A cheer for Thomas Reid

Thomas Reid’s “commonsense realism” gets beat up a lot, especially in contemporary evangelicalism. But in their history of the Bible in modern culture, Harrisville and Sundberg point (with some unnecessarily pejorative language) to some of the accomplishments of Reid’s philosophy in American church life and theology:

“For three generations, commonsense realism helped to negotiate the thorny paradox of teaching divine election and human depravity while at the same time affirming American optimism in the great experiment of a new nation founded on Enlightenment ideals. It did so by aiding theology in teaching that the common man, listening to the preaching of the church, is capable by the use of reason of assessing the full scope of his moral predicament as a lost creature under the judgment of God who has nowhere to turn but to the love of Christ. Commonsense realism thus helped to accommodate Augustinian faith to the peculiarities of the American mission field, thereby making the heritage of the Reformation accessible to a broad public. Doctrinal rigorists might argue the differences between ‘consistent’ Calvinism and ‘Arminian’ tendencies in the rhetoric of conversion, but such conflicts pale in comparison to the pervasive consensus of American evangelicalism that minimized denominational differences, preached the sovereignty of God, shared in the exuberance of the revivalist tradition, and held to the conviction that America was a chosen nation.”

Reconciling Augustine with the American frontier in a way that promotes inter-denominational consensus – that is no mean achievement.