Founding the Fathers. Elizabeth A. Clark
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wrote with intense effort,” Hastings confessed, “but always, in our weariness at the close of the lecture-hour, we felt we had lost much because we had not secured all that he had said.” Students deemed remarkable Smith’s ability to answer their questions on the spot—suggesting that most professors (pace Samuel Miller) were not able to do so. Hastings added:
No question surprised him; his answers dissected the subject so thoroughly that it seemed as if he had specially prepared himself for each question. He made us work harder than we had ever done before. He marked out courses of reading sufficient to occupy us for years, and seemed quietly to take it for granted that we would accomplish it all in a few weeks.27
Smith mainly lectured to his classes, as the many student course notebooks housed in the Union Seminary archives show. Abandoning the stillcustomary recitation method of teaching, Smith proposed topics for student investigation.28 Clearly he was a pedagogical pioneer.
Roswell Hitchcock: Union Theological Seminary
Roswell Hitchcock was likewise widely respected for his excellent teaching. He held the Washburn Professorship of Church History at Union from 1855 (when Smith transferred to Theology) until his death in 1887; by then, 1400 living former students could count him as their professor. Hitchcock’s list of courses included Biblical and Apostolic History; General Church History; Sacred History; Old Testament History; The Life of Christ and Apostolic History; General Church History from the Second Century; The History of the World Before Christ; and History of Doctrines.29 This list shows the prominence of “biblical history.” There remain three sets of student notes for each of Hitchcock’s courses on “Church History, 100–323 [or 325],” “Church History, 323 [or 325] to 800,”30 and “The Apostolic Church”; two sets on “The Life of Christ”; and one set each for “The History of the World Before Christ,” “Church History, 800–1294,” and “Church History, 1517–1884.” Hitchcock largely taught by the lecture method. Since Hitchcock never published a Church History, as Philip Schaff had urged,31 his approach to the subject must be gleaned largely from these fourteen extant sets of class notes taken by his students, supplemented by his articles and sermons.
Hitchcock’s lectures on ancient church history follow a pattern. First comes a lengthy “Introduction,” in which Hitchcock describes, inter alia, church history, its “uses,” sources, and the auxiliary studies needed for its pursuit. Turning to the “First Period” (ante-Nicene), Hitchcock gives a general overview and describes its “external history” (Judaism and the Roman Empire) and Christianity’s interactions with this larger world (historical, intellectual, philosophical, moral). Next comes “polity” (including the rise of “sacerdotalism”); then councils; schisms; the life and worship of the church (including its piety; asceticism; domestic, social, and public life, with considerable attention to the subjects of marriage, family, and slavery); and sacred days and services (including discussion of the sacraments). A next heading is “doctrine,” under which rubric Hitchcock expounds his notion of dogmatic development, and describes various authors, writings, and “heresies” (including Gnosticism and Manicheanism). He then takes up apologetics, the Rule of Faith, the canon, and inspiration of the Bible (and lack thereof in post-biblical writings). The last major topic, theology, includes discussion of the Trinity, “anthropology,” Christology, soteriology, ecclesiology, the sacraments (again), and eschatology. This schema is also largely followed in Hitchcock’s discussion of the Nicene and post-Nicene periods, with appropriate modifications for the changed historical situation. Although Hitchcock lists no category of “social history,” one former student described how he wove contemporary issues pertaining to war, law, medicine, and science into his lectures on church history.32 Judging from class notes and incidental writings, Hitchcock gave more than usual attention to what today we would call “history of religions” and “theory” in religious studies. Both Hitchcock and Smith, it may be noted, showed more interest in the political events and social movements of their time in America than did Schaff, whose life was devoted to more strictly Christian causes.
Hitchcock declared that although it was “a luxury to learn,” that of teaching was even greater. The teacher must himself keep on learning, “have something fresh to communicate”—and when he does not, it is time to resign. Antiquarianism, Hitchcock claimed, should be relegated to the museum.33 Former students confirmed the “careful research” that went into Hitchcock’s teaching: “he did not weary of fresh investigations, even on familiar topics.”34 A friend claimed, “Who that ever heard him lecture in his class-room on Ecclesiastical History can forget his masterly picture of the past; how he made the great figures of the Apostolic age to live again…. He believed in the Holy Catholic Church and in the Communion of Saints.”35 Students testified that Hitchcock never gave the same lecture in two different classes, but always updated his presentations with the latest research.36 Student notes from his courses over the years cast doubt on the strict accuracy of this claim, although Hitchcock clearly continued to read and report on new works.
Shortly after Hitchcock’s sudden death in 1887, Philip Schaff described him as “a brilliant scholar and lecturer, with an absolute command of language”—but one whose publication record was scanty, since he considered authorship “intolerable drudgery.” In his own inaugural lecture later that year, Schaff claimed that his predecessor “always spoke like a book,” thus sparing himself the trouble of writing them.37 Another memorialist claimed that Hitchcock’s students took down what he said, “word for word,” helped by the fact that he spoke slowly and precisely—and some very detailed student notes suggest that this was not an overly extravagant claim. “He was,” the memorialist asserts, “the master of the terse, crisp, epigrammatic, condensed speech.”38
As noted above, Hitchcock left money in his will to establish a prize for excellence in church history, to be given to a member of the senior class at Union.39 This prize was sometimes used by the recipient to continue studies abroad. The Hitchcock Prize in Church History is still awarded at Union Seminary.
George Fisher: Yale Theological Departmentand Yale University
In his history of Yale Divinity School, Roland Bainton comments that from George Fisher’s published historical writings (which he praises as “impartial”), readers would never guess that he was a witty and vivacious conversationalist and teacher. So engaging was his manner of speech that some might receive the misimpression that he had fallen prey to “secularization.”40 Upon Fisher’s death, one memorialist commented, “So delightful was Professor Fisher’s personality, so nimble his wit, so genial his spirit, that it was not always easy to remember that he was one of the foremost scholars of his time.”41
From class notes taken by undergraduate Bernadotte Perrin, later a professor of Greek at Yale, it appears that Fisher largely taught by the lecture method. Perrin’s notes, however, do not convey the witty, vivacious spirit here suggested. Indeed, Fisher’s genial classroom style apparently suffered in his later years. By then, students complained that he simply repeated the contents of his textbooks. One student allegedly sat with the textbook open, occasionally adding a note should Fisher ever offer anything new.42
Bainton praises Fisher for his attempt to modernize the study of theology in the broader sense, working scientific advances into both apologetics and older theories of design.43 In general, Fisher thought that historical studies needed more emphasis on “modern” (i.e., post-476) history. Books on “universal history,” he advised, should devote more attention to history since the Roman Empire’s “fall”—an event he nevertheless deemed the most “stupendous” change in history from that time to the present. In his own Brief History of the Nations, he sought to give more space to medieval and modern history than was then customary, ancient history still dominating history textbooks.44 Fisher’s complaint suggests that as late as the 1890s, ancient history received disproportionate attention—and that covering “universal history” was deemed viable.
To acquire a vivid picture of church history, Fisher insisted, the student must know sources—not only written sources such as letters and monastic