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NaphtaliPress · #48 (**permalink**) 03-07-2007, 02:03 PM

Two snippets by C. N. Willborn on Dabney.
Robert L. Dabney, The Sensualistic Philosophy (Dallas, Tex.: Naphali Press, 2004) Preface by Willborn, 7-8. This book is offered in the PB book review section.

Outside a certain theological circle today, Dabney is probably best known as an apologist for the antebellum Southern culture. A Defense of Virginia and Through Her of the South was written at the end of the War and defended slavery as a Biblical institution. Furthermore, he sought to prove the benefits of the peculiar institution for the eco*nomic and moral condition of the South. For many his support of sla*very and certain views of the African culture, render him a racist and, thus, unsuitable for intellectual consideration. With the large racist tag dangling in front of their eyes, Dabney’s detractors have often missed the broader implications of the very complex Southern cul*ture he espoused. It was a culture centered on family and familial affections. Honor, patriotism, nobility, and commitment to a repre*sentative constitutional government were all marks of the civiliza*tion. Still, many have truncated “the Cause,” as the Southern culture has been called, so as to define it as a racially-blinded class of ogres.

Like so many of his Southern contemporaries the racist stereotype has rendered Dabney virtually worthless to several generations of theological students, social theorists, and churchmen. Unfortunately, with the bath water (dingy as it may be), the church and intellectual community at large has dispensed with a first-class theologian, edu*cator, socio-political commentator, and philosopher. For the theologi*cal student and pastor, Dabney’s Systematic Theology provides a very able defense of a moderate Calvinism and confessional orthodoxy. His Discussions (now available in five volumes) provide a broad sam*pling of his productivity on subjects like public education, science, politics, ministerial training, economics, and philosophy. Under the locus of philosophy the reader will find further stimulating reading in The Practical Philosophy. The material for this book came largely from his lectures to his University of Texas students and was prepared for publication in 1896. According to T. C. Johnson, Dabney considered this to be his best book.

Next to The Practical Philosophy, Dabney considered The Sensualis*tic Philosophy of the Nineteenth Century Considered (1875 and 1887) as his ablest work. He was, not unlike a number of very able eighteenth and nineteenth century theologians, a practitioner of Scottish Com*mon Sense Realism. Yet, he has recently been described as an eclectic in his utilization of the Common Sense Philosophy. Certainly he was no slave to a philosophical system that was in his day in substantial flux. Still it is accurate for categorization to label him a Common Sense Realist. As a Scottish Realist he held tenaciously to “that class of truths known as primary cognitions, innate ideas, [and] first truths.” Dabney held these “first truths,” to be “faith assumptions,” to borrow from Dr. Douglas Kelly. As such, the “first truths” influ*enced and shaped human reasoning. Furthermore, Kelly likened Dabney to Cornelius Van Til in the way he consistently showed how non-theists “reasoned on the basis of unproven, faith assumptions.”[1]

[1]Douglas Kelly, “Robert Lewis Dabney,” in Reformed Theology in Amer*ica, ed. David Wells (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1997), 220.

The Confessional Presbyteriian, 172-175
Review: Sean Michael Lucas, Robert Lewis Dabney: A Southern Presbyterian Life (Phillipsburg, N.J.: P&R, 2005). Hardcover, 295 pages. $24.99. Reviewed by C. N. Willborn, Professor, Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

Another positive side of this work is the handling of Dabney and the black population. Here the reviewer enters into very lonely ground. Many friends no doubt will disagree; many who thought they disagreed with the reviewer will be pleasantly surprised. Dabney was wrong in his view of the Africans brought to America through slaver trade, as Lucas argues. Until the end, Dabney insisted that they were inferior to his Caucasian ancestry and contemporaries. Unlike his South Carolina friends and co-laborers, John L. Girardeau and Thomas Peck, Dabney did not believe that a black man could ascend to majority status in society. A black man could never be qualified to fill the office of Pastor in Dabney’s world. Girardeau demurred from his friend. Prior to filling Thornwell’s shoes as the theologian at Columbia Seminary, Girardeau had labored among the slaves and free blacks of Charleston. He built a church for the black population that numbered over a thousand in membership and witnessed thousands in attendance every Lord’s Day. Girardeau ordained black ruling elders in 1869 and agitated for integrated churches as soon as possible. It was Girardeau who held out to the end (1875 General Assembly) for the Southern Church to withstand segregation along the color line. The action of the 1875 Assembly for “organic separation” was to Dabney’s liking. One must think that Dabney would have been a better man had he followed Girardeau in his view of blacks and their ability within the church. p. 174.