THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
present must and will endure an entirely different measure of heterodoxy within the Church; and the reigning spirit is one of liberalism.
There is, however, another struggle pending, which may lead to the last schism in Christianity. This does not concern deviating con- 3. The cepts and presentations of individual Modern doctrines, or the acceptance or rejec- Antithesis. tion of this or that ecclesiastical position, but in it two views of the universe— practically, two religions — stand opposed to one another. For if, ostensibly to ethicize Christianity, its nerve of faith be severed, if the essential divinity of Christ be replaced by his human uniqueness, if the Bible be dethroned for the consciousness of the community, then there is no longer a mere conflict between orthodoxy and heterodoxy; but the existence of the confessional churches is imperiled, and the way is opened for the formation of entirely new types of religious organization. Protestantism is evidently destined to surrender to this new development. The antithesis is no longer between conservative and liberal theology, but between Church and modern theology. The question is whether Christianity is to maintain itself as the religion of revelation, or is to lapse to a mere phase of the general evolution of religious history.
(Karl Burger!. ) Orthodoxy and heterodoxy receive a different application according as there is an established Church, or a binding creed to be interpreted by a constituted authority, or a body of churches more or less loosely connected with a declaration of faith subject to revision or susceptible of a considerable margin of explanation. In America 4. Con- and Great Britain this subject has flicts in come up under a variety of conditions. America In America, e.g., about the middle of and Great the eighteenth century, the Arminian Britain, position concerning free will and original sin (see Arminianism) as represented by Daniel Whitby (1726) and John Taylor (1761) was branded by Jonathan Edwards and others as heterodox and fought as the most deadly enemy of religion in New England. Later, at the rise of Unitarianism (see Unitarians), in the Congregational Churches of New England the line between orthodoxy and heterodoxy was sharply drawn by Noah Worcester and Moses Stuart on one side, and on the other by Henry Ware, Sr., W. E. Channing, and Andrews Norton (qq.v.). The next controversy emerged nearly simultaneously in the Presbyterian and Congregational Churches. In the Presbyterian Church, in connection with the movement which resulted in the organization of the New School branch, Albert Barnes (q.v.) was first tried and condemned by his presbytery and afterward acquitted by the General Assembly, and Lyman Beecher (q.v.) was tried but acquitted for advocacy of the universality of the Atonement (q.v.). A few years later Horace Bushnell (q.v.) was repeatedly threatened with prosecution by some of his ministerial brethren in Connecticut for alleged heretical writings on Christian nurture, the Trinity, and the atonement. These movements were ultimately abortive and the
suspected teachings have long since taken their place by the side of other accredited doctrines of the respective churches. Near the close of the last century two other movements appeared in the same religious bodies. Professor C. A. Briggs (q.v.) of Union Theological Seminary (Presbyterian), tried for heresy by the New York Presbytery and acquitted, was the following year suspended by the General Assembly for heterodox teaching with reference to historical criticism of the Old Testament. The same year a similar fate and for a like reason befell Professor Henry Preserved Smith (q.v.) of Lane Theological Seminary. In the Congregational denomination (1882-93) the so-called Andover hypothesis of probation after death (see Probation) became the subject of heated controversy, in which not only Andover Seminary, but all who sympathized with the larger hope were charged with defection from the orthodox faith. This controversy was resolved by appointment of men as missionaries who were in sympathy with Andover, by a declaration by the National Council of Congregational Churches at Minneapolis in 1892 that creeds were to be used "not as tests, but as testimony," and finally (1908) by the affiliation of Andover Seminary with the Divinity School of Harvard University — an event of extraordinary significance in the light of the early history of both institutions. In the Protestant Episcopal Church the opposition to teaching regarded by many as heretical, for a long time smoldering, here and there breaking out, overtook the Rev. T. H. MacQueary, charged with the denial of miracles and suspended for six months (1891), and the Rev. A. S. Crapsey, deposed from the ministry (1908) on the ground of rejecting the birth-stories of Jesus in the first and third Gospels. Other denominations have experienced similar conflicts between orthodoxy and heterodoxy, e.g., the Baptists in the agitation which resulted in the retirement of Professor C. H. Toy from the chair of Hebrew in the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Ky., in 1879, and is more recently convulsing the Northern Baptists on the subject of baptism (immersion) as a sine qua non of admission to the sacrament of the Lord's Supper.
In Great Britain in the Church of England (see England, Church of), at one time the Evangelical, at another time the High-church, party, professing the orthodox faith, has stamped as heterodox the Broad-church or liberal party as heretical, without, however, being able to excommunicate their leaders. Scotland was the scene of a fierce battle when William Robertson Smith (q.v.), professor of Hebrew in the Free Church College of Aberdeen, was in 1881 removed from his chair by the extraordinary act of the General Assembly, on account of his articles in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, in which he had advocated the views of Wellhausen and his school respecting the religion of Israel and the canon of the Old Testament.
C. A. Beckwith.
Bibliography: J. H. Blunt, Dictionary of Sects, Heresies, Ecclesiastical Parties and Schools of Religious Thought, Philadelphia, 1874; J. H. Allen, Ten Discourses on Orthodoxy, Boston, 1849; J. F. Clarke, Orthodoxy, its Truths and Errors, ib. 1866; J. J. Overbeck, Catholic Orthodoxy and Anglo-Catholicism, London, 1866; E. C. Towne, The