The American Scholar

English 5571 - American Transcendentalism

Theodore Parker (1810 - 1860)

Theodore Parker was born in Lexington among eleven children. With little formal training, he earned a living as a farmer and carpenter. "Admitted to Harvard, he was too poor to attend classes but took and passed all the examinations" (Parker 226). He was an avid reader and master of twenty languages.

The following is a brief look at Parker's sermon, "A Discourse of the Transient and Permanent in Christianity," which caused quite a commotion amongst those present at South Boston Church. He was subsequently ostracized from respectable circles in Boston.

Key text:
"Heaven and earth shall pass away; but my words shall not pass away." (Luke 21:33).

Parker's argument is that although sects of Christianity come and go, true Christianity will continue to live on. Thus, he argues, there are both transient and permanent aspects of Christianity.

Ironically, Jesus never made a big deal of the need to write his words down, even though they are to be eternal. "He appoints no order of men to preserve his bright and glad relations. He only bids his friends to give freely the truth they have freely received. He did not even write his words in a book" (260-61).

According to Parker, "It is these words that still work wonders, to which the first recorded miracles were nothing in grandeur and utility. [. . .] They take the sting out of disease, and rob adversity of his power to disappoint. They give health and wings to the pious soul, broken-hearted and shipwrecked in his voyage through life, and encourage him to tempt the perilous way once more."

He further contrasts the words of Jesus with other men's words, saying, "[t]he words of great men and mighty, whose name shook whole continents, though graven in metal and stone, though stamped in institutions, and defended by whole tribes of priests and troops of followers,--their words have gone to the grounds, and the world gives back no echo of their voice."

The obvious illustration to this assertion is Shelley's Ozymandias:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away." (Poetry)

Strong statement: "The difference between what is called Christianity by the Unitarians in our times, and that of some ages past, is greater than the difference between Mahomet and the Messiah" (Parker 262).

Bottom line: "Jesus tells us his word is the word of God, and so shall never pass away. But who tells us that our word shall never pass away?" (262).

Parker goes on to compare this dichotomy (the transient and the permanent) to the laws of nature vs. the phenomena of nature.

"These two bear, perhaps, the same relation to each other that the phenomena of outward nature, such as sunshine and cloud, growth, decay, and reproduction, bear to the great law of nature, which underlies and supports them all."

In other words, the phenomena of nature and the sects and opinions of Christianity are merely accidental, while the law of nature and Jesus' words are substance. 

"Every one (sic.) plays the philosopher out of the small treasures of his own fancy; the more sublime wits more acutely and with better success, the duller with less success, but equal obstinacy," emphasis added (265). 

Criticism of Unitarianism: "Many tenets that pass current in our theology seem to be the refuse of idol temples, the off-scourings of Jewish and heathen cities, rather than the sands of virgin gold which the stream of Christianity has worn off from the rock of ages, and brought in its bosom for us" (266).

Transcendentalist statement: "[. . .] if we are faithful, the great truths of morality and religion, the deep sentiment of love to man and love to God, are perceived intuitively, and by instinct, as it were, though our theology be imperfect and miserable" (266).

Parker details two particular doctrines that are transitory:

1. The origin and authority of the Old and New Testaments (267-69)
"On the authority of the written Word, man was taught to believe impossible legends, conflicting assertions; to take fiction for fact; a dream for a miraculous revelation of God; an oriental poem for a grave history of miraculous events"
"But modern Criticism is fast breaking to pieces this idol which men have made out of the Scriptures. [. . .] That their authors, wise as they sometimes were; pious as we feel often their spirit to have been, had only that inspiration which is common to other men equally pious and wise; that they were by no means infallible; but were mistaken in facts or in reasoning; uttered predictions which time has not fulfilled; men who in some measure partook of the darkness and limited notions of their age, and where not always above its mistakes or its corruptions."
"Which Evangelist, which Apostle of the New Testament, what Prophet or Psalmist of the Old Testament, ever claims infallible authority for himself or for others? [. . .] Did Christ ever demand that men should assent to the doctrines of the Old Testament, credit its stories, and take its poems for histories, and believe equally two accounts that contradict one another?"
2. The nature and authority of Christ (270-71).
"For some ages the Catholic Church seems to have dwelt chiefly on the divine nature [. . .] the Protestant Church dwelt chiefly on the human side of Christ."
"If it rest on the personal authority of Jesus alone, then there is no certainty of its truth, if he were ever mistake in the smallest matter, as some Christians have thought he was, in predicting his second coming." (Matthew 24 Jesus claims that he will return before the disciples' lives on earth end. This, of course, doesn't happen.)

Parker's conclusion seems to sum up the message of these idealists in 18th Century America.

"Doubtless the time will come when men shall see Christ also as he is" (274).

Parker felt, however, that if you make Jesus into something more than a man, our hope of divinity is destroyed.

"But if, as some early Christians began to do, you take a heathen view, and make him a God, the Son of God in a particular and exclusive sense, much of the significance of his character is gone." (275).

True Christianity is "is absolute, pure Morality; absolute, pure Religion. [. . .] All this is very simple a little child can understand it; [. . .] so well summed up in the command, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind; thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself'" (277).