Henry Boynton Smith
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![](//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Henry_Boynton_Smith_%281815%E2%80%931877%29.png) |
Born
| (
1815-11-21
)
November 21, 1815
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Died
| February 7, 1877
(1877-02-07)
(aged 61)
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Education
| Bowdoin College
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Occupation
| Theologian
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![](//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/Signature_of_Henry_Boynton_Smith_%281815%E2%80%931877%29.png) |
Henry Boynton Smith
(November 21, 1815 - February 7, 1877), United States theologian, was born in
Portland, Maine
.
[1]
He is best known for introducing many Americans to avant-garde German historical scholarship, especially in his
History of the Church of Christ, in Chronological Tables: A Synchronistic View of the Events, Characteristics, and Culture of Each Period, including the History of Polity, Worship, Literature, and Doctrines: Together with Two Supplementary Tables upon the Church in America; And an Appendix Containing the Series of Councils, Popes, Patriarchs, and Other Bishops, and a Full Index
(1860).
He graduated at
Bowdoin College
in 1834; studied theology at
Andover
, where his health failed, at Bangor, and, after a year (1836-1837) as librarian and tutor in Greek at Bowdoin, in Germany at
Halle
, where he became personally intimate with
August Tholuck
and
Hermann Ulrici
, and in Berlin, under
August Neander
and
Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
.
[2]
He returned to America in 1840, was a tutor for a few months (1840-1841) at Bowdoin, and in 1842, shut out from any better place by distrust of his German training and by his frank opposition to
Unitarianism
, he became pastor of the
Congregational Church
of
West Amesbury (now Merrimac), Massachusetts
. In 1847-1850 he was professor of
moral philosophy
and metaphysics at Amherst; and in 1850-1854 was Washburn professor of Church history, and in 1854-1874 Roosevelt professor of systematic theology, at
Union Theological Seminary
, were he also served as the head librarian for the
Burke Library
.
[2]
[3]
His health failed in 1874 and he died in New York City on February 7, 1877.
[1]
His son
Henry Goodwin Smith
was also a theologian.
Rejecting the Old School version of
New England Theology
, Smith was one of the foremost leaders of the new school
Presbyterians
and promoted principles of the so-called "mediating theology" (
Vermittlungstheologie
). His theology is most strikingly contained in the Andover address, "Relations of Faith and Philosophy," which was delivered before the Porter Rhetorical Society in 1849. He always made it clear that the ideal philosophy was Christocentric: he said that Reformed theology must "'Christologize'
predestination
and decrees, regeneration and sanctification, the doctrine of the Church, and the whole of the
Eschatology
."
[2]
For his theology, Smith used the Incarnation as "the structural principle of his theology."
[4]
[5]
In this approach, he followed the mediating theologians.
References
[
edit
]
Further reading
[
edit
]
- Aubert, Annette G. "Henry Boynton Smith and Church History in Nineteenth-Century America."
Church History
85, no. 2 (2016): 302-327.
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