TYLER, BENNET
(10 July 1783, Middlebury, CT-14 May 1858, South Windsor, Cl). Education: B.A., Yale College, 1804; studied theology with Asahel Hooker, Goshen, CT, 1805-7. Career: Schoolteacher, Weston, CT, 1804-5; minister, South Britain, CT, 1818-22; president, Dartmouth College, 1822-28; minister, Second Congregational Church, Portland, ME, 1828-34; president and professor of Christian theology, Theological Institute of Connecticut (became Hartford Seminary), 1834-57.
Bennet Tyler became, almost inadvertently, the leader of the Congregational opposition to the New Haven Theology. When Nathaniel William Taylor* published Concio ad Clerum (1828), the manifesto for a new movement to make God more accountable to human reason, Bennet Tyler was comfortably settled as pastor in Portland, Maine, far from the madding theologians' doctrinal strife. He had served well as president of Dartmouth, but a taste for the simpler life of the ministry drew him away from Hanover.
The celebrated "Tyler-Taylor controversy" began when Tyler wrote from Maine, suggesting that Taylor-a former Yale classmate-was going too far in the direction of limiting God by human standards of conduct Tyler summarized Taylor's philosophy as the belief that no human being can become depraved but by his own act, and that the sinfulness of the race does not come from man's nature. The two men carried a spirited correspondence which established Tyler as a leading opponent of Taylorism. Tyler is sometimes described as an Old School Calvinist, and Taylor, identifIed with the New Divinity. But Tyler was arguably closer to the New Divinity, certainly closer to Jonathan Edwards* on many points. The difficulty of applying labels indicates the degree to which
Congregational theology had become a web of ideas, sometimes intersecting, sometimes running parallel, sometimes diverging.
In 1833 Asahel Nettleton* and other Connecticut conservatives met together, formed a pastoral union, and resolved to establish Connecticut Theological Seminary in East Windsor, where Jonathan Edwards had lived as a youth. As first president and theology professor for their school, they chose a man with experience as a college administrator and unimpeachable credentials as a doctrinal conservative-Bennet Tyler. At the seminary-later called Hartford Theological Seminary-Tyler taught doctrines that would have seemed familiar to Thomas Hooker* and John Cotton*. God was a perfect, absolute sovereign, and humanity was totally depraved, fallen with Adam. Man did not have the moral ability to repent. God elected to choose whomever he wished for salvation: regeneration came about "not by moral suasion, or by the efficiency of any means whatever, but by the direct agency of the Holy Spirit, changing the moral disposition, and imparting a new spiritual life to the soul." Without this assistance, Tyler said, there was no salvation, and the damned would suffer eternal punishment.
Tyler helped keep old Calvinism alive, but he must have felt at times that whenever he fought one liberal fire, another would blaze up from an unexpected quarter. Late in life he correspondence with Horace Bushnell*, the man who eventually turned the Congregational church towards a more "humanistic" understanding of God and man. Disputing Bushnell's notion that one could come to faith in a godly household through "Christian nurture" by earthly parents, Tyler reasserted the Calvinist position, "They are not made Christians by education ... .It is God's prerogative to change the heart"
Bibliography
.A: Letters on the Origin and Progress of the New Haven Theology (New York, 1837); A Review of the President Day's Treatise on the Will (Hartford, Conn., 1838); Memoir of the Life and Character of Rev. Asahel Nettleton (Hartford, Conn., 1844); Treatise on the Sufferings of Christ (New York, 1845); New England Revivals (Boston, 1846); Letters to the Rev. Horace Bushnell, 2 vols., (Hartford, Conn., 1847-48); Lectures on Theology (Boston, 1859); Worth of the Soul (Boston, 1873).
B: BSGYC 5,716-24; DAB 19.85-86; DARB, 480-81; NCAB 9, 87-88; SH 12, 46-47; RHAP, 420.
Bennet Tyler became, almost inadvertently, the leader of the Congregational opposition to the New Haven Theology. When Nathaniel William Taylor* published Concio ad Clerum (1828), the manifesto for a new movement to make God more accountable to human reason, Bennet Tyler was comfortably settled as pastor in Portland, Maine, far from the madding theologians' doctrinal strife. He had served well as president of Dartmouth, but a taste for the simpler life of the ministry drew him away from Hanover.
The celebrated "Tyler-Taylor controversy" began when Tyler wrote from Maine, suggesting that Taylor-a former Yale classmate-was going too far in the direction of limiting God by human standards of conduct Tyler summarized Taylor's philosophy as the belief that no human being can become depraved but by his own act, and that the sinfulness of the race does not come from man's nature. The two men carried a spirited correspondence which established Tyler as a leading opponent of Taylorism. Tyler is sometimes described as an Old School Calvinist, and Taylor, identifIed with the New Divinity. But Tyler was arguably closer to the New Divinity, certainly closer to Jonathan Edwards* on many points. The difficulty of applying labels indicates the degree to which
Congregational theology had become a web of ideas, sometimes intersecting, sometimes running parallel, sometimes diverging.
In 1833 Asahel Nettleton* and other Connecticut conservatives met together, formed a pastoral union, and resolved to establish Connecticut Theological Seminary in East Windsor, where Jonathan Edwards had lived as a youth. As first president and theology professor for their school, they chose a man with experience as a college administrator and unimpeachable credentials as a doctrinal conservative-Bennet Tyler. At the seminary-later called Hartford Theological Seminary-Tyler taught doctrines that would have seemed familiar to Thomas Hooker* and John Cotton*. God was a perfect, absolute sovereign, and humanity was totally depraved, fallen with Adam. Man did not have the moral ability to repent. God elected to choose whomever he wished for salvation: regeneration came about "not by moral suasion, or by the efficiency of any means whatever, but by the direct agency of the Holy Spirit, changing the moral disposition, and imparting a new spiritual life to the soul." Without this assistance, Tyler said, there was no salvation, and the damned would suffer eternal punishment.
Tyler helped keep old Calvinism alive, but he must have felt at times that whenever he fought one liberal fire, another would blaze up from an unexpected quarter. Late in life he correspondence with Horace Bushnell*, the man who eventually turned the Congregational church towards a more "humanistic" understanding of God and man. Disputing Bushnell's notion that one could come to faith in a godly household through "Christian nurture" by earthly parents, Tyler reasserted the Calvinist position, "They are not made Christians by education ... .It is God's prerogative to change the heart"
Bibliography
.A: Letters on the Origin and Progress of the New Haven Theology (New York, 1837); A Review of the President Day's Treatise on the Will (Hartford, Conn., 1838); Memoir of the Life and Character of Rev. Asahel Nettleton (Hartford, Conn., 1844); Treatise on the Sufferings of Christ (New York, 1845); New England Revivals (Boston, 1846); Letters to the Rev. Horace Bushnell, 2 vols., (Hartford, Conn., 1847-48); Lectures on Theology (Boston, 1859); Worth of the Soul (Boston, 1873).
B: BSGYC 5,716-24; DAB 19.85-86; DARB, 480-81; NCAB 9, 87-88; SH 12, 46-47; RHAP, 420.