man's will. This issue was central to the conflicts in England during the seventeenth century, and it...