Richard Baxter Conformed to Nonconformity: The Modern Reception of Baxter as a Practical Theologian

Abstract

Through an examination of the Nonconformist reception of Richard Baxter, this essay provides a window into theological transition within early modern Protestantism. I argue that, although Baxter excelled in knowledge of scholastic theology, integrated scholastic theology into his practical writings, and produced a great scholastic system of theology—the Methodus Theologiae Christianae (1681)—over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, scholastic and philosophical aspects within Baxter’s corpus were ignored, downplayed, and even excised by Nonconformists who otherwise strongly sympathized with his writings. The modern focus on Baxter’s practical works and neglect of Baxter’s scholastic theology is due in large part to this later reception. The story of Baxter’s reception is, moreover, illustrative of a general shift in philosophical and theological orientation in late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Nonconformity.