Repeating history.

The story of C. H. Toy: the nineteenth century was a time of cultural and intellectual turmoil in Europe and North America.

Industrialization led to increasing urbanization. Family roles altered, and social structures were overturned. These changes grew out of the new mode of critical thinking that emerged from the Enlightenment. In the wake of this new attitude, modern science was born, history birthed historiography, and the study of literature gave rise to literary criticism. In every area, it seemed "uncritical acceptance and reverential awe gave way to the progress of scholarship." (1) Biblical studies could not remain untouched.

Biblical criticism had been around for more than a century, but it was not until the 1860s and 1870s that its aims, methods, and presuppositions were widely known enough to provoke controversy in the Anglo-American context. Once the conclusions of some of these studies reached a more general audience, however, they aroused both popular interest and indignation. (2) Although conflicts between the new critical approach and traditional Christian beliefs occurred in both Britain and America, the outcome of these conflicts was quite different.

Among the first in the United States to suffer because of his use of higher criticism (3) was Crawford Howell Toy, professor of Old Testament interpretation at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. (4) This article examines Toy's story, whose conflict with the church became a footnote in the history of scholarship, (5) and compares it briefly with that of a much better known British contemporary, William Robertson Smith, in an attempt to explore some of the effects of social setting on the influence of scholarship. We sometimes assume that brilliant scholarship is the key to intellectual progress. The stories of Toy and Smith suggest that good scholarship is important, but other factors are also crucial to scholarly impact.

Crawford Howell Toy

Toy was born in 1836, the eldest of nine children, and early showed promise as a student. He attended Norfolk Academy, a military school, and entered the University of Virginia at the age of sixteen. He exhibited a gift for languages, studying Latin, Greek, Italian, German, and Anglo-Saxon, while also pursuing interests in law, medicine, and music. (6) While at the University, Toy was baptized by John A. Broadus, then pastor of the Charlottesville Baptist Church, who became a lifelong friend. Toy graduated in 1856 and took a teaching position at Albemarle Female Institute in Charlottesville, where Broadus was head of the trustees. In 1857, Charlotte (Lottie) Moon entered the institute, and she, too, was baptized by Broadus, during a revival in 1859. (7) That same year, Toy volunteered as a candidate for foreign missions in Japan and entered with the first class at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Greenville, South Carolina, to prepare for his missionary work. (8)

At Southern, Toy again showed his brilliance as a student, completing "three-fourths of a three year course of study" in a single year. (9) He learned Hebrew so quickly that he soon outdistanced his professor, Basil Manly Jr. He was appointed a missionary to Japan in 1860, but his hopes were thwarted when the uncertain American political context led the mission board to cancel any new missions assignments. It is one of many ironies in Toy's life that he would probably never have entered academic life had not the Civil War disrupted his plans. Although he considered going to Japan on his own, Toy remained in Virginia. He first taught Greek at the University of Richmond in 1861, then returned to Norfolk as an interim pastor. During this period, Toy proposed marriage to Lottie Moon, but she refused. In the fall of 1861, he enlisted in the Confederate Army, where he later served as a chaplain. (10) He was wounded at Gettysburg and became a prisoner of war. In 1863, he became part of a prisoner exchange and spent the remainder of the war as a professor of natural philosophy at the confederate military college established at the University of Alabama.

Following the Civil War, Toy studied Semitic languages and theology at the University of Berlin (1866-68). One of the remarkable things about the Toy case is that a southerner should be instrumental in bringing German critical thought to public notice in the United States. In the aftermath of the war, few southerners had the opportunity for travel abroad. Indeed, only twenty-five Americans altogether studied in Germany in the decade of the 1860s. (11) One of Toy's fellow students was Charles A. Briggs, who would himself be the center of a much more celebrated ecclesiastical storm in the 1890s. (12)

A young William Robertson Smith may have been in Germany at the same time Toy was studying there. Although Toy was ten years older, his academic career, had been sidetracked by the war, while Smith's German experience, like that of many young British scholars, began during the summer term at the university. The Scottish academic year ended in March, so Smith had ample opportunity to study in Bonn and Gottingen during his years at New College, Edinburgh, a period that included the years of Toy's stay in Berlin. (13)

After his return home, Toy taught at Furman for a year. In 1869, he became professor of Old Testament at Southern Seminary, one of the shining stars in the seminary firmament. (14) Indeed, on July 4, 1876, the seminary issued a centennial broadside portraying its faculty members, Boyce, Broadus, Manley, Whitsitt, Toy, and Williams, as examples of Baptist scholarship. (15) Two of the six (Toy and Whitsitt) would later be forced out of the seminary for unorthodox beliefs.

In the years after she rejected Toy's proposal, Lottie Moon joined her sister Edmonia as a missionary in China. Some letters she wrote home soliciting help to relieve the famine in northern China were published in Southern Baptist journals, and Toy saw them. He began corresponding with Lottie and the result was an engagement to marry when she returned home. They had apparently hoped to return to the mission as a couple. Once again, Toy sought the mission field only to have fate intervene. By 1879, Toy's views on biblical interpretation had raised questions at the seminary which led to his resignation. Lottie called off the wedding when she found herself unable to accept Toy's views on the Bible, continuing a solitary career as a missionary until her death in Japan in 1912. (16)

The year 1879 was difficult for Toy. He made no protest at the acceptance of his resignation, although he had not expected it to be accepted, nor did he force a public hearing over the theological issues. He was offered a position at Furman, another Baptist institution, first as professor and then as president, but he refused. He worked part of the year as a newspaper editor, a job that he found adequate but unfulfilling. (17) When he returned to academic life, it was not in Baptist circles.

During this period, Charles Eliot of Harvard University was seeking an Old Testament scholar as part of his program to rebuild the Divinity School. (18) He offered the job to William Robertson Smith, then on trial for heresy in Scotland, but in another twist, Smith refused, thinking he had been acquitted. Shortly afterward, articles in press at the time of the acquittal were published, and he was suspended from his position. In the meantime, however, Eliot had offered the job to Toy, "an American heretic" in Eliot's words. (19) Smith himself went on to Cambridge where he continued a distinguished but brief career, dying of tuberculosis in 1894 at the age of forty-seven. (20)

Unlike Smith, Toy lived to be eighty-three, dying in 1919. As Hancock Professor of Hebrew and Oriental Languages, he was instrumental in developing the study of Semitic languages at Harvard. The books for which he is best known were published after he moved to Harvard. His History of the Religion of Israel (1882), was intended for young readers and was a popularization of German critical scholarship on the development of ancient Israelite religion. (21) It was typical of Toy that this was not a book intended for scholars, but for the church. History was also the first U.S. book describing the history of religion in terms of cultural evolution (the Graf-Ewald-Wellhausen view). It went through thirteen printings, although by the time of the thirteenth edition in 1900 it had come to seem conservative. (22)

In 1884, Toy produced a volume on New Testament quotations of the Old Testament. (23) Here he pursued some of the issues that led to his dismissal at Southern Seminary. He suggested that New Testament writers quoted the Greek and Aramaic versions of the Old Testament and used rabbinic exegetical methods characteristic of the day. He also understood Jesus as a product of his day and age. Ten years later, Toy published another volume on a similar theme, which again received little notice in Europe. (24) He had come to understand that Christianity developed out of Judaism in the characteristic way of human progress. Christianity was the universal religion founded by Jesus.

In his latter years, Toy was particularly interested in the history of religions. In 1899, however, he published two commentaries. The first was on Ezekiel and was an attempt accurately to render the Hebrew text. (25) The second was on Proverbs and is Toy's most lasting work. (26) It went through five printings over sixty years. Its attention to Hebrew poetry and to philological matters is notable. His last book was on the history of religions. (27)

What was the root of the controversy that cost Toy his position and perhaps his first love? Toy was interested in the intellectual developments of the age. He had begun reading geology while still at home and felt modern scientific views must be reconciled with the Old Testament. After studying Hebrew, he became convinced that day in Genesis 1 was literal. Reading Darwin and Spencer convinced him of the reality of evolution. At first dismayed by his conclusions, Toy finally came to understand inspiration in terms of accommodation: "God permitted his servant `to convey the truth in the form proper to his time.'" To properly understand the Bible we must "take the kernel of truth from the outer covering of myth." Once he arrived at this position, sometime in 1874 or 1875, Toy pronounced himself "at peace in a position absolutely beyond the reach of science." (28)

By 1876, however, Toy's views had begun to raise questions at the seminary.

It is recalled that a student went to Doctor Boyce with the statement that "Doctor Toy taught that the writer of the 16th Psalm had no reference to the resurrection of Jesus, but that Peter said in Acts that it was a direct prophecy of the risen Christ." "Well," said Doctor Boyce, "as between Doctor Toy and Peter, you and I had better stick to Peter." (29)

Boyce, president of the seminary, complained to Broadus that Toy was denying the full and accurate inspiration of the Old Testament. Many Baptists expected their seminary teachers to pass on an orthodox and traditional version of the faith, but there was more involved for Boyce than correct hermeneutics. The seminary was in dire financial straits. The budget difficulties had already forced a move to Louisville, Kentucky, and Boyce feared that Toy's views would antagonize the seminary's constituents and make it impossible for the school to survive. (30)

Toy agreed to stop his more questionable teachings, but his students had already begun to ask questions that he thought he must honestly answer. Toy's integrity was one of his great strengths. He could not teach what he did not accept as true. He also believed that intellectual honesty in the long run strengthened faith, an attitude he passed on to his students. (31)

Toy was also interested in the evolution of ancient Israelite religion and how that was reflected in the Old Testament. He was influenced by Kuenen's view of the authorship of the Pentateuch, a view we most often associate with the documentary hypothesis of Wellhausen fame. The specific issue that led to his demise at Southern was, however, the relationship between the Testaments. The Sunday School Times for April 19, 1879, published Tey's exegetical notes suggesting that the description of the suffering servant in Isaiah 53:1-12 was not a direct reference to Christ but rather to the righteous in ancient Israel. This view aroused immediate opposition to the journal and to Toy. (32)

It had become clear that Toy was developing views about Scripture that were in conflict with most Baptists in the South. Toy genuinely believed that such views must be introduced for the good of the church.

Toy understood that the matter would be discussed at the Southern Baptist Convention in May 1879, and he prepared a statement of his convictions as well as a copy of his argument for the virtue of teaching such views. He appended a letter of resignation, "expecting, apparently, that the air would be cleared and his resignation refused." (33)

That, of course, was not to be. The committee appointed to deal with the issue found it expedient to accept Toy's resignation, and he was relieved of his duties. Some opposed the move and suggested a full discussion of Toy's views of the inspiration of Scripture; but in the end, his resignation was accepted out of fear that the seminary would be damaged. (34) No real discussion of the theological issues was held; the decision was made on pragmatic grounds. Allowing Toy to teach views that were "different from those held by our brethren in general" would be inappropriate, and might lead to loss of financial support. (35) In other words, the public issue was not the soundness of his views but whether they were out of step with the average Baptist, a criterion that set a precedent for academic constraint in Southern Baptist seminaries still in effect today.

Toy was well liked and respected personally, a genial and self-effacing man of wide scholarly interests. (36) Many colleagues noted that although he was a critical scholar, he was still in basic sympathy with the Bible's message, in contrast to some European scholars. (37) In this light, Schaff called him a "liberal conservative." (38) After his death, his students and friends memorialized him as a soldier "in the war for theological freedom, in which he fought as bravely as in the Civil War, and was compelled to pay the fine of adherence to his slowly won convictions." (39) But Toy's opponents in the end ignored or demonized him, criticizing him for the use of higher criticism and especially for his move in the struggle to find a religious home to Unitarianism after going to Harvard. (40) Often, little or nothing was said of him in Baptist circles; even at Southern, it was as if he had disappeared from view. (41) The controversy in the United States over the critical method would continue for many more years, and critical methods would not be widely accepted even in the Northeast until the twentieth century. Indeed, the battle continues among some conservative denominations, including Toy's own Southern Baptists. (42)

W. Robertson Smith

An interesting comparison from Great Britain will help put the Toy story in a broader context. While Toy was tendering his resignation to Southern Seminary, William Robertson Smith was undergoing trial for heresy in Scotland. Smith's trial was a protracted one; it began three years before Toy resigned (1879) and concluded two years later in 1881. The issue for Toy and Smith was the same--"scientific technique versus orthodox doctrine" in the study of the Old Testament, and particularly the effect of such techniques on the doctrine of inspiration. (43)

Toy and Smith had much in common. Both had broad interests and great ability. Both studied in Germany and spent time studying and teaching Hebrew and other Semitic languages; both were especially fascinated by the significance of Arabic for the study of ancient Semitic languages. They were both committed to the church and were involved in denominations that would be called orthodox or evangelical. They were dismissed from their posts in denominational schools at nearly the same time, and both went on to prestigious universities: Toy to Harvard and Smith to Cambridge.

W. Robertson Smith was born ten years later than Toy. He grew up and was educated in the home of a pastor of the Free Church of Scotland. Smith was nearly fifteen when he entered the University of Aberdeen where, like Toy, he was a brilliant student. He decided to pursue ministry and a four-year divinity degree at New College in Edinburgh, and it was during this period that he visited Germany and developed many ties there. Although committed to the church, Smith early focused on faithful scholarship as a necessary ingredient for the health of the church. In 1870, at the age of twenty-four (about the same age Toy joined the Confederate Army), Smith became professor of Hebrew and Oriental Languages and Exegesis of Old Testament at the Free Church Divinity College in Aberdeen and served until 1881. (44) At the same time, he began to write articles for the Encyclopedia Britannica. It was these encyclopedia articles that "provoked a storm of controversy" in 1876. (45)

Smith's work challenged the traditional view of biblical inspiration when he suggested that Deuteronomy reflected later prophetic theology rather than the last views of Moses. Smith was tried for heresy by the Free Church of Scotland, which was formed in 1843 when the Evangelical Party broke from the Church of Scotland. Just as a conservative seminary in the American South seems an odd place for the renewal of biblical criticism in the United States, it is ironic that it was the conservative Free Church in Scotland that nourished biblical criticism. Perhaps the youth of the members and the dissenting character of the group's origin encouraged openness to new ideas; or perhaps Smith himself, like Toy, was a catalyst.

Although the issues that provoked controversy were much the same for Toy and Smith, the shape and outcome of the two controversies were quite different. Toy was in many ways a true pioneer, renewing a discussion that had fallen into abeyance in the North and had never begun in the South. Robertson Smith, on the other hand, was not the first to use critical methods in Britain, although he was an outspoken advocate for them; and his trial became a symbol of the ongoing conflict between the old orthodoxy and the new methods. Toy's dismissal was quiet and dignified, a gentleman's affair, even with the later exchanges in the press. Smith's trial was the most famous of its kind, perhaps the classic expression of the conflict between faith and criticism in the nineteenth century. (46) Toy's dismissal was an exercise in pragmatism that virtually ignored the deeper issues, and Toy made no attempt to force his ideas on a reluctant denomination. Smith's trial was about biblical studies and theology, academic freedom, the relationship of church authority and individual scholar ship, what was becoming a rift between science and religion. "And Smith, genius and polymath that he was, touched on, if he did not directly address, nearly all the issues implied in his case. He was, almost from the beginning of his trial, both hero and heretic." (47)

Toy withdrew from the Baptist academic world and eventually left the denomination altogether. Smith remained active in the Free Church and was an influential scholar both in the church and in the larger world outside. His case was crucial in the emerging dominance of historical-critical biblical studies in Great Britain. Smith's views were quite similar to Toy's, but his work marked the victory in Britain of what Cameron has called pious or devout criticism. (48) By 1914, even Scottish Presbyterianism had accepted critical methods. (49) Toy's case, on the other hand, was only a ripple warning of storms to come. In the early-twentieth century, critical methods were common in the Northeast, but they remained a minority position in the South. The tensions came to a head in the Fundamentalist-Modernist Conflict of the 1920s. (50) Conservative groups, including Toy's own Southern Baptists, are still divided over many of the same issues today. (51)

Despite some similarities in their personal histories, Toy and Smith had very different personalities and very different goals. Toy was a quiet and retiring man focused on the local church and missions. (52) Smith was an apologist, a pugnacious man determined to defend his views for the good of the broader church. (53) Smith was also more cosmopolitan, forming networks with Old Testament scholars around the world. (54) He was a popularizer of scholarly views; average attendance at his lectures in Edinburgh and Glasgow after the trial was 1,800. (55)

In Smith's case, a great mind had an impact on intellectual history, but by all accounts Toy, too, had a great intellect and great curiosity. (56) Certainly Smith's aggressive temperament, so different from Toy's reticence, had much to do with Smith's impact, but personality alone is not enough. As Saebo commented:

  [M]odern scholarship has been promoted by individuals of
  genius ... [but it is also] of great importance for the
  progress of study that the theories and views of leading
  scholars ... cross national and regional borders as
  well as confessional ones. (57)

Rogerson suggested that three major factors affect the history of scholarship: personality, individual circumstance, and national and regional setting. (58) All these factors came into play in the story of Crawford Howell Toy. That the Civil War interrupted Toy's work and perhaps determined his ultimate career illustrates this point. In addition, the war interrupted the development of scholarship in Old Testament interpretation. Most scholars take for granted the fact that the advance of critical Old Testament scholarship was quicker and more pervasive in Great Britain than in the United States. (59) Yet, critical ideas had reached the United States, or at least New England, early in the 1800s, during the same period in which they were first being discussed in England. New England scholars "hoped to transplant to the new world the disciplines being developed by German scholars." (60) By 1849, however, this early effort had faded away. The Unitarians who had been responsible for the initial upsurge of interest turned away from biblical studies, and the issues of abolition and the coming Civil War overshadowed scholarly activity. By the end of the Civil War, the first generation of critical scholars had died, leaving no successors. Not until the Briggs controversy in the 1890s did critical issues come under widespread debate even in the Northeast. Smith was the heir of sixty years of Old Testament interpretation; Toy worked when controversies over how to read the Old Testament were just beginning anew.

Although the spread of critical methods in the United States was hampered by the war, it was also constrained by American cultural and religious diversity. Although some regions might be controlled by a single denomination, no single church dominated the whole of the United States. The influence of frontier living and individualism heightened distrust for centralized authority. (61) Factionalism between East and West, North and South inhibited consensus on new ideas or philosophies. Decisions over approaches to the Bible in New England, for example, or in one denomination, did not settle decisions in the South or another denomination. Thus, the South was largely untouched by early forays into critical scholarship, and the Northeast was unaffected by controversies in the South. When Briggs was charged with the heretical introduction of higher criticismto Union Theological Seminary, it was considered something new, despite the fact that Toy had been forced to resign and had moved to Harvard more than ten years earlier. (62)

Geography made a difference, too. In the early-nineteenth century, the Napoleonic wars were an obstacle to interaction between England and the continent, but by the mid-1800s English and German scholars were in regular contact with each other. The United States, however, remained isolated from Europe. Fewer American scholars had first-hand experience of continental ideas and techniques, and American scholarship had less influence as well on continental thought.

Other factors also inhibited American acceptance of the new scholarship. As Clements pointed out:

   ... by the turn of the century virtually all the major centers
   of theological learning in Europe had embraced [biblical
   criticism's] methods and its basic conclusions. Only in
   America was the reaction to it more intense and prolonged,
   where the dismissal of C. H. Toy from his professorship
   at the Southern Baptist Seminary in 1879 reflected a
   more deep-seated suspicion of critical biblical scholarship
   and a marked difference in the structure and background of
   American theological education. (63)

In the United States, theology and biblical interpretation became the business of divinity schools and seminaries supported by the various denominations. (64) These schools were (and many still are) outside the usual university circles. A number of them continue to champion theological conservatism today and feel no compulsion to yield to the accepted wisdom of other academic traditions.

In addition, American individualism and emphasis on democracy, combined with limited opportunities for education on the frontier, have frequently led to suspicion of intellectualism and authoritarian pronouncements, particularly when they question popular orthodoxy. (65) Toy's story illustrates Southern Baptist resistance to classical learning. In a sense, what Toy accomplished was the integration of faith and learning. But many Baptists of his day were unwilling even to admit the existence of the problems Toy addressed.

Perhaps the most glaring contrast between the story of Toy and of Smith is the denominational structures they confronted. Robertson Smith was tried publicly; and while the trial took an inordinate amount of time, it came to a public conclusion.

In 1892, C. A. Briggs, like Smith, faced a public ecclesiastical trial over his use of critical methods. When the trial was over, Briggs went on to other interests since "the trial had already done more to disseminate his views on [higher criticism] than he could have done in his lifetime." (66)

Toy, on the other hand, was never tried publicly. His resignation was accepted for pragmatic reasons--to avoid public dissent at the meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention and to avoid damage to the young seminary. The issues Toy raised were never addressed in an orderly way. The denominational structure Baptists in the South have chosen still does not lend itself to providing a forum for the open discussion of theological issues. Emotionalist appeals on pragmatic grounds often carry the day in matters of denominational conflict.

Both men were influential, but Smith's was much the more spectacular star. Toy brought the study of Semitic languages to Baptist seminaries where they are still considered to be an integral part of theological education. He was instrumental in shaping the Department of Semitic Languages at Harvard. (67) There is no way to measure his personal influence on friends like Whitsitt. On the other hand, Robertson Smith was not only a biblical scholar but also a remarkable and influential scholar in anthropology and Arabic studies. His trial, despite his dismissal, marked the climax of such events in Great Britain, and the general acceptance of new methods followed. Just after 1900, an attempt to impeach George Adam Smith on the same grounds failed easily. (68)

Both Toy and Smith were caught in a paradigm shift in Old Testament studies. It was a time when educational institutions were moving from devotional orthodoxy to historical-critical approaches, and change brought conflict. Both paid a price for the integrity of their response, yet neither would agree to compromise. Part of the difference in the impact they made may have been due to temperament and interests, but part, too, was the effect of timing and circumstance on their lives.

Every scholar works in a historical context within the broad social setting of the guild and the nation, but also within a specific regional and denominational setting. Robertson Smith was clearly the more dynamic and charismatic of these two scholars. But in the United States, no one person could sway the diverse and recalcitrant regions and traditions. This was particularly true in the South with its tradition of local-church autonomy.

In this setting, the story of C. H. Toy has a haunting familiarity about it: honest intellectual of the church resigns under fire at Southern Baptist school. Many dimensions of that history keep repeating themselves. (69) Toy's case is often listed only briefly in Baptist histories, if at all. Part of our purpose has been to give some more flesh to that brief notice. While not agreeing with many of Toy's positions on the Old Testament, we have come to appreciate his academic skill and unswerving honesty as well as his commitment to the church and its mission. Central issues he raised--the inspiration of the Old Testament, its relationship to its ancient socio-cultural setting, and its relationship to Christ and the New Testament--continue to be matters of importance. Like many scholar/teachers, his true influence may never be known.

(1.) Richard Allan Riesen, Criticism and Faith in Late Victorian Scotland. A. B. Davidson, William Robertson Smith and George Adam Smith (New York: University Press of America, 1985), xiv.

(2.) Ibid., xv-xvi.

(3.) Lower criticism is the term often applied to the field of textual criticism that had been on the scene for some time and is less controversial. A number of scholars took inquiry further with source criticism, form criticism, and redaction criticism, the kinds of methods often labeled higher criticism.

(4.) C. A. Briggs, General Introduction to the Study of Holy Scripture (N.Y.: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1899), 286, quoted in Pope A. Duncan, "Crawford Howell Toy: Heresy at Louisville," in American Religious Heretics: Formal and Informal Trials, ed. George H. Shriver (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1966), 56-88.

(5.) Toy is rarely mentioned even at Southern Seminary, although another "martyr," William Whitsitt, is well known. Tellingly, McBeth's mammoth work on Baptist heritage mentions Toy more in the context of his interest in missions and his relationship with missionary Lottie Moon than for his role in Baptist scholarship. H. Leon McBeth, The Baptist Heritage (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1987), 418, 422-23, 446.

(6.) Billy G. Hurt, "Crawford Howell Toy: Interpreter of the Old Testament" (Th.D. diss., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1966), 14-16. The following biographical sketch is based primarily on Hurt. See also Stephen J. Hurd, "Confronting an Intellectual Revolution: The Southern Baptists and the Toy Controversy" (master's thesis, Vanderbilt University, 1987).

(7.) Lottie Moon became a renowned Southern Baptist missionary in whose name a foreign mission offering is made in local churches every year at Christmas.

(8.) Toy thought Japan had great potential as a future world economic power, Hurt, "Toy," 31.

(9.) Ibid., 28.

(10.) Ibid., 34.

(11.) Hurt, Confronting," 7-8.

(12.) Max Gray Rogers, "Charles Augustus Briggs: Heresy at Union" in Duncan, American Religious Heretics, 89-147.

(13.) William Johnstone, "Introduction" in William Robertson Smith: Essays in Reassessment, ed. William Johnstone; JSOT Supp189; (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 18-19.

(14.) See Joel E Drinkard Jr. and Page H. Kelley, "125 Years of Old Testament Study at Southern," Review and Expositor 82 (1985): 9-10.

(15.) The portraits headed blank checks for one dollar payable to the treasurer of the seminary; the text on the check explains it is intended for a contribution to the endowment of the seminary.

(16.) McBeth, The Baptist Heritage, 418-19.

(17.) Duncan, "Heresy at Louisville," 73. It is probably not coincidental that during Toy's time with the paper Whitsitt's first articles against Baptist succession were published anonymously.

(18.) Thomas H. Olbricht, "Intellectual Ferment and Instruction in the Scriptures: The Bible in Higher Education," in The Bible in American Education: From Source Book to Textbook, ed. David L. Barr and Nicholas Piediscalzi (Philadelphia: Fortress Press), 104.

(19.) Duncan, "Heresy at Louisville," 56.

(20.) Johnstone, Introduction, 21.

(21.) C. H. Toy, The History of the Religion of Israel (Boston: Unitarian Sunday School Society, 1882).

(22.) Hurt, "Toy," 71.

(23.) C. H. Toy, Quotations in the New Testament (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1884).

(24.) C. H. Toy, Judaism and Christianity: The Progress of Thought from Old Testament to New Testament (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1892). "Briggs called this work `the best statement of Ethical ethics and sociology that has yet been produced' [and complained in a footnote] `It is discreditable to German and British writers that they so generally ignore a volume which is on the whole the best that has ever been written on the subject.'" Olbricht, "Intellectual Ferment," 105.

(25.) C. H. Toy, The Book of the Prophet Ezekiel: A Critical Edition of the Hebrew Text, The Sacred Books of the Old and New Testament, ed. Paul Haupt (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1899).

(26.) C. H. Toy, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Proverbs, International Critical Commentary (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1899).

(27.) C. H. Toy, Introduction to the History of Religions (Boston: Ginn, 1913).

(28.) Duncan, "Heresy at Louisville," 64. From Pauline Lindsay, Scrapbook Composed of Newspaper Clippings which is in the library of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

(29.) Hurt, "Toy," 61.

(30.) Duncan, "Heresy at Louisville," 65.

(31.) Hurt, "Toy," 61-62.

(32.) Interestingly, Broadus had published very similar views, but managed to dissociate himself from the controversy. Hurt, "Toy," 190.

(33.) Riesen, Criticism and Faith, xvi.

(34.) Hurt, "Toy," 64; Duncan, "Heresy at Louisville," 56.

(35.) Duncan, "Heresy at Louisville," 69,

(36.) "Seldom has a heretic been more beloved by his opponents than this one. No one of those who voted against him denied his ability, piety, honor, integrity, and candor.... [Toy] sought to draw the line of battle on the issue of the nature of inspiration. The opposition refused to question his orthodoxy and, in effect, made the decision against him on the issue of the nature of theological education." Duncan, "Heresy at Louisville," 56.

(37.) C. A. Briggs, The Higher Criticism of the Hexateuch (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1893), 70; Hurt, "Toy," 288-89.

(38.) Philipp Schaft, Encyclopedia of Living Divines (New York: Funk and Wagnall, 1984), 2:219.

(39.) Memorial Resolution, Proceedings for December, 1919. Journal of Biblical Literature 39 (1920) ii-iii. See also David G. Lyon, "Crawford Howell Toy," Harvard Theological 12 (1920): 6.

(40.) Paul R. House, "Crawford Howell Toy and the Weight of Hermeneutics," Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 3 (1999): 29-39.

(41.) Hurt, "Toy," 2-3.

(42.) House, "Weight," and also, "Neglected Voices in Theology," Editorial, Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 3 (1999): 2-3.

(43.) Riesen, Criticism and Faith, xvii.

(44.) Johnstone, "Introduction," 16.

(45.) Ibid.

(46.) Riesen, Criticism and Faith, 94.

(47.) Ibid.

(48.) Nigel M. de S. Cameron, Biblical Higher Criticism and the Defense of Infallibilism in 19th Century Britain, vol. 33 of Texts and Studies in Religion (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1987): 260, 266.

(49.) Alec C. Cheyne, "Bible and Confession in Scotland: The Background to the Robertaon Smith Came," in Johnstone, William Robertson Smith, 40.

(50.) George Marsden, Religion and American Culture (Orlando: Harcourt Brace and Jovanovich, 1990) 180-87.

(51.) House, "Weight," 35-37. In his 1997 Founder's Day Address, House warned against the danger of Toy's theological conclusions.

(52.) Friends spoke of him as "considerate, sweet-tempered, charming." Duncan, "Heresy at Louisville," 77.

(53.) Cheyne, "Bible and Confession," 40.

(54.) Rudolf Smend, "William Robertsen Smith and Julius Wellhausen," in Johnstone, 229.

(55.) Johnstone, Introduction, 20.

(56.) Despite theological disagreements, House called him "One of the most brilliant scholars to graduate from and teach at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary," "Weight," 28.

(57.) Magne Saebo, "Some Problems of Writing a Research History of Old Testament Studies in the Latter Part of the Nineteenth Century--with Special Regard to the Life and Work of William Robertson Smith," in Johnstone, 249, comments on Robertson Smith's deep friendship with Wellhausen as well as his frequent visits to German universities.

(58.) Rogerson, Old Testament Criticism, 4-5.

(59.) Cameron suggested that Britain was slower to adopt the newer methods than was the continent but that the United States was slower to do so than Britain; Cameron, Biblical Higher Criticism 28, 205, 260, 266.

(60.) Jerry Wayne Brown, The Rise of Biblical Criticism in America, 1800-1870: The New England Scholars (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1969), 7.

(61.) Walter B. Shurden, Not a Silent People: Controversies That Have Shaped Southern Baptists (Nashville: Broadman, 1972), 41-42.

(62.) Brown, The Rise of Biblical Criticism, 160. See also George M. Marsden, Religion and American Culture, 169-171,

(63.) R. E. Clements, 100 Years of Old Testament Study (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976), 2. Fourteen years after Toy's dismissal, C. A. Briggs was tried for heresy.

(64.) Brown, Rise of Biblical Criticism, 181.

(65.) Shurden, Not a Silent People, 39-42.

(66.) Rogers, "Charles Augustus Briggs," 139.

(67.) Duncan, "Heresy at Louisville," 76. Toy "proved one of the ablest professors in the Divinity School" rapidly increasing the size of the department and offering instruction himself in a wide variety of subjects.

(68.) Cameron, Biblical Higher Criticism, 205.

(69.) Shurden, Not a Silent People, 104-05. In many ways the Elliott controversy of the 1960s was a replay of Toy's story.

Phyllis Tippit is adjunct professor of Hebrew at George W. Truett Theological Seminary, Waco, Texas. W. H. Bellinger Jr. is w. Marshall and Lulie Craig Professor of Bible at Baylor University, Waco, Texas