Edward Beecher

Edward Beecher (1803-1895) was a Congregationalist minister and theologian, a son of Lyman Beecher and brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher. He was pastor of Park Street Church in Boston, first president of Illinois College from 1830 to 1844, an early antislavery organizer associated with Elijah P. Lovejoy, and later a pastor and editor in Boston, Galesburg, and Brooklyn. His History of Opinions on the Scriptural Doctrine of Retribution (1878) surveys how Christian teaching on future punishment developed from the church fathers onward, which brought his work into the debates that concerned Universalists.

Edward Beecher's great attempt to reconcile God's goodness with human depravity through the pre-existence of souls — the boldest of the orthodox wrestlings with the moral problem of damnation. His History of Opinions on the Scriptural Doctrine of Retribution, also in this collection, gives the historical argument; this gives the constructive system.

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A history of the doctrine of future punishment by a member of America's most famous clerical family — Edward Beecher, Congregationalist, brother of Henry Ward Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Beecher was no Universalist, but his candid survey concedes the wide prevalence of restorationism among the early fathers and the late, contested arrival of endless-punishment orthodoxy — conclusions the Universalists gratefully cited ever after. A fair-minded outsider's confirmation of much the denomination had long argued.

(Note: this summary was automatically generated and may be inaccurate.)