The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

III. Bishop White—Mankind Universally Mortal Through Adam

We now come to WILLIAM WHITE (1747-1836), one of the organizers of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, and first bishop of Pennsylvania. He was graduated from the College (later University) of Philadelphia in 1765, and completed his theological studies in 1770. Going to England, he was ordained an Anglican clergyman in London in 1773, and upon returning became rector of the united parishes of Christ’s Church and St. Peters, Philadelphia, which post he held until death. CFF2 288.1

1. OBTAINED EPISCOPAL ORDERS FOR DAUGHTER AMERICAN CHURCH

White played a central part in founding the Protestant Episcopal Church of America. In fact the movement for its organization was started in White’s study, where the Episcopal clergy of Philadelphia met to draw up plans for a General Convention. White was designated first bishop of Pennsylvania in 1786, being consecrated in London by the archbishops of Canterbury and York, thus obtaining Episcopal orders for the daughter American church. He presided over fifty diocesan sessions. CFF2 288.2

White introduced the plan of lay participation with the clergy in all legislation—a novelty in Anglicanism. He was also chiefly responsible for the American Revision of the Book of Common Prayer, which remains largely unaltered to the present. While engaged in much controversial writing, White worked closely with other Protestant groups. He was one of the first to endorse the Sunday school, a new institution, then regarded with grave suspicion and even hostility. And he was long chaplain of Congress (1777-1801), when it still met in Philadelphia, and was the intimate of many statesmen, some of whom were members of his congregation. He was also president of the American Bible Society. CFF2 288.3

Bishop White was author of Lectures on the Catechism of the Protestant Episcopal Church (1813), Comparative Views of the Controversy Between the Calvinists and the Arminians, 2 vols. (1814-16), and Memoir of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America (1820). He was therefore thoroughly and typically Episcopalian. CFF2 289.1

2. TURNED AWAY FROM CALVIN’S PREDESTINARIANISM

White was primarily a theologian, though familiar with the arguments of philosophy and of Platonism as well as the foibles of Deism. Reason, he held, was not to be worshiped but was to serve the mind as a tool. White felt that man must face the problems of Christianity squarely. Thus he came, inevitably, to be interested in the doctrine of man. And in this he was deeply influenced by the writings of John Locke, who was a Conditionalist. ³ White held the doctrine of free will, and contended strongly against the philosophic necessity that had come to be associated with certain Calvinistic teachings, especially those expressed by Jonathan Edwards, on the Eternal Torment of the wicked. CFF2 289.2

Chrysostum and other fourth-century Fathers, White held, had considered predestination from the standpoint of questions raised by the philosophers. But Augustine introduced the next step which, still through predestination, excluded a great proportion of mankind from possibility of salvation. Eleven hundred years later, at the Reformation, the thought of the “final perseverance of the saints” was introduced, which idea again came to be coupled with the philosophic aspect. CFF2 289.3

White’s criticism of Augustine’s predestination was based on the chronological lateness of its introduction and its conflict with the teaching of the earlier Fathers. In this he cites Bishop Burnet, who had said, “I follow the doctrine of the Greek Church, from which the St. Austin departed, and formed a new system.” ⁴ White therefore favored Luther’s position rather than Calvin’s teachings on the will and predestination, because it went back to the earlier Fathers. He was thus prepared for the Conditionalist position on the nature of man. CFF2 289.4

Bishop White opposed the doctrine of Hume, who believed in “the development of man from a low state,” holding that “the religions of the great prehistoric civilizations were originally monotheistic and that religion, separated from revelation, had degenerated into polytheism.” ⁵ CFF2 290.1

3. MORTALITY INHERITED BY ALL FROM ADAM

On the question of immortality White held that since Adam’s fall immortality has been lost to mankind. He referred to “the universality of mortality through Adam.” From Adam all men inherited mortality. ⁶ This was because in the Fall man became mortal when he was found unworthy, by Adam’s sin, of immortality. He approvingly cites Bishop Wilson on this point. ⁷ CFF2 290.2

Bishop White pressed on the fact that “as in Adam all die, so in Christ all are made alive.” Through Christ “mortality was squarely met in the crucifixion and was overcome on the third day. The resurrection proved an immortality which might have been hoped for on the grounds of rational deduction, but could never have been assumed without the empirical fact.” ⁸ This placed all men in a new relationship to God. Immortality comes through Christ. CFF2 290.3

4. FALL BROUGHT WITHDRAWAL OF PRIVILEGES

But White also held that when Adam broke the provisions of the original conditions it would be expected that God should withdraw the privileges. ⁹ CFF2 290.4

“The immediate effect of the first transgression was mortality including liability to all the diseases, to all the violence and to all the other injuries on the body which may be causes of it.” ¹⁰ CFF2 291.1

Such were the views of America’s first Episcopal bishop on the question of forfeited immortality and its restoration through Christ—evidently adopted around 1800. CFF2 291.2