Oriel Noetics

The Oriel Noetics is a term now applied to a group of early 19th-century dons of the University of Oxford closely associated with Oriel College. John Tulloch in 1885 wrote about them as the "early Oriel school" of theologians, the contrast being with the Tractarians, also strongly based in Oriel.[1]

The Noetics were moderate freethinkers and reformers within the Church of England. In terms of Anglican religious parties, the Noetics were High Church opponents of evangelicalism, but adhered also to a rationalism from the previous century.[2] They advocated for a "national religion" or national church,[3] and in their own view stood for orthodoxy rather than liberalism.[4] In politics, they were associated with the Whigs, and influenced prominent statesmen such as Lord John Russell, Viscount Morpeth, and Thomas Spring Rice.[5]

Distinctively, the Noetics combined natural theology with political economy. Their approach had something in common with that of Thomas Chalmers, and had much support at the time outside the college in Oxford, and more widely.[6]

  1. ^ Stuart G. Hall (26 February 2009). Jesus Christ Today: Studies of Christology in Various Contexts. Proceedings of the Académie Internationale des Sciences Religieuses, Oxford 25–29 August 2006 and Princeton 25–30 August 2007. Walter de Gruyter. p. 142 notes. ISBN 978-3-11-021277-8. Retrieved 12 December 2012.
  2. ^ Michael George Brock; Mark Charles Curthoys (1997). 19th Century Oxford. Oxford University Press. p. 73. ISBN 978-0-19-951016-0. Retrieved 11 December 2012.
  3. ^ Arthur Burns; Joanna Innes (13 November 2003). Rethinking the Age of Reform: Britain 1780-1850. Cambridge University Press. p. 40. ISBN 978-0-521-82394-4. Retrieved 11 December 2012.
  4. ^ John Walsh; Colin Haydon; Stephen Taylor (7 October 1993). The Church of England c.1689-c.1833: From Toleration to Tractarianism. Cambridge University Press. p. 41. ISBN 978-0-521-41732-7. Retrieved 11 December 2012.
  5. ^ Curthoys, Mark C. (1997). Nineteenth-century Oxford, Part 1. Clarendon Press. p. 74.
  6. ^ Peter Mandler, Tories and Paupers: Christian Political Economy and the Making of the New Poor Law, The Historical Journal, Vol. 33, No. 1, Mar., 1990, Cambridge University Press, p. 86 note 20; Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2639392.