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Editorial note: Our guest writer today is Zachary Groff, Director of Advancement & Admissions at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and Pastor of Antioch Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Woodruff, SC.
John Lafayette Girardeau (1825-98) occupies a significant place in the history of American Presbyterianism. His importance is most evident in his record of service to the Church as a preacher, pastor, churchman, and seminary professor. In 1875, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS) voted to replace William Swan Plumer with Dr. Girardeau as Professor of Didactic and Polemic Theology at Columbia Theological Seminary in South Carolina. On this development, Dr. C. N. Willborn notes, “For the next twenty years, [Dr. Girardeau] carried forth the Thornwellian tradition from the theological chair in Columbia…. Girardeau committed himself to working on those areas of doctrine Thornwell had not been able to complete” (C. N. Willborn, John L. Girardeau (1825-98), Pastor to Slaves and Theologian of Causes, PhD diss, Westminster Theological Seminary, 2003: pgs. 304, 305).
The profundity of Dr. Girardeau’s theological thought is demonstrated in the important (and posthumously published) volume recently posted to Dr. Girardeau’s Log College Press author page: Discussions of Theological Questions. In this anthology of articles and essays, Dr. Girardeau develops a definition (and division) of Theology along the lines of his teacher and predecessor at Columbia, Dr. James Henley Thornwell (1812-62). In doing so, he identifies and confounds variants of the aberrant theology he denominates as Rationalism, including pantheism, intuitionalism, deism, technical rationalism, mysticism, and Romanism. Beyond the discussion of Theology as-such, the volume includes a brief article on the Person of Christ and a very significant contribution to the development of the doctrine of Adoption in Christian soteriology.
Students of American Presbyterian theology will mine rich rewards from a careful consideration of Dr. Girardeau’s Discussions of Theological Questions. While the Discussions is now available to all visitors to the Log College Press website, it was released a couple weeks ago for members of the Dead Presbyterians Society. By signing up for the Society (here), you will gain access to exclusive content, including the Log College Review, a new short-form scholarly resource page with articles on American Presbyterian history and theology. You can read an expanded version of this blog post at the Log College Review in which I give a brief introduction to Dr. Girardeau’s Discussions of Theological Questions by considering his definition of theology as an objective scientific discipline distinguishable from – but necessarily correlative to – subjective religious experience.
