Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 53-04, Section: A, page: 1254.

Adviser: David Brion Davis.

Over the course of the nineteenth century, American liberal and conservative Protestant theologians changed the way in which they depicted God's character in their writing. Early in the century the predominant way of characterizing God was as a judge, feeling both anger and love. By the end of the century, American theologians predominantly characterized God by his love. As part of this change, anthropomorphism was discredited and theism became the only authoritative way to depict God theologically. That is, God could no longer have an anthropomorphically variable nature, but only a singular, theistic nature. Thus, during the nineteenth century, there emerged a new way of conceiving of God and a new way to write about him in theology. But this change did not occur without a struggle, and during the middle of the century a number of American theologians, most importantly, Albert Barnes, Horace Bushnell and Robert Lewis Dabney, tried to reinvest an anthropomorphic depiction of God with authority.

This is the first historical study to focus on the changing characterization of God during the nineteenth century. My approach has been to probe beneath the contents of doctrinal controversy to examine the sorts of rhetoric which theologians used in their depiction of God. This has revealed the important influence of literary styles on theological writing. The new emphasis on God's theistic benevolence borrowed from a neoclassical literary style and discredited the juristic depiction of God by associating it with anthropomorphism, which, in turn, was disparaged as being primitive. The reaction against the new, neoclassical theism involved a romantic anthropomorphism. This, however, was a short-lived effort. The conclusion of this study is that the disappearance of a theologically credible anthropomorphism played a large part in the secularization of modern American culture.