by Jerome
If you have not looked at this blog for a little while, please look below this article for news about Rachael's stay in hospital, and perhaps send her a message.
Debates sometimes featured in the early Bible
Students’ witnessing efforts. CTR was featured in two famous ones, against E L Eaton
in 1903 and later against L S White in 1908. The text of both debates was
transcribed and published. In 1915 J F Rutherford engaged in debate with J H Troy.
Again the text was published, originally in the 1915 convention report,
transcribed in the main by Rutherford’s son Malcom.
In the UK a debate was held in Scotland in 1896
between Bible Student Charles Houston and a Scottish Free Church clergyman
Donald Davidson which was extensively reported. Houston would have probably
become a well-known name in UK Bible Student history, but he died young. For
the story of this debate you can check back in this blog or download my book on
it. See:
(I know this is a shamless plug, but the download IS
free).
However, not all invitations to debate were
accepted. Following the Russell-Eaton debate, CTR received a challenge through
the pages of the Christadelphian Advocate magazine. The strand of the Age-to-Come
movement that developed into the Christadelphians was to split into several
different fellowships. An original statement of belief was later “amended” by a
sizeable group, leaving those who disagreed as “unamended” Christadelphians. The
unamended group was responsible for the Christadelphian Advocate, founded in
Iowa in 1885 by Welsh immigrant Thomas Williams.
As you can see from the main article in this issue,
CTR was not their favorite person. A member of the Christadelphian ecclesia
started publishing materials the editor viewed as heresy. In a swipe at him,
the beliefs of CTR and ZWT came in for attack. Amongst the issues that clearly
marked out the differences between Christadelphians and Bible students were two
mentioned in the paragraph below from October 1903:
In 1904 CTR was challenged by one of their members
to debate with the Advocate’s editor.
CTR’s response was polite but negative.
It was also noted that the invitation had not come
directly from the editor but just one of the paper’s readers, although the
paper had chosen to publish the correspondence.
In 1906 the attempt was made again. CTR’s response
was published in the Advocate:
Much as those outside the Christadelphian fellowship
tended to lump different Christadelphian groups together, so to a degree did
Christadelphians when looking at the developing Bible Student movement. So John
H Paton appeared on their radar.
From 1905:
This shows that while Paton’s magazine had a more
limited circulation than ZWT (and they confused his magazine title World's Hope with his book Day Dawn), he was still quite well known in these sort of circles.
Having failed to tempt CTR, Williams challenged Paton
to a debate. Paton accepted and the two men and their adherents squared up to
each other in February 1906.
The results were published in a booklet by the
Christadelphian Advocate.
CTR’s debates tended to dwell on conditional
immortality and whether or not there was a hell-fire. Paton’s debate centered
on his main Universalist platform.
How much the event influenced the respective sides,
other than confirm their existing positions, is debateable. But the
Christadelphian Advocate felt confident enough to publish the results. Although
they did choose to cry “foul” in their introduction.
The May 1, 1915 WT published an article from CTR on
the subject of ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF DEBATES. In it CTR wrote:
"Although the Lord's providence
did seem to open up the way for the "Eaton-Russell Debate" and later,
for the "White-Russell Debate," and through these Debates led the way
on to the publication of the Sermons in hundreds of newspapers throughout the
world, nevertheless the Editor is not, and never was, much of a believer in the
advantages of debating. The Debates mentioned were valuable chiefly as
entering-wedges for the newspaper work…So far as the Editor is concerned, he
has no desire for further debates. He does not favor debating, believing that
it rarely accomplishes good and often arouses anger, malice, bitterness, etc.,
in both speakers and hearers. Rather he sets before those who desire to hear
it, orally and in print, the Message of the Lord's Word and leaves to opponents
such presentations of the error as they see fit to make and find opportunity to
exploit.--Hebrews 4:12."
6 comments:
Thanks Jerome.
Hi Jerome! So many thanks for the free download link. Great work!!
Wow. That's quite a find. How did you find it?
The Paton-Williams debate was sent to me by an occasional correspondent, but it came from the Abilene Christian University library under the subheading Stone-Campbell books. Here is the link:
https://digitalcommons.acu.edu/crs_books/541/
The cuttings from the Christadelphian Advocate came a number of years ago from a Christadelphian-related correspondent. I believe some of this magazine has been released electronically.
I will send you some stuff back-channel.
Thank you Jerome. This and your Houston-Davidson debate are fine pieces of work.
All good wishes,
Gary
Christadelphians have always been an interesting faith to me, although studying some of the works post 1950 in relation to the Watchtower view of Christadelphian teaching and then studying the Christadelphian take on the Watchtower, I was largely unaware of this early study of Russell's involvement. Thank you so much for sharing this.
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