James A. Lyon, 1814-1882

James Adair was born to Ezekiel L. and Mary Adair Lyon near Jonesboro in Washington County, Tennessee, April 19, 1814. He became a communing member of the Jonesboro Presbyterian Church when he professed his faith in Christ in 1831. His college education was completed in 1832 at Washington College in Tennessee; he then moved to the seminary in Princeton, New Jersey, where he received his divinity degree after four years of study. He was licensed by the Presbytery of New Brunswick in 1836. The year 1837 was a particularly eventful one for young ministerial candidate Lyon because after he married Adelaide E. Deadrick of Knoxville, Tennessee, on March 14, the Old and New Schools divided the Presbyterian Church at the General Assembly in May, after which he was ordained by the Old School’s Presbytery of Holston as an evangelist in September. His first ministry as evangelist was to the churches in Rogersville and New Providence, Tennessee.

Rev. Lyon’s next call would require him to leave his home state, move southwest across the Tennessee River and the state of Alabama, to settle in Mississippi at the Presbyterian Church in Columbus. Rev. Lyon ministered there as stated supply from October 1841 to May 1847; there is no reason given for his not having been duly installed as the called pastor. Following a year of foreign travel after he left the Columbus Church, he accepted a call to the Westminster Presbyterian Church in St. Louis, Missouri, where he was installed November 15, 1848. After a ministry of only two years, he left the church, and established a Select High School for Young Ladies in St. Louis where he taught for three years. In 1854 his Alma Mater, Washington College, honored him with the Doctor of Divinity, and then in October he returned to his former church in Columbus, Mississippi, where he was duly installed as the pastor on January 7, 1855. He continued his ministry at Columbus for sixteen years, which when added to his previous service to that congregation as stated supply gives a total of twenty-two years of ministry.

One aspect of James Lyon’s life that would have particular significance for the P.C.U.S. in later years was his influence in establishing the professorship of Natural Religion in Connection with Revealed Religion at Columbia Seminary in South Carolina in 1860. The new position was endowed with a large cash gift from Hon. John Perkins, Jr., who was a member of Rev. Lyon’s church in Mississippi. During a visit to Columbia to work out the details regarding the new professorship, Lyon stayed with J. H. Thornwell and enjoyed a ride with him in his carriage as they toured the city. Lyon also preached in the First Presbyterian Church on “The Ill Desert of Sin.” The next day Lyon attended the wedding of John B. Adger’s eldest daughter to First Church’s co-pastor with Thornwell, Rev. Francis Mullally. Mulally went on to became the sole pastor in November 1861 when Dr. Thornwell resigned due to continuing health problems. James Woodrow was selected as the first Perkins Professor and began teaching in 1861. Woodrow’s views on creation and evolution would become the subject of extended controversy in the 1880s in Columbia Seminary and the P.C.U.S.

In August 1870, Dr. Lyon was elected Professor of Mental and Moral Science in the University of Mississippi at Oxford, where he worked until he retired in June 1881 due to declining health. James A. Lyon, D.D., died on May 15, 1882, in Holly Springs, Mississippi, in the home of his son-in-law, Eagleton M. Smith, Esq., following four or five days of paralysis. He was survived by his wife, Adelaide, and six children.

Though Dr. Lyon may be an unfamiliar church historical personality today, he was an influential minister in his era. He was selected the moderator of the P.C.C.S.A. General Assembly that met in Columbia, South Carolina, in 1863. Lyon contributed several articles to the Southern Presbyterian Review, and his sermons and comments were published in Columbus newspapers and other periodicals including True Witness and Sentinel (Memphis and New Orleans). Though he enjoyed some prominence and accolades to some degree, he seems to have preferred accomplishing his ends as a behind-the-scenes influence.

The information used for the biography was harvested from standard nineteenth-century Presbyterian biographical sources. Regarding James Woodrow and the evolution controversy, see the Woodrow biography by A. H. Freundt in Dictionary of the Presbyterian and Reformed Tradition in America, eds. Hart and Noll, 1999. See D. Calhoun’s, The Glory of the Lord Risen Upon it, pages 88, 101, regarding Mulally and First Church.

James P Boyce - Abstract of Theology

The following is an excerpt from James P Boyce's -"Abstract of Theology". Boyce was the founder and first principal of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He attended Princeton Seminary and had the upmost respect for Charles Hodge.

CHAPTER VII.

THE IMMUTABILITY OF GOD.

By the immutability of God is meant that he is incapable of change, either in duration of life, or in nature, character, will or happiness. In none of these, nor in any other respect is there any possibility of change.

1. This is implied in his absolute perfection. Perfection permits neither increase as though he lacks, nor decrease as though he can lose. Change must be for the worse or for the better, but God cannot become worse or better.

2. It arises in like manner from the pure simplicity of his nature. That which is not and cannot be compounded cannot be changed.

3. It is expressly taught by the Scriptures in the following as well as in other particulars. A few passages out of many are referred to in support of each.

(a) They declare him to be unchangeable in duration and life: Gen. 21:33; Deut. 32:39, 40; Ps. 9:7; 55:19; 90:2; 102:12; Hab. 1:12; Rom. 16:26; 1 Tim. 1:17; 6:16.

(b) They affirm the unchangeableness of his nature: Ps. 104:31; Mal. 3:6; Rom. 1:23; James 1:17.

(c) They also assert that his will is without change: Job 23:13; Ps. 33:11; Prov. 19:21.

(d) His character is also said to be immutable, as for example his justice: Gen. 18:25; Job 8:3; Rom. 2:2; his mercy: Ex. 34:7; Deut. 4:31; Ps. 107:1; Lam. 3:22, 23; Mal. 3:6; his truth: Num. 23:19; 1 Sam. 15:29; Mic. 7:20; Rom. 3:3; 11:2, 29; 2 Tim. 2:13; Titus 1:2; his holiness: Job 34:10; Hab. 1:13; James 1:13; and his knowledge: Isa. 40:13, 14, 27, 28.

The immutability thus set forth in the Scriptures and implied in the simplicity and absolute perfection of God is not, however, to be so understood as to deny in him some real ground for the Scripture statements of emotional feeling in the exercise of love, pity, longsuffering and mercy, or of anger, wrath and avenging justice. We could as well deny some real ground for the attributes of love, justice and truth which are at the basis of these emotions. We must never forget that we know but little, if anything, of the mode of operation of the divine mind. We are sure that we have to think and speak of it erroneously when our thoughts or words involve successive emotions in God or such as have beginning or end. And yet the only way in which change in him in such emotional acts could occur would involve both beginning, and end, and succession. Wherefore, we know that whatever possibility of change in God appears is due only to our own imperfection of knowledge and in-capacity to form true conceptions.

It is also true that the unchangeableness of God is not incompatible with such outward activity and relations as exist in connection with Creation, Providence and Redemption. But as this has not been so readily admitted, it may be well to consider more particularly the objections which have been made.

I. It is objected that a change must have taken place in God in the creation of the universe. It is claimed that he must then have formed a new purpose, and must have passed from a state of rest to one of activity.

(a) But this objection is based upon a forgetfulness of the fact, that in him there is no succession, and no change of time from one moment to another. The creation of the universe is no less an outward act than is the time in which it has existence. It appears in time and with time. But with God there is no time and no relation of time, exclusive of time itself. There was not before its creation. There will not be when there shall be no more time in creation. We may not be able to understand how this is, but we know that the fact must be so.

It is on this account that the purpose of God to create was not a new one, formed at one time and not at another. On the contrary, that purpose, and, indeed, his whole will is eternal. Whatever may have given rise to that purpose, does not exclude this fact.

(b) There was nothing outside to influence him. He was moved entirely by his own will. Whether that will was altogether voluntary, or arose from some necessity in his nature, we need not now consider. If it was either the one or the other, in either event it was eternal, for if his nature be eternal, then any necessity of his nature is an eternal necessity, and any purpose he forms, whether of necessity, or voluntarily, must be eternal volition. So much for the objection, based upon a supposed new purpose.

That from a transition from rest to labour is equally baseless. It supposes labour and toil in God. But the Scripture account of creation, as well as the dictates of reason, forbid this. There was no laborious work of God. There never is; there never can be. His infinite power compasses his infinite will, in the mere wishing. Neither in the creation nor in the sustentation of the universe is there in God any of that busy, careful thought, and protracted weary effort by which man maintains government or sustains the lives of those dependent on him.

This view of God's creation accords with reason. It alone is worthy of an all-wise, all-powerful, independent and self-existent God.

It is established by Scripture. Heb. 11:3. "By faith we understand that the worlds have been framed by the word of God, so that what is seen hath not been made out of things which do appear."