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The Religious Thought of Samuel Johnson (Paperback)
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The Religious Thought of Samuel Johnson (Paperback)
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Starting from the youthful influences that helped to form Samuel
Johnson's mature religious thought, Chester F. Chapin goes on to
consider the development of this thought and its relation to
Anglican orthodoxy and to social and political questions. The
second and major part of the book is devoted to an analysis of
Johnson's mature position on certain basic issues. Chapin considers
Johnson's attitude toward evidences, arguing that Johnson attempted
to establish revelation by grounding it in history. He maintains
that Johnson did not distinguish between Christian and
non-Christian ethics, and that it was the eschatology of
Christianity that he valued particularly. The intensity of
Johnson's fear of death and judgment is a measure of the intensity
of his faith. Chapin considers problems of evil, of free will, and
of foreknowledge and necessity as Johnson struggled with them.
Writers that Johnson referred to argued that foreknowledge does not
imply necessity, but Chapin maintains that Johnson was not
convinced by these arguments. Experience, Johnson saw, was on the
side of free will, and for him this took precedence over theory.
The author then turns to Johnson's social and political attitudes.
His loyalty to the Church shaped other conservative attitudes.
Johnson did not assert that the ultimate conversion of all men to
Christianity was part of God's plan, and his attitude toward the
non-Christian world approached that of live and let live. Johnson
was not a relativist. Since men have the ability to distinguish
good from evil, it follows that there is an objective moral order
in the world. Finally, Chapin reviews the problem of human life,
which so occupied Johnson's mind, and states that for Johnson
religion was the only rational solution to this problem. Chapin
also presents the position of Hume and other 18th-century
intellectuals and provides a carefully reasoned argument concerning
various questions of theology.
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