Ability and responsibility in American Christianity from Jonathan Edwards through Charles Finney

The history of Christianity reveals an incessant struggle between Calvinistic and Arminian thought. This conflict often finds a focus in how man's depravity affects his responsibility to God. If because of the Fall man is unable to respond to God, how then can God hold him responsible to do so?;This dissertation examines how various American theologians, from Jonathan Edwards to Charles Finney, have attempted to answer this question. After a brief background to American thought, the theology of Jonathan Edwards is examined. He understood man to possess the natural ability to respond to God but not the moral ability to do so. He argued that natural ability rendered one responsible, even when moral ability was absent.;From Edwards sprang a New England theology which wavered from his pure Calvinistic thought. While Samuel Hopkins basically maintained Edwards's stance, Timothy Dwight and Nathaniel Taylor radically altered it. Especially under the spell of revivalism, they granted to man every faculty necessary to make peace with God.;The Anglican Church served as a springboard for a different course of thought. The Englishmen John Wesley and Richard Watson impacted early American Methodist thought more than any others. They both argued for a Calvinistic understanding of depravity, but they believed God lifted each man from this morass of sin by granting him grace. This universal gift bestowed the ability to respond to God, thus making each man responsible.;Charles Finney made the boldest strides toward abandoning the effects of Adam's sin upon the race. Driven by a revivalistic impulse, Finney granted each man the full ability to meet God's demands. While he stressed that Holy Spirit power was necessary to salvation, his emphasis on immediate submission to the Christian faith practically took God out of the picture.;An interesting corollary to this line of theological thought is the question of how man's depravity should affect evangelistic technique. Edwards accepted the puritan tradition which stressed a process of preparation leading to conversion. He preached at the same time both a call to immediate salvation and a need to wait on God's timing. In contrast to this, the revivalists of the nineteenth century dropped the notion of waiting on God and replaced it with methods designed to promote immediate decision. The adoption or rejection of these methods, to a large extent, revealed the minister's stand on the soteriological question.